reignfall | 𝔣𝔬𝔯 𝔟𝔬𝔯𝔫𝔱𝔬𝔯𝔢𝔦𝔤𝔫.

𝔣𝔬𝔯 𝔟𝔬𝔯𝔫𝔱𝔬𝔯𝔢𝔦𝔤𝔫.

In spite of all her terrible fears, it really does seem as though it was naught but the common fever, which had struck her young son. Joffrey Zarek had never known a day's suffering, however, not a lack of rest nor a hint of true hunger, and though he is but few turns away from his third nameday, encroaching upon them in the second month of the year, the disease passed by him quickly. It is the fourth day now, and his appetite was ferocious when she had broken her fast with him on honeyed bread and fruit, he was eagerly chasing a cat he had spotted right thereafter, and only during their walk in the open air did any sort of fatigue catch him. Awake he remained for the waterfalls and his spotting of a large bird of prey, though he was solidly asleep in her arms soon enough on their way back. Before she set him down in his bed, she felt his forehead for the umpteenth time, but it is as the healer had assured her: he is well once more, even the cough is gone.

Relieved, she leaves the boy to his afternoon nap, and goes again to find her husband. Gone had he been in the earliest hours of morning, as was his usual way, though it is strange that he not even been present to ignore her request to join her and their son for their morning meal, nor has she seen hide nor hair of him since.

She finds him in his study, in the end, and it does not take more than a look for her to know what has befallen him. There is a glaze to his otherwise so sharp eyes, a pallor to his skin, dark rings beneath his eyes. The lips dry and cracked, his breath the lightest rasp. "My emperor." She inclines her head, though she is trying fast to suppress a hint of mirth. "If you would excuse me for another moment?"

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"If you were at least like a child about it. Your son had no trouble lying himself back down when I told him to, and see how swift he's recovered." There are numerous things she has come to expect of him: whip-sharp observations, a keen knowledge of those around him, even those he has barely met at all. Violence, yes, and no hesitation before a swift betrayal, too. And he still surprises her, whether it is by making just a sliver of space for Joffrey in the tight-woven fabric of his life or by knowing her darkest secret, and having kept it for years. And still... she had not expected, on this day or any other, to see him truly afraid.

"You have not told me much of him one way or the other." She fixes a cushion for herself to lean against, having set her cup down on the bedside table with a look of disgust for the sage brew inside. "The most you have spoken of him was before you had his portrait removed from Joff's nursery."

There is another remark on the tip of her tongue – something to do with his own faithlessness, which seems surprising now considering what killed his father. Yet this is a tender subject, and she is unwilling to bring it up now that he's revealed himself to know all there is to know of her own extramarital affair.

"My son," Casimir retorts, with a heavy edge of disdain, "is not Emperor." Yet. He must remember the yet. He must remember, too, the inevitable passage of how that yet will come to be. Joffrey is his assassin-in-waiting, the looming reminder of an end. He is glad, even so, that it will not be a fever that kills the child. It will not be a fever that kills him, either. "He has no reason not to lie down. He has no work to be dragged away from."

As though that were the point. He knows it is not the point. He knows, if he is honest with himself, that the reason he will not lie down is that he is afraid: of wasted time, of lost strength, of death that doesn't even have the decency to offer him a fight.

He is not honest with himself. He remains where he is, letting his head fall back against the heavy wood of the headboard, and looks up at the carved crest overhead. A long, slow exhale. His chest aches.

"As for Gostislav, there is no reason to say much. He was a stupid man, a bad king, and a failure, and he left no legacy to speak of. But none of it is a secret. There, now I've told you everything worth knowing about the man."

"You are not saving time, and you well know it. Fine, though, force yourself to sit and work, it is not my lungs the sickness will take fierce root in." Considering, however, that she remains seated right there... It is almost as though she does not mean to let him leave his bed so easily. Stubbornness is a trait they share, and one they each hold an abundance of. And unlike him, she feels refreshed and ready to battle this out.

She takes a stray cushion, fluffs it and places it to his side – hardly an invitation. The way he sinks against the wood weighs heavy on her chest, though, with some relief, she notes it is not so terrible a feeling as when Joffrey had coughed, or when she had touched the boy's forehead and found it scalding. It isn't nothing, either. When has she turned foolish enough to want him hale and whole?

