It wasn’t exactly the most helpful theory. What guard was going to turn himself in for getting drunk on duty when the penalty for such an infraction was death?
After a few days, the traffic subsided, and a silence settled over the entire corridor off of which Ellie’s bedroom resided.
If there had been one more second of chatter in the hallway, if the shuffling of feet had continued to mask her shallow breathing, the steady drum of her heartbeat, I might have lost it.
But there she lay, flat on her back with her beautiful face resting to the side, very much alive.
Rays of sunlight crept through the window and caressed her cheeks. I could never decide whether to crack the window or leave it shut, but there was something about the state of Ellie’s health that had me feeling like the exact temperature of her room was of dire importance.
She’d made the window. I found my fingers tracing the carved initials every time I tried to determine whether the fresh air would do my betrothed good or harm.
Ellie had hardly breached consciousness in the few days since the attack. Peck, a faerie healer who’d been in the service of the royal family since before my grandfather had taken the throne, spent hours at a time by her bedside, tending to her wounds and whispering enchantments over her injuries.
I watched wide-eyed with horror while he dressed the wound. At first I’d averted my eyes to maintain her privacy. Sure, we were to be wed, but I wouldn’t force Ellie into anything that marriage would typically require, and I had zero expectations of laying eyes on my wife’s form. Other than the curves that couldn’t quite hide under the delicate fae fabric of her gowns.
But I couldn’t help glancing at the wound.
It had become a bit of an obsession, actually.
When Peck ripped her gown apart at the waist to examine the wound that first night, it had seemed to gape, open-mawed, ready and welcoming to any infection that might come Ellie’s way. Maybe it was the blood that pooled around her, dripping off her smooth brown skin and splattering against the sheets that gave that impression.
Once he’d cleaned it, I’d felt a bit relieved at its size and averted my eyes once more.
The second day it had swelled.
The third I thought I glimpsed signs of infection, but Peck assured me the puss was simply a byproduct of the wound purging itself. Using Peck’s magic as a catalyst to do so more quickly and fervently than human skin would typically be capable of.
I stayed through all of it.
And when Peck left her side to get some rest of his own and replenish his magic, I stayed then, too.
This was my fault, after all.
I couldn’t quite bring myself to admit why it was my fault, at least not without skirting around the edges.
So I told myself it was because I’d been a fool and placed that fae bargain on that stupid shoe, not considering the consequences if the shoe might fit someone other than…
I shoved her name from my mind. I’d deal with my concerns about her later.
Right now, all that mattered was Ellie making it through this.
I held her hand most always, rubbing my thumb across her feverish arms, sometimes using both palms when she began to tremble and I worried she’d gotten too cold.
As soon as Peck returned, he usually commanded I stop. That he was hydrating Ellie as best as he could with magic. If I kept rubbing the same portion of her skin like that, I’d give her a blister. That sort of thing.
Sometimes Ellie would shiver uncontrollably, and Peck would tell me he’d done all he could, that his magic was fighting off infection, giving her the best shot at survival.
Once, the shivering got so bad I considered slipping into the bed with her. I’d already pulled back the sheets when Blaise arrived and offered to do it for me.
She’d snuggled up next to Ellie and fallen asleep, weary with dread herself, and I’d watched as the new heat source assuaged Ellie’s shivers.
I’d had an awful thought that night.
I’d been annoyed with Blaise, wishing it could have been me who soothed Ellie, whose body warmed hers.
That thought got tucked away with haste.
Besides, Blaise had taken to Ellie.
The night of Ellie’s attack, Blaise had burst through the doors an hour or two after Ellie had slipped from consciousness, out of her mind frantic. She’d muttered something about hearing a commotion in the hall, how a servant had informed her what had happened.
She hadn’t even taken the time to put her slippers on before sprinting up to Ellie’s rooms barefoot. I’d had to catch her before she launched herself onto Ellie, weeping.
She’d fought me for a moment, tears streaming down her pale face and soaking my arms. I’d just held her like that, pulled her against my chest as she kicked and punched at me until, all at once, the fight and frenzy in her seemed to be snuffed out, and she sank against me in a puddle of tears.
I’d let her sit next to Ellie after that, and she’d gotten into nearly as much trouble as I had with Peck. Except with Blaise, he claimed she was rubbing Ellie’s forehead too much.
Blaise had hardly left Ellie’s side, except for the day after the attack when she’d run to town for a few hours and returned with a basket full of sticky buns and lemon tarts from Forcier’s.
My mother had supplied the bedside table with a fresh vase of lilies every morning.
Even Imogen came and visited, her sallow cheeks waning still. She would show up for only minutes at a time, hovering by the door quietly, as if she hoped not to be noticed. Her fingers would jitter, and she’d chew her lip before slipping into the hall, only to return a few hours later.
From the look of the shadows that rimmed her eyes, she wasn’t sleeping.
“Do you think we should read to her?” Blaise’s voice broke me from my dazed thoughts, and from an almost-nap. I’d spent the nights in the armchair beside Ellie’s bed, Blaise and I taking turns staying awake to monitor Ellie through the night, but the little sleep I managed to snag was fitful, and I often found myself drifting off during the day.
“I’m going to be honest with you, Blaise,” I said, stretching my feet out, like that would somehow make up for the deprivation I’d put my body through the last few days. “I don’t know that my eyes can focus enough to read right now.”
