Helper

The night will be a long one. Osthryn knows this. She is hardly comfortable leaving Silovar alone in the Keep, especially with an apparent necromancer among the royal healers. Beyond that, who knows which guards or servants can be trusted?

Frederick himself did not put the silver in Silovar's wine. He must have signaled someone with that tap on Silovar's shoulder. It had to have been someone who poured for Silovar alone, since Osthryn, and as far as as she now heard from Tomas, everyone else, had no silver or any other foreign substance in their wine.

Along that line of thought, how can Tomas be trusted? Oswald and Silovar treat him more like a young family member than a servant, which means they trust him, at least. Osthryn doesn't. She does not doubt that Tomas would do nothing to harm Silovar, but how far should he be included in their speculations of what happened?

And how did he know the silver would harm her  too? Silovar knowing she is a Dragon was unavoidable, and Oswald was her rescuer. The old fear of having too many points of failure between herself and her identity begins creeping into the back of her mind -- adding to her growing anxiety.

She may not be in Bettramon, but she is in a Keep -- a fort that cannot be breached unless it is permitted. She sits in the rooms of a court mage who was targeted and poisoned, in a foreign land whose unkown customs are still a threat. The only being that reasonably stood between her and total fear of being hunted like a devil is now hunted himself. Damn his bravado and his confidence in the harmlessness of humans. Osthryn cringes at the thought, but she will not hesitate to kill them first if it means saving him.

Wait, she would kill them? Osthryn looks at Silovar lying all-too-still on the bed next to her.

He is breathing easier, and with a second round of lesion-binding, he has regained most of his movement, too. He is asleep now, still weak and exhausted from both the silver and the healing magic. He appears deceptively peaceful, but the grin that spreads across his face each time he gleefully challenges her limits sorely made its absence known in the last several hours.

Osthryn resented how their roles had reversed. She only truly appreciates it now, but he was always protecting her. He would draw her out, yet shield her. He would push her, but before it goes too far, he would catch her.

"At some point, you must give me the opportunity to catch you for a change"

Osthryn wishes those words away, as if her embarrassed jab at her vulnerability around Silovar somehow wished this situation into existence. If only she knew more. If only she were more of what she should be. She does not know what she could have done to stop this, but a part of herself accuses her.

As if detecting her thoughts, Silovar's eyes flutter open. She stares past them, not wanting to meet them. Three times today she mapped out every nerve pathway and contour of his human form, and twice while he was awake and joining his own magic with hers.
Yet, meeting his eyes now as these thoughts tumble through her mind feels too intimate.

She scolds herself for being unable to reconcile her feelings. For all four hundred years that she lived she has prided herself on her ability to suppress any affection for a mortal being. Silovar broke that shield. When he turned out to be a Dragon, that fact took her final excuse and shattered the shield with it.

It is an overwhelming thing, realising that you would kill for someone, and then admitting it to yourself.

She might be avoiding Silovar's gaze, but he is actively seeking hers. "Are you alright?" He asks, his voice barely above a whisper.

They are perfectly alone. No one questioned whether she wanted to leave Silovar's rooms. Tomas simply gave her a truly enchanted item with which to call him if she needed anything.

The pendant is long gone from its threatening perch on the mantle, Oswald having taken it with him. Likely for Martina to investigate more than safekeeping.

Tomas seems to have had further foresight than just the enchanted stone, however. Though no one formally arranged with her where she would sleep that night, the roll of a futon and blankets placed on the foot of Silovar's bed tells her that she is not alone in thinking he should not be left alone tonight.

"Osthryn?" he asks again, no longer whispering. He strains as he props himself up on his elbows. Osthryn tears herself from her thoughts and reaches out to stop him, standing from her stool.

"Its okay, Silovar, please lie down. You need to rest."

Silovar holds out his arm to counter her, catching her outstretched forearm and holding it. Her hand instinctively closes around his forearm too. "I am fine, I will not dissolve to dust," he insists. As if to prove it, he squeezes her forearm firmly. Osthryn relinquishes her grip, and sits back down. Silovar pushes himself into a sitting position. He struggles, but weakness is better than partial paralysis.

