Time blurred. She couldn’t tell if she had slept or only hovered at the edge, until a new sensation stirred her, a faint touch, fingers ghosting through her hair.
Her eyes flicked open, seeing Ciaran’s arm stretched weakly toward her, his hand tangled in her hair. He wasn’t awake, but the touch lingered, slow, almost tender.
She hardly dared to move, but her pulse hammered with hope, letting him rest his hand there, not sure what to think of it, with no idea what he thought in his fevered dreams.
When she shifted at last, trying to ease her cramped arms and shoulders, his hand slipped free. She caught it instinctively, cradling it against her palm, and turned her fingers into his. She’d expected only a slack, unconscious weight—but instead his grasp tightened faintly, weak yet deliberate, she chose to believe. His long fingers wrapped around hers and then went still.
“Ciaran?” She said hopefully, believing he might be coming out of the worst of it.
There was no answer. Yet her throat ached with sudden, quiet feeling at the thought that he had sought her out.
Exhausted but steadied, Claire lowered her head again, and slept with Ciaran’s hand in hers.
***
Ciaran woke slowly, as if dragging himself up from deep water. His mouth tasted foul, thick and bitter, and his body felt heavy, as though he hadn’t moved it in days. For a long while he lay still, trying to piece together where he was, what had happened.
It was the weight and warmth at his hand that finally cut through the fog. His fingers were curled around another’s. He blinked, tipping his chin downward, and saw Claire, slumped beside the bed, her cheek resting on her arms, her bonny face angled toward him.
Claire was here.
Holding his hand.
What the—
Fragments stirred in his mind then, heat, shadowy dreams, her voice. A haze of moments, half-remembered, awake, aware, and then not. Aye—the fever, he recalled just then. It had swept through Caeravorn and had apparently taken him with it. He shifted his gaze to the window, where the faintest pale light marked the coming of dawn, or near to it.
Hours must have passed, many hours. He must have been dangerously ill, to have warranted Claire at his bedside—unwilling to leave him? Afraid he might die?
Another memory stirred—twelve people showed signs of the sweating sickness, he recalled Claire saying. Was she run ragged, then? Too exhausted, perhaps, to find her own chamber?
His chest tightened at another thought. What if it was not only weariness? What if she herself was sick now, having sat so near him through it all? Fever did not spare the strong, nor the stubborn.
The notion cut colder than the night air.
“Claire.” His voice rasped, raw from disuse. He tried again, firmer. “Claire.”
Her lashes fluttered, her head shifting against her arm. At last she stirred, lifting her face from the crook of her elbow. Gray eyes blinked up at him, clouded with sleep. “What?” she mumbled, her voice thick.
He forced his hand free from hers and reached, clumsy with weakness, to touch her brow as he’d seen her do. “Ye’ve caught it, too,” he muttered, almost to himself. “God’s teeth, why did ye nae keep yer distance?”
She jerked awake, blinking hard, her eyes still heavy with sleep. “No,” she said quickly, then again, clearer, “No, I’m fine. Just tired. I fell asleep here, that’s all.”
He narrowed his gaze, unwilling to take her at her word. “Ye’ve nae color. Ye look...unwell.”
“I’m not sick,” she insisted, straightening in the chair, rubbing her knuckles over her eyes. When she dropped her hands, she gave him a weary smile. “I’d tell you if I were.”
He studied her a long moment, searching for signs of fever. But all he saw was the weariness etched in her face, the shadows under her eyes, the faint red mark pressed into her cheek from lying on her arms. She looked worn, aye—butshe looked...bonny, too. Aye, but she could have been dressed in rags, covered in soot and sweat, and she’d still be bonny. Mayhap bonnier still for having stayed with him, for giving her strength when he had none.
For a long moment he studied her. Even rumpled from sleep, hair mussed from where it had pressed into his bed, she was striking. The lamplight caught on pale locks of hair, pulling threads of silver from it, and her eyes—though weary—still held that clear, unwavering gray that always seemed to draw him and pierce him. There was strength there, even in exhaustion.
Ciaran let his hand fall onto his middle, onto cloths nearly dry, ones she must have draped over him. “Ye’ve the look of a ghost,” he muttered, softer now, “and yet ye’re bonny still.”
She blinked at him again, as though not sure she’d heard right. Then her features softened, the fatigue not erased but transformed, and a slow smile curved her lips. It was small at first, tentative, then steadier, warm enough to light her tired eyes.
“Oh, boy,” she deflected lightly, “I see the fever still has you in its grip.” She stood and laid her warm hand over his brow. “Or not,” she assessed.
Ciaran captured her wrist, drawing it down, and waited for her to meet his gaze. “Nae fever,” he stated. “I thank ye, lass. Truly.”
