POV: Sylra
I set my hand near his on the sheet.
I did not put it on his hand. I had not earned that yet. He had said one word and his wolf had come across our connection and his eyes had been open for a long stretch of seconds and he had spent everything he had to give me that. I would not take more than he had set out for me to take.
I set my hand a hand's-breadth from his, palm up on the sheet. I let him see it. I let him decide.
He saw it.
Then his eyes lost their focus and the line of his jaw went soft and the small effort that had kept him with me went out of him in one long breath. His chest kept moving. The rest of him went under again.
He did not know I was crying. I was glad he did not know.
I cried without sound, sitting in the chair, my hand a hand's-breadth from his on the sheet. The tears came hot and slow and steady. I did not move my hand. I did not wipe my face.
I stayed where I had been when his eyes had been open, because I had told him with my body that I would stay, and I was going to be the body that had told the truth.
I cried for a long stretch and then I stopped.
I sat in the chair after that the way I had sat in it before, only more so. The lamp burned. His pulse stayed at its low, even rhythm. The papers on my lap did not move.
I had been preparing my whole life to be queen and no one had told me that the work of being queen was, sometimes, sitting in a chair while the man you loved was unconscious and not flinching from the sitting.
The corridor went quiet long after the second bell.
A while before dawn the door opened soft and I did not have to look up to know who it was.
Caelen stopped just inside the door.
"Tell me."
I stood. My legs were stiff under me. He came across the room and we did not touch. He set himself a step away from my chair and waited.
"He surfaced for a short stretch. Then he looked at me and said one word. Then his wolf came through without his control — the whole of it, raw, all at once. He could not pull it back. He held my eyes through it. Then he went under."
"What word?"
The shame in my throat had nothing to be ashamed of. I said it anyway.
"Stay."
Caelen's face did the small thing his face did when he received a piece of news that mattered to him personally and he was choosing not to make it about him. The line at the corner of his mouth went soft. His shoulders did not move.
"That is good news. The connection is still active. The wolf came across and he was awake to feel it come across. That is the kind of news Kael will want to know on the road."
I nodded. I had heard him say it the way he meant me to hear it. He was giving me a gift wrapped in operational language because he knew I could carry the gift if it was wrapped that way.
I loved him so much in that quiet I had to look down at the floor.
"Walk with me. I will tell you the rest in the corridor. I do not want to talk about it standing over him."
We went out as he closed the door behind us, soft.
In the corridor I told him the plan for while they were gone. Ithara twice a day, full assessment in the morning, abbreviated check at the night register.
Written dispatches by rider every other day, sealed, the second seal blank — Vedran's protocol — to flag anything urgent without naming it on the cover. If anything changed I would send to him at the road and to the eastern outrider both.
He listened. He nodded when I had finished.
"All right. I will reach you when I can. The first message will be from the second night out, if we hit no delay."
He turned to go.
"Caelen."
He turned back, looked at me. I had a hundred things to say and I did not get to say any of them. I said the one I would not have to take back if he did not come home.
"Come back faster than the plan."
His face did not change in a way another person would have read. I read it. The small steadiness in his eyes that meant he had taken what I had given him and was going to hold it on the road.
"I will."
I did not put my hand at his coat. He did not put his hand at my face. The corridor between us was the corridor I had asked him to cross by being who he was, and he was who he was, and he crossed it by not crossing it.
He went as I stayed at the corridor wall for a stretch of breaths. Then I went back to the chair.
I watched the window go grey. I heard the courtyard come alive — boots, harness, a low order, a horse's small complaint at being asked to stand still in the cold. I went up to the wall.
I watched them mount in the courtyard. Caelen at the head, Kael beside him with the case under his coat, four guards behind, the small party that had been ready since full dark.
They went out the gate at first light without ceremony. Caelen did not look up. He had told me he would not. I had asked him not to.
I watched them past the first bend and past the second bend, and at the second bend Caelen lifted his hand once at his side without turning. I did not wave back. I did not need to. He had seen the wall and he knew I was on it.
The cold was at my face and at my hands. I kept watching after the road took them. I do not know how long I stood there.
The rider came in from the wrong direction.
He came up the eastern road at the canter of a man who had been riding since well before dawn. He was not one of our outriders. He wore no badge.
I came down off the wall without running. I met him at the gate.