Page 25 of The Curse Between Us

Edric gave him a lopsided smile. “It is my duty, and my pleasure, to tend to my husband.” His smile slipped. “And I confess, I’m afraid I am to blame for your illness.”

Struggling to sit up, Zephyr frowned at him. “Why would you say that?”

With gentle hands, Edric eased him into a seated position. “Perhaps not personally,” he admitted. “But”-- he gestured vaguely around the room-- “this place. My kingdom.”

It took a moment for his words to sink into Zephyr’s fever-addled brain. “You think I am reacting to the climate here?”

Edric nodded reluctantly. “We know our bodies react painfully to one another’s touch. It stands to reason thatprolonged exposure to this environment might have a similar effect.”

It made a certain, terrible sense. Already, Zephyr could feel the heat building in his body again, a slow burn beneath his skin despite the thinness of the linen covering him. And--

Looking down, he noted his attire: a soft shirt and loose drawers. He was certain he had been more formally dressed for the council meeting, and if Edric was the only one who had seen him since then--

“Did you”-- he could barely form the words around the lump of embarrassment in his throat-- “disrobe me?”

Edric’s eyes flared wide, and his cheeks turned as pink as the sunset silhouetted in the window behind them. “I did,” he replied. “I thought it would be more comfortable for you. Please forgive the liberty.”

It was not the way Zephyr had imagined being undressed by his husband, but it left his chest feeling wonderfully tight regardless. “There is nothing to forgive,” he said softly.

He wanted so badly to reach out, to pull Edric’s face down toward his and to kiss the worry away from the set of his mouth. Instead, he doubled over as a fit of coughing shook his body, his abdomen clenching with the force of it.

Edric held a glass of water to his lips, and Zephyr drank gratefully. “You must rest,” Edric said, voice thick with quiet command. “Your body needs to heal.”

Nodding, Zephyr sank further down on the bed, closing his eyes. He felt a gentle hand brush his sweat-damp hair back from his forehead, the tenderness of the gesture tangible even through the leather of Edric’s gloves.

“Sleep,” Edric murmured, his voice low and steady. “I will not leave you.”

With that promise echoing in his mind, Zephyr let the darkness take him again.

???

When next he woke, it was not to dreams of death and destruction, but to hushed voices drifting through the air like echoes in a cathedral. The sound tugged at Zephyr’s consciousness, anchoring him to reality even as the heavy fog of exhaustion clung to his body. He dragged his eyes open, blinking against the golden flood of morning light spilling across the chamber. Dust motes floated lazily in the air, their gentle descent a stark contrast to the storm of uncertainty raging within him.

He guessed it was morning, though time felt slippery, its passage indistinct. The alcove where the bed lay nestled obscured his view of the room, but he could hear them — voices low but distinct. They were not alone.

“You must let a healer see to him,” came Alec’s voice, steady but laced with concern. It carried the weight of someone who had repeated the same words too many times, only to have them fall on deaf ears.

Zephyr tried to respond, to alert them that he was awake, but his throat, parched and raw, refused to cooperate. The words stuck like thorns.

“Not yet.” Edric’s voice was a quiet storm, low and insistent. Zephyr could almost see him: arms crossed over his chest, jaw clenched, eyes burning with defiance. “I can look after him.”

“You’re being absurd.” Frustration sharpened Alec’s tone like the edge of a blade. “Edric, have you considered what happens if he does not recover?”

The room seemed to still. Zephyr’s chest tightened, and he drew a shallow breath, heart hammering. Was that truly apossibility? He knew he was weak, but had he drifted so close to death without realizing it?

“What is there to consider?” Edric’s voice was sharp, brittle.

“The political implications,” Alec answered, his words heavy as stone. “If he dies on our lands, so soon after the treaty negotiations, what will the Eskarvens think?” He paused, letting the gravity of his statement settle like a shroud over the room. When Edric didn’t answer, Alec pressed on. “They will think we had a hand in his death. That it was our plan all along. And I would not blame them for thinking so.”

He was right. Zephyr felt the truth of it settle like ice in his gut. His people, already wary and wounded by years of war, would assume treachery. They would retaliate. Peace, so tenuously held, would shatter like fragile glass.

“Is that all that matters to you?” Edric’s voice cracked through the room like a whip, raw with emotion. “The political implications? We are talking about someone’s life, Alec. Zephyr’s life.”

“Yes. I’m aware of that,” Alec said, voice tight. “But this goes so far beyond one person, Edric. If this alliance crumbles, the war will be even worse than it was before. More people will die. Entire villages, families. If we lose him, we lose our greatest instrument of peace.”

“He is not a tool!” Edric’s control snapped like a bowstring, his voice echoing in the lofty chamber. “Or an instrument. He is a person, Alec.”

The silence that followed was suffocating. Zephyr struggled to make a sound, to end the unbearable tension, but he remained voiceless, a captive audience to a conversation he was never meant to overhear.

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