Chapter 34
Voices.
And warmth. The warmth of a body pressed against mine. I draw a deep breath through my nose. Everything feels nice. He’s here with me, isn’t he?
My eyes won’t open. My limbs won’t move. A bolt of panic replaces my sense of calm. My mind is fogged and sluggish. If only I could open my eyes, then maybe I could think better—
The voice behind me speaks. His words don’t register in my mind, but the tone is resigned, irritated. Then the body shifts away from me, and panic floods. He’s leaving me? Where is he going? But I worked so hard to get back to him! I’m exhausted, and all I want to do is lie in his arms. He can’t leave me! Not yet!
The world turns colder and the mattress shifts. He’s gotten up. Maybe he’ll come back soon.
The door opens, shuts.
Quiet fills my awareness.
I open my mouth, try to call for him. No sound comes out. My lips form his name. Ash.
Well, I’m not about to wait around for him to come back! If I can just get my limbs to work . . .
It’s a painful process, but each new movement comes a little easier, until I’ve managed to scoot to the edge of the bed. The covers are much too heavy for me to lift, and I cannot find the strength to sit up.
So I just roll myself off the bed.
My fall is cushioned by the quilts I unfortunately bring with me. I land in an ungainly heap, breathing hard. My eyes barely crack open, revealing a blurry world of bright color. I’ve got to move fast before Ash gets too far ahead.
With a grunt, I push to my hands and knees—and promptly fall back on my face. A whimper escapes my lips. But by the Great Kings, I’m going to find my husband if it’s the last thing I do.
I twist and roll myself out of the covers, then crawl on my knees and elbows around to the footboard of the bed. Chest heaving, I pause for a ten second break to recover my strength.
My strength does not recover. I forge on anyway.
Finally, I reach the door. It’s closed. I lift a weak arm, slamming the heel of my hand into wood and scrabbling with my fingernails. The doorknob is so high. The world tilts to one side, and I fall back to the ground, losing my progress.
“Aaaaaaa,” I moan. My husband’s name is one syllable. Three letters. Yet my tongue is determined not to work. Useless thing.
Slumping to the floor, I poke my fingers beneath the door. Maybe I can slide underneath it. I’ll be a cat and squeeze through. Think small, fluffy thoughts . . .
Then there’s a voice. “My lord? Before you leave . . . um, there are fingers beneath your bedroom door.”
Oh, that’s Edvear! Maybe he can help me get to Ash. I try to call for him, and only succeed in choking on a gasp. I sag back to the ground. I am so tired. Maybe I’ll sleep a little bit, and then I’ll go after Ash.
It’s so rude of him, leaving when I want him the most.
“Fingers?” comes the startled reply. It’s quieter, as though from the other side of the world. Ash! He hasn’t left me completely yet. “Stella?”
Come back, Ash! I want to cry after him. I need you to kiss me!
The thought comes out of nowhere, but once it’s there, frustration burns through me. We’re married, and he still hasn’t properly kissed me yet. The gall! It’s so infuriating I manage to lift my head and lean it against the doorframe. Everything is still blurry, but who needs clear vision? It’s quite overrated, in my opinion.
“Please don’t leap over the furniture, my lord! I’m sure it’ll be quite as—”
The door swings open so fast I’m almost sucked through the opening. The world tilts again, and I slip from the doorframe to the threshold, hitting the ground hard.
“Stella!”
I sag, going limp at the sound of his voice. He came back for me. Happiness runs liquid through my veins, though my lips only move in the smallest smile. “Aaaa,” I moan.
“You’re alive! Oh Great Kings, you’re alive!” The voice almost sounds teary in its exaltation. It quickly shifts to concern, coming closer and closer to me. “But what are you doing? You’re hurting yourself! Can you hear me? Stella?”
“I can hear you just fine!” I retort—except it comes out in a garbled collection of incoherent noises.
Warmth wraps around me, easily lifting me up. The ground vanishes from beneath me, and in my relief to be back in my husband’s arms, I cannot even find the strength to grab hold of him in return.
“Tell the High King that it’ll have to wait,” Ash barks over his shoulder. “And cancel everything else for the day. Oh—and send for the doctor! At once!”
He lowers me back onto the bed, clucking his tongue and commenting on the disarray of the blankets. I don’t care if half of them are on the floor. I’m just glad to have him back. His voice, a constant comforting hum that comes in and out of clarity, soothes me enough that I sink into the mattress, eyes closed, thinking of nothing but how happy I am.
“You scared me nearly to death!” Ash says, slipping beneath the covers beside me and drawing me tightly into his arms. “Are you awake?”
The sound I make is an attempt at an affirmation, but incoherent as it is, it works. Ash keeps talking—why is he talking so much?—and I hear my name over and over again. Then, somehow, I pry my eyes fully open.
There he is, his face hovering above me. His mouth is moving, and his handsome features blur in and out of focus. I beam up at him, grinning. He stops talking. Just for that one moment.
And then he disappears.
My hammering heart thuds to an abrupt halt when her eyes open—eyes I was afraid I’d never see again—and then a wide smile bursts across her features. She’s a mess of tangled hair, crusted eyelashes, matted and wrinkled nightdress, but the moment she smiles, I forget everything else. She’s never been more beautiful.
Then her eyes roll back in her head, and the pleadings that cross my lips are much too desperate for a prince. I’d had her back! For a single, glorious moment. But now she’s gone again, and I slump against the bedframe.
It’s an eternity before the doctor arrives. I wait impatiently as the moment replays in my mind when I opened the door and found her sprawled on the ground, her nightgown in a tangle around her knees and her head fallen to rest against one of her extended arms.
When the doctor finally walks in, I sit up sharply. “She was awake!” In a rush, before he catches and rearranges the spectacles that bounced off his nose at my outburst, I tell him how I’d found her, the way her eyes opened, and how she grunted in response to my questions. “She managed to get out of bed—and all the way around to the door!”
I’m breathing hard when I finish, waiting—waiting—waiting for him to say something! To say she’s better. To say she’s still going to die. To say anything.
He gives a single, prim nod. “Good.”
“It’s good?” I straighten. “It is, right? This means she’ll recover?”
“It would seem so.” The doctor comes around to Stella’s side of the bed and performs a few checks. Opening her mouth and one eyelid, taking her pulse, touching her forehead. “She is much improved. It’s quite a miracle, I’d say. Her magic may not be very strong if she’s already overcome the worst of the sickness. But that is to be seen.”
After he’s performed a few more inspections, he leaves with the same instructions as before.
I’m alone once more, holding my sleeping wife.
She’s through the worst of it. She’s going to be alright.
Stella will survive. And she has magic now.
Everything has changed.
I carefully extricate myself from her, lay her against the pillows, bring the blankets up to her chin, and tuck her in. I bend down and press a kiss to her forehead. It is like kissing a heart mended anew, or the bright rays of a fresh dawn.
“Rest,” I murmur.
Then I straighten, all but throw myself into my desk, and pick up my quill. I take a blank page and scrawl frantically while hope sleeps a few feet away.