"Had he not care for you?" Why she asks so boldly is anyone's guess, but the closest one could come to the truth might be that the notion surprises her. Her mother might have forced Jaime to vacate their shared room, but she also recalls in great detail her embrace, her voice, and the tales she'd told them both. Her father might have been ready to sell her to a foreign emperor drenched in blood, but he'd promised her when she was just a few years older than Joff that he would make her queen, and he did. He had smiled at her, when she had known the correct answer to a question he posed her. There was more than the obvious.

He gives her a look of withering scorn, which is somehow made more impactful, not less, by the slight difficulty he has keeping focus.

"He hated me." There is, in the end, remarkably little resentment in his tone. This, more than anything else he has said about his father, has the ring of a simply-stated fact - which, after all, it is. There may have been instabilities and uncertainties in his upbringing, but if there was one thing he knew he could count on as a child, it was that. "He would have smothered me in my cradle, except he was too stupid to keep any other heir. Though the sky above knows he must have fathered dozens of them." Then, as though it is only occurring to him now, "Then again, they would probably have been syphilitic halfwits, too."

Very rarely does his scorn chase her away, and very rarely has this ended well for her. Yet if she were to flee now at the sight of that glare, when he is so obviously sick – how weak would that make her? There is nothing he could throw at her, he could do to her, that she could not handle, as she so often insists. This must hold true now more than ever.

Her eyes widen just a tad at the revelation that his father truly held no love for him. It makes all the more present in her mind those moments that he has shown care for Joff, perhaps some days in spite of himself. He names him his own, she has observed him speak to the boy of matters of state he did not yet understand, and he had borne, too, the boy's insistence of sharing with them tales of his playing, more rapidly by the day in the Common Tongue and in Vasi. He had been concerned with his health, too. Not to the point of fretting, sleepless nights, the way the boy's first ever sickness had left Cersei, but... uncaring he was not. Hateful least of all. She looks as though she means to say something in response –

But what he says next has her furrow her brow. How come, if his father was so riddled with the disease, and with Casimir suspecting any bastard-brothers of his would share it... How come her husband shows no such signs at all? "How odd."

This seems more than enough voice given to her sudden urge to question his parentage, and she means to suffocate the thought at once. "All the better he is dead."

He laughs, and if the comment on his father's hate was curiously absent of bitterness, the same cannot be said of that laugh. Without the softening of conscious care, it is a bleak sound indeed.

"All the better," he echoes, a mocking agreement. One of us had to be, he thinks. And that thought is fever-tinged, and again, he thinks of the movement he imagined in the shadows, the gleam of light on metal. He wonders, for the first time in many years, whether when death comes it will wear his father's face. When the darkness does take him, will there be a glint of silver?

His laugh dies away, and he is silent, staring glassy-eyed up at the canopy. At last, slowly, he raises his head to look at her.

"Pour me more tea." Whether the sage will help, he cannot say. Nor will he allow himself to admit that he is thinking of its curative properties; it soothes his throat, that is all. He is not afraid of what will come. He has never feared death before; why would he fear it now? "Pour more tea, and put another log on the fire. I will sweat this out."

"He was wrong to hate you," she says as she rises, steady in the face of that unnerving laugh, and in lieu of something spiteful in response to his one reasonable request in the face of sickness. It soothes her ego to think of it as a request – all the more so because she is not sure how quick he would be to stop her, if she strode out of the room with her head held high.

She takes the mug from his bedside and pours his requested tea, though this time, she does not ask whether he desires a touch of honey. It will simply be added to the finished brew, though she gives it a moment to sit as she feeds and stokes the fire. Normally, these base tasks she would only consider to do for Joff, and it irks her that she feels enough in the face of his dance with illness to do it for him. It seems the sort of thing she can only hope to live down because he will not wish to speak of it again.

Soon enough, she delivers the honeyed tea to him, though at least she does not, as she did with her son, inform him that it is hot and must be drank with care. To her shame, however, she sorts through the furs on her side of the bed, and chooses an especially warm one to unearth for his consideration.

Casimir laughs again at that, although it is a little less hollow this time, and sounds a little more like himself - albeit weaker, less full-throated.

"He was right," he says, as he takes the mug from her. "He was right to hate me, and he was right to fear me. I would have killed him myself, if he had only lived another year or two, and the realm would have thanked me for it." And, in his fantasies of that matter, they would have feared him then from the first. How much trouble might have been spared, if only they had taken him seriously as soon as he was king!

But then he would not have had to grow so hard and so strong, and he might not be the man he is today. Perhaps it was for the best, after all.

