The Thorn and the Tempest: The Single Bed Problem

The ink on the Wayfarer's Rest registry was still wet when Elara Voss noticed the discrepancy.

Two names. One room. The number twelve scratched in the steward's careful hand beside the notation 'honor-bound companions, single chamber allotted per the contract's sixth clause, the Crown assumes no impropriety where duty binds.'

The wax seal at the bottom belonged to Steward Maren of Thornewood Keep, pressed with the thorned rose of the second house. Beneath the seal, in Maren's even script: 'The boy will behave himself. See that the girl does likewise.'

Elara read the line twice. A laugh escaped her, short and incredulous, the kind of sound that filled a small taproom and turned heads from three tables away.

Of course Maren had done this on purpose. Of course she had.

The Wayfarer's Rest sat at the crossroads where the eastern trade road met the southern pass, a timbered sprawl of low ceilings and hearth-smoke that smelled of mutton fat and pine resin. Outside, the last light of autumn bled across the foothills, copper and ash. Tomorrow they would ride into the Sablewood. Tomorrow the real journey began. Tonight, the royal steward who had watched over Kaelan Thornewood since his cradle had arranged for them to share a bed the width of a ship's bunk.

Elara set down the quill. Her fingers left dark smudges on the parchment, the ink from her father's old logbook bleeding through. She had carried that logbook across three kingdoms and two near-death escapes, its leather cover soft as cloth from years of handling. Now she tucked it back into her coat and crossed the common room in four strides, her boots loud on the warped floorboards.

Kaelan was in the corner by the fire, his cloak still damp from the afternoon rain, a tankard untouched on the table before him. He sat with the particular stillness of a man who has learned to take up as little space as possible, shoulders angled inward, long fingers wrapped around the pewter but not drinking. The firelight turned the sharp planes of his face into something almost gentle, softening the line of his jaw, warming the grey of his eyes.

He looked up when she approached. Something flickered there, caution or curiosity, she could never quite tell with him.

'The steward,' Elara said, dropping onto the bench across from him, 'has made an assumption.'

Kaelan's gaze dropped to the folded paper she set between them. He read it. His expression did not change.

'Ah,' he said.

'Ah,' Elara repeated. 'That is your response. Ah.'

'What would you have me say?'

'You could start with an apology for whatever arrangement your household has made on my behalf. You could follow with an explanation. You could finish by producing a second room from somewhere in your princely luggage.'

The fire crackled. A log shifted, sending a shower of sparks up the flue. Somewhere in the kitchen, a pot clanged against an iron hook.

'I have no second room,' Kaelan said. 'And the apology would be insincere, since Maren did this and I did not.'

'But you suspect why she did it.'

'I suspect a great many things about Maren. She has run that keep since before I was born. She believes she knows what is best for the house, and she has not yet been corrected.'

Elara leaned back against the wall. The wood was rough through her shirt, smelling of old smoke and older secrets. She studied him across the table, the prince who had been disowned for refusing a bride, the knight who had never knelt for the marriage his father demanded, the man who now sat across from an outlaw captain's daughter with ink on her fingers and a blade at her hip and nowhere else in the world to be.

Outside, a horse stamped in the stable yard. The sound carried through the thin walls, rhythmic and patient.

'There are other rooms in this inn,' Elara said, more quietly now. 'I passed three on the stairs. The landlady said the east wing was empty.'

'The landlady,' Kaelan observed, 'is not the one paying for the eastern wing.'

'No. Your father is. Through Maren. Which means tomorrow morning, when the household accounts are tallied, there will be a line item for a room you did not occupy. And Maren will ask why. And you will have to explain that the outlaw you are contractually bound to travel with refused to share your bed.'

The word landed heavier than she had meant it to. Kaelan's hand stilled on the tankard.

'That,' he said, after a moment, 'is precisely the scenario Maren is hoping to avoid. If we take separate rooms, the story travels back to the keep in a fortnight. If we take one room, no one speaks of it, because there is nothing to speak of.'

'You sound very certain there is nothing to speak of.'

'I am certain we are both adults capable of sleeping on opposite sides of a quilt without incident.'

Elara tilted her head. The fire was dying down, the flames lower now, casting longer shadows across the table. She could see the tiredness in him, the faint bruise-colored shadows beneath his eyes that three days of hard riding had deepened into something closer to exhaustion. He had not complained once. He had not even slowed his pace.

She had, though. She had watched him notice.

