“I do not need to read again.”
“You will read again because I am asking you to.”
His eyes cut to mine. There is pity in them, and I hate him for bringing it into my house. “It is curse-energy. Old, embedded, and feeding through the heart muscle. Every contraction worsens the deterioration.”
Corin opens one eye. “That sounds expensive.”
I turn on him. “Do not.”
“What? It does.”
Tovan presses two fingers to Corin’s throat, counting beneath his breath. Corin swallows, and the motion looks painful. He still tries for a smile, because he is an idiot, because he loves me, because he cannot bear a room where grief has the upper hand.
“At least,” he murmurs, “I won’t have to wash dishes.”
The joke lands nowhere.
His face twists. He coughs, and the sound rakes through him so hard his shoulders curl inward. I grip his hand. He squeezes back, but there is no strength in it. When the fit passes, his breath wheezes in and out, wet around the edges.
Tovan sits back on his heels. “Weeks,” he says.
I stare at him.
“Do not say that in my kitchen.”
“I will not soften it and leave you unprepared. Weeks at best. Less, if the curse surges again.”
Mara makes a wounded sound in the doorway.
I do not look at her. “There are treatments.”
“For wasting, yes. For ordinary curse-fever, yes. For a hex lodged this close to the heart and drawing infernal backlash through the muscle, no simple one.”
“Then give me the complicated one.”
Tovan’s mouth tightens.
“Give me the name of the temple,” I demand. “Give me the rite. Give me the price. I will pay it.”
“No temple will touch this.”
“Liar.”
His face flinches, but only a little. “Mind your tongue.”
“My brother is bleeding on the floor. My tongue can go hang.”
Corin’s fingers twitch around mine. “Sable.”
“No.” I lean closer to Tovan, every part of me shaking except my voice. “You are going to tell me who can treat him.”
“The temple healers will not risk infernal backlash for a human laborer with curse-energy in his chest. They would need to draw it out through living channels, and if that power bites back, it could burn their sanctum wards from the inside.”
“He has a name.”
“I know his name.”
“Then use it.”
