She drank, coughed, then drank some more. By the time the cup was empty, she was trembling with exhaustion, her eyes falling closed again.
“Now we wait,” he said.
The waiting was the worst part. He sat on one side of the bed, Jessa on the other, both of them staring at the small figure between them as if they could will her to recover through sheer force of attention. The minutes crawled by, each one an eternity of doubt and fear and desperate hope.
Then Dani coughed.
His heart seized. The cough was harsh, wet, worse than before—no, no, no—and he was reaching for her, ready to… To do what? What could he possibly do if his medicine was killing her instead of curing her?
The coughing continued for what felt like hours, though it could only have been seconds. Dani’s small body convulsed with the force of it, her face contorting in pain.
And then it stopped.
The silence that followed was absolute. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He could only stare at the child in the bed, waiting for the next cough, the next spasm, the next horrible sign that he’d failed?—
Dani drew a breath.
Deep. Clear. Unobstructed.
“Her color,” Jessa whispered. “Tarek, look at her color.”
He looked. The fever flush was fading even as he watched, the angry red receding like a tide going out. Dani’s breathing steadied, deepened, became the easy rhythm of natural sleep rather than the labored gasping of illness.
He pressed his hand to her forehead.
Cool. Not cold, not the terrible chill of death, but blessedly, beautifully cool.
“It’s working.” His voice came out rough and cracked. “The fever’s breaking.”
Jessa made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh and wasn’t quite a sob. She grabbed his hand, squeezing hard enough to hurt, and he squeezed back.
They sat there together as dawn light crept across the floor, watching Dani’s chest rise and fall in the easy rhythm of healing sleep.
“How?” Jessa asked.
The question came much later that night, after Dani had woken long enough to drink some broth and complain about the taste of the medicine. After she’d fallen asleep again—real sleep this time, deep and restful. After Jessa had checked her temperature a dozen times, unable to quite believe that the fever was truly gone.
They sat together by the fire in the main room, Jessa curled against his side, her head on his shoulder. Exhaustion weighed on them both, but neither seemed willing to sleep yet. Not when there was still so much unspoken between them.
“How did you do it?” she asked again when he didn’t answer. “You said you weren’t a healer.”
“I said I wasn’t a healer anymore.” The distinction felt important, though he couldn’t have explained why.
“But you were. Once.”
The fire crackled, sending sparks spiraling up into the darkness.
“Yes.” The word cost him more than he’d expected. “Once.”
She waited, patient and still against his side. Not pushing. Not demanding. Just… present.
“I was chief healer to Prince Varian of the Third House,” he said finally. “One of the most powerful Vultor lords on our homeworld. I spent fifteen years in his service. Fifteen years developing medicines, treating injuries, and researching cures for diseases that had plagued our people for generations.”
“That sounds… honorable.”
“I thought it was.” The bitterness in his voice surprised him. It had been so long since he’d spoken of this. “I was proud of my work. Proud of what I’d accomplished. The medicines I developed saved thousands of lives. The techniques I pioneered are still used today.”
“Then what happened?”
