At that moment the door creaked and another familiar face stepped into the half-lit room: Vaidya.
He had changed — if age and worry could be said to change the scholar. Ink smudges still crowned the young strategist's hands. There were hollows under his eyes and a carefulness in his gait that had not been there before. When he saw Solis awake he blurted, "You're up! By Eloin's patience, you look like a man who's slept through winter, man!"
Solis managed a humorless half-smile. "Three months to be precise."
Vaidya set down a small satchel, hands trembling slightly as if he had been holding a leaf. He took Solis's free hand and gave it a squeeze that was both steadier — both an apology and a grounding. "You were in a Postknight scroll," Vaidya said. "Wrapped in protective weave. There was a lot of damage to your energy signature. The scroll was bound by spatial magic — it kept you from dissipating. After that Postknight trainee arrived I came as soon as — well, you know how... I was busy doing my combat training."
Solis's brows knitted. "Why am I… in Mailie? Where's Ada? I was meant to go to Caldemount—"
Vaidya exchanged a glance with Elizabeth. "Ada is in Caldemount," he said. "She… she didn't get to you. A rookie did — Keon, a courier — Ada gave you to him and used the scroll. Ada is with the operation at the Upper Ring and other fronts. Solis — there's nothing simple. The kingdom is under siege. I know you would like to go back and help but you didn't eat for days after the wound. They kept you in the scroll because your aura was unstable. You must rest."
Solis's jaw worked. The need to move, to go, to take up the sword — it coiled in him like an animal. "I have to leave," he said. "Raz — Kreg — if they're taking the kingdom—"
"You can't walk now," Elizabeth said, the nurse's steel slicing through his insistence. "You would fall before the gate. You've bled your strength like a lantern burnt down. You need food. You need sleep. You need time for your aura to resettle and the wounds to knit. The Postknights who brought you here were right to keep you until we could stable you."
Vaidya's fingers tightened on Solis's hand in a way that was almost a reprimand. "Listen to Elizabeth, Solis. I keep track of numbers and movement and patterns. Our seniors are best for no reason. They will take care of it. It needs you to be able to think straight and fight well. Go now and you'll become another casualty. Ada and I — all of us need you alive at the end of this, not wandering like a burned moth."
Solis closed his eyes because the urge to argue was enormous. He tasted defeat like something metallic on his tongue. He had imagined himself rising, taking up the sword in the broken city and meeting Kreg in the street. Instead he lay in a bed smelling of boiled barley.
"Why would Raz do this?" he asked, voice small. "Why hand him the sword? She was… she—"
Vaidya sat on a stool beside the bedside and folded his hands around the satchel. "People break in different ways," he said. "Or they change sides because of love, or fear, or empty promises. He — Kreg — promises a kind of order. Promises to remake the world. For someone like Raz — alone, with a history that reeks of being used — maybe the idea of a father who could give meaning was easier than the truth. I am not excusing her. I only am trying to explain that she is not one thing only. She has many aspects. And Kreg plays men like strings."
Solis nodded though the motion felt like it required more strength than the simple moving of a head. "He promised to remake the world. He used the Blacknight Dragon Sword and the Blazing Dragon Sword. They… they answer to something like hunger. Raz—" He stopped because there was nothing to finish.
Elizabeth moved then, arranging a small bowl of broth and a piece of warm bread on a tray as if the motions could stitch his resolve back into a shape that would hold. "Eat," she instructed. "Even a warrior must feed the body before he feeds the soul."
Solis took the bread and ate it mechanically. The first taste went to a place inside his chest where the dragon had been. Food grounded him in ways that anger could not. He listened while Vaidya told him, in smaller, painful pieces, what had happened in the three months he'd been asleep: the rapid advance of Kreg's dark knights, the collapse of many holdfasts, the bleaker reports from the southern fields. He learned that Caldemount's Upper Ring held, for now; that Epac clung to independence on mountain wind and stone.
When Solis's shoulders drooped and the first real tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, Elizabeth took his hand in hers and squeezed. "You did not choose this," she said in an old, stern way. "But you survived a thing that many of us did not. Now rest. Ada will come when she can. Vaidya will bring news. The world does not depend on one blade. And... it's not you fault."
Solis wanted to argue. He wanted to reject the bed and run. He wanted to find the sword that was given to him by Phill's spirit. But his body remembered the drain: the way Razille's shadow had found the seams of his aura. He could not pretend his limbs would cooperate.
Reluctantly, like a man letting a broken wing rest, he lay back. Vaidya adjusted the blanket and sat to watch. Elizabeth hums a soft, old song while she embroidered a small strip of cloth with a ward — in case. Outside, through the infirmary window, the sky above Mailie was gray and thin with smoke that seemed to travel from far-off fights like a rumor.
Solis closed his eyes. For a moment the dragon's maw returned — not as threat now but as a promise of a shape he would have to learn to meet. He felt the medallion on his chest. He thought of Ada, of Devon's orders, of Cassandra and Colins fighting in a world grown mad. He thought of Razille and the place she had walked to break a seal.
Then, with great effort, he let sleep take him again: this time a shallower, guarded sleep. Elizabeth hummed. Vaidya keep watching. The kingdom burned in news and rumor beyond the infirmary's thin walls, but for now the bed held him, and the world waited for him to stand again.