She managed another two nights, slowly moving forward. She had just finished a blood thinner for Taiyo which would ease the strain on his heart and was a step in the right direction to a cure, but she could feel her exhaustion catching up to her. Her hands were shaking as she corked it.
They were shaking too much.
She tried to pull her hand back from the stand, but it was too late, she had no control. Her hand knocked into the stand and the vials went flying through the air. They shattered on the ground, the glass pieces spilling across the floor as the liquid ran across the stone. A whole night’s worth of work wasted.
She sat on her stool and stared at the broken glass in silence for a moment. And at least there was no one around her to hear the embarrassing sob that fell from her lips.
No one was around to do anything when she cut her hands trying to clean up the glass so Taiyo wouldn’t see it in the morning when she drew more blood. She bandaged her hands herself and went back to Taiyo’s room early, climbing back in bed beside him. And if she was close enough to rest her good hand over his heart and hear its sluggish beat, no one was around to know.
When she woke up two hours later at dawn, Taiyo was holding her hand in his.
In hindsight, she should have been suspicious that Taiyo didn’t ask her about her bandaged hand the next morning. She’d thought maybe he hadn’t noticed it, given how his focus had instead been on the one resting over his heart.
Everything went as normal that day, and she was ready to take control of herself again and not waste any more precious time.
She was in her lab after having snuck out for approximately all of two minutes when the door opened, and she whipped around, beakers in her hands, to see Taiyo in the doorway, looking as ragged as he usually did at night.
Her breath hitched. She’d been caught.
Before she could even ask, he held up two vials, one full and one empty. He’d faked taking the sedative. “I don’t even have the energy to be angry with you right now.”
“Go back to bed, Taiyo.” Hellebore moved back to her table, setting the beakers down and her hands on the table as she ducked her head so he couldn’t see her expression. “I’m fine. I’m making progress, and I need every second I can get if I’m going to save you.”
“You need rest as well.”
“You need a solution.” Her voice cracked and she squeezed her eyes shut.
“I need my wife.”
His arms slipped around her waist as his front pressed to her back while he curled around her. She could feel his breath brush her skin. “And I need her to be healthy and well rested, not running herself into the ground for my sake.”
She tightened her grip on the table, not letting go. “I’ll survive. You won’t.”
“I have the utmost faith in you. And even so, if I am in my last days, that means you should heed a dying man’s request.” He leaned down farther, resting his chin on her shoulder. He turned, pressing his lips to her neck, and whispered, “Come back to bed, sunshine.”
She let go of the table, sinking into his arms. She whispered, “Only—Only because I’m getting sloppy without sleep.”
Taiyo hummed as he lifted his head, brushing his lips against her jaw too slowly and deliberately to be an accident, causing her heart to stutter and him to smirk. “Of course. That’s why your heart is racing right now.”
“I’m sleep deprived and you startled me. It’s—” Hellebore sighed as he pulled back, moving to take her hand in his and walk backward to the door. She said, “It’s just a normal physical response to my state. It has nothing to do with you. I’m not coming back because you asked me. Don’t think this means anything.”
Taiyo’s gaze never left her even as he reached for the door. “Believe me, I’m not that foolish. It’ll mean something when your maids aren’t the ones helping you out of your clothes.”
Hellebore ignored the heat flooding her cheeks. “If you’re waiting for any sort of affection from me, you will be waiting for the rest of your life. However long that might be. You’re dying. You should be doing nothing that could hurt your already failing heart.”
Taiyo laughed, full of the same bitterness as the blood that was coursing through his veins. “It is far too late for that.”
She didn’t like the way he was looking at her when he said that.
But they returned to his room and climbed into bed. Taiyo didn’t take the sedative. Instead, the second she’d crawled under the covers an arm looped around her waist and she let out an undignified squeak as he pulled her to him. He breathed out a sigh as he settled against her back, curled around her once more. He muttered, “To ensure you don’t get any ideas about sneaking off again.”
Hellebore told herself when she woke up the next morning the only reason she was smiling was because of how rested she was from sleeping a full eight hours. It had nothing to do with the way Taiyo was tracing “sunshine” on her palm.
Chapter 18
At Taiyo’s insistence, curing the irises was still Hellebore’s highest priority, not saving his life. He was also watching her with an eagle eye and curling around her every night to keep her from sneaking away to keep working. Which only made the two months she had left all the more critical.
Hellebore had all the information she could gather about the rot, but none of the tinctures she’d created had done anything more than slightly slow the spread. Almost every plant she got her hands on had some version of the rot embedded into it, even ones that looked healthy.
