Read Chapter 22: Half in Love

The heat came first, a slow tide rising from somewhere deep in her chest, spreading outward until her skin was a too-tight garment she wanted to tear away. Then came the voices, muffled and distant, as if she were underwater. Someone pressed a cool cloth to her forehead. Someone else spoke in low, urgent tones she could not quite catch.

She tried to open her eyes, but the light was too much, a burning white that sent spikes of pain behind her temples. So she kept them closed and let herself drift instead, bobbing on the fever's current. Strange images surfaced unbidden: her grandmother's face contorted with warning, the emerald brooch opening like a flower to reveal that single lock of pale hair, Sir Hugh Marlowe's cold smile as she collapsed at his feet.

But then, through the haze, she felt something else. A presence at her bedside. Not the healer's brisk efficiency, not the maid's nervous flutter. Something steadier. A hand, large and warm, closing around hers. It did not linger, did not clutch. It simply held, with a patience that felt almost foreign.

She knew that hand. She had felt it only rarely—at the altar, when she had been too numb to notice; once in the carriage, when he had helped her alight; a handful of times since, always brief, always correct. But now it was there, and it did not let go.

On the third night, or perhaps the fourth—time had become meaningless—she surfaced from a particularly deep dream of drowning to find the room quiet and dim. The fire had burned low. A single candle guttered on the nightstand. And her husband sat in the chair beside her bed, his head bowed, his cravat undone, his dark hair falling forward in disarray.

He was asleep. His hand still held hers.

She should have pulled away. The touch was unseemly, even for a husband and wife who shared a roof and a name. But the warmth of it seeped into her bones, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, she was not cold.

In her fevered state, she let herself study him properly. The sharp line of his jaw, softened now in sleep. The faint hollow beneath his cheekbone that spoke of too many sleepless nights. The crease between his brows that even unconsciousness could not smooth away.

He was not a handsome man, not in the conventional sense. His features were too severe, his mouth too often pressed into a hard line. But there was something in his face now, stripped of its usual guardedness, that made her throat ache.

*I can never feel what you feel.*

Had he said those words to her? Or had she dreamed them? She could not remember. The fever had tangled everything together—the portrait, the brooch, the failed magic, the collapsed weight of her own body hitting the floor as Sir Hugh's wards turned her gift back on itself.

But this she knew: no one had ever sat vigil at her bedside before. Her grandmother had sent physicians and potions when Cordelia was ill as a child, but had never once come herself. The servants had done their duty with kindness, but they had not held her hand through the night.

He did.

On the fifth morning, she woke to find the fever broken. Her nightgown was soaked through, her hair plastered to her scalp, and she felt as though she had been beaten with cudgels. But her mind was clear, and the burning in her blood had faded to a dull ache.

The healer—a bird-boned woman with sharp eyes and calloused hands—helped her sit up and drink a bitter tisane that coated her throat with the taste of ash and honey.

"Your husband has not left this room in six days," the healer said, not quite accusingly. "He sleeps in that chair. Eats standing at the door. I told him he would make himself ill, and he said—" She paused, as if weighing whether to repeat the words.

"Said what?" Cordelia's voice came out as a croak.

The healer's lips twitched. "He said, 'Then I shall be ill with her.'"

Cordelia closed her eyes. Something cracked open in her chest, a fissure she had not known was there, and she had no magic left to shore it up.

When she was well enough to sit in the chair by the window, wrapped in a cashmere shawl that smelled faintly of lavender, her husband came to her. He looked terrible—hollow-eyed, unshaven, his coat rumpled in a way that would have scandalized his valet. But his gaze was steady as he lowered himself onto the footstool before her, bringing himself to her eye level.

"You are better," he said. It was not a question.

"Thanks to you," she said. The words felt strange in her mouth, too raw, too honest. "The healer told me you stayed."

He looked away, a muscle jumping in his jaw. "It was the least I could do."

"The least you could do would be to send a tray and a note enquiring after my health." She paused. "You did not do the least."

"No." He reached into his waistcoat pocket and withdrew something small, wrapped in a scrap of linen. "I have something for you. It was your mother's."

Cordelia's breath caught. "My mother's? But her possessions were sold after she—after the accident. My grandmother said there was nothing left."

"Your grandmother was mistaken." He unwrapped the linen with careful fingers, revealing a ring. It was not impressive—a thin gold band set with a single seed pearl, worn smooth with age. "Or perhaps not mistaken. Perhaps she simply did not know this existed."

He held it out to her, and she took it with trembling hands. The metal was warm from his pocket, and she turned it over, looking for some inscription, some mark of ownership.

"Where did you find it?"

"In my mother's things." He hesitated. "My mother and yours were close, once. Before the families fell out. She kept a small box of keepsakes, and this was among them. I found it years ago, after my mother died, and I did not know what to do with it. It seemed wrong to keep it hidden, but wronger still to dispose of it."

Cordelia slid the ring onto her finger. It fit perfectly, as if it had been made for her. And perhaps it had been meant for her, someday, in a different life where her mother had lived to see her married.

"I cannot give you my heart," he said quietly, and she looked up sharply, startled by the words. "I know this. You know this. It is not in my nature to feel things as deeply as others do, and I will not pretend otherwise."

She opened her mouth to speak, to deflect, to say something cutting about how she did not want his heart anyway. But he held up a hand, silencing her.

"But I can choose." His voice was rough, as if the words cost him something. "I can choose to sit by your bedside when you are ill. I can choose to find your mother's ring and give it to you. I can choose to stand between you and Sir Hugh Marlowe, even if I cannot stop him. I can never feel what you feel, Cordelia, but I can choose to love you."

She stared at him. The words hung in the air between them, too large for the small sitting room, too heavy for her weakened body to bear.

"Say something," he said, and there was a crack in his voice, the first she had ever heard. "If you wish me to leave, I will leave. I will not trouble you again. But I needed you to know."

She looked down at the ring on her finger. The seed pearl caught the pale winter light, glowing softly.

"You cannot feel what I feel," she said slowly. "And I am not certain I can feel what you feel, either. I have spent my whole life learning to be careful with my heart, because I was told that my feelings were dangerous weapons. That they could hurt people. That they could *kill* people."

He flinched, but did not look away.

"Perhaps that is why we suit," she continued, her voice barely above a whisper. "Two people who cannot trust their own hearts, learning to trust each other instead."

"Is that a yes?" He sounded almost boyish, uncertain in a way she had never heard him. "Are you—do you accept—"

"I accept your choice." She reached out, slowly, and placed her hand over his. The ring glinted between them. "I do not know if I can choose to love you back. I do not know if I will ever be certain of anything again." Her voice faltered. "I tried to use my gift, and I failed. I broke my vow for nothing. I am not sure I have anything left to give you."

"You gave me your hand at the altar," he said simply. "I will take whatever else you choose to offer, and I will be grateful for it."

A sound escaped her, something between a laugh and a sob. "You are a fool."

"Perhaps." He turned his hand over, lacing his fingers through hers. "But I am a fool who will sit by your bedside when you are ill, and find lost rings, and tell you the truth even when it would be easier to lie. That is all I have to offer. That is all I am."

She squeezed his fingers. It was not a grand gesture. It was not a declaration. But it was something, and in the quiet of the room, with the winter light falling soft across them both, it was enough.

For now.