Chapter 32
Welma didn’t much like the idea of Gareth taking up residence in my room.
“You need to rest, my lady,” she said rather grumpily, “not spend your energy—”
She fell abruptly silent and gestured to Gareth, who stood at my side. I leaned heavily against him, my cheek pressed to his sleeve. With each moment that passed, I felt a little less capable of standing.
“Not spend her energy doing what, Welma?” Gareth asked, a smile in his voice. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.”
Welma drew herself up indignantly, her cheeks flushing. “You know very well what I mean, Professor, and feigning ignorance just to poke fun at me is not as charming as you think it is.”
Gareth inclined his head and took my hand gently in his. “I assure you,” he said quietly, “nothing is more important to me than Mara’s recovery. I will not—and would never—do anything to hurt her. I simply wish to be near her.”
“Please, Welma,” I said, fighting to keep my eyes from drifting shut. I was so tired, and after only a few minutes out of bed. “Having him beside me will be a great comfort.”
Welma pressed her lips together and considered us. “Very well,” she said after a moment. “Before you settle, I’ll change the bed linens and find an extra pillow. And gods unmade, Professor, will you help her sit down?”
Gareth obeyed, guiding me carefully onto a cushioned bench outside my room.
I teetered at the edge of wakefulness, and through my exhaustion I sensed pieces of everyone around me—my sisters, my friends.
Gemma’s curls pressed against my cheek as she embraced me; Talan gently kissed my forehead.
Ryder placed his hand on my shoulder; Farrin curled her fingers around mine and held them against her chest, right over her heart.
“Rest, Mara,” she whispered. “We’re here now.”
Her words were like a lullaby. I followed it gratefully into the softness of sleep.
***
Gareth was sitting beside my bed when I woke, a book with a faded green cover open in his lap.
He was distractedly biting his thumbnail as he read, his brow furrowed with fierce concentration, and he wore a new pair of wire-rimmed glasses.
Their gold frames glinted in the soft candlelight.
My heart swelled at the sight of them. Such a little thing, and so familiar, so dear.
For a moment I watched him in contented silence. Then I realized he wasn’t actually reading; minutes had passed, and he hadn’t turned the page.
“Hello, Professor,” I said, my voice hoarse and tired.
He looked up at the sound, all the worry on his face melting away. He placed the book on the bedside table and then leaned forward to gather my hand in his—my left hand, rough with scars. He kissed my fingers, then my palm, and looked up at me. The softness in his eyes made me ache.
“Hello there,” he said quietly. A small smile passed over his face, and then he shook his head and looked away, blinking hard.
To distract him, I voiced a question to which I desperately wanted an answer. “Where is Neave?”
“Down the hall,” Gareth answered at once.
He cleared his throat and then spoke more steadily.
“The healers have been tending to Lily’s injuries.
She isn’t conscious very often, and when she is, it’s Neave speaking, not Lily.
Welma told me that sometimes she thinks she sees Lily there behind her eyes, but then Neave takes over, and then they’re both unconscious again. It’s a terrible mess.”
“We have to help her,” I said. Each word hurt my dry throat. “Neave, certainly, but Lily too. We can’t just discard the poor girl.”
“We certainly will not,” Gareth said firmly.
“I’ve already begun searching for her family.
We haven’t dared to probe her for information, she’s too fragile for that, but I’ve got a whole team of clerks at the university scouring our census records for anyone that age named Lily.
Not just in Vauzanne, but in Aidurra, and here in Gallinor too.
We’ll find her family. We’ll see to it that she heals.
And,” he added grimly, “I personally will not rest until any surviving Lemaires are brought to Fairhaven to be sentenced for their crimes by the royal courts. It will have to wait until after the war is over, when things are safer, but I swear to you, Mara, I will not let them escape justice for what they did to her, and to Griselda too, whether it was under Kilraith’s influence or not. ”
I watched him for a moment—how heavily he leaned on his elbows, how tightly he clasped his hands together, the desolate anger on his face.
I reached for him gently. “Come here, Gareth.”
He took off his glasses and dashed a hand across his eyes. “I suppose, though,” he added, laughing bitterly, “that if the Lemaire family is punished for their actions, so should I be for mine.”
