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“Can you promise not to make it worse?” Emrys asked.
Merlon rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t’ve offered to attempt it in the first place if I wasn’t confident that I could improve her situation.”
“Don’t get annoyed. You’re the one who ignored the summons of your queen.”
“Not again.” Merlon groaned. “I didn’t ignore her summons. I explained why I couldn’t come immediately.”
Emrys opened his mouth to respond, but I tugged on his hand to distract him. “What do we need to begin?” I asked the healer.
“A place for you to lie comfortably while I work—preferably on a couch or a bed.” He glanced around the office. “You will need to remain still for a few hours after I finish.”
“Our bedroom should suffice.” Emrys scooped me up in his arms and glared at Merlon. “You can take the long way.” Then he stepped into the shadow of his desk, but not before I heard Merlon muttering in Elvish about annoying shadow elves.
~~~~~
Emrys
Kate fell asleep as Merlon worked. I suspected it was his doing to ease her discomfort and the nervousness she tried to deny.
Her slender fingers entwined with mine on the counterpane. Although our hands remained our only contact point throughout the whole procedure, I remained acutely aware of every hitch in her breath and the beat of her heart as the healer worked.
“How bad is it?” I asked when I sensed the shifting of Merlon’s magic, signaling that he was finishing.
“Not as bad as I feared.” He began drawing in the field he had laid over her as he worked. “Those human healers did more damage to her than the underlying illness.” He muttered something about humans being idiots.
“Not all humans.”
“True.” Retracting the last of the spell tendrils, he took a deep, slow breath. “She is as healthy as I can make her.”
“Lasting effects?” I stroked the silken skin of my wife’s wrist.
“Of the healing? Tiredness for a day or two. Of the illness? Only traumatic circumstances will trigger it now. When that happens, she might experience discomfort, but not nearly to the extremes she has experienced before.”
“Trauma such as?”
He rose, frowning at me. “Broken bones, death of a loved one, those kinds of extremes can cause relapses of symptoms. Even then, the effects will amount to headache, weakness, extra exhaustion, perhaps a fainting spell. Nothing terrible or life-threatening.”
Kate stirred in her sleep. Both of us held our breath until she settled again.
“Is she worth it?” Merlon asked with a foreign softness to his tone.
I turned to him in surprise. “What do you mean?”
He jutted his chin in Kate’s direction. “Bonding with a weaker being, trying to persuade your people to accept her as your queen, being constantly preoccupied with her wellbeing.”
“Yes.” Despite it all, she was.
Merlon appeared to consider this for a moment. “Hmm…” Then he groaned and stretched. “Unless someone else needs my expertise, I best be going.”
“Eager to get back to your work?” I asked.
He paused as his brows lowered in thought. “Yes.”
“Thank you for coming.”
Merlon nodded distractedly. “Send for me if she needs me.”
“You will come this time?”
