Page 12 of The Gargoyle’s Glade (The Gargoyle Knights #3)

Coltor

I rang the bell to summon Lovette to the infirmary as the men deposited the injured man on one of the cots. There were empty beds made up with clean linen all down each side of the room, and the smell of antiseptic clung to the air.

“Go on back and finish up. I’ll stay,” I offered, and they all filed back out seconds before my sister barreled through the door, not even glancing my way as she collected supplies and rinsed her hands in something that smelled like the rot gut alcohol we’d snuck into the barracks during training.

“I rarely get a ring this time of day. Lucky I was in, normally I’d be—” Her mouth dropped open as she finally looked up.

“Coltor? What a lovely surprise!” She strode over, arms wide.

I couldn’t help but return the bright smile she offered when she saw me, but then she noticed the patient.

Her arms dropped before she had a chance to hug me, diverting her course to the side of the cot.

“Oh, dear. Emry, right? What’s happened to you, then? ”

The man could only wheeze, so I answered for him. “He fell off a roof.”

“I see. Let me just have a peek, okay?”

I’d rarely seen my sister so in her element as she was inside the infirmary.

There was no hesitation in any of her movements as she maneuvered Emry onto his side, her hands deftly prodding around the tile that protruded from his flesh on both sides of his body.

Pride lit up my chest as I watched her work.

“Coltor?”

“Mmm?”

“Go wash up.” She gestured to the basin she’d stopped at near the door. “I need your help pulling this out. It’s missed a lot of important bits, but it’s gone through his lung.”

“I—”

“Go.”

There was no room to argue with Lovette’s tone. I felt a bit dizzy when I looked back over my shoulder to see that she’d given him a leather strap to bite down on.

“The tincture will help with the pain, but it’s going to take a moment to start working,” I heard her tell him, and he grunted in understanding.

I did as she asked, scrubbing with the gritty soap at the basin, the potent liquid burning as it found every scratch and cut in my skin. We crowded over poor Emry once my hands were clean, my heart pounding behind my ribs.

“Hold here.” She guided my hands and then met my eye. “Ready?”

“No.”

“Don’t be shy, I’ve seen you do this same procedure before with my own eyes.” She turned her gaze to Emry, everything about her features softening for her patient. “I promise it’s fine, Emry. He’s just a little nervous.”

The man’s eyes were wide as they darted between us. “She’s not wrong, I have actually done this before.” What neither of us said was that the last time it was a tree branch due to a flying accident. And the patient, my dear friend, had not survived.

“See? On three, pull straight back. Understand?”

“Yes.” I braced myself, and she counted down.

Grunting, we both pulled as hard as we could on the tile, but it didn’t want to move. Emry groaned, panting around the leather in his mouth. Lovette put a hand against his shoulder and he calmed. Her gift of alleviating fear came in very handy in her work.

“I’m so sorry, Emry. I’m afraid we have to act a bit more drastically.

” Lovette’s tone was serious, and Emry nodded.

My lunch churned in my gut as she went back to the supply cabinet, returning with what amounted to a fancy hammer and a towel.

She turned to me, voice barely above a whisper.

“Remember when Imogen dropped that half-done pot metal blade through her foot when she was an apprentice? And then it broke when she tried to pull it free?”

I swallowed, throat thick as the old memory surfaced. We hadn’t had a healer like Lovette running an infirmary back then. In fact, that might have been one of the incidents that pushed her into taking the training. “Yes.”

Lovette nodded, her golden curls bouncing against her cheeks as she placed the towel over the bit of tile poking out of Emry’s front. “This is going to be like that. You pull, on three.”

“Alright.” I dabbed the cold beads of sweat from my brow with my sleeve before gripping the tile again.

“Put your foot up on the bed,” she said, tone uncomfortably smooth, clinical. “If he rolls backward, you need to brace him with your knee.”

“Are you sure someone else shouldn’t be?—”

“You’re doing fine, big brother. Don’t forget to breathe, though.

Wouldn’t want you passing out. I won’t be able to catch you, and if you crack your head on the floor, we’ll be in trouble.

” She smirked at me. I was going to catch an absolutely devastating hard time about that from her later, I was certain of it.

“One. Two…” On three, Lovette raised the hammer up and brought it down with all her might, landing a perfect hit on the tip of the tile piece, just as I pulled backward.

