“Miss
Cantacuzino, wait…” Captain Nour said and hesitated. “You were wounded.”
It
was the first time he’d brought up my injury, and I wished he hadn’t. He had
seen the blood on my chest, with a matching stain on my back, and the hole in
my shirt. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together, and Captain Nour, as much
as we often didn’t see eye to eye, was an intelligent man. And he must have
heard people talking about my miraculous recovery.
“I’ll
be fine.” I went for the safer answer. I didn’t quite want to discuss Max’s
blood involvement in this. The only people who knew about what had happened in
this room were obviously Max, Jesse, Radu, Trotuş, and Spânu, and I didn’t want
it advertized.
“Still,
I fear we put you in too much danger. Maybe … maybe you should take some time
off to recover first.”
My
eyes narrowed at him. “Are you trying to protect me, or are you saying that I’m
not fit for this job?”
“Protect
you, yes … like it or not, it’s my job too. But I’ll never say the latter. You
were not prepared for an operation of this size, and still none of us could
have handled it any better.”
“Then
what’s the problem?”
“Well…”
Captain Nour ran a hand over the back of his head. It was unsettling to see him
so uncomfortable in his own skin. We had known each other for over a decade,
and this was a first. “I promised your mother that I would make sure you were
fine.”
“Really?”
A short burst of laughter left my lips, and I winced as it made my chest hurt.
“You’re afraid of my Mom?”
“Mrs.
Cantacuzino can be very convincing,” he said, “and I’m afraid she’s right.
We’ve been asking too much of you. This is a job for pandurs, not for the
Little Council.”
“Maybe
you’re right…” I chose my words carefully. There were times when I wished I had
never set foot out of Romania, especially at night. I couldn’t let him find
that out. “But I’m here. And I’m in charge. You still report to the Little
Council, and while we’re here, I am
the Little Council,” I reminded him and fought to suppress a victorious smile.
“You can’t send me home packing.”
“But
your mother—“
“Tell
her I’m fine. It’s what I do.” I grinned. Poor Mom, she had no idea what the
terror night had turned me into. “And now if you excuse me, I have some bodies
to burn.”
About Ioana Visan:
Award-winning writer Ioana Visan has always dreamed about reaching the stars, but since she can't, she writes about it.
After fighting the apocalypse aftermath in "Human Instincts", she played with shapeshifters in “Blue Moon Café Series: Where Shifters Meet for Drinks”, and then she dealt with vampires in “The Impaler Legacy” series, before tackling longer works like a fantasy trilogy and a science fiction series.
Aside from publishing short stories in various Romanian magazines and anthologies, she published a short story collection "Efectul de nautil" and the Romanian edition of "Human Instincts".
She was awarded the Encouragement Award by The European Science Fiction Society at Eurocon 2013.
Award-winning writer Ioana Visan has always dreamed about reaching the stars, but since she can't, she writes about it.
After fighting the apocalypse aftermath in "Human Instincts", she played with shapeshifters in “Blue Moon Café Series: Where Shifters Meet for Drinks”, and then she dealt with vampires in “The Impaler Legacy” series, before tackling longer works like a fantasy trilogy and a science fiction series.
Aside from publishing short stories in various Romanian magazines and anthologies, she published a short story collection "Efectul de nautil" and the Romanian edition of "Human Instincts".
She was awarded the Encouragement Award by The European Science Fiction Society at Eurocon 2013.
Social Links:
Website: http://www.ioanavisan.tk
Twitter: https://twitter.com/weirdvision
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/ioanavisan
0 fantasies:
Trimiteți un comentariu