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“Doing what?”

“Agreeingwith my sister. It’s freaking me out. Freaking Skye out too. He asked me yesterday if I was absolutely, 100% certain you hadn’t sustained long-term brain damage.”

“So, let me get this straight,” Taly said, stirring the cauldron. “I’m nice to a person, and you two assholes immediately jump to brain damage?”

“Yes,” Aiden said simply. She snorted. “Taly, I’ve known you for a long time. You’re not nice. And neither is my sister. Don’t get me wrong, I love her. But Aimee is, quite frankly, a despot. An overbearing tyrant. An unholy terror, and as I say that I’m actually seeing now how the two of you might get along.”

Taly chucked a roll of gauze at his head, but Aiden flinched away, laughing.

Bubbles began popping in the cauldron, and she turned down the heat, reaching for the bundles of yellow lusica flowers drying overhead. The stalks needed to be wrapped in gauze and allowed to soak. The petals were ground up and stirred in at the end.

Aiden placed a handful of vials on the table. “Your shift is over soon, right?”

“I leave in an hour,” Taly said.

“Could you let the kitchen know not to set a plate out for me tonight?”

“Why?” Not that she needed to ask. The mixture of shame and trepidation on his face gave it away. “Shit, you volunteered for another overnight shift, didn’t you? Seriously, how many is that now? Three this week? When do you sleep?”

He muttered, “Now you really do sound like my sister. And it’s not my fault we’re short on healers. And menders. Everything really.” Back at the table, he sorted through the vials. “Believe me, I would much rather be at home eating food thatdidn’t come from the commissary, but it’s unavoidable. I need to meet with a colleague, and tonight was the only night—”

Someone knocked on the bookshelf next to the tent’s entrance, and they both turned.

“Hi, um… Sorry.” The woman was Highborn with deep brown skin and lavender eyes. Her black hair was loose and draped over one shoulder, long enough to skim the healer’s smock she held folded over an arm. “I didn’t mean to interrupt, but…” She looked at Aiden. “My shift ends at 6bells. I just wanted to make sure that still worked.”

“Uh, hi. Yeah.” Aiden dropped a vial. It bounced off the wooden slats that had been brought in to protect against the mud, rolling beneath the table. Taly stopped it with the toe of her boot. “Six is…” He cleared his throat. “Six is fine. Perfect.”

Taly eyed him, tying off the sachet of stems with absentminded fingers.

“Great.” The woman smiled back, hugging the smock close to her body. “I was thinking that tonight, maybe…” Her eyes shifted to Taly then, widening like she was seeing her for the time. “Wait, are you…?”

Aiden rounded the table. “I’ll see you tonight, Mina.”

“But isn’t that…” Mina stepped around him. “You’re the Savior,” she said to Taly, who gave a baffled smile and a feeble wave of her spoon. “I remember seeing you in Ebondrift. I was there when the abomination—”

“Hit my poor friend here on the head,” Aiden interjected, herding Mina out of the tent. “Yeah, I remember that too. So tragic. Taly, she’s never been the same since.”

Taly arched a brow.

“But—” Mina tried.

“No, you don’t want to talk to her,” Aiden said. “She’s crazy. And if you get too close, she will try to organize you.”

“What does that mean?”

“You don’t want to know. It’s why we put her in this tent.”

Aiden stopped just outside, hands on her shoulders. Mina gave one more confused glance inside the tent before smiling up at him.

Leaning over the table and not giving a shit about being inconspicuous, Taly watched through the swaying tent flaps as Aiden leaned down and gave Mina a quick kiss.

Mina was still smiling as she left.

Aiden was not. Sighing into the haze, he turned, walked the two steps back inside the tent, and waited.

Taly fell back on her stool, grinning—so wide that she was sure she looked maniacal. “So, when you saidcolleague…”

“Here we go.”