The shock of pain was almost reassuring this time, for all that it gripped him in a crushing vice.
Once again, Francesca was there, her hands on his, her murmured words soothing as he bent toward her, the convulsion brief as the agony raced through his brain and was gone again. Then everything went black for a short while, and there was nothing but Francesca’s voice, steady and even, telling him that everything would be okay, that the sun was bright and warm, that the borage had never bloomed more brightly, that the sea seemed to be calling them, though they were far up on the mountain. Silly words, nonsensical words, yet they formed a pathway that held comfort for him. A pathway leading him home.
When Ryker came to, he was sagging against Francesca on the bench, his heavy body almost dwarfing hers. He struggled back to a seated position and she let him get his bearings, shifting slightly so he could stretch out his legs and tip his head to the full sun.
But she didn’t move away from him, he thought, as his thoughts slowly re-ordered themselves, his pain nothing but a memory. She didn’t move away.
And perhaps more importantly…she didn’t let go.
4
Fran climbed back up the stairs to the main villa much later, having finally convinced Ari that she was capable of returning the fifty yards across the courtyard by herself, especially given the patrolling guard.
He’d come out of his episode exhausted but stable, and once again had begged her not to tell the doctors anything. But how could she not? He clearly was enduring tremendous pain every time the past struggled to make itself known. And the fact that he could remember everything up to bits of the trauma of his accident—yet nothing before—seemed significant. She’d need to talk with the doctors to fully understand his condition, she supposed.
Then again, she didn’t want to probe too deeply. It wasn’t her job to get entangled with Ari, merely to make sure he had company until wiser minds determined his next course of action.
Which argued for—
“Francesca.”
Fran stopped short, startled as Queen Catherine stepped out of one of the sumptuous sitting rooms of the guest villa. The queen beamed at her, setting her instantly on her guard.
“Your Highness,” Fran said carefully.
Catherine immediately waved off the honorific. “I beg you, dispense with that. You missed dinner—you should eat.” She practically tugged Fran into the room with her, and a quick glance around the space confirmed no one else was there. “The others wanted to go fetch you, but it would have seemed odd, and there’s enough oddness already without compounding it. Ari might pick up on it, and we can’t allow anything to damage his recovery potential.”
“What is his recovery potential, exactly?” Fran asked as she seated herself on the couch. A tray of sandwiches sat in front of her, and she realized she was hungry. She hadn’t noticed when she’d been walking with Ari, the two of them close enough to embrace…although they hadn’t. He’d let her hands fall away as soon as they’d left the terraced garden. He hadn’t stopped touching her at every reasonable opportunity, though—her shoulder, her waist, her arm. They were bonding, she suspected, but not in the way of patient and doctor.
In a far more dangerous way.
“We don’t know, which is more frustrating than I can possibly express,” the queen said, her hands shaking slightly as she poured water from a large carafe into a tumbler on the coffee table. “According to the doctors, Ari’s brain his healthy. His body, though clearly recovering from the privation of his long stay in the work camp, is healthy. They predict he’ll have joint pain when he’s older, but who is to say anything about that? I have joint pain.”
Fran smiled but she caught the queen’s underlying nervousness. “Do you not believe what they’re saying?” she hazarded.
“Oh, it’s not that.” Catherine sat back in the large wing-backed chair, holding her glass of water with both hands. “I think they’re exactly right. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Ari’s body or his brain. But his mind—well. You make a study of the mind. You know how complicated it can be.”
“I do,” Fran nodded, though suddenly all her textbooks and journal articles and reports seemed woefully inadequate in the face of the queen’s pain. It was one thing to consider mental challenges in the abstract—or with strangers. But this woman was Ari’s mother. His recovery was intensely personal to her, and she needed answers, not theories. Answers that Fran couldn’t give.
Catherine regarded her now over her drink. “What did he tell you?” she asked. “You two talked, right? He used to love to talk. It was one of his best skills in managing all the drama with the royal families, foreign delegates.” She swallowed, then leaned forward to trade her glass for a linen cloth. As she sat back in her chair, she lifted the cloth to her cheeks, whisking away the tears that had surfaced there.
Fran watched her, her heart squeezing. She’d become a good reader of people over the years, and there was nothing in the queen’s manner but authentic sadness. Hope and loss and fear all entwined together, a constant chokehold on emotions that gave way with each scrap of positive news, only to clamp down anew with each setback.
She made a decision. She wasn’t a doctor or an assigned caregiver. She was a friend giving aid where she could. The queen wasn’t a doctor either. So what she did with the information was her own decision.
“Ari is trying to remember things,” she said. The queen went very still. “Not in front of the doctors though. In fact, he specifically asked me not to tell the doctors of his efforts.”
“Why?”
The question was sharp but reserved, and Fran nodded. She could trust the queen not to endanger her son, but also not to put him through unnecessary pain. “He’s resisting it—remembering,” she said. “His hands shake, he sweats, and he has terrible, blinding headaches. A searing pain that shoots through his head, is how he describes it. Like a flash migraine.”
“He’s never had headaches before, not like that.” Catherine sat forward. “What does he recall that brings them on? Anything? Was he in some distress?”
“It’s anything before the crash it seems. If he struggles to recall something during or after the crash, he’s calm—frustrated, because those pictures aren’t quite coming either—but calm. Even happy memories from his past, however, bring the negative reaction.” She demonstrated, putting her hands up to either side of her face and screwing up her expression with a wince. When she glanced up again, the queen was staring at her.
“That poor boy,” she murmured, and despite herself, Fran smiled. Ari was in his late twenties, a grown man. But she’d never had children. She supposed that for a mother, children never grew up, not really. They were always a source of worry.
For some mothers anyway.