He raises an eyebrow as she picks out a fur. There must, he thinks, be some ulterior motive in her solicitousness, and it troubles him that he cannot spot it. "Besides, even if I had been a docile lamb, he would have hated me. He hated my mother, too."

"What did he hate her for?" It bears consideration that the thing which sees him speaking of Joffrey as his future murdered is rooted in the hatred between father and son, fuelled, no doubt, by the twisted, sick man. That Casimir, having lived, is eager to perpetuate it does not surprise her either – isn't this what had been Tyrion's demise? Even a remote threat, an unlikely one, must be eliminated.

This will not, she swears, be the case for their son.

For a moment, she holds the fur, undecided whether her foolishness has ever gone further beyond bounds, and then she makes to cover him with it, mindful of the cup he holds, from chest to legs. It is one of her favoured furs for its warmth, surely her scent must cling to it. "The heat will drive out the sickness."

Under normal conditions, he would snap at her again, remind her that this is something he himself said only a few moments ago - that he does not need to be told that sickness must be sweated out, that he knows as well as she does how to fight illness. But, perhaps just as well for the remnants of his dignity, he is distracted by memory, and all he offers by way of retort is an irritable grunt, his itching eyes closing for a moment. He will not think, either, about how long that moment might be.

"She was clever," he says, at last. "I should think that was it. I never knew her, but she was clever enough to survive his anger and do as she pleased." His eyes open, heavy-lidded and puffy, and fix on her with something that - perhaps only through the muddling of fever - nearly resembles fondness. "I imagine she must have been not unlike you."

It is one thing to see him ill, it is another to watch him close his eyes, and for them remain closed like this in her conscious presence. She can count on one hand the times she has seen him asleep in all their years of marriage, and usually whatever minuscule shift suggests she might be awake jolts him to waking in turn. If he were to come to this same conclusion, she doubts even sickness could keep him from raging fury, and she is grateful for the subject that consumes him.

She is less grateful for that look of fondness. Where she is supposed to store it, which reasonable compartment left accessible to her can hold the potential of a care from his side? It is ever best if such things are hidden, and it is bad enough that she fails at hiding them right now so thoroughly. There is an armoury in what he says, she thinks, in that comparison to his unknown mother and the traits they imply that he values. There is a host of other information, too, foremost the thing she has suspected the moment he had born confused witness to her fretting at Joff's bedside: he does not remember much, if anything, of a mother's care for her son.

The urge to run her hand through his hair in the same fashion that she had stroked Joff's sweat-strained gold from his forehead has a strong hold on her for a moment, but in the end, she settles for something saner. She settles, in fact, beside him, as she often does at night. The past week's sleepless nights are catching up on her, perhaps, and could anyone fault her? She had been beside herself with fear for her son, and sleep had only found her during his quietest hours sometime mid-morning, when she'd sunk into a proper bed for a few frightful hours of sleep. Those were made harder by the way she prefers to sleep in company, to share her bed with a warm body, something impossible with a husband who rises before the sun does most days.

Yes, it is only that missing sleep she means to catch up on now, and she is not offering a physical reassurance in his sickness, nor does she take comfort in being so close to him. Most all she can feel of him is furs now either way. "Cleverness would explain what laid the root for your own mind. It cannot have been the fool father you nearly killed."

Would he truly have, as a child? She doubts it well, but he need not know it.

"Would you have liked to know her?"

If he were in a better state, if he were fully himself, he would answer her curtly: What does it matter what I would have liked? What is, is. He has never been one to dwell on the past - at least, not in waking hours.

But this is not precisely waking hours, as is belied by the way he sinks down against the pillows as he finishes his tea, giving her a bleary and only slightly baleful look as she settles beside him. He is not asleep, but nor is he fully awake - a rare middle-ground for a man who has trained himself to go from sleep to full alertness in an instant.

"I would have liked to know who she was." His accent is stronger than it usually is, and his voice burred a little at the edges. His frown has deepened; he clutches the empty cup between his hands, surprisingly tightly. Painfully tightly, for how his fingers tremble. The knuckles are white. It is as though he is trying to anchor himself on this, of all things. "I used to wonder... but I was a child then." Perhaps it is working, that strange anchor; for a moment, he seems to draw back to himself a little. "I thought I needed her. If she had lived, everything would have been well. But it would not have been; it would have been worse."

