Page 11 of Edge of the Wild

Astrid was coming out the door as they reached it, basket of linens tucked beneath one arm. She shook her head, lips pressed to a thin line before Tessa could even ask.

“No change in him. I can’t get her ladyship to so much as take tea.”

“If you’ll bring some fresh, I’ll see if I can get her to drink it,” Tessa said.

The maid nodded and hurried off.

Tessa didn’t bother knocking; she’d been growing more and more comfortable here over the last weeks, but the past twenty-four hours had knocked down the last of her reticence. She felt like family, now.

A family that she prayed fervently to be made whole again.

Astrid’s touch lay about the room: the drawn-back tapestries, the window panes frosted with ice and pearly with dawn. A chair held a stack of fresh quilts, and two mugs sat on the desk, full and untouched.

Leif sat sprawled in a chair on one side of the bed, head tipped back at an uncomfortable angle, boots kicked out across the rug; he was snoring, softly, hands limp and open in his lap.

Revna, by contrast, sat bolt upright across from him, her spine painfully straight, hands knitted together over one of Rune’s on the coverlet. Her lovely face was lined, drawn, and pale, eyes ringed with shadows, her gaze fixed on Rune, but withdrawn, blank.

“Oh my,” Hilda murmured.

Rune lay sleeping, still pale, still sheened faintly with sweat. His head turned, hair rustling on the pillow, but he didn’t wake. The fever was low, still, and being controlled with herbs, but Tessa knew the signs of it all too well, having seen them in Oliver her whole life.

She moved to stand beside Revna, and laid a hand on her shoulder.

Revna startled. She jerked, and her head whirled, and the hand she lifted from Rune’s formed an automatic fist. Her gaze swung wildly across the room until she spotted Tessa, and recognition dawned.

Then she deflated at once, a visible exhaustion sweeping through her, lowering her lashes to half-mast before she forced her eyes open again. “Tessa.” Her mouth twitched in what might have been an attempt at a smile, perfunctory and pathetic though it was. “You should be in bed. It’s late.”

“It’s early,” Tessa corrected, gently, and pointed to the windows.

Revna turned toward them, blinking against the light, dazed-looking. “So it is.”

“Have you slept at all?” Tessa asked.

Revna’s attention shifted to Rune, and she said, “Does he look better or worse? A little better, perhaps?” Her voice was slow and thick with fatigue.

Tessa traded worried glances with Hilda. “I don’t…I don’t think he looks worse,” she said, carefully.

Revna leaned forward in her chair so she could smooth Rune’s hair back from his damp brow. “He’s too warm,” she said, frowning.

Tessa bit her lip, hesitating. Then she took a deep breath and said, “Revna, I think you should go lie down for a little while.”

Revna’s head turned toward her slowly, glazed expression edging toward disbelief, toward obstinance.

Before an argument could form, Tessa said, “I’ll gladly sit with him, and Leif’s here. I’ll send Hilda for you right away if there’s any change. But it’s like you told me when I was sitting vigil over Ollie: you can’t help him by running yourself into the ground.”

It was different, and Tessa knew it: though she loved Oliver, he was her cousin, and Rune was Revna’s son, her baby, still, despite the beard on his cheeks. But the principle still applied: falling ill oneself at another’s bedside was folly. And Revna was so tired at this point that she could barely function.

“Astrid went to fetch some tea, my lady,” Hilda said. “Perhaps you could go get comfortable in the solar and have a cup?”

Revna hesitated a long moment, gaze shifting first to Leif, whose head had lolled over onto his shoulder, and then to Rune, still now, breathing shallowly through parted lips. She heaved a bone-weary sigh, and then nodded. “’Spose I should follow my own advice, eh? Tea would be good.”

Tessa and Hilda had to support her, when she stood, and then staggered. By the time they’d steadied her, and reached the door, Astrid was there with a supportive arm and a shawl.

“This way, my lady,” she murmured, and led her down the hall.

Tessa sank down into the chair she’d abandoned, and Hilda settled on a tufted footstool, digging a bit of knitting from her apron pocket straight away. She liked to keep her hands busy, Tessa had learned.

For her own part, she contemplated Rune’s hand where it lay on the quilt, the one Revna had been clasping so tightly. Despite its size, it was an elegant hand, long-fingered, well-shaped. As the dawn deepened and brightened, it highlighted a smooth, silver scar in the web between thumb and forefinger – one she reached, unconsciously, to trace with a fingertip.

---