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Tir lay naked and unconscious, limp and unmoving but for the rise and fall of his chest. His skin was very white. His eyes stayed shut.
But he was breathing. He was alive. He was real.
“Tir,” Oliver whispered, trembling. “Tirian, I’m here, I love you, I heard you, I came back for you, I love you,” and took his hand, not knowing what else to do; took his hand, attempting to fumble warmth into cold skin, and bent over and kissed him on the lips.
Tir didn’t wake. Not a fairytale. Not a childhood puppet-play of heroes and rewards. Oliver’s heart, only now realizing the extent of this foolish hope, broke a little, but not in two, because it couldn’t, not now, not as long as Tir was breathing.
“Tir,” he said again, and then he started to cry, because Tir wouldn’t wake up but was alive, alive.
Cedric ran up as he was cradling that beloved head in his lap, and skidded to a halt and caught breath. His eyes were huge. “That’s—Oliver, he’s alive!”
“He’s asleep,” Oliver said, “of course he is, he must be so tired,” and stroked loose hair out of Tir’s face.
“That’s not possible.” Cedric came closer, staring, unnerved but overjoyed. “We looked—we looked everywhere around, we thought, you never know with magic—”
“He came back,” Ollie said. “He called me.”
Tir might’ve come back, but refused to awaken. Alive, but no responses. No reactions.
Tir continued to not awaken while Fadi arrived to check him over, while no outward injuries could be discerned, while they carefully loaded him onto a litter and turned toward home. His head rolled across the blanket with each bump in the terrain; he did not react. Oliver rode beside him desperately. Oliver held his hand and sat with him when they made camp, and tried talking to him, tried mentally calling out to him, tried dribbling water into his mouth. Nothing worked.
Oliver gazed at Fadil with stricken eyes. Their physician sighed. “I don’t know. I’m saying that a lot, I know, but I am saying it. He’s not human, Oliver.”
“You’ve seen—coma patients, head injuries—people wake up—”
“Yes, they do, they have, but I’ve never had a patient come back from the dead before!” This answer came with spread hands, a futile unsatisfied gesture. “I can tell you he checks out as healthy for him. He’s always run a bit cold compared to human people, that’s why all the coats and scarves and such, but you know that, that’s normal for him, we guessed it had something to do with the lack of proper magic down here. His heart’s sounding fine, he’s breathing fine, he’s only not awake.”
“What can I do?” He’d never known that, not precisely, about the cold.
“Truthfully, simply what you are doing, I’d think.” Fadi rubbed at the back of his neck, tired, fretting, searching for answers and a physician’s authority. He’d only been a doctor for five years, Ollie remembered. “Talk to him. Tell him he’s safe and it’s safe to come back. Tell him you’re here. Tell him, I don’t know, astrological trivia, dirty limericks, whatever you two used to talk about. Familiar things. Things he’ll recognize. He might need an anchor. Or he might not even hear you, he’s not precisely a comatose patient and I’m guessing on this one, I’m sorry. Keep him warm. Keep him hydrated, though he seems well enough so far. When we get back and I’ve got hospital equipment I can do some more extensive tests, but not on the road.”
“Okay,” Oliver said. He looked at Tir’s still face, slack mouth, eyelashes lying immobile over pale skin. “Okay.”
“I’ll write to Grandfather. He might know—the archives down South are more extensive, they may’ve had cases resembling…” Fadi looked at Tir too. “I wish I knew more. Perhaps if you found someone with more experience…”
“Is there anyone?”
“Well…not that I’ve heard of. I’m not an expert on fairy physiology, though.”
“No one is.” He held Tir’s hand. “We should change that. We should—we should found a whole new medical center. Learning about fairies. We live with them. Why haven’t we?”
“Because people are scared,” Fadi said softly. “The unfamiliar, the powerful…we might try sending messages to some Northern villages. Local healers. Herbalists. Midwives.”
Where border-crossings happened. Where many of those rumors of rain-bringers or fleet-footed racers or folk-heroes began. “I’ll send heralds out. Today.” They could spare one of Cedric’s Home Guard on the ride back. More than one.
“That’d be a help, if they know anything.” That rich earth-brown gaze held a wealth of sympathy. “Oliver…you know I’m not promising miracles. I can’t simply give you the answer you want to hear. I would if I knew it were true.”
“I know.” He did. He also knew that Tir was alive. Tir had come back this far. That truth overshadowed all the rest.
He talked to Tir, on the way home. Anything and everything he could think to say. Keeping in mind the familiar, the known. Observations about stars in the night sky. Ramblings about blueberry pie and how excited the palace cooks would be. Promises to read a whole three-volume melodramatic novel if Tir ever did write one. Elaborate recitations of favorite songs.
In darker moments he knew he was making no difference. Nothing changed.
In more optimistic moments he knew he did not care. He’d keep trying forever. If the Seeing Pool had been right one final time, then he was meant to save his True Love from one last Deadly Peril, and he was damn well not going to let the Peril win.
He told Tir that he couldn’t keep wearing Oliver’s borrowed set of clothes, the ones out of his pack, forever, so he was just going to have to wake up and get dressed once they got home.
Queen Eleuthenia was waiting at the gate when they rode up. Lights blazed; evening was sidling in, but the castle itself shone like a beacon, buzzing with life and hope and everyone from the cooks to the footmen staying awake to greet the returning party.
