Chapter 6
SHILOH
When I woke in total darkness, I had no idea where I was. I lay, my head heavy and my mouth tasting of metal, my brain too sluggish from sleep and the migraine to recall precisely what was happening.
I was curled on my side in the fetal position, blankets gone fuzzy and soft with wear and washing pulled all the way up to my nose.
There was a slightly soapy, herbal scent clinging to them.
It was mild and fresh and, thankfully, not overpowering.
It didn’t seem to trigger any new waves of pain or nausea.
The bedding is clean.
Rivven.
The cowboy planet.
The second that I remembered where I was and what had led me to waking up in this unfamiliar, clean bed, was also the same moment I became aware of someone else in the room.
A floorboard creaked at the side of the bed.
And then there was another quiet sound, like something solid being carefully placed on the bedside table that, lying on my side as I was, was basically behind me.
“Hello?” I croaked into the darkness.
The darkness lit up. Like someone was shining a flashlight right in my face. Two flashlights.
“Oh my God,” I groaned, yanking blankets over my face. “So bright!”
“Sorry!” came a rushed voice. A voice I recognized. “I did not mean to wake you! You have been quiet for so long, and the warden and his wife have been sleeping for a while now. I worried you’d be hungry, and…”
Carefully, I lowered the blanket. The room had gone back to the relief of utter blackness.
“There is water here from earlier. And I’ve just put a little plate with bread and some preserved fruit. Ta…” He hesitated. “The warden’s wife said that might be a meal you could tolerate.”
“Thank you,” I said quietly. I didn’t feel too terrible at the moment.
But I wasn’t out of the woods yet. I knew if I sat up too quickly, or carried on this conversation for too long, the migraine would come roaring back.
But it was important that I thanked this disembodied voice for its thoughtfulness. “Rivven?”
“Yes?”
So this was Rivven, then.
“Thank you,” I said again, just above a whisper.
“Of course.” He’d said that before, too. Like it was inconceivable to him that he’d behave any differently towards me. That he’d offer anything besides generosity.
“I’ll leave you now,” he murmured. “Let you rest.”
I figured that would have been the last I heard from him for the time being. But a second later, there was the unmistakeable, wooden thud of him running into something. A wall, or maybe a piece of furniture. Then, the quiet hiss of, “Blast!”
“Are you alright?” I asked. Very slowly, I turned over, flipping my entire body in one stiff roll so I didn’t move my head and neck too much on their own. “Did you bump into something? It’s hard to see in the dark!”
I wondered what happened to the lights he’d had a second ago.
“Oh, I can see in the dark just fine,” he replied. “But my eyes are closed.”
Uh…
“I mean, if you can see well in the dark…” Was the migraine making me stupid? I could not figure out what the heck he was talking about. “Why don’t you just open your eyes?”
“I am afraid I do not have a particularly good rein on them at the moment,” he said cryptically.
“Sorry,” I said with a tired sigh. “I’m not sure I know what that means.”
My own eyes were open now. I blinked and squinted, but it was pointless. I could see absolutely nothing in the room. Night must have fallen outside, because there wasn’t even the faintest glow of daylight coming in from behind whatever Rivven had covered the window with.
“I…I fear my eyes have gone rather rogue,” he said with a strained note in his voice, like he wasn’t too happy about this admission.
Unbidden, the image of two alien eyeballs bouncing around the room, evading Rivven’s grasp, appeared in my mind.
I held back a laugh for both our sakes. Laughter would make my head feel like it was going to pop right off my body right about now.
And I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
“I know you are sensitive to their light right now,” he went on.
“So, until I can reassert control over them, I will keep them closed. I will use my tail ahead of me as a sort of guide.” There was a slithering sound, like a serpent moving over wood, then the clumsier thump of what was presumably Rivven’s hand connecting with a nearby wall.
Hold on…
That light was from his eyes?
“I have found the door!” He sounded so pleased by this fact that I couldn’t help but smile a little. “Oh! I nearly forgot. Do you need your bucket emptied?”
“My bucket?”
Oh, right. I’d asked for one. I hadn’t even realized someone had brought it.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t throw up.”
“You did not throw up what?” He paused. “If you use the bucket, please do not feel as if you have to throw it anywhere, like out the window. I will dispose of the contents myself.”
