Lyra Fernbrook's Arc

Chapter 13 of 18

Dorian slept through the night on the long table by the window. Lyra sat by the lamp and watched his chest rise. When dawn came, she moved him to the cot in the back room and started the work of keeping him alive. She boiled water. She changed the packing on each wound. She refilled the satchel from the jars on the shelves, tying fresh sprigs with twine when her hands stopped shaking. The first week she barely slept. She checked the stitches every few hours and hummed the mending tune under her breath while she worked. The wounds held. By the fourth day he could sit up and drink broth. By the sixth he asked for bread. She gave him small pieces and watched him chew like it cost him something. She kept the lyre on the bench by the door, within reach, its ward mark facing the window. The grove outside stayed quiet. No feathers. No black shapes in the trees. On the eighth day she helped him walk to the porch. He leaned on her the whole way and swore at the shallow step. She laughed and he laughed and then he had to sit down because laughing pulled the stitches. She brought him tea. He watched her hands on the cup and did not look away when she caught him. The second week they moved slower and closer. She walked him to the flower arches behind the herbal house each morning. Sprites drifted through the blooms and did not flee from him, which she took as a good sign. He asked about her grandmother. She told him things she had not told anyone. He told her about the forge fire the year he came to the ridge, and about the lyre the first time he had seen it, in another pair of hands. She took the last stitches out on a Tuesday. The skin under them was pink and whole. They went back to her cottage at the end of the second week. The iron wards still held on the door and windows. She lit the hearth. He sat at her table like he had been sitting there for years. Neither of them said the thing. She caught herself looking at him and looking away. He caught himself doing the same. It went on like that for six more days. On the last night of the third week she was banking the fire when he said her name. She turned. He was standing by the window with one hand flat on the sill, the way he stood when he was about to say something he had rehearsed. "I love you," he said. "I should have said it in the tower. I should have said it on the table. I'm saying it now." She crossed the room and put her hands on his face. "I love you," she said. "I have for weeks."