I hopped to the bed and sat down, pulling my foot up to look at it. The cut was long but not deep—a clean line across the arch that was bleeding steadily in the way that foot cuts always bled, which was excessively and dramatically, as if my foot was auditioning for a horror movie. Blood was dripping onto the stone floor, mixing with the ceramic dust, and I pressed the heel of my hand against it and tried to think.
Did they have band-aids? They had showers and plumbing and enchanted fire, but what about basic first aid? Was there a medieval equivalent, like a poultice or a salve? Was I supposed to pack it with moss and pray to a forest god?
I looked around the room for something to wrap it with and saw nothing useful. The bed linens were too thick to tear, and the shirts in the wardrobe were too far away.
It did something I wasn’t expecting. The pain lanced through the numbness I’d been hiding inside, and suddenly, it wasn’t just my foot that was bleeding. My pain was overwhelming, and it wasn’t just coming from my foot, it was coming from everything that had happened to me.
And nobody was coming. Nobody could help.
Not with the cut, specifically. Somebody probably would check on me eventually, if I yelled loud enough. But no one could help me with being here, being gone, being disappeared from a world where I was already barely visible. My boss at the bar wouldnotice when I missed a shift and then replace me within the week. My landlord would notice when rent was late and start the eviction process.
The tears came and I didn’t stop them. I was tired of stopping them. I let it happen (the ugly crying, the snot, the shaking) and pressed my bloody hand to my bloody foot, curled up on the bed, and just let out all of the emotions that I’d been forcing down.
The door burst open, and Aeldryc was standing in the doorway.
“What happened?”
“I kicked a vase.” My voice was thick and wrecked and I didn’t even try to make it sound light. “Like an idiot. And then I stepped on it. Also like an idiot.”
He was already moving. Crossing the room in three strides, crouching in front of me, his hands reaching for my foot with a gentleness that was so at odds with how he usually moved that it made me cry harder.
“Let me see.” He’d dialed back his usual commanding tone to something low and quiet.
I moved my hand. The cut was still bleeding, and Aeldryc studied it for a beat. He stood, disappeared into the corridor, and came back in under a minute with a basin of water, strips of clean linen, and a small clay pot of something that smelled like herbs and honey.
He knelt at my feet, cradling my foot in one hand and cleaning the cut with the other, his fingers careful around the edges of the wound. The linen was warm and damp and he worked in small, precise movements, clearing the blood, checking for ceramic fragments.
He reached for the clay pot. “It’s not deep. Ilyndra’s powder should heal it quickly. Is it okay if I use it?”
“Yes,” I whispered, and we both watched the magic work, sealing the wound in an impossible way. He grabbed a clean linen and wiped off the last of the blood, then set it aside, not letting go of my foot.
“Why were you crying?”
I frowned at him. “I cut my foot.”
“That was more than a cut foot cry.”
“Bad day,” I said. “Interdimensional jet lag. You know how it is.”
He didn’t smile or look away. He just stayed there, on his knees, holding my ankle, and waited. Maybe this was part of his interrogation technique.
“I don’t have anyone.” Once I got the hardest part out, the words just kept coming. “Back home. There’s no one who’ll miss me. No one who’ll come looking. I just… disappeared, and it doesn’t matter because I was already kind of disappeared.”
Aeldryc’s thumb moved once across my ankle, a slow deliberate press, and then went still. His grip was snug and oddly reassuring.
“Can you—” my voice cracked, and I tried again. “Would you just hold me? For a minute. I know you’re not a hugger, I know you’re like, Captain Stern McStoicface, but I really need someone to—”
He was on the bed before I finished the sentence.
I don’t know how he moved that fast, but he was pulling me against him, one arm around my back and the other cradling the back of my head, and I was pressed against his chest. My cheek was against the leather of his armor, and I was shaking. It was the first time anyone had comforted me in so long that I couldn’t remember the last time. A sob slipped from my lips, and his arms tightened around my waist.
This time the emotions hit harder, and he pulled me closer against his chest and didn’t let go. He was solid and warm and immovable, like a wall that had decided to be kind, and I pressed my face into the hollow of his throat and breathed in leather and iron and slowly the shaking eased.
I pulled back enough to see his face.
His eyes were on mine: violet, dark, and so close I could see the silver flecks in them that I’d missed before. His jaw was tight. His breathing was careful, measured, the kind of breathing youdid when you were controlling something. His hand was still on the back of my head, fingers threaded into my hair.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
