Marrow
TEORIN
Darkway Palace, Morrath
He had the procedure done in her room.
The healer had suggested his own chambers twice. He had not responded either time and eventually she had stopped suggesting it and prepared him where he was.
It was not painless. Bone marrow extraction from a living feeder was not a procedure with a comfortable version, the needle long enough to reach the center of things, the draw slow, the body's resistance real even in someone with his healing capacity.
He lay beside Asharin and looked at the ceiling and did not make noise about it because there was no one in the room worth making noise for.
Feeder marrow was not infant blood. It would not give her what infant feeder blood would--strength and the ability to leave Morrath.
But it was richer than what ran through veins, older in the way that marrow was older than blood, and it was what he had.
The healer administered it carefully, watching Asharin's color, watching her chest, watching for any response.
There was none. Not yet.
He could not move his legs properly when it was done. That was expected. He lay where he was.
He thought about the last time he had been beside her like this. After her brother and his friends had tried to kill her. He had sworn to himself that no harm would ever come to her again. And yet, here she was.
He hated himself for that, though he hated Colsar more.
He slept for two days.
When he woke he could not walk. That passed by the third day. By the fourth he could sit up and by the fifth he was watching her eyelashes again because that was what he had been doing and he saw no reason to stop.
On the fifth evening they moved.
Just slightly. The faintest twitch, the kind that could have been involuntary and probably was. He did not call for the healer. He sat forward and watched and said nothing.
On the sixth day her breathing changed. Deeper.
On the seventh night she spoke.
"Colsar."
He sat very still.
Then, quieter: "Kiss. Ari."
He looked at the ceiling. Something in his chest pulled in a direction he did not acknowledge and eventually it stopped pulling and he looked back at her.
Her eyes partially opened on the ninth day. Her lids lifted and caught, as though the effort had cost more than she had available. She looked at him without recognition. Through him, almost.
"Colsar," she said.
"No," he said. Quietly.
She closed her eyes.
The next day she did it again.
This time her eyes opened further. This time something behind them was closer to present. He watched her process him, watched understanding arrive in pieces.
She was quiet for a long time.
Then she said, "I'm not always Ashen."
He smiled. It surprised him. He could not remember the last time one had arrived.
"No," he said. "You are not."
She closed her eyes again. The corner of her mouth had done something.
He got his strength back slowly. Walking again by the twelfth day. He still found himself lying down beside her in the evenings and he had stopped explaining that to himself.
He brushed her hair one morning because it had tangled badly and no one had addressed it. He was halfway through before he registered what he was doing. He kept going.
The healer arrived that afternoon to examine her.
"She is better," she said.
He nodded.
"However." A pause. "The poison has done damage that even your marrow cannot fully repair. She may drift like this indefinitely." She paused again. "I am sorry, Majesty."
He said nothing.
The healer left.
He sat in the chair beside the bed and looked at Asharin's face and felt something press against the back of his eyes that he had not felt since he was young enough not to know better.
He did not let it go anywhere. He sat with it until it became something manageable and then he leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
When he opened them there was a woman in the room.
Dark teal hair. One eyebrow raised. Looking down at him with what was either boredom or mild amusement, he could not tell which.
He sat up.
"How did you get in here?"
"Your security leaves much to be desired," she said. "I simply walked in." She looked around the room. "This is a realm of heartless creatures, Majesty. Are you really naive enough to leave yourself weak and unprotected?"
"I am not weak."
She looked at Asharin. Then back at him.
"You are weak," she said. "And she is still half dead." A pause. "Though I imagine she is less half dead than before. I will give you that."