'Very well,' she said. 'One room. One night. And in the morning, you write to Maren and tell her this was a terrible idea.'

'Agreed.'

'And if she writes back that it was an excellent idea, you tell her she is no longer in charge of your sleeping arrangements.'

'That,' Kaelan said, the corner of his mouth twitching, 'I cannot promise. Maren has been in charge of my sleeping arrangements since I was four years old. She chose my nightclothes until I was eleven. She once hid my boots for a week because she disapproved of where I had walked.'

Elara felt the laugh before it came, warm and startled out of her. 'Hid your boots.'

'In the armory. Behind a rack of ceremonial pikes. I found them by smell.'

'Your steward hid your boots behind pikes because she disapproved of where you walked.'

'The walk in question was to a tavern in the lower city where she had specifically forbidden me to go.'

'Why?'

'I was meeting a friend.'

'A lady friend.'

Kaelan met her eyes. The grey was darker in this light, almost the color of the sky before a storm. 'A bookseller,' he said. 'He had a first edition of the Thornmother cycle he wanted to sell. Maren disapproved of the price.'

'You risked your boots for a book.'

'I risked my boots for the Thornmother cycle. There is a difference.'

Elara shook her head, still smiling, and reached for the tankard he had not touched. She took a long drink. The ale was bitter and cold, the kind they brewed in the foothills where the water ran mineral-rich from the high springs. She set it down and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

'Come on then,' she said, rising. 'Before the landlady changes her mind and assigns us to the pig room.'

'There is a pig room?'

'There is a pig room. The landlady was very specific about its amenities.'

Kaelan stood. He moved the way he always did, controlled and economical, no wasted motion, the trained economy of a man taught from boyhood that his body was a weapon that must be kept sharp. He collected his cloak from the peg, draped it over his arm, and waited for her to lead the way up the narrow stairs.

The room was at the end of the hall, small and clean, with a single window that looked out over the stable yard. The bed occupied most of the floor, a heavy oak frame hung with faded blue curtains that had once been finer than they were now. A washstand stood in the corner. A single chair. A braided rug on the floor, threadbare but recently swept.

Elara set her pack on the chair and turned to find Kaelan standing just inside the door, as if uncertain how much of the room he was permitted to occupy.

'There's a washroom down the hall,' she said. 'I saw it on the way up. Shared, but private enough. I will go first if you like.'

'Thank you.'

She collected her night things and left him there, closing the door behind her.

The washroom was cold, the water in the basin sharp with chill. She washed her face and hands, unbound her hair and rebraided it loosely for sleep, changed into the linen shirt she used for nights on the road. In the small mirror above the basin, she looked younger than she felt, the freckles across her nose standing out against skin that had not seen enough sun this autumn. There were lines at the corners of her eyes that had not been there two years ago, before her father's ship had gone down with all hands in the strait beyond the Amber Isles.

She had not thought about that tonight. She had not thought about it for almost three days, which was some kind of record.

When she returned, Kaelan had moved his pack to the floor beside the chair and was sitting on the edge of the bed, unlacing his boots. He had removed his coat and sword belt, and without the bulk of them he looked somehow smaller, more human. His shirt was unlaced at the collar, the linen soft and well-worn, and she caught the faint scent of him as she crossed the room, pine soap and leather and something warmer beneath, the smell of a man who had been riding hard.

He glanced up. Their eyes met.

'There is a blanket in the chest,' he said, very carefully. 'I thought I would take the outer edge. If that suits.'

'That suits,' Elara said.

She crossed to the bed and pulled back the quilt on the left side. The mattress dipped under her weight, older springs that creaked but held. She sat, then stretched out on her back, her head on the single pillow, staring up at the ceiling beams.

The bed was, as she had suspected, the width of a ship's bunk. Her shoulder was perhaps four inches from where his would be. She could feel the warmth of him even before he lay down, the displacement of air as he settled onto the other side.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

Outside, the stable boy was leading the horses in for the night. The soft thud of hooves on packed earth rose through the floorboards. A barn owl called somewhere in the darkness, the sound lonely and precise.

'Elara,' Kaelan said, to the ceiling.

'Mm.'

'Why did you agree? Truly.'

She turned her head on the pillow. He was still staring upward, his profile limned in the dim light from the single tallow candle on the washstand.

'Because you are tired,' she said. 'Because I am tired. Because the alternative was a fight I did not want to have tonight, and Maren would have won it regardless.'

'That is not the whole of it.'