"How are you feeling?" She asks. Silovar frowns at her, his mouth twitching into a wry smile, "I asked first."

 "I am not the patient," Osthryn deflects.

"You don't have to be," Silovar insists, "Are you alright?"

She sighs, "Yes, I am."

Silovar tilts his head at her, "No, you are not."

"And how can you tell?" Osthryn challenges coyly. Silovar lifts his head to the ceiling pensively, as if deep in thought, "I must have been sleeping for an hour or two, and still you haven't moved from your gargoyle's perch."

"Oh, am I a gargoyle now? I thought I was a crow."

It appears as if Silovar wants to laugh with her, but his concern compels him to undercut her deflection.

"If you absolutely need to keep watch next to me, at least lie down. You don't have to sleep, but you can't stay sitting like that all night long."

"I will be fine, Silovar. You need to rest."

"Okay!" Silovar exclaims defiantly, folding his arms, "If you won't lie down, neither will I. You don't want to directly harm the healing of your patient through your stubborness, do you?"

Osthryn covers her face with her hands, exhausted. "Silovar, please, just rest. Don't worry about me."

"Osthryn," Silovar's voice warns.

Osthryn looks up. Silovar's eyes are softened, but he is serious, pleading. "Just lie down. It will help me."

Osthryn moves to take the futon and blankets. She pauses, looking where best to place them.

Silovar senses her hesitation. He tilts his head to the space next to him on the bed, "There is enough room. You can move to the floor once you are happy I am fine if you really want to."

Osthryn's fingers play with the cord binding the futon roll for a moment, and then acquiesces. She was inside his mind. Lying next to him on the same mattress is nothing if it makes him go to sleep.

She lies down next to him, above the blankets. She is not planning to sleep. Osthryn folds her arms over her stomach and stares up at the canopy, trying to make out the shapes of the engravings in the dark. Silovar lets himself lie back down slowly, mirroring her posture.

"It's a very funny feeling, knowing your limbs are there, but they don't want to listen to you," Silovar muses quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. "I can feel my legs are there, but they are like lead blocks, and I cannot tell what they are touching, or if they hurt."

Oshryn nods. "It is definitely not the same," she clarifies, "but it is almost like what my wings felt like. They were there, but it was like I had to fight to tell them to move. When they did move, it was as if I had to consciously move each part of them."

Silovar chuckles, "Sounds like what my arms felt like this morning."

Osthryn joins him, the brief laughter a reprieve from this incredibly strange sequence of events.

"Who is Tomas, and what does he know of us? And the fae?" Osthryn asks after a long stretch of comfortable silence. Silovar pauses, thinking. "He is someone like Oswald. A young human that I saved from a precarious situation." Osthryn thinks back to Oswald's retelling of Silovar saving him and Martina from drowning in the rapids nearly fifty years ago. "What precarious situation? If I may ask?"

"Well," Silovar sighs, readjusting his shoulders and looking back up at the canopy. "He was an orphan boy, raised by what you would call Baobhan Sith. One catch is that these fae creatures are, for lack of a better word, brutal. Their coming-of-age rituals are a guaranteed death for any human child. I protested that he should not go through with it. The Baobhan Sith insisted that a dead human is better than an 'unworthy' one. I disagreed, and I killed her."

Osthryn remains silent at the revelation, watching Silovar's face fall as he tells her this. Silovar looks back at her, a smile teasing at his lips, "Now, I have a loyal valet of few words and keen magical awareness. Very useful, indeed."

Osthryn stares back up at the canopy, straining her eyes once again to make out the carved shapes.

"Osthryn, do you trust me?" Silovar whispers, his voice suddenly small.

Osthryn smiles at the canopy, "Yes, but certainly not with yourself."

Silovar returns his gaze to the canopy, closing his eyes as he readjusts his shoulders a final time. "I'll take it."