‘Do you want me to tell you a story?’ She’d told the younger children stories as best she could when they cried. She wasn’t very creative, but it rarely mattered. Even saint tales, so overtold ears closed as soon as they started, could help when all someone wanted was a soft voice and the comfort of someone making time for them.
He stretched out and rolled over to half look at her, and some of the darkness in his eyes had lightened with actual amusement. Good.
‘You’re so bad at lies, I can’t imagine you tell interesting stories.’
She scowled, but he wasn’t wrong. ‘Why don’t you tell me one, then?’
His head was tilted so he was speaking into her shoulder, his arm moving to drape across her. Her breath caught, but it would be cruel to shake him off. She’d endured far worse in the name of help.
‘Once, there was a boy who could turn his touch into gold.’ His voice was languid with medicine. ‘Once his powers manifested, his parents took him from place to place so he could repay their debts, but their debts were large, and he was small.’ He yawned. ‘But then when it turned out the gold he made turned to ash the next morning, they tossed him out again to the scholars.’
‘That’s not a very good story.’ She tried to keep the pity out of her voice.
He chuckled. ‘Well, it wasn’t a very good childhood. I envy you a little, being an orphan.’
He caught her injured hand and brought it to his lips. She froze at the contact.
Then he rolled over. ‘Good night, Csilla. I think I will get some sleep.’
She watched his back until his breathing was even and deep, then started to ease off the side.
Suddenly, he shuddered so hard it shook the bedframe, a cold sweat on his skin. Csilla started, feet slipping on the cold floor as he gave another thrash.
‘Mihály?’
His eyes flashed open, the pupils wide and inky and unfocused. His lips and tongue were moving with the zeal of prayer, but no sound emerged.
She rose to her knees to turn him on his side – he didn’t look nauseous, but there was no telling. If he was having a seizure...
He grabbed her wrist with such force that it felt like he could break it and she gasped at the bright stab of pain as he squeezed down to the bone.
‘Mihály!’
She shook him as best she could even as her stomach turned and her panicked heart raced, but though his eyes fell shut again, his grip didn’t ease. The pillow beneath his head was damp and darkening with sweat, the palm against her skin cool and slick as she twisted and pushed against his chest. This must have been what Tamas had been talking about with his spells, but among all the bottles, she didn’t see any true medicine. Pinprick pain lanced her fingertips. Soon her hand would be numb.
‘Let me go.’
She shook her arm again, but there was no change in his expression, no sign that he’d heard her. Swallowing, she raised her free hand and probed his mouth, grimacing at the wet saliva. Well, he hadn’t swallowed his tongue in his fit, so he wasn’t choked and dying. She thumped his chest again. His heart was beating far slower than hers. If he didn’t let go soon she would have to scream.
His fingers finally softened, and the thumb that had been jammed onto her vein changed to sweet stroking, and hemurmured something she couldn’t make out. She froze, and his eyes opened again, lighting with surprise.
‘Csilla...’ He looked at where his hand still wrapped her wrist, as if it weren’t part of him. ‘What did I do to you?’
‘What you’re doing now, that’s all,’ she answered, but when he pulled away there was blooming red that would soon turn withering blue and black. ‘Are you alright?’
She kept her voice soft and even. Mercy workers who dealt with soldiers or other victims of violence spoke of similar visions, the way a mind tried to protect itself. A bruised wrist was nothing.
‘I’m so sorry.’ The whisper barely registered before he reached for her again, reverent as he brushed the pain.
There it was. Light. Purity. Her heart thrummed a divine cadence, and the ache in her skin eased.
‘There,’ he breathed, bending forward to rest his forehead against hers. ‘Better?’
Csilla cradled the tiny miracle of her newly uninjured arm.
‘Better,’ she lied, both in words and the way she forced herself still when he kissed her brow, his exhalation still sour with drink.
As soon as his breaths were regular again, she slipped away.