He might break the cup, she thinks, somewhere in his affected state. He might break the cup, and he'll cut himself on the shards as he does, and he won't like that she already knows she would mean to bandage his hand herself. With Joff, this had been a dance onto itself as well – less so with her son, who some might call spoiled, and who had wept and protested as any child would, until the fever had lain him lower, and then he had not minded the cold cloths, the gentle holding. Half she had expected Casimir would glower at the amount of healers she'd called, or berate her for reading story upon story to the boy to soothe him. Instead, and much to her consummate surprise, he had appeared an unusual amount himself. She reckons Joff would not protest another bout with the fever for it alone.

But she knows well enough that Casimir had not taken lightly to whatever has taken root in his heart.

"This is why I wanted Tyrion dead." That, and the prophecy. "Not knowing what it would have been like to have her around."

Would Joanna have sold her to an emperor as readily as Tywin had? She does not doubt it; she does not quite want to think too hard about the alternatives. Changes would imply another life, when she has grown so... content with this one. She reaches up to touch his hand, to offer him something else to crush that won't leave him injured so easily. Stupid, the very impulse is stupid, but she knows she won't find it so silly when he can hold neither quill nor dagger. If he takes a cold with so little grace, he will not take such an injury with any more. "I know you never needed anyone. But the curiosity is natural."

It is the same impulse she sees when Joff asks her if his father will come see the geese after all.

He never needed anyone. It is true. He has needed things from people, has relied on their loyalty or their avarice or their stupidity many times; he is not foolish enough to think that he can stand truly on his own, hated by everyone. He tried that, once. But he needs what they can give him, nothing more or less; and there is nobody in the world who cannot be replaced in his plans. He never needed anyone.

He does not, however, bat her hand away, although he doesn't take it, either. "What does Tyrion have to do with it? Killing him would not have brought her back. Even as a child, you must have known that." He contrives, even in his current state, to offer a remarkable amount of scorn in so few words. As though similar thoughts had never occurred to him: as though his hatred for his father had not been deepened by the suspicion that more could have been done. Killing Gostislav would not have undone any of the evils of his reign, either, but it would have been deeply satisfying. Killing his mother's nameless lover might have had the same effect, he has sometimes considered.

A muscle jumps in his neck, and he presses his lips more tightly together, against the persistent unsteadiness that plagues him today. "Besides, it is hardly the same. You knew your mother a while, and your father gave a shit about her. It's a different situation."

"Of course it is a different situation," she snaps, irked at last by his scorn, and pulls her hand away. Strangely enough, she remains settled next to him, still curled as close as furs will permit her to be. Arguing with him is, though often harrowing and bordering on the suicidal, more familiar ground than showing an open and earnest care for his well-being. "I don't have a wealth of memories, either."

"Which is why I insist so much on your spending time with Joffrey. He deserves to know his father." In more detail than either of them can boast of at least one parent, though, if she were honest, she has at least always had Tywin. Tywin, who had not let her forget that she was born somewhat defective by virtue of her sex, but who was, nonetheless, someone to live up to. Never mind that she now held a title so far out of his reach it made much of her previous yearning to impress him a little funny. "As you said, vengeance alone would not make up for what he might otherwise miss."

"I don't know what you expect of me," he grumbles, looking at her askance. There is - though he would never admit to it - something almost petulant in his tone, as though he is stung by her words. "The way you talk, I think you would need three husbands at least: one to fuss over you, one to fuss over the boy, and one to rule. All that, and you would still have me stop and crawl into bed every time I sniffle."

True, this is noticeably more than a sniffle, but that is hardly the point. She does spend far too much of their marriage, in his estimation, trying to cajole him to rest, or to fuck, or to otherwise make time for her - as though he does not already spend a disproportionate amount of his free time between her and the boy.

"I spend plenty of time with him."

"Are you not more than most men?" She seems offended by the implication that she might be too demanding of him – seeing how she often wishes to demand significantly more. For him to sleep longer, for instance, so that her own rest is undisturbed and free of any nightly concerns that could otherwise rouse her. More frequently shared meals, that would be quite lovely, frequent letters while he is off to war, especially with Joff now being old enough to question his father's absence next time. "You cannot tell me that you were well enough to do a day's worth of work in your state. And I have yet to hear you complain about a thing I do when you join me in our bed."

Her hand now rests where his chest would be, were he not absolutely covered in furs, and like this, is almost as if she is embracing him as she is laid down by his side. She cannot truthfully say what still makes for a markable difference between a casual, shared lie-down and a caring embrace in this situation, but she chooses to turn a blind eye to this. "More when he was ill, I know. And I know it eased his heart. And I know he is only getting to be the age where he can begin to listen to your instructions, but still... This will determine what sort of man he becomes. This is why it is so important that he sees and knows you."

