White light clouded his vision when he lost consciousness, and white light greeted him when he came to.
Briar squinted at the fluorescent strips overhead, reacquiring his senses one at a time. Starchy, stiff sheets. The soft hum of machines and the clip of distant footsteps. An acrid taste in his cotton-dry mouth, and the unmistakable, sterile smell of antiseptic.
He was in a clinic.
Vatii roused next to him, a low chirrup of greeting in his ear.
He didn’t have long to recall how he’d blacked out before the door opened and Sorcha’s husband appeared. It was surreal to see Connor changed out of the ugly Christmas jumper into blue scrubs. All Briar’s illusions about keeping his curse a secret dissolved. Connor would have seen it in his medical files.
“Ah, Briar. Sure good to see you’re awake.” But something in his voice said otherwise. “Not your favorite place to be on Christmas Day, I imagine. How are you feeling?”
“Exhausted. Where’s Rowan?” He knew what Rowan would have seen. Part of him was embarrassed. He’d seen his mother have these seizures. They were terrifying.
“He’s in the waiting room. He’ll give out to me in a minute for not letting him know right away that you’re up, but we have to talk. Doctor-patient confidentiality comes first ’n all that.”
Connor pulled up a chair, metal legs squealing, and sat next to the hospital bed. He folded his hands in front of him. The pose told Briar hewouldn’t like what he was about to hear. No good news could come from such a posture.
“How long have you been afflicted with Bowen’s Wane?”
“Two years. And a bit.”
“That’s all?”
Defensively. “Yeah.”
Connor looked at a loss for words, like he didn’t often have to deal with delivering terrible news, not in this small town, not to someone he’d just shared Christmas dinner with.
“Just tell me.”
Connor met his eyes. Steeled himself. Possibly, he dug into the persona he would present to any patient. “It’s as if you’ve had this curse for a long time, Briar. Your health has degenerated so badly, I don’t know what to make of it. It’s as if you’ve had it ten years, not two.”
“Ten,” Briar heard himself say as if from underwater. He expected to follow a list of things he would need to do to rectify his devolving health. A new dosage for his potion. Something.
Instead, Connor said quietly, “I’m trying to contact your specialist, but it being the holidays… I managed to speak to someone in Pentawynn, and they said some things can accelerate the curse’s symptoms. Unrelated illness. Too little sleep. Stress.” He didn’t mention the tithes, though he must have seen them while treating Briar.
“How long do I have?” Briar repeated it before the panic took his voice. “How long?”
Connor’s eyes crinkled at the corners. A kind, pained sympathy. “Months. Six, at most.”
In a wash of dread, Briar unstuck his jaw enough to move it, but words failed him. That couldn’t be right. That just could not be right. He had to look away, up at the lights, but their brightness made his eyes sting harder. He choked on a well of things rising in his chest. A roiling bile of emotion that burned and scraped like a flood full of debris was trapped in the shivering prison of his ribs.
He remembered holding his mother’s hand while she lay dying, how he’d been speaking to Vatii, because it took a long time to die. And they’d had no idea when it would happen. And he remembered thinking,It’s been a long time since Mum breathed.Those breaths had been loud in the quiet hospice room, each one a rasping struggle. He’d waited, and the room was silent.
The feeling that had come over him then, and the one that came over him now, were not dissimilar.
Connor started to stand. “If you need a moment—”
Impulsively, Briar grabbed his sleeve to stop him. “Don’t tell Rowan.” It just came out.
“Why don’t you want him to know?”
Because he had a plan to fix it. Because he didn’t want the fondness with which Rowan looked at him to change into pity. Because he had a destiny that didn’t involve dying, and maybe this—his growing affection for Rowan—had derailed that destiny. Not stress or sleeplessness or flesh tithes but an unbidden love affair, accelerating the rotting curse in his brain.
Because all of these things, and because he didn’t know how to tell Rowan.
Connor deflated. “I won’t tell him. Patient-doctor confidentiality ’n all that. But he’ll want to know. He’ll ask. And he’ll want to see you soon, like.”
“I know. I will talk to him. Just give me five minutes? To think.”
