Most of their evenings together were spent with Ephraim reading aloud to Hull or Hull to Ephraim.They were in the midst ofThe Pickwick Papersat present; Hull’s first encounter with the work, and as for Ephraim, he’d well lost count by now.Ephraim picked up the book again and endeavoured to read as he always did whilst remaining aware of any change in his beloved’s comfort.To his own great relief, Hull seemed to relax a fraction as he narrated the comical misadventure.
The minutes stretched on.A chapter went by, then another.No bell rang down-stairs.No hoof-beats clattered up the stair.No knock resounded upon the office door.The sole interruption—well after the tea-kettle had ceased to steam—was a bitten-off groan from Hull.
Ephraim ceased his narration at once.His eyes shot up from the prose to regard his beloved.
Hull’s eyes had fallen shut.From his slouching posture, a stranger stumbling across him might assume he’d fallen into the repose of Endymion.But his breaths came ragged through his tight-clenched jaw.
Ephraim tried to take heart in how his chest rose and fell.He set the book aside and leant forward to lay his fingertips against the pulse leaping in Hull’s wrist.It came hard and fast.Ephraim wished he knew whether that meant good or ill.
“Ephraim?”Hull murmured.
Ephraim took his hand.“I’m here.”
The faint smile twitched again at the corners of his mouth.Then he furrowed his brow and licked his lips, seeming about to speak again, but ultimately relenting with a sigh.
Ephraim poured another cup of tea and brought it to his lips, slipping a hand behind his head to tilt it up.His guess as to thirst proved correct; Hull sipped greedily.The cup was drained in a moment and refilled and drained again in another.
“How long do you suppose it will take the bone-setter to arrive?”Ephraim enquired as gently as possible.
Hull shrugged and winced.“Before nightfall.Or so I hope.”
Ephraim understood the fae had magickal means which allowed them to travel unfathomable distances with great rapidity.Yet this estimation seemed both far too quick and not nearly quick enough.
Particularly as beads of sweat broke out over Hull’s brow.
Dr Hitchingham had told Ephraim how the fracture of a bone could induce a fever.That didn’t make it any less alarming to witness firsthand.Particularly as Ephraim reflected how Dr Hitchingham treated merely mortal patients.He knew not what this development might portend in one of the hidden folk.
Still, another cold compress probably wouldn’t go amiss.
The icy sweat trickling down Hullvardr’s scalp felt at odds with his fevered brow.The pain in his broken limb remained a constant—but, as one might grow accustomed to the howling of hounds after enough hours of ceaseless noise, so the searing agony had become just another part of the world, like the rattle of wagon-wheels over cobblestones and the crackling hearth-fire.Part of him felt better for having beheld the wound; now that he understood the shape of it, no longer did the possibility of worse torment him.The pain burst into something louder and brighter only when he moved his leg, and so he did not move it.His molars ground together to keep the more pitiful moans at bay.Giving voice to his pain would not change matters.He had but to wait for Grytha’s arrival.Until then he need only endure.And with seven centuries behind him, he could endure well enough.
The more pressing matter, to his mind, was how to look after Ephraim.
Hullvardr knew well that he could survive this and worse.Ephraim, however, was mortal.Far lesser wounds had carried far stronger mortals off to their demise.Small wonder that fear should remain evident in Ephraim’s crystalline gaze, though his bashful smile and industrious nature both strove to hide it.Hullvardr suspected the suggestion of a book to distract him was just as much of a relief to Ephraim.And though it worked wonders for a while—Hullvardr’s mind drifting away from his agony as his beloved’s cheerful words washed over him—his mind likewise wandered backward to the errand he’d failed not two hours hence.
His calf, clenched in pain, spasmed.It jolted his broken bone.A groan escaped him.
Ephraim glanced up sharp.In an instant the book was laid aside.His care-worn hands laid over Hullvardr’s as the latter’s nails dug furrows into the arms of his chair.
“More laudanum, I think,” Ephraim said, his voice soft but his tone carrying a far more decisive note than Hullvardr had heard from him in all their acquaintance.
Hullvardr found he agreed.But before Ephraim could arise to brew the tea—as Hullvardr ought to be doing, he the clerk to Ephraim the lawyer and more importantly he the strong elder fae to his young and delicate mortal lover—and dispense the medicine, Hullvardr forced his clenched knuckles to release their hold upon his chair and clasp Ephraim’s hand in turn as gently as he deserved.
“Forgive me,” Hullvardr forced out between clenched teeth.The two words hardly sufficed for all Ephraim deserved, but it was the best he could manage under the circumstances.
The worried furrow between Ephraim’s brows knit further in confusion.“Whatever for?”
For causing you grief.For trying your patience.For requiring you to look after me when I ought to look after you.
Aloud, Hullvardr heard himself reply, “For forgetting the book.”
Ephraim blinked.“What book?”
Hullvardr realised, belatedly, that he had explained nothing.First he had focused upon returning home, step by agonizing step, to his dear Ephraim.Then he had set his mind upon summoning Grytha—and even this he had not elaborated upon, and how bizarre it must seem to his mortal lover, to give over his letter to a wulpertinger rather than a post-box, when no such creature dwelled in London.Then his sweet and gentle Ephraim had swept over him, propping up his wounded leg with cold compresses and brewing tea and dispensing laudanum and mopping the fever-sweat from his brow and reading to him to take his thoughts away from his pain and now?—
Now, Hullvardr supposed he had better go all the way back to where the path began and he’d first gone astray.
“At the book-seller’s stall,” Hullvardr told him.“He had a copy ofRoderick Random, which I meant to purchase and bring back to you.But then there were children playing with hoop-and-stick, and —I didn’t quite see what happened, only—something startled the horses drawing the omnibus, and they reared, and there was a boy—I didn’t have a moment to think—so I ran—threw him out of the way—” It was a simple enough story.It oughtn’t have drained him so to tell it.But shivers chased each other across his skin beneath beads of frozen sweat against the furnace of his fever and his leg trembled and the break throbbed and his teeth clenched hard enough to crack and he couldn’t draw enough breath to make his speech as light and airy and sweet as it ought to be for his dear gentle Ephraim.“And I never told you, and I ought’ve done so the moment I arrived, but?—”
