The flat went silent. Briar held himself up on the wall. After a moment, he dropped the saltshaker to the ground. It clattered and rolled away. With the last dregs of energy available to him, he shuffled to the bed and collapsed into it.
Vatii fluttered across the room to settle on the pillow beside his head and nuzzle his cheek. She’d been uncharacteristically silent in the hospital and the whole way home. Now she finally spoke.
“It’ll be okay. There’s hope. Linden’s looking for something.”
Briar clenched his eyes shut. It was somehow worse that she sought to comfort him when, under normal circumstances, he’d be bracing for herreproach. For banishing Gretchen. For his foolish behavior with Rowan. For all his terrible choices.
Instead, she preened his hair.
He stayed in bed for hours. Connor had recommended rest, and Briar couldn’t move if he wanted to. At some point, there was a knock at the door, but he couldn’t muster the energy to go downstairs. He stayed in bed and drank his potion at the times instructed. He dragged himself out of bed on two occasions to make toast. The potion tasted even worse at this potency, but he couldn’t stand long enough to cook something without collapsing.
Christmas Day passed this way. By morning, he felt cold to his bones and wanted to soak in a bath, but his tiny flat had no such luxury, so a shower would have to do.
He managed the trip to his bathroom and turned on the showerhead. He removed his clothes and sat on the toilet while waiting for the water to heat. It took only two minutes of standing under the spray for his legs to shiver so precariously he had to sit. The water was hot, though, and it helped to ease the aches spreading through his limbs.
How had it gotten so bad so quickly?
He tipped his head back and waited for the heat to soak into his bones, but it didn’t quite penetrate, and as time wore on, the water cooled. When it reached lukewarm temperature, he tried to stand. The slippery bottom of the shower and his tottering lamb legs prevented it. He tried grabbing hold of the faucet handle, but his arms couldn’t lift his weight. Concluding that he would have to crawl out and partially flood his bathroom, he pulled on the sliding door, only to find it had come off its tread. He tried to force it open, but after all his attempts to stand, his arms were too weak for this as well.
A steadily rising hysteria threatened. He had been eating and laughing and sledging and kissing only a day ago. How had one episode left him so incapacitated?
After a few more pathetic attempts, he curled up against the shower wall, as far out of the cooling spray as he could get, and let out a mournful wail. It was very theatrical and on brand for him.
Vatii came to perch on the edge of the shower door. “Do you want me to get someone?”
“No!” Briar howled. He was committed to having a well-deserved meltdown.
Fate, twisted in its machinations, had other ideas, because there came another knock at the door. Briar whipped his head up and regretted it. His vision swam.
Vatii flapped away. Briar heard her winging down the stairs, then the manic scrabbling of talons against a window. She couldn’t open the door, but she could alarm someone enough they might break in to see what was wrong. Humiliated as he felt, trapped naked in a cold shower, he hoped it was Rowan.
It was not Rowan. Moments after he heard the door open—not with a crash, but a click and jingle—Linden appeared on the other side of the shower glass.
He whipped around at the sight of Briar naked, sputtering. “Oh, pardon me, I’m sorry! Vatii seemed distressed, and I thought you might have been ill again.”
“I am,” Briar said. “The door’s stuck. Don’t look at the mushrooms!” The bathroom still had a fungus problem.
Briar appreciated the irony that, a year ago, if someone had told him Linden Fairchild would burst into his bathroom to rescue him dripping naked from a locked shower, he would have tithed the skin off his left leg to fast-forward in time and arrive at that exact moment.
Now, he lived in a mirror world where everything he’d seen as decadent and delicious had spoiled. He couldn’t even think of a teasing repartee to deflect from his embarrassment as Linden picked the door up out of the tread to wiggle it aside. He looked stricken at the sight of Briar. Without hesitation, he leaned through the spray and pulled Briar to his feet. Drops of water speckled his glasses, and a sheen of water soaked through his hair and clothes. He lowered Briar onto the toilet seat and wrapped a towel around his shoulders, then turned off the shower, something he should have done first.
They looked at one another, neither sure what to do.
Briar broke the silence. “This is not as sexy as I hoped it would be.”
And Linden responded with a gust of indignant laughter.
Briar almost laughed too. “No, seriously, please wipe our memories of this moment. This isn’t how I imagined you seeing me naked.”
“Nor I, but I’m afraid memory spells are quite outside my ability.”
“Shame,” said Briar. “I’ll have to use the traditional method.” He leaned over the counter and knocked his head against it. Gently.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t. Come, let’s get you dried and dressed.”
Linden found and brought him clothes. He allowed Briar to lean onhim as they hobbled back into his flat. A plastic bag sat on the salt-covered kitchen table, which hadn’t been there before.
“Someone left it at your door,” Linden explained.
