Page 32 of Sunder

Long ago had her cups been replaced with fine metal castings, as the ones made of pottery met the impact of the floor too many times. Plush rugs could only offer so much protection, and she’d have to flutter out of bed, tearful and ashamed that she needed help to find all the shards and little bits that settled into the carpet.

He pulled back the top of the bedclothes. Which... were not the same as they had been.

He noticed her expression, and he made a sheepish nod toward the pile of linens. “I thought you’d rather sleep in fresh. That’s what took me so long.”

She swallowed. Hadn’t given it a moment’s thought, but now that she did, she found it yet another sweet gesture. He was trying—and she... wasn’t.

Or was she?

She didn’t know anymore.

He settled the bedclothes over her, and it should have simply been a kindness, but it made her feel somehow worse. She wasn’t doing enough, and none of it was the right thing. He’d been generous with her, and she’d blubbered and promised him nothing, and if their first night was to be a sickbed and a healer that was hers but also wasn’t, then she would like it to end with some nicety on her part.

“There,” Athan declared when he was satisfied she’d been tucked in properly. “Comfortable?”

Yes.

No.

He likely did not even need the bond to feel the anxiety pulsing off of her in steady waves—her expression would have shown it just fine.

A sickbed, he’d said.

With all the expectations that accompanied it.

Like rest, and many liquids, and minimal complaining when a tincture was particularly bitter.

“I’ll let you sleep. But for the sake of clarity, I shall check on you often. I would like you to keep breathing, at least until tomorrow.”

Humour. Said with a smile, as he looked at her expectantly for some sort of engagement.

Her lips quirked upward, but she was too consumed with her own thoughts to properly answer him, let alone offer him a jest in return.

“Athan,” she murmured when he nodded. Her hands were tight at the top of the bedclothes, and she was not a child, nota girl. She was a woman grown, and she could say what she wanted.

Or... what she thought was right.

And maybe those things would someday align.

“Yes?” He was near the door, and she wondered if he was off to another chamber, or would he sit up in the kitchen all night in between hischecks?

She should tell him it was unnecessary. Even at her worst, she’d never stopped breathing. Never come close to dying, although she’d almost...

She stopped the thought.

She did not want to die. Not then, and not now.

“You could stay,” she managed to get out from a throat that felt too tight and a head that reminded her just how sore and heavy it had become. “You needn’t go very far then. To check on me.”

She adjusted the blanket, hoping he’s say no. Hoping he’d say yes.

That he would... want to.

It was a shameful admission, even in the privacy of her own mind. She wanted him to want her. To think her pretty, just as she thought him handsome. For him to have lingered on her legs because he thought them comely, and not because he wondered at the story behind her scar.

It was absurd. More bond nonsense, she knew. Making her think things, and wonder things—that had before now involved only a faceless entity. Not someone real, with a becoming smile and a kind heart.

She could not know that for certain. She’d spent far too little time with him to feel her judgement was born from more than relief that he hadn’t immediately shown himself to be a selfish brute.

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