"I could be the greatest man who ever lived, and there would still only be twenty-four hours in the day." Again, there is that bristling in his tone, a resentment that it should even be questioned. He is, he is proud enough to believe, more than most men - but only in will and vigour, not in the ability to make an hour longer than its minutes. Does she suppose, his tone demands, that he is not using his time well enough? That he has time to waste? It is almost an admission of weakness - but, no. No, it is simple fact. No man, surely, could do more with the time he is given than Casimir has done?

(But the time is short, and growing shorter, and there is more you could do. There is always more you could do. Does she think her comfort is so much more important to him than his power?)

He sighs, a hoarse and scoffing sound that turns into a cough. "He will determine what sort of man he becomes. Not me, and not you."

"And there will be more days if you allow yourself to rest and recuperate. You are more than enough –" Too close and too quick has this etched towards an honesty they cannot handle between themselves. What would she want his company for, after all, if they are not fucking or plotting? The sentence has become too dangerous to finish, too close to implying that she cares beyond what serves her, and closer yet to admitting that she not only cares, but, in her way, longs for him.

The subject of Joffrey is an easier one, for at least here, they have a common goal. Their son will not be weak, nor will he be killed before his time, lest he provokes his father's more defensive responses. He will be well, and ruling. "We determine the values he learns at this age, and the memories he carries into his adulthood. What he does with them is his to determine, though, you are right."

It is as well, perhaps, that he is sinking so inexorably towards sleep (whether he wants to or not), and that he feels so leaden in his limbs and so muddy in his thoughts. It is as well, because even under those circumstances, there is an alarming lurch in the pit of his chest at that hastily cut-off admission, at what it might mean. What conspiracy is she working, that calls for that kind of open near-compliment? What does she stand to gain by his resting, except that it will loosen his grip on his power? And, worst of all: why do those questions feel like they ring so hollow, as though he already knows that she did not, after all, say it as part of some grander campaign against him?

He cannot feel her hand on his chest, not through the furs. Even so, he finds himself strangely aware of it, and of his own disinclination to move it.

"Then we must both be careful not to coddle him too much." His voice lacks its usual sharpness. "Or he will learn to value that, and in adulthood, no-one will be so gentle with him."

Strange it is every time that she is awake enough still to note when he himself is winding down to rest. Most frequently, she is the one to fall asleep first, to wake only when he rises, and then only to stir to a different sleeping position that does not rely on him for her being comfortable. To be here now, as sleep steadily claims him, is almost too much of an intimacy between them – and perhaps it is for the best that she can feel the need for a brief respite nudging at her own self in turn. She shifts deeper under her own furs, sharing but the uppermost one of his, so when her hand rests on his chest the second time, there is one less fur between them – but surely, it makes no difference, layered as he is.

"He will value family, for he has one to value." Unlike Casimir, she does not say, but what father was there to look up to? None. The mother, mayhaps, if it is not wishful thinking on his part, but Joffrey need never suffer such insecurity. She yawns, nuzzles closer to him. There is another thing to debate, of course, for even he, mighty Casimir, has someone here in this moment who is gentle with him, and why should their son be denied? But he seems disinclined towards the admission, and Cersei herself knows too great a risk when she sees it.

He does not push her away. He can tell himself, will no doubt tell himself, that it is down to the heaviness of his limbs and that uncomfortable knowledge that he must, after all, rest to restore himself as soon as possible to fighting condition. He can tell himself that he feels no comfort in her closeness, that there is no part of him that turns towards the weight of her body against the furs; he can tell himself, too, that if he did, it would only be a kind of habituation, for they have in the past few years slept beside one another more often than not. He can tell himself many things. He has always been a consummate liar.

What he cannot do is stifle his own answering yawn, or resist the urge to let his eyes close again and remain closed. Nor is he master enough of his own body, in this moment, to keep it from shifting a little closer still, until her breath brushes cool against his fevered cheek. He cannot dwell too much on it, except to think that perhaps, if he is fortunate, they will both have forgotten such small lapses by the morrow.

"What a man values," he warns, in a voice made less stern by the yawn half-stifled beneath it, "is what will kill him. What he loves. Why do you think I love nothing but victory?"

But victory is cold and as empty as a ringing bell, and she is warm, and he has found himself strangely at peace here in that warmth.

