lungs don’t know how to fill themselves. I don’t realize that he’s standing too until I feel his breath on my cheek and it kick-starts my own, shallow and rapid as white-hot heat burns through my skin. I look up at him and want to reach out and smooth away the crease between his eyebrows. There’s a moment when he looks like the Sleeping Prince from the book, with his high cheekbones and his generous mouth. Then he doesn’t look like a prince at all, but a sad, lost man, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to step forward, reach up and wrap my arms around him, linking my hands behind his neck and pulling him against me.
He stiffens briefly, then relaxes, but makes no effort to touch me in return. It’s as though my embrace is nothing to do with him. My skin heats with the familiar flush of shame and I unclasp my fingers and pull away.
Then his long arms fold around me and pull me back towards him. His head nestles into the hollow between my neck and shoulder, his face pressed to the skin. I feel the warmth of his breath on my neck.
It goes on and on, long past the moment we should have let each other go. He clings to me as though I’m the last safe port in a storm and I try to be that for him. My feelings flit between concern and something else, something that makes my heart skip tellingly. I’m dreading the moment this ends, because some instinct tells me that when he’s gone from my arms, something vital will be missing from me.
When he sighs I lean my head against his and he turns his slowly, until his mouth brushes my jaw and I hear him inhale sharply, his fingers tightening for a split second on my waist. He stays there, his lips an inch from mine, and I tilt my head until the corners of our mouths rest against each other. I close my eyes, waiting for him to move, to kiss me, but he remains tantalizingly still, holding me to his chest, where I can feel his heart pounding as violently as mine.
And then he pushes me away. Again.
“Errin,” he says, and my ears ring with the rejection. “I can’t, please.”
“I won’t, I’m sorry,” I stammer.
“I thought I made myself clear before?” he says quietly, and I nod, reddening again as a new wave of humiliation hits me. “It cannot be,” he says, his voice pleading as he walks away towards the door, and my traitorous heart lurches when I see him reach for the latch.
“Stay,” I blurt, and he pauses, head tilted, his back still towards me. “It’s late.”
“I can’t.” He shrugs the cloak from his shoulders and places it gently on the bench. “I’ll come back, when the sun comes up.”
And then he’s gone, leaving me alone with a dying man.
I tidy away the bloodied water and throw the cloths on to the fire to burn, watching them hiss and pop. The man’s eyes are shadowed, his complexion dangerously wan. When there’s nothing more for my hands to do I take my cloak and pull it around me, sitting on the bench. And I wait.
“Silas?” It’s spoken so quietly that I don’t realize I’m awake, hadn’t known I’d fallen asleep. When the voice comes again, I open my eyes and look at the man in my bed. Who returns my gaze, one eye swollen shut, but the other fixed on me.
“Silas?” the man says again, and I scramble from the bench to his side.
“Hush, rest,” I say. “I’ll get him. I’ll get him for you.”
I’m halfway to standing when the man weakly raises a hand.
“You know him?”
“Yes, he brought you here. He—”
“I need you to pass on a message.”
“I’ll get him—”
“No!” The man coughs, and his spittle flecks the blankets, dark and glistening. He closes his eye and I worry it’s already too late. Then he speaks again. “Tell him she’s already passed.”
“She’s passed?” Who? Who’s passed? Does he mean Silas’s mother; is she dead?
“She’s the reason he’s here, he’ll understand. Tell him she’s gone to Scarron—” The man pauses to cough again and it’s a thick, wet sound. Blood bubbles from the corner of his mouth, and I know then that he’s not going to recover. I take his hand and the faintest smile graces his bloody lips. “She left there before … before he came. She’s safe, for now.”