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“Better than before,” said Enzo. He raised his hand to the termometro in an enquiring gesture, and only after Fiore nodded did he draw it from his lips with exceeding tenderness. Another smile flickered at the corner of his mouth as his gaze fell on the instrument. “And no worse.”
Fiore wondered what he had to do to make the termometro reading better.
Enzo merely smiled and held out his hand.
Even if Fiore weren’t weak as cobwebs, he had no choice but to take it.
Enzo slipped his other arm beneath Fiore’s shoulders and sat him upright, completing the now-familiar ritual of swinging his legs out of the bed so he might stand. Fiore took in more of the room this time, noting in particular the tapestry embroidered with a scene of a unicorn hunt, which had presumably hung over the enormous blank space on the wall by the door but now had been flung over the full-length mirror beside the wardrobe.
This time when they reached the window Enzo sat down beside him. Fiore felt his gaze upon him as he stared out over the city. He still didn’t know quite how to answer it. He knew only how Enzo cradled his hands in his own and anchored his aching heart to the soft and calming lagoon.
All too soon, however, his body wearied from the chore of holding itself upright, even with the velvet cushion beneath him and the support of the window’s marble pillars against his back. He turned to Enzo and found his dark gaze soft with something he couldn’t quite place.
“Back to bed?” Enzo murmured.
Fiore nodded and allowed Enzo to draw him up and half-carry him there.
Then, of course, intruding once again onto what little harmony Fiore could scrape together since his rescue, there came the chirurgeons. Dr Venier arrived to slice off and re-stitch the bandages ‘round his middle. Fiore submitted to this only because his Enzo remained beside him throughout.
When it came to his hand, wrists, and ankles, however, Enzo took sole charge.
It began with the unwrapping. Enzo peeled away each layer of linen from Fiore’s wrists and hand with all the soft patience of nature coaxing rose-petals to unfold from bud to bloom. After a meticulous soapy scrubbing of his own hands in the washbasin, he bathed the rope burns and the ragged stump with a cloth soaked in warm water, then patted them dry. His gentle fingertips salved the wounds, and he redressed them with fresh linens, wrapping Fiore’s wrists and knuckle firmly yet gently in the long winding bands. The tenderness of his touch throughout as he cradled Fiore’s hands in his own threatened to tear through the tight knot that’d formed in Fiore’s chest.
Then, to Fiore’s astonishment, Enzo brought Fiore’s left hand to his lips and kissed his knuckles with all the reverence of a mortal approaching the divine.
Fiore quite forgot to breathe.
Enzo lowered his hand and glanced up with a shy smile. It vanished the moment his gaze met Fiore’s face. “Have I hurt you?”
“No,” Fiore forced out; the tight knot in his chest had risen into his throat. “Why?”
Enzo hesitated, then raised his hand to Fiore’s unwounded cheek and brushed away something wet with the pad of his thumb.
Shame made Fiore’s eyes burn all the more. Another blistering tear trickled down his face.
Enzo withdrew a handkerchief from his breeches pocket and daubed at Fiore’s cheek. Then, putting the handkerchief into Fiore’s own grasp, he turned away to the nightstand and poured a glass of water from the pitcher. This, too, he gave to Fiore, supporting it as he drank.
When Fiore had polished off his second glass and scrubbed the last of his unwarranted tears from his face, Enzo slipped down the bed to examine his ankles. They had fewer abrasions than his wrists; his hose had shielded them somewhat from the ropes. Still, as Enzo slid his palm beneath Fiore’s calf and began to bend the limb, Fiore winced.
Enzo ceased at once. “It pains you?”
Fiore nodded with reluctance. “Not as bad as the rest of it.”
“Still,” said Enzo. “Where does it hurt, beyond the wounds themselves?”
“Mostly in the joints. And the lower back, as well. You’d think years on my knees would’ve inured me to it,” he added bitterly.
It at least brought a wan smile to Enzo’s lips, if only for a moment. His brow furrowed in concentration again as he experimentally slid his hand up over Fiore’s knee and the outside of his thigh to the jutting hollow of his hip. “How long did they have you tied? Forgive me,” he added quickly. “I hate to ask, but…”
“A chirurgical necessity?” Fiore enquired drily.
The wan smile flickered across Enzo’s features once more. “I’m afraid so.”
Fiore tried to remember. It was harder than it ought to have been. The whole sordid night had played out over and over again in flashes throughout his nightmares and in certain waking moments. But any specific useful detail evaded him. “They took me in the early afternoon. Slipped something into my wine. I don’t even remember disembarking from theKingfisher. I suppose they tied me up soon after. Hand-to-foot, behind my back,” he added, guessing the specific method might be helpful for Enzo’s purposes. “I woke up like that, and I didn’t get out of it until…” He paused, silenced by his own shame. “Well, until shortly before you arrived.”
Enzo wore the look of one trying very hard not to appear even half so horrified as he felt. It didn’t quite work. Still, his voice remained calm and even as he concluded, “Twelve hours, then, at the very least.”
Fiore shrugged, then winced at the ache in his shoulders. “You’d know better than I.”