Will a death in the name of victory feel grander than one in the name of a lesser value? She fancies a death in her own bed, falling asleep peacefully in a nest of gilded accomplishments, resting rich at the heart of an empire. It need not be blades, or a slow chocking. It is either this or a death found side by side with her twin, as their fealty goes, but it is evident Casimir has no taste for such things, not even when taken so harshly by sickness.

Now, though, he has come as close to holding her as he ever will, and she is nestled as comfortably as she ever does with him, and she cannot dwell too much on his voice and the word loves. He loves not. This is what she needs to keep her eyes on. "Then what is the difference? If they call kill the same. I won't let him be poisoned by love."

But he is so close to her, and she is tired, and she knows he will not open his eyes again for anything now, so why hide a contended smile at his closeness?

Hours later she awakens, at least three must have come by judging the change in the light, and rare as ever, she wakes first. There is sweat at his forehead, he is gleaming with it, and the room has gone cold with the diminishing of the fire. Not him, though: he is radiating a sick, feverish heat. Slowly, gently, she extracts herself from the furs, and pads over stiffly to the hearth, stoking it once again. Next, she finds the water, a cloth that she may wet for her task, and as she returns, she already begins her speaking. It will not do to wake him tenderly, and it will not do to startle him, either. She has no doubt that he can yet wield a knife. "You are burning, the fever is driving the sickness out of you." Softly, she sits down on his side of the bed. "I'll cool your forehead."

Joff, at least, had appreciated it, and she takes the cool, wet cloth to his heated skin with the same gentle care he had seen used on their boy.

He hardly stirs when she moves, and he hardly stirs when she speaks. It is so rare that he fully gives himself over to sleep, to anything so vulnerable as oblivion, that he struggles to wake at all, his body clinging to what it has so often been denied. If it were not for the heat of his body and the loud rasp of his breath against a swollen throat, he might easily be mistaken for a dead man, so still and peacefully has he slept.

Even when the cloth is laid against his brow, he does not fully surface: he only rises out of the depths of oblivion into the shallower waters of half-dreaming. He moves sluggishly to find the knife beneath his pillow, but does not draw it. The familiar smoothness of its bone handle is enough to comfort his half-waking mind, and his body feels so heavy, so entirely immovable. Besides, the cool caress of the cloth is not unpleasant in the slightest, and he does not, in his addled state, particularly want to push it away.

He mumbles - in Vasi, garbled with sleep - something he will not remember. Death makes hands cold, Mother. Stirs a little, his hand still clasping the knife beneath his pillow, to turn towards her touch and the weight that shifts the mattress beneath him. Surfaces a little further, still clinging to dreams. In sleep, his face has a different caste, slackened and almost gentle despite the feverish glow; as he rises towards the sharp-edged wakefulness that he so rarely releases, his features harden a little, draw back to their usual sardonic look. At last, fully half a minute since she spoke, one eye opens, bleary with sleep and not fully focused.

"Gold." It is mumbled, too, and he still is not entirely confident which language he speaks, but fortunately, his unconscious mind seems to have settled on Westerosi. His brow furrows beneath the cloth, and his tone is that of a man trying to draw together the disparate pieces of a thought. "Your hair. Gold."

They may not share even a droplet of blood, but the way he reaches for the knife beneath his pillow is remarkably akin to Joff reaching for one of the toys he insists on taking to bed. The same seeking of a routine comfort, of a familiar shape it is, and as so often, she does not know what to do with the similarities once she notes them. If she could at least mislike this, find notable reason to see that her boy does not grow into those self-same habits –– but there is nothing wrong, in her mind, with a man preparing himself for some evil to come.

Never has she seen him so heavy with sleep, or so accepting of a gesture some might quantify among tenderness of all things. He mutters something, and she does not cease the gentle motion with which she touches the cloth to his forehead. Vasi is not her greatest strength, but she has learned and is learning still. Here and now, she does not understand all: he mumbling, and she is unprepared. But her boy is raised to speak two tongues, and she understands best of all clumsy-tongued needs. Cold, for instance. And mother.

The latter, at least, is a surprise, and it does frighten her, coming from him. Is he so sick that he must ask for his mother? Men have died of all sorts of afflictions that looked, at first, conquerable.

"Yes," she answers, for once kind enough to speak his own tongue to him, her halting Vasi, which has seen far worse days than this one, but could stand betterment. "Gold." It seems struggle enough for him to speak, though his features have sharpened into some form of waking. Why she makes this attempt to please him now, she cannot say. "You need more sleep to heal."

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