Chapter 3 #2
I hadn't even realized I was reaching for his wrist—habit, the instinct to check a patient's pulse—until his fingers closed around mine and stopped me mid-motion.
The contact sent a shock through my entire body.
Not pain. Something else. Something that felt like lightning trapped beneath my skin, like every nerve I had suddenly waking up and paying attention.
His eyes held mine. Dimmed but still knowing. Still seeing everything I tried to hide.
"When did you last eat?"
The question was so unexpected that I blinked. "I—that's not important. You need—"
"When did you last eat, Lena?"
My name in his mouth. Soft as shadow, steady as stone. It did something to my chest that I wasn't ready to examine.
I tried to remember. Before the ritual? No, I'd been too nervous to eat.
During the journey on Davoren's back? I recalled Kara pressing bread into my hands, but had I actually eaten it?
The days blurred together—pain and power and impossible choices, and somewhere in there I'd apparently forgotten to feed myself.
My silence was answer enough.
Something shifted in his expression. Not disappointment. Not judgment. Something that looked almost like recognition. Like he'd known, somehow, what my answer would be.
"Come," he said.
He moved slowly through the Sanctuary's corridors, and I watched him lean on furniture, on walls, on anything that could take his weight. When I tried to offer my arm, he shook his head once—a small motion, but final. He would not accept my support.
But he would lead me to food.
The dining chamber was small and intimate, lit by that same starlight that seemed to permeate this place. A table had been set with simple things: bread, soft cheese, sliced fruit, a pot of honey that caught the light like liquid gold. Two chairs. Two plates.
Had someone prepared this? Or did the Sanctuary itself provide, responding to its master's unspoken needs?
Morgrith lowered himself into a chair across from me. The motion cost him—I saw the tightness around his eyes, the careful way he settled his weight. But he didn't complain. Didn't acknowledge the pain.
He simply watched me with those dimmed starlight eyes and said: "Eat."
I reached for the bread. My hands were shaking—delayed shock, probably, or the strangeness of the power still humming through my veins, or the overwhelming intimacy of being alone with him in this quiet space.
The bread crumbled before it reached my mouth, pieces falling onto the table like evidence of my failure to do even this simple thing correctly.
Morgrith reached across the table.
His fingers brushed mine as he took the bread from my trembling hands—that same lightning-shock, that same sudden awareness that made my breath catch. He tore off a small piece. Dipped it in honey, slow and deliberate. Held it to my lips.
"Open," he said.
Gentle. Implacable. A voice that expected to be obeyed.
And god help me, I obeyed.
The first bite undid me.
It wasn't the food itself—though it was good, the bread soft and fresh, the honey sweet with something floral I couldn't name.
It wasn't even the taste, though that too was better than anything I'd eaten in years, better than the hard bread and travelers' rations I'd lived on, better than the lukewarm broth I'd choked down between healings.
It was the act.
The impossible, unprecedented act of someone holding food to my mouth. Waiting. Watching my lips part. Placing it carefully on my tongue like an offering, like a gift, like something sacred.
I'd fed countless patients. Held cups to fevered lips, spooned broth into mouths too weak to manage alone.
I'd watched my grandmother do it before me, watched her tend the sick of our village with hands that never stopped giving.
I'd learned from her that this was what wound-walkers did—we provided.
We poured ourselves out for others until there was nothing left.
No one had ever poured anything into me.
Morgrith watched me chew. Watched me swallow. When I'd finished, he tore another piece of bread, dipped it in honey, and held it to my lips again.
"Open."
I opened.
He fed me piece by piece, unhurried, patient as stone.
The bread gave way to cheese—soft, creamy, melting on my tongue.
Then fruit, sweet and cold, each slice placed carefully between my lips.
He didn't speak beyond that single word each time.
Didn't explain what he was doing or why.
Just watched me with those dimmed starlight eyes, steady and knowing, as if he could see every hungry part of me I'd tried so hard to hide.
The tears started somewhere around the third piece of fruit.
I didn't feel them coming. One moment I was swallowing, the next my cheeks were wet, hot tracks sliding down toward my jaw. I reached up to wipe them away, embarrassed, horrified—I didn't cry, hadn't cried in years, had learned long ago that tears accomplished nothing and cost too much—
Morgrith caught my wrist.
