On the bright side, she supposed, Trickster was nowhere near.

Quietly as she could, Iseult poured the freshly retrieved water into the basin, but when a small cry broke the silence, she snapped toward the bed.

No one had awoken, though. The cry had come from Aeduan. He flinched and flinched, as if being hit. Over and over. Flinch. Flinch. Flinch. His face …

Iseult blinked. This was not the curse that struck Aeduan. This was grief. It was despair, as if the one thing he loved most in the world had been taken away from him.

And it was horrible to watch. Iseult wanted to stop it. She wanted to rush to him and jolt him awake. Wanted to cup his face and tell him it was going to be all right and that whatever ghosts haunted him had now passed. It was a visceral desire, not a logical one, and she crossed the room in two long steps.

She knelt, reaching for his face. Heat curled off his skin, strong as an inferno. Flinch, flinch, flinch. Sweat shone on his brow.

A fever, she thought distantly, glad she had bought a tonic against that.

Then Aeduan stopped flinching.

And Iseult froze, her fingers a hairsbreadth from his jaw. Her breath held. Heartbeat by thudding heartbeat, the lines on his face smoothed away, slipping once more into the innocence of dreamless sleep. Part of her wanted to keep going. A tiny secret corner of her chest, tucked just in front of her left lung—it wanted to keep going, to feel the edges of his jaw and watch as he woke up.

But that was a part of her she refused to acknowledge, for as long as she pretended it wasn’t there, then she didn’t have to consider what it might mean.

She drew back her hands. For some reason, they were shaking, as if she had never done this before. As if she had not hovered beside an unconscious Aeduan only yesterday, observing the high curve of his cheeks and the thick frill of his lashes. In sleep, he was so easy to touch. To tend. No crystal eyes to bore into her. In waking …

This room is too hot. She was the one sweating now, she was the one feeling feverish. And it was not the heat of the Firewitch, either, but something else. Something that made her stomach cinch and her rib cage feel too small.

Quiet as a cat, just like Habim had taught her, Iseult backed away until she was to the washbasin once more. If she was lucky, Aeduan would not awaken until she had laid out everything he needed to tend his wounds. Then she could tiptoe from the room, and perhaps find a shadowy spot to hide in the common room below. Somewhere she could mull over what had happened with Trickster, somewhere she could order food for Aeduan and Owl without being seen by other guests.

And without being seen by Aeduan. His command from before still scoured against her ears. No. He did not want her help. No. He did not want her touch. Yet fanciful fool that she was, she had almost done exactly that …

And still wanted to.

She could only imagine the horror on his face if he had woken to find her fingers on him. It would have been so much worse than earlier.

No.

But the Moon Mother, it turned out, was against Iseult tonight. While Iseult managed to place clean linen strips, two different Earthwitch healer salves, a Firewitch healer powder, and the Waterwitch healer tonic beside Aeduan without disturbing him, when she tried to carry the full washbasin over, water sloshed onto his leg.

His eyes snapped wide. So blue. So lost. “You are back.” Hoarse words. Scarcely a whisper.

The temperature in the room doubled. Iseult’s tongue doubled too. “S-sorry to wake you.” She scooted away.

Or she tried to. Aeduan latched onto her wrist, his grip surprisingly strong. “Stay,” he breathed, and there was that penetrating stare. The one that made her whole world fall away.

Moments trickled past. His grip weakened; his gaze did not. Iseult could pull free if she wanted to. An easy move, an easy twist.

She didn’t.

“Scar,” he said at last.

She had no idea what he meant. “I don’t—” she began.

“Scar,” he repeated, more emphatic, and though his gaze didn’t move, his thumb did. It grazed—slightly, slightly—over her wrist. Then onto her palm to where, yes, there was a faint scar. Earned from a fisherman’s hook in Ve?aza City.

“My fault.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

His thumb moved, back up her palm toward her wrist. His skin was rough. His touch was not.

