Dagan took the hand and kissed the palm, slumping bonelessly onto the bed. “Hen.”
“This is good. Really good.” Innan grimaced. “Sorry, of course it’s good, I just—I’m trying to find a way to say how much relief I feel and I can’t. I didn’t even realize I was this scared.”
“You and me both. Would you let his family know?” Dagan suggested.
Innan started for the door immediately, fiery hair streaming behind like a herald’s banner. “Hug him for me when he’s up, will you?”
“I won’t ever let him go,” Dagan promised himself, mostly.
*
At first, Hendrik slept. Not the fitful, fevered sleep of the past few weeks but a deep, poppy-aided sleep from which he woke bleary-eyed and confused. When they stopped giving him the poppy-milk, Hen seemed to improve rapidly. He asked about his friends, his family, injuries and thoughts and plans. He asked about Alonza and Demetrius, and whether they’d arrived yet. But he most notably did not ask about the civil state of the Stone City, even when Kajja came and obviously wanted to tell him about it.
Mostly, he asked about Dagan. What he thought of the City, what he’d been doing while Hen slept, if he was bored or tired or entertained or if there was anything Hen could do for him, stuck in bed as he was. Also notably, he never implied that Dagan should or could leave, even for a moment.
Though Dagan’s initial rage had long since bled out, Hen’s willingness to accept his help and devotion soothed any residual flares quickly. Hendrik, on the other hand, grew restless at about the same rate he healed. “Can we go?” he asked at least once a day. And Dagan had to kiss him and tell him, “Not yet, my darling boy. Give your body time to recover before we put it through something else.”
The full moon came and went; Piret said it was the first full moon in recorded city history without any “inheritances.” The streets were restless, people speaking in hushed voices until the moon started to wane again. When nothing disastrous happened as a result of the missed ceremony and sacrifice, when the Children of the Blood who would’ve been next didn’t ascend to godhood or spontaneously explode in their sleep, people began to forget they’d been nervous. They began to let go of their beliefs, slowly, slowly, but surely.
“You did it,” Dagan said.
But Hen just frowned. “A thousand years too late. But yeah. We did it.”
“Kass would be proud.”
“Kass would be scandalized.” That made him crack a smile at least. “But I hope he’s at peace.”
After about a week, the healers decided Hen could risk a bath, and he was overjoyed. “If I have to have my ass sponged one more time I’m going to throw myself out a window,” he insisted, stripping off as Dagan poured buckets of hot water for him. “I feel like a newborn in nappies.”
“I rather like sponging your ass,” Dagan said airily.
“Before fucking it, yeah. After I take a shit, though? I know you love my ass, but even you couldn’t enjoy that.”
“Someday I’ll be sick and infirm, and it’ll be your turn for ass sponging; then you’ll see it’s a privilege and an honor,” Dagan assured him with a little laugh.
“Very funny.” Hen had a crutch he used to get around, now that he was allowed, and moved rather efficiently with its help. He made his way to the tub and leaned over, inhaling deeply. “Lavender.”
“Only the finest for the city’s shyest and most elusive hero.”
Hen grimaced. “Do we really have to go to the—whatever? Victory thing?”
“Let them see you,” Dagan insisted, refilling a bucket and setting it by the fire. “Just this once. We’re stuck here, anyhow. Might as well meet your adoring public.”
“They have Piret and Kajja and Eva. They don’t need me,” Hen grumbled.
His face had thinned out in the last few weeks with his illness and surgery, but his color was coming back steadily. Still, his cheekbones looked dangerously hollow and his eyes wild in dark sockets. Not fever-wild, but wild like they had when Dagan had first met him in the woods, after surviving on grass and tidal fish for a few moons. Wild like an animal who’d been chased so long, it didn’t care anymore if it was caught. That couldn’t be further from the truth, thankfully, but seeing him like that was hard on Dagan’s heart.
“I want to get you to the Heart Wood as fast as I can, believe me,” Dagan promised. “I want to see you lying in beds of grass and pools of sunshine, bringing all the color back into your skin and the light back into your eyes. But until then, be a good boy and help me take care of you, please.”
“Will you still be calling me good boy and darling boy when I’m 60?” Hendrik mumbled, trying not to smile.
“I very nearly called your father darling boy the other day, if you must know,” Dagan lied. “So yes, probably.”
Hen winced. “Ew.”
Dagan chuckled and held out his hand. “Come on. Use me.”
“Don’t tempt me.” Settling his crutch against the wall, Hen took his hand and put the other around his shoulders.
“Thought I was ew.” Dagan wrapped an arm about his waist and lifted.
Hen swung his left foot into the tub, steadied it, and only then replied, “Only when you say Konstantin is hot.”
“That’s what you’ll look like when you’re 60,” Dagan reasoned. “Here, put the other one up here, I made you a little shelf.”
“Cute.” Hen situated his other knee against a small wooden tray Dagan had fixed to the side of the tub and cushioned with soft linen towels.
“The shelf or my cutting analysis of how hot your father is?”
“Ughhhhh.” Hen let Dagan lower him into the tub, though, keeping the wounded portion of his right leg, now truncated below the knee, high and dry and comfortable. The rest of him sank into hot, salted, scented water. “Oh, fuck me. You know what, you can talk about hot old guys all you want. Even Kon. This is the best thing I’ve ever felt in my life.”
A knock at the door pulled Dagan away briefly, scurrying around the screen. Once the rest of the water had been delivered and settled by the fire, Dagan shooed the maids away and locked the door.
Hendrik was lying back in the tub, arms floating, left knee propped up above the water, right leg on the little shelf while the rest of him soaked. The look on his face was, in fact, pure bliss. Dagan cast a quick look at his bandage, just to make sure it wasn’t getting wet, then sank to his knees beside the tub, forearms propped up on it, cheek leaning against them. “You look so content, my love.”
“I am. Well, as much as I’m going to be.” Hen opened one eye briefly then closed it again. “We’ve been here for how long?”
“A few weeks,” Dagan replied easily. “Almost three, now.”