'No,' she admitted. 'It is not.'

She watched his throat move as he swallowed. The owl called again, further off now.

'I have shared quarters with men before,' Elara said. 'On ships, mostly. When the bunks were tight and the weather was bad and there was nowhere else to be. You learn to sleep through anything. You learn to be still.'

'I have not,' Kaelan said. 'I have had my own rooms since I was nine. My own bed. My own quiet.'

'Then tonight will be educational.'

A breath of sound that might have been a laugh. 'Yes,' he said. 'I suppose it will.'

The candle guttered in its holder, the flame bowing sideways as a draft moved through the old window frame. Elara reached up and adjusted the quilt higher on her shoulder, then let her hand fall back to the mattress between them.

The space felt smaller than it was.

'Sleep,' she said, softly. 'We have a long day tomorrow.'

'Yes,' he said. 'We do.'

He blew out the candle. The room went dark, the only light the faint grey wash from the window, the shapes of furniture softening into shadow. The bed creaked once as he settled on his side, facing away from her.

Elara lay on her back and listened to the inn settle around them, the creak of beams, the distant murmur of voices from the common room below, the soft breathing of the man beside her.

She did not sleep for a long time.

The tremor had passed, but it had taken something with it. Kaelan's legs buckled at the second step from the window, his weight dropping hard against her before he could catch himself. Elara caught him under the arms, felt the cold sweat soaking through his shirt at the small of his back, and understood in that instant that this was not going to be a quiet negotiation.

'Sorry,' he managed, the word bitten off and half-lost to the chattering of his teeth. 'Sorry, I just need a moment.'

'You need the bed.'

'Yes.' A laugh, thin and breathless. 'I suppose I do.'

He was heavier than he looked. Tall first, and then broad through the shoulders, and then simply heavy in the way of a man whose body had been trained to carry armour and had not yet unlearned the habit. Elara braced her feet on the plank floor, hooked her shoulder under his arm, and began the ungainly work of moving them both toward the mattress.

Three steps. Four.

Kaelan's knees struck the edge of the bed with a soft thud. He folded forward, more by accident than design, and Elara had to choose quickly between letting him fall or going down with him. She let him fall. The frame shuddered under his weight, the ropes beneath the straw ticking in protest. He lay there on his side, still half laughing, still shivering, his face half-pressed into the pillow.

'You could have warned me,' Elara said, out of breath, one hand braced on the bedpost.

'I did warn you. Earlier. You did not listen.'

'I meant before you collapsed.'

'I did not collapse. I leaned.'

'You collapsed,' she said. 'There is a difference, but not the one you think.'

She went down on one knee beside the bed, unbuckled his boots with fingers that wanted to fumble, and pulled them off one at a time. His socks underneath were damp. The second one stuck; she had to peel it from his heel. Kaelan made a small sound, not quite a wince, and turned his face further into the pillow.

'There,' she said, setting the boots side by side on the floor with a care that felt absurd. 'Now the rest of you.'

'The rest of me,' he repeated, and the laugh came again, weaker. 'I can manage the rest of me.'

'You cannot. Your hands are shaking.'

'They are always shaking after. It passes.'

'Hush.'

She pulled the quilt from beneath him, a slow negotiation with gravity and the mattress, and laid it over his legs and torso. He was still shivering, the fine tremor running through his shoulders even now, and his skin under her palm when she checked his forehead was clammy and too pale. She did not like the colour of him. She did not like the way his breathing sat too high in his chest, too fast, as though he were preparing to run.

'When was the last one?' she asked.

'This evening. Just now.'

'Before that.'

A pause. 'This morning. Before you arrived.'

'Kaelan.'

'Two days, then.' He closed his eyes. 'Three, if we are counting the small ones. Which we should not.'

'We are counting all of them.'

'Then three.'

Elara sat back on her heels and looked at him. The candlelight from the table caught the line of his jaw, the dark fan of his lashes against his cheek. He looked younger like this, and more tired than she had seen him before. She had known, in the abstract, that the Greying took things from him in private moments, between the public performances of strength. She had not understood until now that those moments were coming closer together.

'You should have told me,' she said.

'I did not want you to worry.'

'I worry regardless. You might as well give me the information.'

Another of those thin, bitten-off laughs. 'I will bear that in mind.'

She stood, retrieved the second quilt from the chair by the door, and shook it out over him. He made a sound of protest that she ignored. The room was not cold, precisely, but the stone floor drew heat downward and the window did not seal well, and he had lost too much warmth already.

