Astra
My room was colder than Caspian’s.
I shut the door and stood with my back against it, still wearing my coat. My skin held his warmth beneath the dress, and my legs had not entirely remembered how to be steady. For a moment I let myself stay there with my eyes closed.
Then Kieran laughed.
The sound was weak and quickly cut off. Hale answered him, his voice too low for me to make out the words.
I opened my eyes.
The sound had come through the door, not the wall. I opened it a few inches. Kieran’s room stood diagonally across the short corridor, its door ajar. Caspian’s closed door was beside it. Hale spoke again, and this time I heard the scrape of a cup and Kieran’s uneven exhale afterward.
If I could hear them this clearly, they could have heard us.
Heat rose into my face. The bedframe scraping across Caspian’s floor. My voice. His.
I sat on the edge of my bed and pulled my coat tighter around me.
I wasn’t sorry I had gone to Caspian. I could still feel the reason for it in the slowing beat of my heart and the relief that had settled into my body.
But while I had been with him, Hale had been across the corridor keeping Kieran upright.
Kieran coughed. The sound ended in a sharp breath that made the green-gold line ache along my wrist.
I stood at once and crossed the corridor. None of our doors locked, and apparently Hale had stopped pretending a closed one offered privacy. I pushed Kieran’s wider.
Kieran was propped against the headboard with his shirt open at the throat and a blanket pulled to his waist. The color along his cheekbones was too bright. Damp hair clung to his forehead. Hale sat beside him on the edge of the bed, one hand around Kieran’s wrist and the other holding a cup.
A shallow basin had been set on the floor. A cloth floated in water that had already gone cloudy with green.
Hale looked up. His sleeves were rolled above his elbows, leaving the rain-dark lines of his Mark uncovered. He did not pull them down.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Nothing new,” Kieran said. He sounded breathless. “I’m being watered like a kitchen garden.”
Hale kept his fingers against Kieran’s pulse. “He tried to stand.”
“I wanted to look in the basin.”
“You almost fell into the basin.”
“Move over,” I said.
Hale shifted without argument. I sat on Kieran’s other side and put one arm behind his back so he could lean against me. Heat came through his shirt. It frightened me more than the cold of his fingers had in the tunnel.
“You shouldn’t be this warm.”
“I’ve always run hot.”
“Kieran.”
“I know.” The joke left his face. “I know, Astra.”
Hale handed me the cup. Kieran drank when I held it to his mouth, though only enough to keep either of us from arguing.
“Was he this warm when the reader saw him?” I asked.
“No. The fever came after. She documented the change in color and the spread across his shoulder, then said intervention required panel authorization.”
“So they’re waiting.”
His mouth tightened. “Yes.”
I looked down at the basin. Green curled through the water from the cloth, faint as diluted ink. “What are we supposed to do until then?”
“Keep the fever down. Keep him drinking. Wake him if his breathing changes.”
Kieran leaned more heavily into me. “I preferred him when he gave combat instructions.”
Hale wrung out the cloth and laid it across the back of Kieran’s neck. His hands were steady, but he had braced his elbows against his knees to keep them that way.
I thought of those same hands supporting Kieran across the bridge. I thought of my own hands in Caspian’s hair while Hale sat here listening to each breath.
“I should have stayed,” I said.
Kieran’s head turned against my shoulder. “I told you to go.”
Hale dipped the cloth into the basin again. “You can both stop.”
I looked at his uncovered Mark. “Could you hear Caspian and me?”
His hands paused in the water.
Kieran closed his eyes. “Oh, good. We’re discussing it.”
I looked down at the cloudy basin.
Hale squeezed the water from the cloth. “These walls carry sound.”
“I noticed.”
“Then you have your answer.” He folded the cloth once and put it back against Kieran’s neck. “I wasn’t listening to you.”
He had been listening to Kieran breathe. I tightened my hand around the cup.
I adjusted the blanket over him. “I shouldn’t have left.”
Kieran’s eyes remained closed. “Hale was here. I knew I wasn’t alone.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
“I know. But I told you to go because you looked exhausted, and I didn’t want you sitting here waiting for me to get worse.”
“You did get worse.”
He was quiet a moment. “I would have either way.”
Hale’s gaze moved briefly to mine. He did not rescue either of us from the conversation.
I set the cup down before I spilled it and rested my cheek against Kieran’s damp hair.
Caspian appeared in the doorway a little while later. His shirt was wrinkled, his coat was missing, and his hair was still damp at the temples.
Kieran noticed.
His eyebrow lifted, but whatever he saw in my face kept the comment behind his teeth.
Caspian crossed the room and crouched beside the basin. He looked at the green water, then at Kieran.
“What do you need?” he asked Hale.
“Fresh water. Something with salt if they’ll give it to us.”
Caspian stood. “I’ll find Marrow.”
“He’ll say no,” I said.
“Then he can say it more than once.”
He left before anyone could stop him.
Kieran watched the empty doorway. “Ashford is becoming alarmingly useful.”
Hale’s mouth twitched at one corner. “Fever’s affecting your judgment.”
Caspian returned with a pitcher, a second basin, and a covered bowl that smelled of broth. Marrow followed him into the room.
His attention moved over the bed, the cloudy water, Hale’s uncovered Mark, and my arm behind Kieran’s back. He showed no surprise.
“Joint review at the next bell,” he said. “All four of you.”
“He needs treatment,” I said.
Marrow looked at Kieran as if confirming he was still conscious. “The panel will determine what is required.”
“And if he gets worse before then?”
“Pull the cord beside the door.”
I looked. A thin black cord hung against the stone where the open door had hidden it.
“No one told us that was there.”
“Now you know.”
Marrow left. He did not close the door behind him.
For several seconds, none of us spoke.
Then Kieran said, “Charming place.”
Caspian poured fresh water into the clean basin. Hale replaced the cloth at Kieran’s neck, and I coaxed another mouthful from the cup into him.
We stayed that way until his breathing evened and his weight grew heavier against me. When he finally slept, Hale moved back to the chair. Caspian sat on the floor with one shoulder against the foot of the bed.
I kept my arm around Kieran.
None of us returned to our own rooms.