“In Mhorghast you were a prisoner, controlled by the god of the mind himself. It was different.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Clearly the Lemaires made a bargain with Kilraith to protect their land from the Knotwood,” I said, wincing a little at the effort it took to reach for him. “They had a choice. You didn’t.”
He must have heard the strain in my voice, for he turned to me and took my hands in his and kissed them, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m sorry,” he whispered against my fingers. “Don’t listen to me.”
“But I like listening to you, and I’m glad you’re helping Lily. Of course you’re helping her. My Gareth.” I struggled toward him, wanting to kiss him but unable to find the strength for it. “Please come closer, won’t you?”
“The healers told us that you nearly exhausted yourself to death,” Gareth said, hiding his face against my hands.
His jaw clenched. “You were drawing on your power so fiercely and for so long that it almost ran out entirely, and with it your life. They’d never seen anything like that before.
They didn’t know if they would be able to save you.
Mara, I’ve never…” He blew out a sad, choked little laugh.
“When they said that, I couldn’t breathe for a moment. Darling, you came so close to dying.”
“But I didn’t,” I said, my eyes hot with tears, “and now you know how I felt when I carried you away from that godsforsaken island. I suppose in a way this makes us even, doesn’t it?”
“No.” He shook his head. “No, that’s not true. Don’t shrug off what happened to you. That may work on other people, but it doesn’t work on me. And anyway, I wasn’t alone when I was injured. I had you. You had no one.”
Of course, that wasn’t entirely true, but I didn’t yet know how to break the news about Ankaret, and I’d never seen such raw despair on Gareth’s face. I tugged gently on his hands, offered him a small smile. “Gareth Fontaine, I won’t ask you again: Why aren’t you in this bed with me?”
He looked helplessly at me. “Gods, Mara, I’m the clumsiest ass to have ever lived. I don’t want to jostle you. I don’t know what might hurt you.”
“You’re not clumsy. In fact, you’re quick and brave and good.”
“None of that negates clumsiness,” he said, a familiar wry note in his voice.
“Come here.” I tugged on his hands again, and this time, at last, he relented.
He took off his shoes and then crawled into the bed so carefully that if he weren’t so obviously distressed, I might have laughed.
Instead I kissed the tear trembling on the tip of his nose and drew him down to me.
He shook in my arms, pressed a kiss to the hollow of my throat.
“What did you call me once? A menace?” He laughed quietly, the sound catching on a sob. “A menace indeed, crawling into your sickbed just to cry all over you.”
A monster and a menace. Suddenly, the word monster didn’t bother me as it once had. If I was indeed a monster, at least I was his monster. I closed my eyes and drew my fingers slowly through his hair.
“You honor me with your tears, Gareth Fontaine,” I said softly, and then added, “Besides, it’s nice to have someone besides me crying in this bed for once.”
“Oh gods,” he said roughly. “Mara, the thought of you crying here all by yourself, and in such pain—”
“No, forget I said that. It was a bad joke. I just don’t quite know what to do with myself, seeing you this sad.” I turned to kiss his hair. He’d bathed while I slept, and his soap smelled of sage and sandalwood. He was fresh and warm; I wanted to sink into the heat of him and never leave.
“I’m here, Gareth,” I whispered against his brow. “I’m right here, and I love you.”
***
I hated letting Gareth leave my sight, but there were things to discuss, and I wasn’t yet in a fit state to leave my bed—a fact that grated on me terribly.
He and the others had been in conference with the royal councils all morning, and not knowing what they were talking about was driving me mad.
When I couldn’t bear the stillness any longer, I forced myself out of bed and started to hobble around the room.
“You are anxious,” Ankaret remarked, sitting quietly in the corner. I’d given her one of the sleeping gowns Welma had provided for me. Somehow she made the humble cloth look regal.
“What gave me away?”
“You have been frowning and pacing for the last fifteen minutes. I do not think Welma would approve.”
Apparently dry humor was lost on this reborn Ankaret. I stopped to brace myself against the back of a chair and regarded her. “When will you show yourself to them? You’ve been able to maintain this form all morning.”
She shifted uneasily. As she did, flames sputtered at her fingertips. “I have not yet mastered control of my fire.”
“And what if you never do? Will you hide away forever?”