'Better?' she asked.

'Smothered.'

'Good.'

She crossed to the table, poured water from the pitcher into the basin, and wrung out the cloth that sat folded beside it. The water was cool, not cold; she did not want to shock him. When she returned to the bedside and laid the cloth across the back of his neck, he let out a breath that was almost a groan.

'That is,' he said, carefully, 'unfairly good.'

'Quiet.'

'You are bossy when you are concerned.'

'And you are argumentative when you are avoiding the fact that you have just frightened me.'

The words came out before she could think better of them. Kaelan opened his eyes. The grey of them was darker in this light, almost the colour of the window behind her, and there was nothing guarded in them now, just surprise, and something softer beneath it that she did not want to name.

'I did not mean to frighten you,' he said.

'You did.'

'Elara.'

'You did,' she said again. 'I heard the noise from the hall and I thought, this is it, this is how it ends. Not the king's men, not the road, not any of the things I had prepared for. A tremor in an inn room, and you at the other end of it alone.'

He was quiet for a moment. The cloth on his neck had begun to warm; she turned it, folded the cooler side up.

'I am sorry,' he said.

'Stop apologising.'

'I am not sure what you would prefer.'

'I would prefer you not to do it again.'

'Ah,' he said. 'That I cannot promise.'

She let that sit. There was no good answer to it, and they both knew it. The Greying was not a thing one could will away; it was in him now, part of the shape of his days, and there would be more of these, not fewer. She laid her hand flat on the mattress beside his shoulder and felt the warmth coming off him, too faint, too slow in coming.

'Then I would prefer you not to do it alone,' she said. 'Even if I am in the hall. Even if I am asleep. You call for me.'

'That feels dramatic.'

'Kaelan.'

'Yes.'

'You call for me.'

He looked at her for a long moment. The shivering had eased, or seemed to; she could not be certain. His jaw had unclenched, at least. The lines around his mouth were softer than they had been a minute ago.

'As my lady commands,' he said, and the formality was meant to lighten the weight of it, and almost did.

'Good.' She stood, picked up the basin, and returned to the table. 'Now sleep. The shaking will pass quicker if you let it.'

'You sound like Maren.'

'That is the worst thing you have said to me tonight. Take it back.'

He laughed, and this time it was closer to a real one, if a tired one. 'I take it back. You are nothing like Maren. Maren would have had me stripped to the waist by now and dosed with something foul.'

'Would she?'

'She did, once. When I was fifteen and the Greying first came on. I did not speak to her for a week.'

'She was right to.'

'Yes,' he said. 'She was.'

She turned back to him. He had not moved, exactly, but he had settled deeper into the mattress, the quilts rising and falling with his breath. The cloth on his neck had slipped; she crossed to the bed and adjusted it without thinking, her fingers brushing the fine hair at the back of his skull.

He closed his eyes.

'Elara,' he said, very quietly.

'Yes.'

'Thank you.'

'For the cloth.'

'For the cloth,' he agreed. 'And for the shouting. And for coming up the stairs.'

'Shouting is generous. I believe the word was bossy.'

'Generous to me, then.' A pause. 'For coming up the stairs.'

She did not answer. There was nothing in her that wanted to make a joke of it, and nothing she trusted herself to say in earnest. The owl called again, somewhere distant in the trees below the inn, and the floorboards ticked once as the building adjusted to the cooling night, and after a while his breathing slowed, and she knew he was asleep.

She stayed a moment longer, watching the line of his shoulders under the quilts, the way his hand lay curled on the pillow near his cheek. He looked, in sleep, less like a prince and more like a man. She was not sure which of the two frightened her more.

She straightened, blew out the candle on the table, and sat down in the chair by the window. It was narrow-backed and hard, but she had slept in worse. The moonlight came through the glass in a pale, uneven wash, and she rested her head against the frame and let her eyes adjust to the dark.

Somewhere below, a door closed. A man laughed, low and brief, and a woman answered him in a voice too soft to make out. Elara listened to the sounds of the inn settling, and to the slow, even breathing of the man on the bed, and she did not sleep for a long time.

She must have slept, in the end, because she woke to the thin grey light of a winter morning and the smell of woodsmoke coming up through the floorboards. The chair had made a new ache in her neck, and her left hand had gone half-numb where it had been pressed under her chin. She sat up carefully, listening.