And Iseult’s entire body shut down. There was no other way to describe it. No other words for how still everything inside of her went. No breath, no heartbeat, no vision beyond Aeduan’s thumb tracing along her hand.

“Why?” he murmured eventually, finger finally slowing at her pulse point.

“Why … what?” She had no idea how she got those words out.

Aeduan swallowed, the muscles of his neck, his throat strong, even if his body was weak. “Why are you still here?”

She blinked, surprise briefly shrinking her tongue. Briefly calming her mind. “Where else would I go? Did … did you need me to get something else for you?”

“No. Not that—” He broke off, coughing, and his fingers finally released Iseult. Suddenly, the skin around her wrist felt too cold. At odds with the rest of her body, which was blistering from the inside out.

“With Owl,” Aeduan rasped once the coughing had passed. “And … me. Why do you stay?”

“Oh.” It was the last thing she expected him to ask, and for half a skittering moment, Iseult feared he had somehow seen the note from Mathew in her pocket. Somehow he knew that she had other options before her. Except that this was impossible—she had only just received the message. There was no way Aeduan could know that someone was coming for her.

And why do you care if he does know? her brain demanded. He knows that you seek your Threadsister. He knows that you have Thread-family and that you cannot stay beside him forever.

Well, he may know that, whispered the tiny secret corner above her lung. But do you?

“I … owe you life-debts,” Iseult offered eventually. It was the only explanation she had ever put into words for herself. “Many of them. Why? D-do you want me to leave?”

So hard to squeeze out those words, and Aeduan offered no response. Instead, he simply stared at her, unblinking and inescapable, and with each passing second, his eyes shed more sleep. Awareness hardened in his gaze.

All while the room grew hotter and hotter and Iseult’s tongue grew fatter and fatter. Now she realized her heart had never stopped, her lungs had never paused. It was just that they’d been hidden behind the expanse of him. Of his eyes, of his fingers, of his touch.

Beside her, Aeduan heaved himself into a sitting position. A moan of pain, a spasm of agony, yet Iseult made no move to help him. No. Instead, she simply watched as the seconds ground past and internally chanted, Stasis. A futile refrain really, for once Aeduan had straightened fully and set to removing his shirt, it became too frustrating for Iseult to endure. His pain shivered in the air between them. The urge to yank off his shirt for him—it made her fingers flex against her thighs.

She was a pot about to boil over.

Iseult pushed upright. A bit frantic, a bit loud, but no movement came from the bed, no shift in Owl’s Threads as Iseult returned to the now barren table. She gripped its edges, then forced her gaze to the mirror. To her own reflection, where hazel eyes glinted in the lantern light.

Stasis, stasis, stasis. How many times had Iseult’s mother made her stare in a mirror, forcing her to master her Threadwitch calm? How many times had Gretchya made Iseult observe her own face for every tic, every twitch, every failure to maintain smooth perfection? Iseult had hated it growing up. Now, though, in a room made of flames, she sank into the forgiveness of a cold, methodical lesson from the past.

She could master her face, and then true tranquility would follow.

“I could find no clothes,” she murmured at last, no stammer. No inflection. No more Aeduan to devour her senses. “I will try again tomorrow, when shops might be open.”

“I can get clothes…” A grunt of pain behind her. A savage exhale. Then, “At the Monastery outpost. I can get more clothes.”

“You still intend to go there?”

“I … must.”

Iseult swallowed a sigh, even as her reflection stayed still. She wanted to argue, but knew it to be pointless. This was not the first time she’d encountered behavior that contradicted a story told aloud. Aeduan claimed he disliked the Carawens, that he was not even part of their ranks anymore, yet he’d remained so scrupulous to their rules over the past two weeks of travel. He had meditated upon waking, he had kept his Carawen cloak fastened and clean, and he had regularly recited prayers at dusk.

Safi had been no different. She had always claimed to despise her uncle, yet she’d also gone out of her way to impress him. Finding reasons to show off her fighting prowess, dropping her latest history lessons into conversation, and twice even pulling heists while he watched on.