POV: Sylra
Kael went out with Ithara and the door closed behind them and the sound of it closing was the loudest thing in my body for a count of breaths.
I did not move at first. I stood at the foot of the pallet and looked at the man on it.
His face was half turned toward me on the pillow. His hair was pushed wrong. His chest moved.
I was angry at him. I was so angry at him I could feel the heat of it under my collarbones. He had decided for me. He had decided for me about him, which was the one decision he was not allowed to take out of my hands, and he had taken it out of my hands.
I was also so frightened I could not get a full breath in. The fear sat low in my stomach like a cold stone. He could die on this pallet tonight. He could die on this pallet in a stretch of weeks. The window Kael had described was small enough to fit in my palm.
I wanted to put my hand on his face. I wanted to lay my forehead against his and breathe at him until he opened his eyes.
I did not do any of that. I sat down.
I pulled my chair to the side of the pallet and put the papers from the garden on the bedside table — Aldric's two documents, the ones that needed a response before tomorrow — and I uncapped my pen and I worked.
Working was the only thing my hands were allowed to do.
I read the first document twice before any of it moved through me. I made a note in the margin and underlined a clause. I read the second document. I drafted a paragraph of response on the back. The pen scratched. The lamp ticked. Vedran breathed.
Every few minutes I looked up at him and my chest cracked a little wider and I looked back down at the page.
The corridor outside changed register and I knew Caelen was coming before he knocked.
He did not knock. He had read the guard signal from wherever he had been, and he came in already operational, and he closed the door behind him without sound.
He looked at Vedran first. He let himself look — a stretch of seconds, no performance, no hiding. Then he looked at me.
"Tell me," he said.
I set the pen down. My throat was thick and my voice came out level anyway, because there were two men in this room and one of them was unconscious and I was not going to let the other one walk in and find me unable to speak.
"Vedran was hit by a poisoned arrow at the eastern engagement," I said. "A couple of months ago. Slow binding compound. It does not kill the body — it degrades the wolf's regulation. Kael has been treating it. Three antidotes failed. The fourth was just given. Ithara says it bought time. She also says it did not change the outcome."
"How long?"
"Weeks. Not months. The window for a fifth attempt is shorter than the window for life. Days inside the weeks." He absorbed it.
"Kael held it," he said. "How long?"
"Months. Vedran asked him to. Kael agreed."
He did not say anything to that. He did not need to. His jaw set and unset once and that was the whole of it.
He pulled a folded paper out of the inside of his coat.
"The next stretch of days," he said. "I will hold the council in your place."
He did not ask permission. He was not offering. He was informing me of how the world was going to work while mine had stopped.
"The supply dispute between Greyveil and the Ironshade lines — I will resolve it. That does not need you. The eastern patrol report can wait until the end of the week."
He set each item down like a man clearing a table of everything that did not belong on it.
"The Aldric correspondence requires your signature. I have already drafted the response to the Marrow letter — you will read it and sign it or you will tear it and I will redraft. The petition log can sit."
A breath.
"The treasury reconciliation cannot sit, but it does not need you in the room. Davan will run it. I will sign."
He set the paper on the table between us, by my hand.
"What absolutely cannot wait," I said.
"The Aldric papers tonight. The Marrow signature in the morning. Anything that touches the Conclave I bring to you and you decide. Anything that does not, I handle and report. You stay here."
"Caelen."
"You stay here," he said. "I am telling you this is the operational answer and the personal answer at the same time. Both of those are true. Take the list."
I took the list.
The wanting in my chest moved sideways. I loved him. I loved him with the steadiness that had carried me through the war and the curse and the hearing room and the night Lyra was born, and right then I wanted to put my forehead against his shoulder and I wanted him to put his hand at the back of my neck and I wanted the world to stop for a count of breaths.
I did not. He did not. We did not have a count of breaths to spare.
He pulled the second chair to the other side of the table and sat down. He set his own stack of correspondence in front of him. He uncapped his pen.
He did not say anything about choosing the medical room over his own office. Neither did I.
We worked.
The lamp ticked. The pen scratched on his side of the table. The pen scratched on mine. Vedran breathed, low and even, the small lamp on the wall painting the line of his jaw in soft yellow.
After a stretch of work Caelen lifted a page off his stack and slid it across to me.
"Patrol rotation," he said. "The rescheduled one. It needs your mark. The change is in the second column."
I read the change. I marked the change. I slid it back. He took it without looking up. He set it on the signed pile.
He did not make it into anything. Neither did I.
But the second chair on the other side of the table was him, and the steady scratch of his pen was him, and the warmth at my left elbow where his sleeve was a hand-span from mine was him.
I loved him so much in that quiet I had to look down at the page until my eyes stopped burning.
I worked through the second Aldric document. He worked through the Marrow draft. The lamp burned. Vedran breathed.
I had just signed the bottom of the second page when his hand jerked on the sheet.
Not a waking movement. The fingers spasmed once and lay back. His eyes did not open. His chest kept its same low rhythm.
I was on my feet before I decided to stand. The chair scraped back behind me. The pen rolled off the table. My heart was in my throat and my hand was already reaching for his.