Chapter 21: Friendly Competition
It felt like a million years before a healer finally emerged again from the operating room to deliver news of Azia's condition. They were pleased to report that Azia would survive the attack, but her recovery would be slow. They wanted her to remain in the healer's ward for several days in order to completely heal.
They could have told Zeke that she must be confined to a bed for months and it wouldn't have mattered. The only thing Zeke cared about was that she would be alright.
Azia woke up in the healer's ward feeling as though she had just fallen down a one hundred foot cliff. She remembered being in the woods with Zeke. She remembered hearing the sound of someone running up behind them. She remembered seeing a sudden flash as sunlight reflected off the metal of the blade as it flew through the air.
She remembered diving headlong into Zeke as though she were a professional wrestler and the blinding, almost unbearable pain of the blade as it sunk into her flesh.