“I’m not sure I understand,” I say.
Moving to the bed, he rests a palm flat against the mattress and sinks his weight onto it. The wooden slats squeak beneath the pressure. “Your mattress is filled with old straw. It offers no support. You sleep little because you are uncomfortable.”
“I sleep little,” I counter, “because you have entered my room unwelcome and unannounced.”
“No personal touches,” he continues, motioning toward the plain plaster walls. “You possess not even a book.”
“I have a book.” The Text rests on my desk.
“Not a book to read for pleasure or comfort.”
“The Text comforts me.” It is steadfast, it is true.
“But nothing else in this room does.”
I do not need comfort. I need only the Father. But I do not expect Zephyrus to understand.
“You are denied pleasure,” he says.
I clear my throat and shift to a more comfortable position on my side. “Pleasure is temptation,” I whisper.
“Mm.” A low, curious sound, neither agreement nor disagreement. “Is this what you believe, or what you are told to believe?”
“I do not see a distinction between the two.”
For a moment, I’m positive his gaze has fallen to my chest, where my arm conceals the shape of my breasts, but it is too dark to be certain. “How can you judge pleasure when you have not experienced it yourself? You are not curious?”
This again. “No, I am not.”
He purses his lips, then relents. “Very well.” This near, I smell the rain on him. “If your wounds are not treated, you might always live with this pain.”
My fingers dig into the mattress. It is agony, my injury, though I do not want to admit it. “Give me the salve, then. I will apply it myself.”
“You cannot reach, and you have no one to assist you. Allow me to do this for you.”
My pulse leaps. “Absolutely not.”
“You truly want to punish yourself in this way?”
The question gives me pause. Mother Mabel might consider my sentence just, and I agree, to an extent, but we are armored differently, she and I. The West Wind offers me relief. I question whether I deserve it. “I can’t,” I whisper.
“You can,” he says gently, “if only you say yes.”
I cannot read his expression. “I don’t know.”
“Let me help you.”
My tongue is rendered useless, naught but an awkward chunk of flesh behind my teeth. “No man may touch a Daughter of Thornbrook.”
“You are in pain,” he says. “Pain I have directly caused.” Another step forward, boots quiet. When I walk the room, the wooden floorboards buckle and groan, but Zephyrus—it is as though he weighs nothing at all. “Let me heal you. Let me ease your burden.”
My eyes burn, yet no tears fall. I have been unable to properly sleep these past few nights. Exhaustion has threaded through my skin, piercing every muscle and tendon and bone.
If I were to guide another in this situation, what would I say?Accept the healing for what it is—grace. But I have never taken my own advice.
“What must I do?” I say.
Zephyrus pulls a pair of gloves from his back pocket, slides them on. I blink in surprise, having not thought him capable of such a courtesy. Once again, he’s left me unbalanced. “Unbutton your gown to the waist and lie on your stomach.”