“What? No, sorry.” I supposed that was a bit of a translation error. “I meant, I didn’t vomit.”
“Vomit?!”
“Er…Yes? Did that translate alright?” Why was he so surprised? “What…What did you think I needed the bucket for?”
“Well,” he said, “I thought you’d piss in it.”
Oh, Christ. The man really thought I was going to pee in the bucket.
Or worse.
And he’d just offered to empty it.
“No, no!” I said. The creeping heat of embarrassment was making my head throb. “When I need to, uh, engage in that sort of thing, I’ll find my way to the appropriate room.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. It remained pitch-black in here. He must have still had his eyes closed. I tried to imagine him, standing at the door with his eyes screwed shut, but couldn’t really do it. I hadn’t even gotten a glimpse of him yesterday, and I had no idea what he looked like.
But he sounds handsome.
“Emptying the bucket would be no trouble,” he added, distracting me from the absurdity of that sudden thought.
“Well, it would trouble me,” I said on a shaky half-laugh, half-moan. “But thank you for the offer.”
He didn’t say anything else. It was only the fact I hadn’t heard the door open and shut again that told me he was still there.
“I’m going to sleep a little more. If that’s alright.” I was rapidly losing steam.
“Yes,” he said abruptly, as if his mind had been miles away and I’d just called it back. “Sleep as long as you need.”
It was only when he’d been gone for a while, when I was drifting back to sleep, that I remembered this was Rivven’s bed.
And I wondered where he’d lay his head down tonight.
When I woke next, there was a small amount of light present in the room.
I let out a shaky sigh of relief when I realized that it wasn’t causing me pain.
I felt like a wrung-out dishrag, but it seemed like the migraine was receding somewhat.
Hopefully, if I took it easy for the next day or two, it wouldn’t turn into a monster 72-hour attack.
I stayed still for a while, just breathing and enjoying the fact it didn’t currently feel like somebody was pulverizing my brain with a meat tenderizer.
When I felt up to it, I shifted to the edge of the bed and snaked my arm out.
My bag was on the floor beside the bed, as was the bucket Rivven had mentioned last night.
I ignored the bucket for now and opened my bag, pulling out my bottle of painkillers.
If I took another one now, when I was already feeling much better, hopefully the medication would stave off the return of the worst of it.
If I could manage to keep ahead of the pain with medication, things tended to go a lot better.
I was about to dry-swallow a pill when I remembered what Rivven had said about there being some water.
Moving at the pace of cold, crawling molasses, I eased myself up into a seated position.
My head gave a dull throb at the exertion, but thankfully it was only an echo of the intensity from yesterday.
I took the pill with a sip. The water was quite cold.
So was the air in the room, now that I was awake enough to notice and not as cocooned in the blankets as before.
The low temperature convinced me the food Rivven had left last night would probably be fine to eat as well.
The sliced bread was stale now, but still good, and I had to stop myself from moaning at the bright, sweet, tartness of whatever fruit preserve he’d smeared on top.
And…Holy hills of Terra…Was that butter as well?
When was the last time I’d had real fruit and butter?
Probably some Christmas morning when Daddy was still alive.
I chewed vigorously and swallowed hard, forcing the food past the new lump in my throat. I hadn’t planned to eat everything – I wanted to give my stomach a little time to settle after last night – but it was so tasty I cleared the plate entirely. Then, I drained my water.
So far, so good.
Encouraged by the way that my body was reacting, I slowly eased my feet off the bed and into my boots. I almost kicked something over – the bucket. Which made me aware of the fullness of my bladder.
He really was offering to deal with my bodily fluids…
Very sweet. Also very gross. And not something I ever planned to actually let happen.
Putting my jacket on over yesterday’s clothes, I ventured out in search of a bathroom.
Outside the bedroom door was a small landing, then a set of stairs that led down into what looked to be a kitchen of some sort.
And in that kitchen stood a man.
A beautiful man. A man with skin the precise, aching shade of the sky that had called me here. Long, deep blue hair was tied neatly behind him as he worked over what appeared to be a wood-burning stove. Deliciously rich and savoury scents drifted up to me from where I watched him.