Zoey

“Is he going to be okay?” I tried to whisper so I wouldn’t wake Stark and was, apparently, unsuccessful, because his closed eyelids fluttered and his lips tilted up slightly in a painful ghost of his cocky half smile.

“I’m not dead yet,” he said.

“And I’m not talking to you,” I said in a much more irritated voice than I’d intended.

“Temper, u-we-tsi-a-ge-ya,” Grandma Redbird rebuked me gently as Sister Mary Angela, prioress of the Benedictine nuns, helped her into the little infirmary room.

“Grandma! There you are!” I hurried to her and helped Sister Mary Angela ease her into a chair.

“She’s just worried about me.” Stark’s eyes were closed again but his lips still hinted at a smile.

“I know that, tsi-ta-ga-a-s-ha-ya. But Zoey is a High Priestess in training and she must learn to control her emotions.”

Tsi-ta-ga-a-s-ha-ya! That would have made me laugh out loud if Grandma hadn’t looked so pale and frail, and if I hadn’t been so, well, worried in general. “Sorry, Grandma. I should watch my temper, but it’s kinda hard when the people I love most keep almost dying!” I finished in a rush and had to draw a deep breath to steady myself. “And shouldn’t you be in bed?”

“Soon, u-we-tsi-a-ge-ya, soon.”

“What does tsi-ta-ga-a-s- whatever mean?” Stark’s voice was thick with pain as Darius spread a thick cream over his burns, but in spite of the wound he sounded amused and curious.

“Tsi-ta-ga-a-s-ha-ya,” Grandma corrected his pronunciation, “means rooster.”

His eyes glimmered with humor. “Everyone says you’re a wise woman.”

“Which is less interesting than what everyone says about you, tsi-ta-ga-a-s-ha-ya,” Grandma said.