Page 39 of Honeythorn
And then, even in dreams, it stopped. His body, his mind, they fluttered to the ground like leaves. A final resting place, perhaps—but not even that was to be.
Milan opened his eyes. The crust at their edges made it hard to blink. He tried to focus on the ceiling above him.
A bed. Sheets, cooled sweat, a familiar smell.
He was alive.
A sob escaped him even as his thoughts struggled to comprehend. How? How, after all that suffering, could there be peace?
He looked around and there, an omen of death—Lord Raphael. He sat, looking bedraggled and exhausted, by Milan’s bed. A phantom, surely, but when Milan deciphered one burning from another, he realised that Raphael’s hand—hisbarehand—rested on top his own.
With the only drop of energy he had in his body, Milan yanked himself away. Instantaneously, roiling nausea made his stomach clench, his chest heave, which only abated when the foreign hand grasped his again. The touch was like warmth after too much cold—the chewing of a hundred ants from the inside out, doing good even as it tortured.
“You must let him touch you, Lord Milan.”
Milan whipped his head around to stare at the strange woman standing on the other side of the bed. Portly, with round cheeks and a plain dress, she was looking down at him kindly.
“Who are you?” Milan rasped.
“I am Dr. Kensington. Here, let me prop you up for a second. Drink this.”
Milan did as he was told, accepting the offered cup of water as he ignored the hand still clasped in his. He collapsed back onto the bed when he had finished, his whole body aching at the movement.
Milan blinked at the doctor. “What…am I…?”
“You’re going to be fine, Lord Milan. You gave us all a little bit of a scare, but you’re lucky that Lord Ledford got here in time after his staff alerted him about your condition.”
With absolutely no control over himself, Milan suddenly began crying. Great, gulping sobs that made his body scream out in pain.
He understood perfectly what was happening. The bond was not broken. He was not free. Instead, Lord Raphael had waited until Milan was at the brink of death only to swoop in, the saviour, to pull him back. Milan could foresee his plan—Lord Raphael would do it again, and again, and again, until either Milan’s body or his mind gave in.
“Please,” Milan choked out. “Please, he’s killing me. He’s killing me.”
Milan tried to pull his hand away again, and again found resistance. He turned to look at Lord Raphael, knowing what he would find: disdain, contempt, or perhaps anger that Milan was attempting to reveal his plans.
The reality, however, was quite different. Instead of the coldness Milan expected, Lord Raphael’s face was cracked open with grief. He looked stricken, as if Milan’s words had truly struck him somewhere that hurt.
Milan shook uncontrollably at how good an actor his husband could be.
“Lord Milan, I know this is very difficult, but please try to take some breaths. Your body has gone through quite the ordeal. I know you must think that Lord Ledford was the culprit of this, but in fact, it was the bond between you. When neglected—”
“I know what this is,” Milan hissed through his tears. “A neglected bond, as I told the useless Dr. Fitch.”
Dr. Kensington looked shocked, but it was Lord Raphael that spoke first.
“You knew what was happening? Why…why did you not say something? It was killing you!”
Milan looked at him with hateful incredulity. “Do not pretend now,dear husband, that you did not know! The gloves—I begged you to let me touch you! I begged—just once a day, justonce. How dare you sit there and pretend—howdare you?”
Milan started struggling again. He did not care about the pain or suffering. All he wanted was his skin never to touch Lord Raphael’s again.
But, of course, it only took Milan wanting this for Lord Raphael to refuse him, holding on tight.
“Lord Milan! Please, you are hurting yourself!”
Milan did not care. Even his fatigue couldn’t stop his thrashing, and it took both Lord Raphael and Dr. Kensington quite a few minutes to calm him down. In the end, it was a hopeless collapsing of his spirit that made Milan lay limp on the bed, tears blinding his vision.
“Lord Milan, please listen to us. What you are saying, about the neglected bond is completely correct. The problem is, Lord Raphael wasn’t aware of the consequences.”