Gently. Not restraining, just stopping. With his other hand, he produced a cloth—soft, dark, appearing from somewhere I couldn't see—and wiped my cheeks himself. Slow strokes. Careful.
Then he dipped another piece of bread in honey and held it to my lips.
"Open."
The sob that tore out of me was nothing like the sound I'd made when absorbing his pain during the ritual. This was worse. This was twenty-seven years of loneliness cracking open all at once, flooding through walls I'd built so carefully, so patiently, brick by brick by brick.
I'd walked home alone after every healing.
Watched through windows as families gathered around dinner tables, as mothers held children, as husbands reached for wives.
I'd wrapped my arms around myself in cold guest houses and told myself it didn't matter.
That being needed was enough. That wanting more was greedy, was dangerous, was the kind of hope that broke you when it didn't come true.
I'd buried every dream of being held in that drawer in my mind. The one where impossible things went to die.
But Morgrith was holding bread to my lips. Morgrith was wiping my tears with cloth that felt like woven shadow. Morgrith was watching me fall apart with an expression that held no judgment, no discomfort, no desire to fix or flee.
Just patience. Just presence. Just there.
My hands came up to cover my face, and I bent forward over my knees, and the sounds that came out of me were ugly and raw and utterly beyond my control.
All the nights. All the mornings. All the times I'd healed someone's child and watched them hold that child close, knowing no one would ever hold me that way.
All the times I'd told myself it was fine, it was enough, I was fine—
The chair scraped. Movement beside me. And then hands—large, trembling slightly with their own weakness—were gathering me close.
Morgrith knelt on the stone floor beside my chair.
He shouldn't have been kneeling anywhere, not in his condition, not with his diminished body and his fragmented powers.
But he knelt anyway, and he pulled me against his chest, and his arms wrapped around me with a strength that seemed impossible given what he'd just sacrificed.
"I know," he murmured into my hair. "I know, little one."
Little one.
The words hit something deep in my chest. Something that had been waiting, without my knowledge, without my permission, to hear exactly that.
"You've carried so much for so long." His voice was soft as shadow, steady as the darkness that wrapped around us both. "You don't have to carry it anymore."
I couldn't speak. Couldn't do anything but sob into the fabric of his shirt, feeling the steady beat of his heart beneath my cheek, feeling the impossible reality of being held. My fingers curled into the cloth like I was afraid he'd disappear if I let go.
He didn't try to quiet me. Didn't tell me it was okay, that I needed to calm down, that everything would be fine. He just held me, and the shadows in the room gathered close, wrapping around us both like a blanket, and I cried until there was nothing left.
I don't know how long it took.
Long enough that my throat went raw. Long enough that the shadows had crept up to my shoulders, settling there with the weight of comfort. Long enough that the starlight in the walls had shifted through several shades, marking time in ways I couldn't understand.
When I finally surfaced, I was exhausted. Cleaned out. Like something toxic had been drained from me, making room for something else to grow.
Morgrith was still holding me. Still steady. Still there.
His hand stroked slowly through my hair and his heartbeat remained even against my cheek. He didn't seem to care that I'd soaked his shirt with tears. Didn't seem bothered by the time this had taken, by his own discomfort kneeling on stone, by any of it.
When I could finally stand without my legs threatening to buckle, Morgrith insisted on showing me his realm.
"You should know where you are," he said, rising from his kneeling position with a care that told me his body was screaming at him. "What this place is. What the bond offers you."
I expected the tour to exhaust him. He was so diminished, so human now—I could see it in every line of his body, the way he moved like someone testing ice over deep water, uncertain which step might break through.
But walking through the Sanctuary seemed to restore something in him.
The shadows recognized their master even in his weakened state, parting before us.
I found myself hyper-aware of him as we walked.
The way his shoulder almost brushed mine when the corridor narrowed.
The sound of his breathing, still slightly uneven from kneeling on stone, from holding me while I fell apart.
The bond between us hummed with every step, a constant low vibration that made my skin feel too tight, too sensitive.