"From one night?"
"From whatever that was." He gestures at the wrecked weapon rack, at the scattered blades and the gouges in thestone floor. "I've never... heats aren't usually like that. Not that intense. Not that fast."
I reach for the water and drink deeply, buying myself time to think, to push down the complicated tangle of feelings his concern stirs up. He watches me, that worried crease still between his brows, and I hate how much I want to smooth it away with my fingers.
"I should get back to my chambers," I say when the cup is empty. "Clean up."
"I'll have Bessa draw you a bath."
"I can manage."
"I know you can." Something flickers across his face—frustration, maybe, or hurt, or some combination of both. "I'm offering anyway."
I don't know what to do with his gentleness, don't know where to put it inside myself. It's easier when he's the monster, when I can hate him cleanly, when the line between us is sharp and clear. This careful concern makes everything complicated, blurs the edges I've been trying so hard to maintain.
"Fine," I say. "Thank you."
He nods once, then turns to go, and I watch the way his shoulders move beneath his fresh shirt, the tension he carries in every line of his body. He pauses at the ruined doorway, one hand on the splintered frame.
"Kess."
"What?"
"If something's wrong—if something's changing—you can tell me." His back is still to me, shoulders tense, and I can hear the effort it takes him to say the words. "I'd rather know than wonder."
The irony isn't lost on me. He's asking me to share secrets while keeping his own, asking for honesty he's not willing to give.
"Same goes for you," I say.
He doesn't respond. Just walks out through the splintered frame, his footsteps fading down the corridor until I can't hear them anymore.
I wait until the silence settles around me. Then I press my hand to my hip, feeling the hardened scars through my torn leathers, the texture that shouldn't be there.
He's hiding something.
So am I.
I gather my shredded clothes and wrap myself in my torn training jacket as best I can, though it barely covers anything. I look like I lost a fight with a wild animal, which I suppose I did, in a way.
The corridors are mostly empty this early, the castle still waking around me. I pass a kitchen boy carrying a basket of bread who takes one look at me and flattens himself against the wall, eyes averted, cheeks flushing red. Smart boy.
My chambers are exactly as I left them yesterday morning—sheets rumpled, water basin full, breakfast tray waiting outside the door. I eat mechanically while I wait for the bath to be ready, standing at the window and watching the castle come alive below me, my mind churning through everything I don't understand.
When Bessa comes to tell me the water's hot, I thank her and head down the corridor to the bathing chamber, grateful for her perpetual disinterest in conversation.
The examination can wait until after I'm clean.
Steam rises from the water's surface as I lower myself in, and the heat soaks into my abused muscles like a blessing, drawing out the tension knot by knot. For a few minutes I just float, lettingthe warmth unknot my shoulders and ease the ache in my hips, not thinking about anything at all.
Then I hold my hands up to the light filtering through the narrow window.
There.
Under the beds of my nails, barely visible unless you're searching for it—a faint purple tint, like someone took a bruise and spread it thin beneath the keratin. My stomach drops even though I knew this was coming, even though I read about it in the archives and pieced it together from fragments and burned pages.
Contamination from alpha blood entering through wounds instead of being swallowed clean. The signs were always the same in every text I found.
Purple fingernails. Red ring around the pupils. Skin hardening where the blood entered.
