Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
When Ethram wakes in the dark, he knows Ky has returned.
The pressure in the air is heavy, cloying, like it hasn’t been since those winter weeks when Ky had first arrived. He’s in the kitchen by the hearth, and all around is the scent of aetherblood.
His shirt is in a tattered heap beside him, and a bowl of blood-dark water sits next to it. Then Ky looks up, and Ethram flinches. It’s not Ky, not really. It’s something much darker.
Ky shifts, goes back to cleaning his wound. Ethram grits his teeth, feels the strain in his neck, and unhooks his hand from the door frame. Ky’s shoulders are strung tight, but he doesn’t react as Ethram takes a fresh cloth and takes over wiping the blood.
The wound is long, slicing Ky’s shoulder and down across his chest, right over his heart. It’s not so deep, but bleeding sluggishly. The blood sears Ethram’s skin where it touches, but he only clenches his jaw harder and works until the mess of it is gone.
When he looks up, the twisted mood has vanished from Ky’s face. He’s watching Ethram, wide-eyed and gentled.
“Ethram.”
Ethram takes the bowl to the sink and empties it and then washes his own hands. No burns, but there are touches of scalding. They should fade before he next has to go to the university. “You should have woken me.”
“I didn’t wish to frighten you,” he says.
“You wouldn’t have.”
Ky is silent because he knows he had. Ethram holds the edge of the sink to steady himself. He wants—needs—to ask where Ky has been, and what he found, but the thorns are sharp in his throat and he knows better than to let them free. Not if doesn’t want to hurt more.
“I’m going back to bed,” he says.
Ky doesn’t stop him. Ethram lays in their bed, and after a long time, so long that he thinks he won’t, Ky follows. The bed dips, and then Ky is behind him, gathering him into the curve of his body. He’s careful with how he holds him, and Ethram stays still, letting Ky fit around him as he can.
“I’m sorry,” says Ky, softly.
Ethram doesn’t think he is, really. He thinks he’d do it again without flinching. Ky was always going to leave, and Ethram is pitifully grateful that he’s come back, this time. It doesn’t mean it will not happen again.
He tucks his face into his pillow and lets the easy warmth of Ky bear him into a restless sleep.
Ky makes breakfast in the morning, and he sits beside Ethram at the table, running one hand up his back and into his hair and back again the entire time.
When Ethram goes to the study, Ky follows.
When Ethram goes to fetch more wood for the fire, Ky follows there, too, and wordlessly takes the armful that Ethram loads onto him.
“Fine,” says Ethram, eventually. He’s in the pantry sorting through what is left of the apples, and Ky is standing in the doorway as he has been the entire time, blocking the light and being no help. “What do you want?”
The pantry door falls shut as Ky steps inside. Only the little aether lantern, perched on a high shelf, gives light, but it is enough to see the wry cast to Ky’s face. He gathers Ethram in his arms, pulling him forwards. It’s a little ungentle, because Ethram doesn’t make it easy.
“Ethram,” says Ky, and now there’s a faint note of exasperation in his voice. “Come, let’s be friends again.”
Ethram makes a skeptical noise into Ky’s shirt. It’s really no use keeping up the fight. Ky’s holding him too tight for that. “Friends.”
“Let us not be strangers,” he says, amused. “We are safe here. That has not changed. I only had to know what was coming after me.”
Dry river rushes and rain. The scent is there, and under it, still the faint note of aetherblood. The wound is almost closed, though. Almost gone. “And do you know?”
“I know,” says Ky. “That is all I will say on it for now.”
“You might have told me,” says Ethram.
“I had intended to be back before you,” he admits. “I miscalculated.”
“The gash in your chest is fair evidence of that.”
Ky’s sigh is a heaving of his chest. “I am sorry, my heart. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
It was worry, Ethram realises. The soul-aching worry that comes from loving someone.
Truly loving, the sort of loving that he hadn’t realised he’d slipped into until it happened.
“What I said to you when I first kissed you,” says Ethram, and Ky goes still, listening.
“I meant it then, and I mean it now. You’ll leave one day, and I know that.
But don’t leave me without a word again.
I didn’t know if you were coming back, Ky.
Don’t leave me waiting for a return that isn’t coming. ”
“I was coming back,” Ky says. “I was always coming back.”
“This time,” says Ethram, and Ky says nothing in return to that. Only holds him more tightly until the aether is stinging into his skin.
It’s only like nettles. Ethram doesn’t mind it. It means he isn’t alone.
“I do love you,” he says into Ky’s shirt. It’s barely a breath. He knows Ky still hears it. “Even so.”
“And I you, my heart,” says Ky. He kisses the crown of Ethram’s head. His fingers dig in, then release. After a while, he says, “Wherever did you find riverleaf? I couldn’t find any, despite all my searching.”
“From a worryingly peculiar scholar at the university.” Ethram draws back. He lost count of the apples long ago, but he’s sure there were plenty. “If you need any other elusive herbs, he’s certainly the one to go to.”
“I think I have everything I need now,” he says. “Come, let me show you what I plan for the garden.”
Ethram lets himself be herded out into the pale autumn light, and half-listens as Ky points out a handful of growing plants in the garden bed, as if they’re noticeably different from the other spindly shoots.
Mostly he’s watching Ky’s hands, strong and elegant, and not at all the hands of a gardener, or a carpenter, or a woodcutter.
And despite the year of labour he’s given their cottage, there isn’t a callus or rough patch on them.
The hedgerows are a riot of russet and gold, and blackbirds weave amongst the spikes of the hawthorn and buckthorn, stealing the berries from the elderberry bushes. Beyond their cottage, beyond Polling Woods, Esk is awakening for the wintering season.
But here, it feels like things are winding down. Like the last loops of yarn in a skein are slowly unspooling, until soon, with one last twist, there will be nothing left at all.