Kaelan was still asleep. The fever had not broken, but the shaking had eased; his hands lay still on the quilt, and the sweat on his brow had dried to a fine salt. She watched his chest rise and fall, counted the breaths, and was satisfied.

She rose, stretched the cramp out of her back, and went quietly down the stairs.

The common room was empty except for a single boy of about twelve, sweeping the flagged floor with a birch broom that was taller than he was. He looked up at her with the wary curiosity of a child who had been told to mind the inn and not to talk to strangers.

"Has the innkeeper gone to market?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am."

"And the woman who was here last night. The one with the white cap."

"Cook, ma'am. She's in the kitchen."

"Thank you."

The kitchen was a low, soot-blackened room at the back of the inn, with a wide hearth and a row of iron pots hanging from hooks. The woman from the night before was kneeling at the hearth, raking out the ashes from the morning's first firing, and she straightened when Elara came in and looked her over with the frank, unembarrassed appraisal of a working woman.

"You'll be wanting hot water," she said. It was not a question.

"If you can spare it. And a basin. And, if it's not too much, a small bowl of broth. The man upstairs is ill."

"Looks like a fever."

"It is."

"I've seen it before. Comes off the river." She got to her feet, wiping her hands on her apron. "There's a tansy poultice my mother used to make. Cuts the heat. I'll fix one for you, if you like."

"I would be grateful."

"Don't know what you've done to put him in my inn in such a state," the cook said, turning to the hearth, "but he doesn't look like a man who deserves to die in a stranger's bed. And neither do you, for that matter, whatever you are."

"Whatever I am?"

"You're no wife of his. No sister either. You've got the look of a woman who doesn't quite know what she is to him, and he doesn't quite know what he is to you, and you're both of you going to pretend the matter isn't settled until one of you says it is." She glanced over her shoulder, her eyes sharp in the firelight. "I've seen it before. More than once."

Elara felt the colour rise to her cheeks and was annoyed to feel it. "You are very observant, mistress."

"I've had practice. Sit down. The water will be hot in a moment."

The cook, whose name was Hilda, said no more about it. She moved about the kitchen with the brisk efficiency of a woman who had been on her feet since before dawn, and in a short while she had set a kettle over the fire, mixed a poultice of dried tansy and yarrow bound in a square of muslin, and ladled a bowl of broth from a pot that had been simmering on the hob since the night before.

"This is for him," she said, handing the poultice and the bowl to Elara. "The broth first, while it's warm. The poultice after, on the chest and the temples. Change it when it cools. The tansy will draw the heat out. You'll know if it's working because the shivering will stop and the sweat will turn cold."

"You're a good woman, Hilda."

"I'm a practical woman. There's a difference." She took the bowl back for a moment, examined the surface of the broth, and added a pinch of salt from a box on the shelf. "He needs to drink the whole thing. Even if he doesn't want it. Especially if he doesn't want it."

"I'll see that he does."

"And you need to eat something yourself. You've the look of a woman who forgets to feed herself when there's someone else to look after. Sit. I'll bring you bread and butter."

Elara opened her mouth to protest, and then closed it again. There was, she reflected, no point in arguing with a woman who had already made up her mind. She sat on the stool by the hearth and accepted the bread when it was offered, and the butter was good, and the bread was fresh, and she ate more of it than she had intended.

When she went back up the stairs, the morning light had strengthened, and the room was no longer grey but a thin, clean white. Kaelan was awake. He was lying on his back with one arm across his eyes, and he did not move when she came in, but he spoke.

"I thought I heard voices."

"The cook. Hilda. She says you have a fever off the river."

"Off the river," he repeated, in a tone that suggested he found the diagnosis somewhat beneath his dignity.

"She has a tansy poultice that will draw the heat. And broth."

"I'm not hungry."

"She said you wouldn't be. She said to drink it anyway."

A pause. He took the arm from his eyes and looked up at her. In the morning light, the lines of illness stood out on his face: the hollows under his cheekbones, the faint blue at his temples, the shadow under his jaw where the skin had gone thin. But his eyes were clear.

"You've been up for hours," he said.

"I slept in the chair."

"You should not have."

"I know."

"It wasn't necessary."

"No."

He held her gaze for a moment, and something shifted in his expression, very slightly, the way the light shifts on water when the wind changes. He did not say thank you. He did not say he was sorry. He said, instead, "Sit down, Elara."

She sat on the edge of the chair by the fire. The chair was the one she had taken the night before, and the fire had died to a low bed of coals, but the room was not cold. The wool quilts held the warmth, and the morning sun came in through the window and laid a pale stripe across the boards.

