AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Fiore felt only too happy to indulge him, though he couldn’t suppress a smirk as he replied, “Enzo.”
Enzo clasped his hand with a contented smile.
“The duke told me you were out of danger,” Fiore confessed. “Do you feel so?”
“Better than I was, certainly.” Enzo’s throaty chuckle became a cough. Not a hacking one, and the attack didn’t last very long. Still, it was enough to unnerve Fiore.
“Don’t let me overtire you,” he began, but Enzo waved him off.
“What tires me is boredom,” Enzo croaked. “You’re the best cure I could hope for.”
Fiore had been called many prettier and more flattering things in the past. Yet this simple proclamation nonetheless fluttered pleasantly in his heart. “What happened? The duke said something about a hunting accident.”
Enzo nodded, stifling another cough. “My own hubris. A stag went after Vittorio. So I leapt between them and, well…” He moved to draw back his bedclothes. “Would you care to see?”
Fiore, never before permitted to see more than scraps of Enzo’s nude form and eager to behold anything further Enzo deigned to show him, nodded.
With Fiore’s assistance, Enzo drew the bedclothes down to his waist, revealing a swathe of clean white linen pulled tight ‘round his ribcage and secured over the left shoulder. Nothing seemed to have bled through, at least not that Fiore could see, which he took as a good sign.
“There.” Enzo pressed two fingers against a particular point on his chest with a wince. “The antler gored me between the ribs.”
To Fiore’s untrained eye it seemed as though it’d missed his heart by mere inches, if that. Fiore’s own heart shot into his throat. He swallowed it down and tried all the while not to appear even half so unnerved as he felt.
“So the lung is punctured.” Enzo let the bedclothes fall back into place with a weary sigh. “And it collapses. And no sooner is it restored than pneumonia sets in—an infection,” he added in response to Fiore’s bewildered gaze. “So I’m left in a fever for what they tell me was three days. Finally I come out of it, and Giovanna suddenly wants to know who ‘Fiore’ is.”
Fiore smiled to hear it, though now that he knew the full extent of Enzo’s injuries, he couldn’t keep from asking, “Should you be talking quite so much?”
Enzo rolled his eyes to meet his gaze. “Are you sick of the sound of my voice?”
“Never,” Fiore declared—and in all honesty, for once. “Only I fear I might never hear it again if you injure yourself further by it.”
A self-depreciating smile wound its way up Enzo’s cheek. “Would that pain you so?”
“Terribly.” Fiore wished he could make it sound as sincere as he meant it. “It seems Vittorio owes you his life. Where is he?”
For indeed, he had proved himself a very poor friend by Fiore’s estimation if he couldn’t even attend Enzo’s sickbed.
Enzo gestured to the foot of his bed where the hound lay.
Fiore glanced to the hound, then back to Enzo, confused.
“Vittorio,” said Enzo.
The hound raised his head and thumped his tail against the bedclothes.
“Ah,” said Fiore.
“You think me foolish,” said Enzo.
“Not at all. I think you loyal, and courageous besides.”
A huff of laughter escaped Enzo—and another cough besides—but his soft smile appeared nonetheless pleased. “I’m not keeping you from any pressing business, am I?”
“You are my most pressing business,” Fiore laughed, adding, “And my pleasure.”
Too late he realized how the jest might come across. Fortunately, Enzo took it in just the sort of humor Fiore had intended. Unfortunately, his chuckle turned into a hacking cough. He recovered quick enough, as before, but it gave Fiore no less alarm.
“Perhaps I ought to go and let you catch some rest,” Fiore offered, if half-heartedly. He would tear himself from the bedside for Enzo’s sake, though he did not wish to let him out of his sight.
