Kieran
The healers kept their word. On the sixth morning, they removed the monitoring lines and declared me well enough to leave the infirmary, though not well enough to be left alone.
Hale received the instruction with the gravity of a military appointment.
He walked beside me through the corridors, close enough to catch me without making a show of it.
Astra and Caspian were waiting when we arrived. Astra rose so quickly her chair scraped the stone.
“You’re walking.”
“That was the condition of release. Marrow remains unmoved by my requests for a sedan chair.”
Her mouth tightened. The joke had been for her, and we both knew it.
Caspian crossed the room and put a hand on the back of my neck. He held it there for a moment before stepping away.
“Sit down,” Hale said.
“I have missed your tenderness most of all.”
“Sit.”
I sat.
The room showed signs of their waiting. The blanket had been folded back from my side of the bed, my cup stood within reach, and two chairs had been drawn close. My clothes remained on the shelf, with the ledger tucked safely beneath them.
Hale set out the draughts and repeated the healers’ instructions. I let him. Caspian asked what food I could keep down, and I let him ask that too. Their concern filled the room until it crowded even the lamplight.
Astra said very little. She watched my right hand whenever she thought I would not notice.
“Something happened,” I said.
Her gaze lifted to mine.
“You all look as if you’ve agreed not to tell me.”
“I followed your copied record to the archive below the records stair,” she said. “They had added a cover page.”
I looked from her to Caspian. “You went into the archive?”
“She did,” Caspian said. “Hale and I made sure she came out.”
Astra ignored that. “Your record was classified under Untethered association. The cover named Sadie Corwin’s file for comparison.”
The name took a moment to settle. I knew it from the initials Astra had traced through the Hall, a girl removed from its records but remembered in Delphine’s carvings.
“They’re using my decline to study your Mark,” I said.
“We think they might be. I found Sadie’s file, but I didn’t have time to open it.”
“Which means you intend to go back.”
She did not answer. She did not need to.
I glanced toward the shelf. “The original?”
“Still here.”
Some of the tightness in my chest eased. Not much. “At least Marrow doesn’t have the ledger itself.”
“For now,” Hale said.
At last Caspian said, “We should let him sleep.”
Hale looked prepared to object.
“I know where the cord is,” Astra said.
He looked at me instead.
“Go,” I told him. “Before I begin to feel cherished.”
That earned the smallest movement at the corner of his mouth. Before Caspian followed Hale, the silver line at Astra’s wrist brightened. Its twin answered beneath his cuff. They held each other’s gaze until the light dimmed.
Then they left, closing the door behind them.
Astra stayed in the chair.
“You can come closer,” I said.
“Can I?”
The question took what remained of the performance out of me.
“Yes.”
She sat beside me on the bed. Her hand hovered near my shoulder, then settled on my knee instead.
“They said you stopped breathing.”
“Briefly.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“No.”
I looked toward the pale blank in the wall. During the worst nights in the infirmary, I had tried to picture this room. I had never imagined the false window correctly. In memory, I kept giving it glass and darkness beyond, some proof that the mountain ended somewhere.
“I thought I knew what frightened me,” I said. “The pain. Losing the use of the arm. Being told there was nothing to do but wait.”
Astra’s thumb moved once across my knee.
“Then I woke up with Hale shouting at a healer and couldn’t draw breath enough to answer him.” I swallowed. “I was still in there. I could hear all of you. I simply couldn’t reach you.”
She took my left hand and pressed it between both of hers.
“I could see you through the glass,” she said. “They wouldn’t let me in.”
“I know.”
“I hated you for making me promise about the ledger.”
“Reasonable.”
“I thought those might be the last words you said to me.”
I turned my hand inside hers and caught her fingers. “They weren’t.”
She looked at me then. Her eyes were dry, but I could see what the last six days had cost her. I lifted her hand to my mouth and kissed the scar across her knuckle.
“Kieran,” she said.
There was a warning in it, though I could not tell which of us it was meant for.
“Caspian knows why you stayed,” I said.
“He does.”
I glanced at the closed door.
“He knows I want you,” she said. “I told him before you came back.”
“How did he take it?”
“He’s jealous. He also knows I chose him.”
I looked again at the door. “I don’t blame him.”
“Neither do I.”
“I spent six days with strangers touching every part of me that failed,” I said. “I would very much like to remember that this body can be touched for another reason.”
Her fingers tightened around mine. “Are you sure?”
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to do much.” The admission burned more than it should have. “I’m sure I want you here.”
She shifted closer. “Those aren’t the same question.”
“No.” I met her eyes. “I want you.”
