The corner of my mouth moves. Not quite a smile. But she sees it, and something in her face softens.
She's quiet for a moment, her shoulder almost touching mine. Then: “I'm starting to think it might not even be the watching that matters.”
“What do you mean?”
“At the farmhouse, I fell asleep. You know that. Hours before dawn.” She says it plainly, not apologizing for it. “And nothing happened. The rage stayed down anyway.” She shifts, glances at me sideways. “I think it might just be that I'm near you. The presence of me. The voice helps, but even unconscious I was still there.”
“You think.”
“I want to test it.” She nods toward the far corner of the room, the one I'd be using if she weren't sitting beside me. “Tonight, when you're first settling. I'll sit over there. We'll see if the distance makes it worse, or if it holds.”
I look at her. “And if it gets worse?”
“Then I come back and talk about well water until you're asleep.” She shrugs. “Either way we learn something.”
She reaches up to push her hair behind her ear. A small movement, thoughtless, the kind of thing she has probably done ten thousand times. Her fingers brush the side of her neck, and the firelight catches the curve of her jaw, and I go still.
Not berserker-still. Not danger-still. Something else entirely.
Something that starts in my chest and spreads outward until my fingers are curled against the floor and the effort of not reaching for her is a physical ache, a heat the fever stopped explaining somewhere on the road, something that lives in the space between her shoulder and mine, in the fact that she is close enough to touch and she is not afraid and the bond is amplifying every part of it, her pulse threading through mine until I cannottell if what I am feeling is her heartbeat or my own wanting echoing back.
She doesn't notice. She is already talking, moving on to the patients she'll see tomorrow, the child with the fever, what herbs she'll need. Her voice fills the space between us, and I let it, because the alternative is reaching for her, and I have not earned that. May never earn it.
The distance between us is measured in inches now. I have not tried to widen it.
I close my eyes. Her voice continues beside me, low and steady. She is talking about the well water, how it smells wrong, what she would do about it if she had the supplies. The words are ordinary. The sound of them is not.
It shouldn't be enough to hold the darkness back.
It is.
I sleep. And for the first time in a long time, the dreams don't come.
MAREN
Ispend the morning with the sick.
Harren shows me through Gorvani like a man showing off damage he needs someone else to pay for. Three patients. A child with a fever that won't break, small body burning up while her mother hovers in the doorway, eyes red from crying and not sleeping. An old woman whose cough has turned wet and deep, each breath a rattle that speaks of fluid where it shouldn't be. A man who took a fall from a roof last week and hasn't been right since, complaining of headaches and dizziness and a strange sensitivity to light.
I work through the morning. The child first, because children are fragile and fevers are cruel. Then the old woman, dosing her with what I have and showing her daughter how to prop her up so she can breathe easier. Then the man, checking his pupils, his reflexes, the way he tracks my finger when I move it across his field of vision.
Kovren stations himself at the doorway.
He nearly fills the frame, shoulders close to brushing both sides, head ducked to keep from hitting the lintel. People press against the far jamb to squeeze past, not meeting his eyes. A boy of maybe four, too young to be afraid, walks straight through thegap between Kovren's legs without breaking stride. Kovren goes perfectly still until the child is clear, then exhales.
He doesn't move. Doesn't speak. Just stands there, blocking the doorway and everything behind it.
I find myself glancing at him while I work. The way his eyes track movement in the street outside. The way his hands stay loose, ready. The way he shifts, almost imperceptibly, whenever someone new approaches.
He's guarding me. Not because I asked. Not because I need it.
The child's fever breaks near sunset. Her mother cries, grabs my hands, thanks me in a voice gone thick with relief. I tell her what to watch for, what to do if it comes back, press a packet of herbs into her palm and pretend not to notice when she tucks a coin into my bag.
Harren finds me as I'm packing up.
“The girl's better.” It's not quite a thank you, but close. “Her mother thought she was going to lose her.”
“She might have. Another day, maybe two.”
