It would have been funny if it just… wasn’t.
“I suspect he would prefer that I examine his wounds. I have more salve.” She made eye contact with Perian. “Are you going to kill me?”
Perian shook his head, a lump in his throat. “No. I won’t harm you in any way.”
“Allow me to treat the patient. Now.”
It took the Queen’s nod for Cormal to finally unlock the door to Perian’s cell. The doctor passed through and soon had Perian sitting down so she couldexamine his wounds. She gently touched his face, and he winced. He’d somehow forgotten about the head wound, but that explained why everything hurt.
And he hadn’t had any idea how tender his neck was until the doctor carefully daubed more salve on it.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
“The bruising is quite spectacular. He tried to choke you?”
Perian nodded shortly.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s slow to heal,” she observed.
“I hadn’t really noticed,” Perian said. “It’s been a weird day. Or two? I don’t actually know when it is.”
He’d lost all track of time.
“You were found very early yesterday. I would have expected that it would heal faster, based on your previous record,” she said.
He realized what she was saying. “I’ve been healing myself?”
“Oh, I think so,” she said.
“You don’t sound very surprised.”
“I’m not, particularly.” She looked at him. “Do you know that when I told you that the salves healed things more quickly, the salves you made healed better than any of the salves that I have ever produced?”
Perian digested this for a moment. “What?”
She nodded. “I told you that they did, and you believed it.”
“But… why would that matter?”
She smiled at him. “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Conversationally, as she smeared more salve on him and carefully began to rewrap his wrists, she continued, “In addition to the head wound, the strangulation attempt, and various bumps and bruises, you suffered from smoke inhalation, which is particularly dangerous. I gave you several tonics, and you responded better to them than many have.”
Perian had been trying to heal himself of whatever was the most dangerous to him?
She eyed him. “Of course, for anyone to heal themselves, they need to be in an optimal state. Well-rested, not stressed, and properly fueled.”
Oh.Oh.
Perian understood, finally, what she was trying to tell him. Perian ate food, and he wasn’t actually sure the last time that he’d consumed anything, but that wasn’t what she meant. Without realizing it, whenever he’d been injured, he crawled into bed with people. When he’d been attacked and wounded with the knife while Brannal was gone, what had he done? That was when he’d accepted Molun and Arvus’s invitation to join them in bed, wasn’t it? He was pretty sure it was.
It hadn’t seemed like a pattern to him, because it wasn’t something it would have occurred to him to track. He was having sex so regularly for the most part, that it surely didn’t matter. But what had he done after Molun had been injured, when he’d been so stressed and upset by what had happened, even ifhehadn’t been the one physically injured? He’d crawled into bed with Brannal. Crawled into bed with Molun and Arvus. Repeatedly.
Perian might not have known what he was, but his body seemed to have figured out what it needed.
But if that was all it was, then Perian would be trying to do it to the doctor right now, wouldn’t he? She was right here, and Perian was injured. He could feel faint wisps of desire if he searched for them, but he didn’t try to pull them to him, and he’d never done so for any of the things that she felt, which they’d both ignored.
