Page 13 of Guiding Reason
Coldis looked at the bed, then Hyran’s arm, nodded. Hyran helped him up.
“About the channeling. You never said whether you needed it.”
“Not right now.” Hyran grabbed the sheets and pulled them back over the Conduit. He’d have preferred to join Coldis in the bed, make sure he was warm without those socks, but as things stood, that was an empty desire, a need he had to ignore.
“My Guardians say that too. They are generally wrong because they know nothing about channeling, whereas I’m an expert in it.”
“An expert with a concussion who wants food. Is the light okay at thirty percent?”
Coldis shrugged and fussed with the sheets, looking as if he simply wanted something to do. “I can eat and channel. The light is fine. It was too bright before.”
Hyran understood that. Even dimmed light could be painful in the state Coldis had been in.I should have thought of that before.
“And I can’t let you do both.” Hyran got the cool seal container and the three-color crackers and brought both over to the small rolling cabinet next to Coldis’s bed and unfolded its table section. “I got this from my favorite place in the city. It’s this shop that looks tiny from the outside, but then you walk in and realize they have almost the entire floor of the building,and it stretches deep. They import things from other cities and have small batches of specialty foods in stock. For three-color crackers, you can get batches with more of the black bean ones or the golden ones. I got the regular mix because I didn’t know which ones you like best.”
Coldis lifted the box of crackers. “These’re Forty-Sevens. I’m sorry to inform you the brand is known all over the place, even in faraway Argentea. And I like being surprised by whichever color I happen to grab out of a bag.”
Hyran tapped the hummus container with his index finger. It didn’t have an official label, just a printed freshness date, seven days in the future. “I mean this. Handmade from sorono grown on the Ferrean city wall. They tell me they can even track it back to the bot that harvested the sorono.”
“Huh. Impressive.” Coldis broke the cooling seal and opened the crackers, then dipped one into the sorono, scooping as much on it as most people would on five.
Hyran watched with fascination as the Conduit put the whole entire loaded cracker into his mouth and chewed, making an appreciative sound.
“Good?”
“Acceptable.”
That hurt. There was no reason it should have, none other than that Hyran had hoped Coldis would be pleased. That he would say that he was pleased.
“I brought a few more things,” Hyran said and unpacked the rest of everything, sweet nut candies, the Kiki Tea, two for each of them, and a selection of fruit.
He brought all of it over, spread it out in front of his Conduit. Coldis watched him while he ate, the next cracker very nearly vanishing under the amount of sorono as well. The Conduit still looked tired, but clearly, food was helping.
“Wait, is that moisturizer?” Col pointed at the bag that was left on the table.
Hyran froze. He sped over there, pulled the little bottle from the bottom of the bag and brought it over.
“It’s an all-purpose one. I grabbed it at the store because I figured it couldn’t hurt if you were staying here for a few days.”
Coldis took the moisturizer, leaving the crackers and sorono alone for the moment.
“I’m not staying here for a few days. I’m leaving as soon as this”—he pointed at the medication—“is done. But I have dry hands, so this is nice. Thank you, Guardian.”
Hyran sat on the bed, wary but unwilling to ignore the possibility for closeness, however slim it was. “You are very welcome. And you need to heal. Concussions are bad for your brain, and to me, yours is very important.”
He watched as Coldis rubbed the gel into his hands, applying a generous amount. A strand of the Conduit’s rich brown hair fell into his face, and Hyran longed to brush it back but didn’t dare.
“You wanted to tell me about how you were suspecting me and my team,” Coldis said without looking up from his hands.
“I didn’t, but I will. Before that, we need to talk. About the imprinting.”
“There isn’t that much talking that needs to be done after an imprinting, Guardian. Things are clear. Custody-ship sets in when that first touch ends, and we are bound in that until one of us is no more.”
Hyran’s hands balled to fists. “First of all, please stop calling me Guardian. Call me Hyran. And I disagree. There is a lot to talk about, because Custody-ship doesn’t have to be unilateral in every way. I don’t know everything there is to know about you yet, but I want to. I would like to share myself with you as well. I hope we can grow to trust one another. And please, please, don’t talk about dying, Coldis.”
Coldis tilted his head up. “Would I have reason not to trust you, Hyran?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