"Drink the broth," she said. "Please."

He did not argue. He pushed himself up against the pillows, accepted the bowl, and drank it in small, careful sips, his eyes averted, as if the act of being fed were a confession he was not yet ready to make. When the bowl was empty he set it on the table and looked at her.

"Thank you," he said.

"You've said that before."

"I know. I'm saying it again."

He did not elaborate. He did not say for what, or in what tone, or with what feeling. He said only the two words, and left them there, in the quiet of the room, where they could be taken for what they were.

Elara took the tansy poultice from her lap and unfolded it. It smelled of dried herbs and something faintly bitter, and the steam rose from it in a thin curl when she held it near the fire to warm it.

"This goes on the chest," she said. "And the temples. Hilda says to change it when it cools."

He looked at the poultice. "You don't have to do that."

"I know I don't have to."

"I can manage."

"I know you can."

She waited. He said nothing more. After a moment, he reached up and untied the neck of his shirt, and drew the linen down off one shoulder, and turned his face away to the window.

She did not let herself hesitate. She laid the poultice flat on the back of his hand first, to feel its warmth, and then placed it on his chest, just below the collarbone, where the skin was hot to the touch. He drew in his breath, very slightly, but did not move. She smoothed the muslin with her fingertips, working from the centre out, and felt the heat of him through the cloth, and felt, too, the quick, hard beat of his heart under her hand.

"Hold that there," she said. "I'll do the temples."

He took the edge of the poultice in his own fingers, holding it against his chest, and she folded a fresh square of muslin, warmed it at the fire, and pressed it gently to his temple. He closed his eyes. She worked in silence for a few minutes, replacing the compress as it cooled, and the only sounds in the room were the small creak of the floorboards under her, the soft tick of the fire, and the slow, steadying rhythm of his breathing.

"Maren will be wondering where we are," he said, at last, without opening his eyes.

"Maren has been wondering where we are for the better part of two days. A few more hours will not hurt her."

"She will have sent riders."

"Then the riders will not find us. No one knows we are here."

"Cassian may guess."

"Cassian is in the north, at his own holdings, minding his own estate. He has no reason to guess anything."

He opened his eyes and looked at her. The faintest edge of a smile was at the corner of his mouth, and did not quite reach the rest of his face. "You have a very low opinion of my brother."

"I have no opinion of your brother. I have never met him."

"Most people who have not met him have a very low opinion of him. It saves time."

"And you?"

"I have a very high opinion of my brother. He is the better man." He said it simply, without rancour, and she understood, from the way he said it, that he had long ago made his peace with the matter, and that what she had taken for bitterness was something else, and older, and more difficult to name.

She replaced the compress on his temple. He closed his eyes again.

"I was unjust to you," he said, quietly. "Last night. In the alley."

"You were in pain."

"I was unkind. There is a difference."

"Yes. There is." She did not soften it, and she did not look away. "You were unkind."

He nodded. The movement was small, but she saw it. "I will try not to be again."

"You will be. You're a man, and a sick one, and I'm a stranger who talks too much and won't do as she's told. We will quarrel again before the week is out."

"Probably."

"But I would rather quarrel with you than not quarrel with anyone else." She said it before she knew she was going to say it, and once it was out, she did not try to take it back. It was, after all, true.

He looked at her for a long moment. The light in the room had shifted again; the stripe of sun had moved off the floor and lay now across the foot of the bed, and the coals in the grate had settled to a deeper, more even red.

"Elara," he said, and stopped, and began again. "I do not know what I am to you."

"No," she said. "Nor I to you."

"But I am glad you are here."

"So am I."

She replaced the poultice on his chest. He did not flinch this time. She smoothed the muslin once more with her fingertips, and the heat of him came up through the cloth, and the bitter smell of the tansy filled the small room, and somewhere below, in the kitchen, Hilda began to sing a low, tuneless song to herself as she worked, and the sound of it came up through the floorboards like a memory of a country Elara had never seen, and she thought, without any particular reason, that the morning was not a bad one, and that whatever came next, they would have to face it as best they could, and that this was, in the end, all that anyone could do.

She sat back in the chair. The fire was low but steady. He closed his eyes, and his hand, the one that had been holding the poultice, came to rest at his side, and after a while the lines of illness on his face began, very faintly, to soften, and she sat in the warm quiet of the room, and watched him, and did not speak, and did not leave.