Chapter 50
M aster Edvin came back to check on Rowan throughout the night and next day, and he wasn’t the only one.
One by one, the men dropped by. Taras and Kirill were the only ones who came into the bedroom, but the rest spoke through the door.
“How many are standing guard out there now?” I asked, disentangling myself from Rowan’s hair to stand up for a rare reprieve while Taras watched over her.
She let out a small sound of protest, and I touched her wrist on instinct, pulling the covers over her with my other hand. She sighed a little, but didn’t whimper again.
Taras eyed the whole exchange with his overly observant gaze, but didn’t comment.
“Four,” he answered after a beat. “I finally made Henrick and Yuriy rest, and the others have been on rotation.”
Of course they have been.
She had captivated them even before she put herself in the line of fire for one of their own. Only Taras was a holdout, or had been, before she saved his brother from a likely execution.
“How is she, actually?” he asked quietly.
I followed his gaze to Rowan’s wan profile, her fair skin even paler against the contrast of my obsidian blanket. A purple half moon hung under her visible eye, and her lips were ashen.
“Edvin says she’s stable, for whatever that’s worth. She isn’t getting better. She hasn’t taken a turn for the worse. Her fever spikes and ebbs away, like now.” I rubbed my temples before turning to go.
I made quick use of the lavatory and cleaned up, throwing on fresh clothes before I emerged again. Well, a fresh set of pants, since my body heat and the skin to skin contact were some of the only things keeping her “stable” at this point.
Kirill was there when I returned, placing a stack of parchment on my desk.
“Reports,” he explained quietly.
“Any word from Iiro?” I asked.
He pursed his lips, glancing over at the fitfully sleeping princess. “Not yet.”
I nodded, briefly scanning through the reports. Then I wrote up a short note, handing it to Kirill to deliver.
First his brow furrowed, then a smile spread across his cheeks, one devoid of his usual warmth. Taras raised his eyebrows and Kirill explained.
“New orders for Samu. Looks like someone is taking a turn demonstrating techniques on withstanding torture to the incoming troops.”
I couldn’t actually reassign him, but as a high-ranking soldier, it was well within his duty to play this role.
“I’m only sad I won’t be there myself to help with that demonstration,” I said through a half-hearted grin.
“As your second-in-command, it is my duty to attend in your stead,” Taras volunteered.
His tone was so neutral, I might have missed the malice churning in his eyes if I hadn’t been looking for it.
Yes, Taras might have been a holdout before, but his brother’s life had earned Rowan his loyalty. And his vengeance, as it turned out.
Good.
They left, and I returned to my bed, pulling Rowan against me once more.
Der’mo . She was hotter than before, burning up from the brief moments I had left her.
“Stop doing that,” she murmured.
“Doing what?” I asked, hoping she would stay lucid enough to respond.
“Leaving.”
I swallowed, my arms frozen around her for a moment before I could think of how to respond. Was she lucid, then? Or had she imagined I was someone else?
“All right, Lemmikki,” I said after a moment.
Shivers wracked through her and she shook her head, small noises of pain escaping her chapped lips.
“Cold,” she whispered.
I tightened my arms around her. “Better?”
“Mm.”
She pressed against me, wrapping her arms around me and squeezing with surprising force for someone in her condition. Then she finally succumbed to sleep, and eventually, so did I.
I hadn’t even registered falling asleep until Rowan was moving. My eyes flew open, and I expected to find her in the throes of another nightmare, but instead, she was intentionally trying to untangle her limbs from mine.
I swiftly moved out from under her, before adjusting her so she was propped upright on the bed next to me.
She let out a hiss as her back came in contact with the pillow and I debated whether I should have left her on her stomach. Her wounds were healing, though, and she had more agency this way.
It was strange to think that we had hardly spoken since the ill-fated negotiations, and now we were here. Stranger, still, in her position, where she had spent the past several days mostly unconscious.
