Kieran
The hourly checks reduced my life to the space between one knock and the next.
Different readers came with the shifts. Each pressed two fingers below my collarbone and another against my throat, then wrote down figures with the ledger angled away from me.
The small pause before each reader put pen to paper told me enough. I had seen the same hesitation in healers for years, just before they told me nothing had changed.
The numbness no longer stopped at my fingers.
My forearm had failed twice since the review, each time for longer than the last. The pain in my shoulder no longer eased when I held it still.
I sat against the wall with my right arm supported across my chest and watched water-light move along the floor.
The lock turned near dusk.
The reader entered with Astra and a steward. Astra’s eyes went first to my face, then to the arm against my chest.
“What happened to your arm?”
“It stopped working.”
The reader spoke before she could ask more. “You were brought for proximity observation. The administrator wants both Marks measured before and after one hour in the same room.”
“You could have told me what this was before bringing me here.”
“I have told you now.”
Astra stared at her. I almost intervened.
The reader drew my collar aside and placed her fingers below the green-gold spread at my shoulder. She measured Astra’s wrist next. The open line there was brighter than it had been at the review.
She wrote down both readings and closed the ledger.
“The door remains open. No deliberate attempt to influence either Mark.”
“We don’t know how to do that deliberately,” Astra said.
“Then the restriction should not trouble you.”
The reader left. The steward took his place outside the door. Water moving below the false window covered our voices as long as we kept them low.
Astra remained near the threshold.
“You should ask to go back,” I said.
She came inside and sat in the chair beside the bed. “No.”
I looked down at my useless right hand. “I don’t want you watching this.”
“Why?”
“When people watch, I make them laugh.” I swallowed. “I don’t have one tonight.”
“Then don’t.”
She moved from the chair and knelt in front of me. Her hands rested on my knees, warm even through the fabric of my trousers.
“My mother died before she could tell me anything,” she said. “Everything I might have asked went with her. I’m not leaving this room while I can still ask you what hurts.”
“Astra—”
“Then be afraid with me. Don’t send me away.”
I closed my eyes.
Her hands stayed on my knees. She waited.
“I don’t want to die,” I said.
I opened my eyes. Astra was still there.
“I thought I had made peace with dying,” I continued. “I had three years to do it. Then I met you, and suddenly I wanted things that required more time than I had.”
She looked down. Her thumbs moved once against my knees.
“I told you I loved you on the worst day I could have chosen,” I said. “After that, every hour we had was borrowed from something. The Hall. The Council. This place. I wanted one morning with you that didn’t feel stolen.”
Her breath caught.
“I wanted enough of them to stop noticing,” I said. “I wanted ordinary.”
Astra rose onto her knees and put both hands around my face. Her palms were cool against my skin.
“So did I,” she said. “I still do.”
“You make that sound possible.”
Her thumb moved beneath my eye. “It might not be. I want it anyway.”
I wished she had lied. I turned my face into her palm.
“You don’t have to protect me from this,” she said. “I know who you are.”
I opened my eyes.
“The clock tower,” she said. “The apple outside my door. The way you looked when you finally told me the truth.” Her mouth trembled. “I remember all of it.”
I covered her left hand with mine.
She sat beside me on the bed, careful of my right shoulder. I put my left arm around her and felt her settle against my good side.
The reader returned at the end of the hour. She measured my shoulder, then Astra’s wrist. Her pen stopped when she compared the new figures with the old ones.
“What?” Astra asked.
The reader closed the ledger. “The response increased during proximity.”
“Is that making him worse?”
“I can’t determine that from one interval.”
She left before Astra could ask another question.
We expected the steward to separate us. Instead the reader returned with Marrow several minutes later.
“The administrator has extended the observation,” Marrow said. “Astra remains here until further notice. The door stays open, and hourly checks continue for both of you.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because your readings changed together.”
He withdrew, leaving the steward at the door.
Astra rested her head beneath my jaw again. The shoulder still burned, and my right hand remained numb at the fingertips.
Another knock came before either of us slept. Astra stayed against my side while I told the reader to enter.