Emry shouted over the leather as the tile pulled free of his body with a grotesque sucking sound.

I was not ready for the abrupt shift in tension, and landed flat on my ass on the hard stone floor, tile in my hands.

“Perfect!” Lovette immediately began tackling the new wound, applying drops of shimmery liquid from a tiny vial, then an ointment that smelled like old gloves before wrapping him in clean bandages.

Emry was dripping sweat but still conscious when she finished, and he managed to give her a thumbs-up and a little grin before slipping off to stone sleep so the healing could speed along.

My sister offered me a bloody hand to help pull me back to my feet. “Not bad for your first surgery out of the field. Though you could have simply come visit, you know.”

“Trust me, this is definitely not how I planned to see you,” I sighed.

She snorted a laugh. “Come on then. Let’s get you cleaned up. Imogen will be so sad she missed this.”

I cringed. “She’d have been a better assistant. I could have fetched her from the forge.”

“Nonsense. You did perfectly, and she’s busy with her fire and steel. Here,” she said, scrubbing us both down elbows to fingernails with soap and a small brush. Once she was satisfied, I was rewarded with a bright smile and one of her hands against my cheek. “Well. Look at you.”

I stuttered, realizing that she had tears in her eyes. “Lovette, listen?—”

“Shut up,” she chuckled, scrubbing her tears away. “I haven’t even missed you that much, you rotten brute. And I’m certainly not mad that you’ve been avoiding me.”

My little sister, who stood perhaps two full heads shorter than me but who’d always had a personality bigger than life itself, punched me hard—right in the same place Emry had been impaled by a rogue roof tile. Then she threw her arms around my middle and squeezed.

“It’s not like we haven’t seen each other,” I protested as she dragged me through the meetinghouse, collecting everything she insisted we needed for a proper catch-up.

“We’ve seen each other for perhaps half a minute several times, that’s true,” she argued, piling sliced meat and cheese onto a plate.

“But there’s always been a bunch of people around or somewhere urgent to be.

I haven’t actually gotten to sit down and talk with you in months.

” Her bright blue eyes fixed on mine as she placed several bottles in my arms. “I’m well aware that’s not your favorite thing, but I’m owed.

You’ll survive an evening in with your sister…

sss . Sister s . Probably. Maybe.” She tucked a whole loaf of bread under her chin and stalked out of the meetinghouse, hands full of overloaded plates and me ambling behind with all the drinks.

“Wait, Imo’s coming too?”

“Yes, assuming of course she’s finished with her project and doesn’t already have dinner plans. She comes by quite a lot, unlike any of my brothers. Only the Fates know when I might actually get to see my twin , the bratty worm.” She shook her head, curls bouncing.

My thoughts spun as I came to terms with how differently my day had gone than I expected.

“Nice to see you Coltor!” Jorna, one of the aunts who ran the kitchen, called after us with a chuckle.

At least we were between mealtimes, and there were only a couple of people gathering snacks like ourselves.

I didn’t think I would have fared well if the hall had been full of my kin.

I’d visited once, shortly after Seir had proven he could mind my post for me.

I’d lasted long enough to bumble my way through greetings to a very loud and enthusiastic group of revelers enjoying some kind of party, greet my father, kiss my sisters on their cheeks, and leave again. It took me a solid week to recover.

“Of course she is. Do you really think nobody dashed over to the forge to gossip the second you walked into the infirmary?”

Her pace was nothing short of speed walking, always had been. I was using my longest strides to keep up with her as we passed the infirmary door, then went around the corner of the building to a staircase that led up to her apartment.

Another thought occurred as we approached the door. “Is Gaius here?” My sister had found her mate not long before, and while I didn’t necessarily dislike the man, the two of us in a room together would likely provide some tension as we maneuvered our new familial ties.

“No. He’s at the outpost, like always. They can’t seem to keep enough staff to save themselves.

” She huffed a little, frustration obvious.

“You’re stuck with us girls this evening.

” Lovette used her toe to nudge the door open, revealing Imogen already sitting comfortably on the plush sofa. “You’re here!”

Imogen returned Lovette’s smile. I enjoyed seeing that their bond had grown in my absence. “I should have checked the meetinghouse, I could have helped,” she said, making room for the plates and cups on the low coffee table.

“No need, we’re all set,” Lovette said, appraising the spread before heading into the adjoining kitchen. “I’ll just get some utensils.”