Somehow, in the time I had spent trying to keep her alive, it hadn’t occurred to me that she would wake up while I was sleeping.
“The healer said you needed warmth,” I explained awkwardly, blinking away the rest of my grogginess. “But with your back…”
“Of course,” she said quickly, her voice strained from disuse.
An uncomfortable silence stretched between us while I debated what to say next. Fortunately, she beat me to it.
“How long was I out?”
“Off and on for three days,” I answered quickly.
Her mouth dropped open and her eyes went wide. “And you were here that entire time?”
I wasn’t sure if she objected to my presence or was merely surprised by it. Storms . Everything about this felt more difficult now that she was awake.
“It was either that, or an untimely death,” I assured her.
She seemed to consider that, a hundred different emotions playing out on her features, namely disbelief. Only she would be surprised that I hadn’t wanted to risk her death when I had gone so far out of my way to avoid it thus far.
Then again, perhaps she was merely finding the flaw in my reasoning, on the cusp of asking why no one else had been available.
What would I say, then? That there had been willing bodies but no one I trusted? That as much as she objected to waking up in the bed next to me, I suspected she would have felt even more strongly, had it been a stranger?
That maybe there had been other options, but I had spent a lifetime relying on my own rationality only to have it flee at the prospect of her death?
None of that made sense, so I said nothing.
“Well, that would have been a waste of a perfectly good political prisoner,” she replied a moment later. “And quite the mess for Bear—” a coughing fit interrupted her sentence.
I turned toward the nightstand to pour her a glass of water, and to hide whatever emotion was playing out on my features. I wished she was right about why I had worked so hard to save her, but there was no point in trying to explain what I still wasn’t sure I understood myself, so once again, I opted for silence.
A gasp escaped her before I could turn back around, and I immediately realized my mistake.
Der’mo .
The scars that I usually kept concealed from her, that I had taken more than the usual care to cover whenever she was in the sauna or came to my rooms late at night, were on full display now.
“Are you, too, an escape artist?” she asked. She made an admirable attempt at sounding casual, but the horror was still clear in her tone.
Slowly, I turned back around and handed her the water glass.
“Something like that,” I said under my breath.
Her lips pursed thoughtfully, her viridian eyes bright with curiosity. Before she could voice any of the endless questions I knew she was dying to ask, I pressed the glass into her hands, urging her to drink.
It was an effort for her, but she took her time to down the entire glass. Afterward, she rested the cup in her lap, her focus shifting to her damaged wrists, still glistening from the fresh ointment Edvin had applied on his visit this morning.
“I’ll go so you can rest.” I moved to pull the blankets off myself.
“No.” The word stopped me in my tracks. Her eyes snapped back up to meet mine, widening like she was surprised by her own protest.
But she didn’t take it back.
“You want me to stay?” I clarified, needing her to state it explicitly this time.
It was one thing when she was still in the throes of her flogging, in debilitating pain and half-delirious from the tonic, unwilling to be left alone. Her eyes were lucid, now, her speech clear. And she didn’t just want me to stay at my desk so she wasn’t alone.
She was asking me to stay in this bed. At least, that’s what I thought she was asking.
She held my gaze and nodded.
All right, then.
I supposed it wasn’t any different than the past three nights had been, except this time, she would be sleeping on her own side. It was the simplest way to keep an eye on her, anyway, and markedly more comfortable than my desk chair or the sofa in my study.
She probably felt safer, finally realizing that at least I had no desire to see her dead, which was more than could be said of other inhabitants of this estate. Or this kingdom, for that matter.
Practicality.
That’s all this was.
So, I grabbed a book from my nightstand on the history of laws for Clan Bear and settled into my pillows to let her know I wasn’t going anywhere.
She watched me for several long moments, like she was waiting for me to argue or change my mind, or to disappear, but she didn’t say anything else.
Instead, she turned onto her side, continuing to watch me until she eventually fell back asleep.