Page 6 of Zenith Tower

The relief left her face so quickly that I felt the loss of it through the bond.

She sat up and reached for her dress. I helped her find the hooks she couldn’t reach, fastening them with hands that had begun to steady.

“I should go,” she said.

I finished the last hook and rested my hand briefly between her shoulder blades.

“I’ll come in a little while.”

She nodded and pulled on her coat. Her hand tightened around the latch before she opened the door.

The door closed behind her.

I sat on the edge of the bed and listened to her footsteps cross the short corridor. Then I dressed and gave her a little time before I followed.

Astra

My room was colder than Caspian’s.

I shut the door and stood with my back against it, still wearing my coat. My skin held his warmth beneath the dress, and my legs had not entirely remembered how to be steady. For a moment I let myself stay there with my eyes closed.

Then Kieran laughed.

The sound was weak and quickly cut off. Hale answered him, his voice too low for me to make out the words.

I opened my eyes.

The sound had come through the door, not the wall. I opened it a few inches. Kieran’s room stood diagonally across the short corridor, its door ajar. Caspian’s closed door was beside it. Hale spoke again, and this time I heard the scrape of a cup and Kieran’s uneven exhale afterward.

If I could hear them this clearly, they could have heard us.

Heat rose into my face. The bedframe scraping across Caspian’s floor. My voice. His.

I sat on the edge of my bed and pulled my coat tighteraround me. I wasn’t sorry I had gone to Caspian. I could still feel the reason for it in the slowing beat of my heart and the relief that had settled into my body. But while I had been with him, Hale had been across the corridor keeping Kieran upright.

Kieran coughed. The sound ended in a sharp breath that made the green-gold line ache along my wrist.

I stood at once and crossed the corridor. None of our doors locked, and apparently Hale had stopped pretending a closed one offered privacy. I pushed Kieran’s wider.

Kieran was propped against the headboard with his shirt open at the throat and a blanket pulled to his waist. The color along his cheekbones was too bright. Damp hair clung to his forehead. Hale sat beside him on the edge of the bed, one hand around Kieran’s wrist and the other holding a cup.

A shallow basin had been set on the floor. A cloth floated in water that had already gone cloudy with green.

Hale looked up. His sleeves were rolled above his elbows, leaving the rain-dark lines of his Mark uncovered. He did not pull them down.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Nothing new,” Kieran said. He sounded breathless. “I’m being watered like a kitchen garden.”

Hale kept his fingers against Kieran’s pulse. “He tried to stand.”

“I wanted to look in the basin.”

“You almost fell into the basin.”

“Move over,” I said.

Hale shifted without argument. I sat on Kieran’s other side and put one arm behind his back so he could lean against me. Heat came through his shirt. It frightened me more than the cold of his fingers had in the tunnel.