The words come out flat, certain. He does not whisper them. He says them in a voice that is quiet but carries the weight of absolute conviction.
Delia's eyes sharpen. She waits.
"But I don't have enough evidence yet to bring him to justice."
Delia grips his arm, her fingers strong, pressing through the fabric of his tunic with an urgency that matches her voice. "Whatever you need from me, you have my support. My husband, my household, my name, all of it. Use it."
Evran looks at her, this woman who opened her home to four clans and fed them and housed them and kept the peace, who has spent fifteen years building something fragile and precious and is watching someone try to tear it apart. Her dark eyes are fierce, her jaw set, and she is not asking him to explain or justify or prove anything. She is sayingI believe you, and I am with you,and the trust in that declaration lands in his chest and stays there.
He reaches out and embraces her. It is sudden and graceless, his arms around her shoulders, his face against the side of her head, and she holds him back, tight and brief, the embrace of two people who do not have time for comfort but are taking it anyway.
"Thank you," he says, pulling back. "I have to go to him."
"The medical wing. Eastern corridor, ground floor."
Evran is out the door before she finishes the sentence.
He runs.
He runs through the corridors of the Keep with a disregard for dignity that would have horrified him a week ago and currently means nothing. His boots slap against stone. Retainers press themselves against the walls as he passes. A guard at a junction calls out, asking if he needs help, and Evran does not stop, does not answer, just runs.
The medical wing is at the end of the eastern corridor, behind a heavy door that swings open at his push. The room beyond is long and well-lit, with windows along one wall and rows of beds along the other, most of them empty. The air smells of herbs and salve and the sharp, clean scent of something astringent.
Vaike is at the far end, shirtless on an examination table, looking surly.
The sight of him, alive, upright, scowling, sends a wave of relief through Evran so powerful it nearly takes him off his feet. He grabs the doorframe for one steadying breath, then crosses the room at a pace that is just short of running.
Vaike's expression is unamused in a way that means he is in pain and annoyed about it and refusing to acknowledge either thing. His jaw is set, his brow furrowed, his dark eyes radiating a controlled displeasure that is aimed not at any individual but at the general concept of being injured and the subsequent indignity of being treated for it.
The medic attending him is a slender man with thin lips and wire-framed spectacles who has long since lost the capacity to be intimidated by warriors, up to and including Warlords. He is applying salve to a bruise that spreads across Vaike's left shoulder and down his upper arm, a vicious thing, dark purple at the center and greenish-yellow at the edges, the mark of massive blunt force applied to vulnerable tissue.
Evran reaches his side. His hands find Vaike's forearm, the uninjured one, and grip it.
"I'm fine," Vaike says immediately.
"You do not look fine." Evran's voice is thin, his eyes moving over Vaike's body with the desperate, cataloguing urgency of confirming that all the pieces are still in place. The shoulder. The bruise. And then the gash on his temple.
It is stitched up neatly, five small, precise sutures closing a wound that must have been bleeding freely when it was fresh. The skin around it is swollen and discolored, a darker purple-red against the brown of Vaike's skin, and the stitches are black thread that stands out starkly against the wound.
"You look as though you got trampled by a horse," Evran says.
The medic looks up from his work with an expression that manages to convey vindication and exasperation simultaneously. "That is exactly what happened," he says, his thin voice clipped and precise. "And he is lucky the horse missed anything vital. The shoulder needs to be rested for at least a week. No lifting. No training." He pauses, his spectacles flashing as he fixes Vaike with a look that says he has dealt with enough Warlords to know this next part will be ignored. "He should definitely not be doing anything as reckless as swinging a sword."
Evran fixes Vaike with a look.
Vaike gives him a look right back, defiant, a lifetime of swinging swords behind him and no intention of stopping because a medic with spectacles told him to. His eyes hold Evran's, steady and challenging, and the message is clear:I will not be coddled.
Evran does not argue, not here, not now, not in front of the medic. He will argue later, in private, in a voice that does not carry and with an expression that Vaike cannot dismiss. For now he simply holds Vaike's forearm and looks at the bruise and thestitches and the general state of his husband and files it all away under things he is going to lose sleep over.
"The gash on his temple," the medic says, moving to examine it with a practiced eye and a gentle fingertip that Vaike endures while suppressing the urge to bite. "That was from the boulder that stopped his fall. He's fortunate it caught his head and not his neck. A few inches lower and we'd be having a very different conversation."
Vaike makes a sound that might be thank you or might be stop talking, and it is difficult to tell, as his jaw is so tightly clenched that individual words are not making it out.
"A boulder stopped your fall," Evran says flatly.
"The medic's bedside manner leaves a lot to be desired," Vaike says, to no one in particular.
"His bedside manner is the least of your problems right now."
