But whatever they did to him, they left something alive enough to speak in the dark. To teach a student who isn’t there. To hold the rhythm of a lesson even when the walls are wrong, and the room is locked, and nobody is listening.
Except me.
I need to find out what he was before they made him this.
Chapter 6
Sable
The key turns in the lock, and I push the door open with my shoulder, kit in one hand, basin balanced in the other.
“Morning,” I say. “It’s me.”
He doesn’t answer. He never answers. But I’ve gotten used to talking to him the way you get used to anything—through repetition, until the strangeness wears off and what’s left feels almost like companionship. I talk. He breathes.
I set the basin on the table and my kit beside it. The sedative dose is there already, capped and ready, because I am not stupid enough to enter this room without one.
He lies where I left him. Still. Sedated. Breathing in the slow, even rhythm of full protocol. Three days running. Same dose. Same schedule. No adjustments. No private judgment dressed up as clinical instinct. I have done exactly what Brenna told me to do.
The dressing first. I check the inflammation around the cut on his forearm—skin hot at the edges, but the wound is clear. I clean the site, apply fresh salve, and rewrap it.
“Greta is on the warpath this morning,” I tell him while I work. “Someone left the gate to the herb garden open, and the goats got in. She’s been muttering about it since dawn.”
I tie off the gauze and note in the journal:inner forearm, redness spread two millimeters, clean and re-dressed.
“Right.” I cap the pen and look at him. “Bath time. Lucky you.”
Every other day, I wash him. It’s the part of this work nobody talks about—the unglamorous reality of keeping an unconscious body clean. Bedpans. Linens. Damp cloths and warm water, and the methodical handling of a man who can’t handle himself. I’ve done this for other patients for years. It’s routine.
I heat the water, test the temperature against my wrist, and wring the cloth.
I pull back the blanket and unbutton his shirt.
Morning light cuts across his chest, and I keep my focus clinical. There is a procedure: face, neck, chest, arms, hands, stomach, legs. Start clean, work down. My hands know the pattern.
I start with his face. Forehead, temples, along the jaw. The stubble has grown in again; I’ll shave him later. The cloth moves down his neck, across his collarbone.
“Dara went outside yesterday,” I tell him. “Stood in the doorway for a while. Said the sun was warm.” I adjust the shirt to reach his shoulders. “She’s eating with a spoon now. Two weeks ago, she couldn’t hold a fork without shaking.”
His chest is broad and hard under the cloth. Surgical lines run parallel beneath his collarbones. Old rune sites mark his ribs in faded burns.
I wash around each one the way I always do.
Then the cloth drags along the scar along his side.
I stop.
It isn’t new. I’ve cleaned this skin before. Rolled him, checked him, noted the wound in my journal with the rest of the damage. But in the morning light, with the cloth bunched in my hand and his shirt open beneath my fingers, the line looks different.
Too slow.
Too deliberate.
Nobody wanted to work with him.
Only the worst ones.
My thumb follows the edge before I can stop it. The scar runs with the curve of his rib, not across it. Not surgical. Not functional. Someone took their time.
