Page 25 of Sunder

As if she was a child. As if she could not even do something as rudimentary asbreathingwithout assistance.

She shook harder.

“I’m going to take you inside now. No Brum, I promise. Just a room and you can lie down, and we’ll get you feeling better.”

A ridiculous thing to promise, but likely what anyone else would believe possible.

He did not wait. Not for her answer. Not for her to fall, as was much more likely to happen next.

He simply moved with all the assurance he was doing the right thing. And this time there was light and a sharp whistle, and the lumbering beast retreated somewhere else while he whisked her to the upper floor and shut the door behind him.

In the dark.

Again.

She curled inward, which might have pressed herself into his chest more than was decent, but that could not be helped. She did not much care for the dark. Or the cold. She liked the glow that came with light and warmth. A fire in a hearth, the whisper of a flame in an oil lamp. Those were girlhood comforts in an otherwise unyielding underground.

She wasn’t there. She was grown, and she did not need to cower and...

He set her down on something soft.

Lit a lamp.

A room. Perfectly ordinary—or it might have been, if she had not spent her life in the confines of a tower, its ornaments and furnishings passed from one generation to the next.

These were plain. Useful, but without carvings or gilding to add to their beauty. A trunk. A bed. Shutters that were fitted poorly and allowed a bit of the night air to push between them.

She wiped at her face and curled on her side. She should take her boots off. They had no place on a bed. She was going to get his bed linens dirty, and could a healer afford a service to launder them?

She couldn’t stop shaking.

“This is not a reproach,” Athan warned as he came to her side and coaxed her hand away from her middle. Her arm. To poke at. Prod and cut and see if that released her visions and...

She yanked it away.

He was not her healer.

She did not have to consent to any of his experiments.

“Medicines do not always heal,” he continued, looking at her sadly as she clutched her hands together and kept them far away from her. “You are overwrought. You are reacting poorly and I do not know how to counter the effects because I do not know what was in that potion of yours.”

She rubbed at her nose, willing the tears to abate. “If that is not a reproach, I hate to hear what is.”

Her words were quiet and slightly slurred, but she caught his frown at the edges of her vision, his hand coming to her shoulder. Not pulling at her, forcing her to bend and offer her arm up to him against her will.

Just... resting there.

A large hand. Practiced in a craft she held no trust in.

“I will fetch you some water. And a clean blanket.” He nodded to himself, as if pleased with his pronouncement, but his steps were hesitant as he moved from the room. “If you could just... stay put. While I’m gone. I will be quick.”

He shut the door behind him, and she waited to hear the familiar sound of a latch bolting from the outside, but it did not come.

That should mean something, shouldn’t it? She had choices, even now. Or she would, if her body could stop betraying her.Could stop shaking and shivering and decide if she was hot or cold. If she wanted to tuck herself in or bolt for the door again.

She started to sob.

She wanted this to be Lucian’s fault. He’d set the idea in her mind. But he loved her and was only trying to help. But that was always true, wasn’t it? Everyone wanted to help her. See her better. Cured. No more visions, no more threads. No more pain that was her most constant companion of all.

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