Page 45 of Fly to Fury (War of the Alliance #3)

His family stepped back out of his view, momentarily leaving only a blue sky overhead and the warm rays of the sun bathing his face.

“Fieran.” Lije’s voice came from nearby, then he, Pretty Face, Stickyfingers, and Tiny were crowding around the stretcher.

They trotted alongside as the orderlies didn’t pause for them the way they had for a king and the generals.

His friends talked over each other, several of them handing him packets of letters to mail.

Which face wouldn’t he see, when he returned? Who would fall because he wasn’t there with his magic to protect them?

A lump clogged his throat, but he forced it down as he grinned at them, shaking each of their hands in farewell. “Watch each other’s backs up there.”

As his friends stepped back, other flyboys from his squadron hurried forward to shake his hand and wish him well. Then the elves of Flight A were there, including Aylia whose bright smile was likely as falsely cheery as his was .

Lt. Rothilion appeared at the stretcher’s side, the others falling away. His long hair lay immaculate down his back, his face set in a stoic expression that gave little away.

Fieran held out his hand to him. “Take care of the squadron for me, all right?”

Lt. Rothilion gave a sharp nod. “I will look after them until you return.” Then without so much as a curl to his mouth to betray his disgust at the human gesture, he took Fieran’s hand and gave it a single, firm shake before he let go, spun on his heel, and marched away.

Strangely, something eased inside Fieran’s chest. As if he actually trusted Lt. Rothilion with his flyboys.

Fieran looked around, but no one else came forward.

Where was Pip? Surely she’d come to say farewell.

He couldn’t remember saying anything that would have pushed her away so badly that she wouldn’t come.

But he’d been so dazed the past day and a half that there was no knowing exactly what he might have said.

Had something happened to her? He’d just seen her yesterday, and there hadn’t been any battles in the meantime.

But the last time he hadn’t seen someone, he’d learned Merrik was wounded. That thought twisted deeper until pain spiked from the tension in his muscles.

The orderlies stepped between a cordon of MPs and into the shadow of the hospital building, their pace slowing. They set Fieran’s stretcher down at the end of a row of other similar stretchers, each holding a wounded man or woman.

And on the stretcher beside Fieran…

“Merrik?” Fieran hadn’t meant for his friend’s name to come out as a question.

Merrik stared at the sky, his long chestnut hair spilling over the edge of the stretcher.

His skin was as pale as the sheet drawn up over him.

As Fieran spoke, the muscle at the corner of Merrik’s jaw knotted, as if he was gritting his teeth.

But that was the only acknowledgment that he’d even heard Fieran.

“I tried to see you yesterday, but everyone refused to carry me here.” Fieran waited, but there still wasn’t any response from Merrik besides that flexing muscle in his jaw.

Had Merrik lost his hearing too?

Fieran held out his hand into the space between their stretchers. “We’ll fly again, Merrik. We—”

“Don’t.” Merrik turned to Fieran, his brown eyes blazing with something Fieran had never seen directed at him by Merrik before.

Anger.

“Don’t say another word,” Merrik snarled between gritted teeth. “I can’t take any of your blithering optimism.”

Fieran sucked in a breath, those words a harder blow than any he’d yet endured. “I’m sorry. I—”

“Not another word.” Merrik ground out the words before he turned his face away from Fieran, his shoulders shifting as if he wanted to turn his back to him.

For long moments, Fieran couldn’t move, his hand just frozen there in the empty space between their stretchers.

Merrik had never struck out at him like that before.

Fieran let his gaze flick down, first toward the outline of his own feet beneath the white sheet that covered him, then to Merrik’s stretcher, where the sheet draped down and flattened far too soon where Merrik’s right foot should have been.

All Fieran’s fault.

He withdrew his hand back to his own stretcher and turned his face away as well, his chest as hollow and empty as the sky arching far above .

Soon, a line of trucks rumbled along the road and halted before the hospital. Orderlies picked their way between the rows, carting off the injured on stretchers and loading them on the trucks.

A pair of them neared Fieran and Merrik as they checked the tags dangling from the end of each stretcher.

One checked the tag on Merrik’s stretcher before he motioned. “Here’s another one bound for Estyra.”

The two orderlies picked up Merrik’s stretcher and carried him toward a waiting truck.

He never glanced back.

As soon as the first line of trucks left, a second line pulled up before the hospital. The orderlies set to work again, loading the wounded into the vehicles.

As orderlies lifted his stretcher, Fieran tried to peer around one last time. A crowd had gathered beyond the cordon of guards, and he could pick out his uncles, his aunt, his flyboys, and even Dacha standing at the front of the crowd as if such things didn’t make him edgy.

Still no Pip.

The orderlies slid Fieran’s stretcher along the floor of the truck’s bed. Two other stretchers had already been secured to brackets along each of the raised sides, and the bottom of one stretcher was only a few inches above Fieran’s face.

More orderlies slid another man and stretcher along the other side, then a third man and stretcher was added on the floor, leaving only a space wide enough for one more stretcher beside Fieran.

Before that spot could be filled, the voice he’d been waiting to hear all morning filtered from somewhere outside of the truck. “Wait!”

There was a brief discussion outside the vehicle. Then Pip appeared at the back and climbed inside, toting her leather bag along with her. She glanced around before her gaze caught on Fieran.

Making her way to the front of the truck, she sat with her back to the cab and carefully set her bag in front of her so that she didn’t bump the injured man on the other side.

“You came.” Fieran clenched his fingers around his swords to keep from reaching for her. To do what, he didn’t know. Touch her hair. Make sure she was real.

A few of the others sent her glances. Those who were awake and not drugged out of their minds, anyway. But none of them spoke.

“I did.” Pip hugged one arm around her knees, gripping her pack with the other. Her shoulders hunched, as if she wasn’t sure exactly what to say or do. “I got new orders just this morning. I’m being sent to Aldon to assist at the AMPC.”

She was going with him. All the way to Aldon. It could be no coincidence, and yet who would have known to send her with him?

Fieran peered past her, past the canvas flaps at the end of the truck’s bed, and toward the small knot of his family at the front of the gathered crowd.

Despite the distance, Dacha seemed to be looking right at him, a hint of something almost like a smile tipping his mouth.

No. Surely not. How would his dacha have figured out how Fieran felt about Pip? Except…there was that vague dream he’d had. But that hadn’t been real, had it?

This was Dacha. He didn’t meddle like that. At least, Fieran hadn’t thought so.

Yet there Pip was, sitting next to him looking rather small and uncertain, as if she wasn’t sure how Fieran would take the news .

Fieran smiled—a true genuine smile despite the pain throbbing through his body and the deeper ache in his heart—and held out his hand to her.

He wasn’t sure if she’d take it. But he’d done entirely too much clinging to his dacha’s hand like a child lately.

Right now, he’d much rather hold someone else’s hand. “I’m glad you’re coming.”

A smile broke onto her face, easing some of the tension in her shoulders and uncertainty in her eyes. Releasing her death grip on her knees, she took his hand, sliding her fingers between his as the truck gave a lurch and rumbled forward, carrying them toward the train to Aldon.

Carrying them toward home.