I nod. "I knew there would be consequences. I didn't expect them to be this severe. But that's the nature of choices, isn't it? We never know what they'll cost until after we've made them."
Silence stretches between us as I finish. He doesn't move, even after I set the balm aside and wipe my hands clean. The weight of everything unsaid presses down on us both. I'm about to stand when he speaks again.
"Mortiana and Lugal keep me in stasis while I'm in Noktemore."
My breath catches. "Is that why you weren't sure if the pain is always this bad? Because you're not fully conscious between Reckonings?"
He turns to face me. "I was 28 when I made my last bargain with Mortiana. That's when Lugal convinced her to grant me stasis."
I study his face, the way the lamplight catches the sharp planes of his jaw, the shadows beneath his eyes. "How long ago was that?"
Something flickers through the bond. Grief, old and worn smooth by time. "I was born the year Tenebris was cursed. I went into stasis 28 years later."
Three hundred years. Give or take.
"You've been in stasis that entire time?"
He nods. "Unless there's a Reckoning, or other tasks I need to complete."
"Is it like sleeping?"
He's quiet for a moment. "It feels like... restless nothingness. Aware but not awake. Existing but not living."
I have to look away. The weight of it presses down on me: his wings, his raffin, three centuries suspended in nothing. Too much. Too much for one person to bear.
"I'm sorry," I whisper. "For everything you've lost."
"It was a long time ago."
"That doesn't make it less awful."
He watches me for a long moment. "Do you regret it?"
"The bargain?"
"Choosing not to make those elixirs."
My first instinct is to say yes. I regret it every day, but that's not quite true. I think about the Shroud and what I suspect may be happening. The mushrooms.
The dying laborers. The pleasure gardens where the Council watches residents weep for memories they were never supposed to have. The guilt has been crushing lately. But regret?
I think back to the night it started. The half-dead alatus dragged into my clinic, an arrow wound turning septic because no one at the arena had the antidote. I remember the creature's pain, not for itself, but for its rider, who lay recovering somewhere in the Hall of Reflection. I remember how that rider replaced the alatus the following week. As if nothing had been lost.
I think of the laborers screaming for families they weren't supposed to remember. The pleasure gardens where grief becomes entertainment.
"No," I say finally. "I don't regret it."
"What about the bargain you made with the goddess? Do you think you'll regret that?"
"Which part?" I stand and begin gathering my supplies. "Our bond? Or agreeing to help lift a curse I barely understand?"
"Both."
I consider it as I work. Healing Jordi was never a choice. I might have worded the bargain differently, might have been more careful. But make it? I'd make it again in a heartbeat.
I meet his eyes. "Ask me again after we lift the curse."
His eyebrow rises. "You sound certain we will."