She kissed me slowly, her palm warm against my jaw. I had kissed her before with danger at our backs and other people waiting beyond a door. Here, when I shifted closer and my shoulder pulled, she felt me stiffen and waited. I nodded before she kissed me again.
I drew her nearer with my good arm. When her hip touched mine, want went through me so sharply that I laughed against her lips.
She pulled back. “What?”
“Relief.”
“At what?”
“Apparently not everything requires a healer’s confirmation.”
Her laugh broke loose before she could stop it. I kissed her again while it was still there.
She unfastened my shirt slowly. The humor left her face when she saw the silver-green line running beneath my collarbone and into the damaged shoulder. It had darkened since the review. I resisted the urge to cover it.
“Does this hurt?” she asked, touching the skin below it.
“No.”
Her fingers moved lower. My breath changed, and she watched my face until she was satisfied it was not pain.
She gave me a look that was almost familiar enough to make the room feel ordinary. Then she bent and pressed her mouth to my chest, safely below the line.
I closed my eyes. The infirmary had taught me to expect the next touch before it came: fingers at my pulse, cold instruments, hands turning my arm to expose the Mark.
Astra asked with every pause. I answered by drawing her closer, by opening her dress beneath my left hand, by letting her see when the effort made my breath catch.
“Pain?” she asked.
“No. Give me a moment.”
She waited without looking frightened. When my breathing eased, she kissed the hollow below my ear.
We undressed without grace. My right arm would not cooperate with the sleeve, and Astra nearly caught her hair in a fastening at her back. By the time we lay beneath the blanket, we were both laughing quietly.
“This is not how I pictured it,” I said.
“You pictured it?”
“Astra, I have known you for more than a month.”
She bit my lower lip in answer.
I rolled onto my left side and ran my hand along her waist. Her skin warmed beneath my palm.
I took my time learning what made her move closer and what drew a low sound from her throat.
She touched me with the same patience, though patience was not a word I had ever expected to associate with Astra Verita.
When I slipped my hand between her thighs, she caught my wrist.
“You don’t have to prove anything.”
“I’m not.”
“You’ve been out of the infirmary for less than an hour.”
“And you are still talking.”
She released me.
I touched her until her breath grew uneven, watching her face change in the silver light. She kept her eyes on mine until she could not keep them open.
She reached for me when she came, her forehead pressed to mine, my name quiet against my mouth.
For a while we lay still.
“Enough?” she asked.
I knew what she meant. I also knew she would stop if I asked her to.
“Not yet.”
She searched my face before she moved over me. I settled onto my back with my right arm supported by the pillow, and she lowered herself carefully, one hand guiding me into her. The first movement pulled a rough breath from both of us.
“Still all right?” she asked.
“Very much so.”
She set a slow rhythm. I kept my left hand at her hip and watched her above me: hair falling loose, mouth parted, the green-gold line at her wrist bright where it crossed the silver one.
Mine answered beneath the skin of my shoulder.
The light between us remained what it had been since the Hall, open and unfinished.
My shoulder tightened beneath the pillow, pulling a sharp breath from me. Astra stopped immediately.
“Pain?”
“The shoulder.” I shifted the pillow with my left hand until the strain eased. “Better.”
She waited until I drew her back down to me.
The second time she moved, there was no attempt to outrun anything. She bent to kiss me, and we found our way back slowly. Pleasure gathered without urgency, deepening until I could no longer separate it from the ache of having her so close after believing I might never touch her again.
When release came, it left me shaking. Astra held herself still above me until my breathing settled. Then she eased down beside me and pulled the blanket over us.
Neither of us spoke for several minutes.
Her fingertips followed the green-gold line along my forearm, stopping before it vanished beneath the silver-green spread at my shoulder.
“You’re still ill,” she said.
“Painfully observant.”
She did not smile. “And I’m still going back for that file.”
“I know.” I covered her hand where it rested against my arm. “I’m still afraid too.”
She rested her head against my chest, on the side where my heart sounded strongest.
“But you’re here,” she said.
I put my arm around her. “For tonight.”
She lifted her head sharply.
“That was not a prediction,” I said. “It was an invitation to remain in this bed.”
“You’re terrible at invitations.”
“And yet you understood me.”
She settled against me again. Beyond the door, someone passed along the corridor and the water channels gave their low, constant murmur.
I stayed awake until her breathing deepened. My shoulder still ached beneath the pillow. Morning would bring Marrow, and Sadie Corwin’s unopened file was waiting somewhere below us. I kept my hand on Astra’s back and listened to her breathe.