You could find someone attractive without actually being interested in them, after all, and a lot of people found Perian attractive.
(Because he was designed that way?)
The doctor finished wrapping his wounds, helped him have a drink of water, and then stepped back through the door when Cormal opened it, key in one hand, fireball in the other.
Really, they should all have seen it coming, but they were all waiting for Perian to do something, and Perian was concentrating on sitting there and not looking like he was going to do anything—and that meant that no one was paying much attention to Renny, and she darted into the cell as the doctor slipped out of it. She dove at Perian.
Perian was aware of how tricky this situation was, how his life might well be teetering on a knife edge at the moment, but he couldn’t do anything except catch Renny when she literally threw herself at him and burst intotears.
He patted her back and rocked her back and forth and told her that everything would be fine even as a furious conversation raged outside about what could be done to get Renny back without precipitating an… incident.
He rolled his eyes at them.
“Nothing is going to happen to Renny. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“Then let her go!” Cormal yelled.
“I’m not constraining her,” Perian argued, frustrated beyond belief. “I’m holding her while she cries. I wouldn’t ever hurt her. And I can’t.”
Cormal’s interruption seemed to have broken through Renny’s crying jag. Still in Perian’s arms, she whirled to look out of the cell.
“Of course Perian wouldn’t hurt me! Perian would never hurt me! Perian’s so good for me! I’ve never felt better than since I met Perian! Perian is the best!”
“He could still—” Cormal began.
“I think not, in the instance,” the doctor interrupted calmly. “Look at the evidence.”
They all turned to look at her.
“When did the Princess begin to feel well?” she asked.
“In the spring,” the Queen said.
“When she met Perian,” the doctor corrected, “in the spring.”
That… was one way of looking at it, Perian supposed, but it wasn’t proof of anything, was it? She had seemed to get better and better the longer he knew her, but that was just… happenstance, wasn’t it?
“Coincidence,” Cormal said dismissively.
“And when is the one occasion that the Princess had a renewed dizzy spell?” the doctor pursued.
They all stared at her, and it was Perian who said blankly, “While I was away. When Brannal took me away for a few days.”
The doctor nodded, staring straight at him. “And when did she get better?”
Shocked, Perian said, “As soon as I got back.”
A marked change, everyone had said, but Perian had just thought she was happy to see him, that he’d been boosting hermood.
“What did you do to her?” Cormal demanded. “Are you controlling her?”
“Oh, have some common sense,” the doctor said with asperity. “The Princess has been sick for years, and the only thing Perian has done is make her feel well.”
She’d been weak and so tired. She would sometimes be stuck in her bed, have dizzy spells when she tried to move, not have enough energy to function.
And then she’d met Perian, and she’d felt so much better, had had so much more energy, almost like—
“Fire and water,” he breathed.
