Page 62 of Salt in the Wound

He is a healer. There is a patient behind him. There is work to do.

He finds a cloth in Eskil's trunk and dampens it with water from the pitcher on the desk. He cleans his own hands first, mechanically, the practiced efficiency of someone who hascleaned up after worse, blood, bile, the slow seepage of Granger's wounds, and then he turns back to the bed.

Eskil is unconscious. Truly, deeply unconscious, not sleeping, and the distinction is one Indrie knows intimately, having spent five years monitoring the sleep of a dying king. Eskil's breathing has slowed to something deep and even, his chest rising and falling in the long, steady rhythm of a body that has surrendered entirely to exhaustion. His face is slack, the severe lines smoothed, the scar across his eye less prominent in the lamplight. He looks younger. Softer. More man than king.

Indrie cleans him up while blushing furiously.

His face burns with a heat that rivals what Eskil's fever produced, a flush so total and so persistent that he can feel it in his ears and his chest and the backs of his hands. He draws the damp cloth across Eskil's stomach, across his hips, between his thighs, cleaning away the evidence of what they did, and every point of contact is a memory, and by the time he's done he's so red he could light the room without the lamp.

He pulls the quilt over Eskil's waist. Tucks it gently around his hips. Allows himself, just for a moment, to look at the man sleeping in the bed, the broad chest, the scarred arms, the hand that rests open on the mattress, the hand that held Indrie's hip and cradled his jaw and tangled in his hair, and the ache in his chest is so acute it takes his breath.

He dresses mechanically. The clothes are where they fell, scattered across the cabin floor in a trail that tells the story of the past hour with more clarity than Indrie can bear, and he gathers them piece by piece. Eskil's trousers first, the ones that are too large and require the rope cinch. Then the shirt. Eskil's shirt. He pulls it over his head and the fabric settles around him and the scent of cedar and iron is there but it's different now, layered with sweat and heat and the unmistakable smell of what theydid, and Indrie has to stand very still for a moment and press the heels of his hands against his eyes and breathe.

His body is still thrumming. Not pain, he expected pain, had braced for it, had filed it away as an acceptable cost, but there is an ache, deep and unfamiliar, that isn't quite pain and isn't quite anything else. A soreness. A fullness. He can feel where Eskil was. Can feel the ghost of that impossible stretch, the place inside him that Eskil had found and returned to again and again until Indrie lost the ability to form words in either language.

His neck and throat are still red and sensitive from Eskil's beard against his skin. He touches the marks absently, fingertips tracing the path Eskil's mouth took, jaw, throat, collarbone, the spot where his neck meets his shoulder that had made him grab fistfuls of Eskil's hair and say the king's name in a voice he didn't recognize. He can still feel Eskil's hands on his hips. Can still feel the press of him, inside, and the sound of Eskil's voice, low and rough and wrecked, pouring out a stream of words Indrie couldn't follow but felt in his bones. One word in particular that Eskil repeated over and over, always in the same tender register, always when his hands were gentlest. Indrie doesn't know what it means but he knows exactly how it sounded and he will hear it in his sleep for the rest of his life.

He presses his knuckles against his mouth and breathes through them.

He gathers his satchel from the table. Checks Eskil's pulse one more time, steady, strong, the beat of recovery, and braces himself.

He opens the cabin door and steps into the corridor and almost immediately collides with Bohdi.

The second-in-command is standing right outside, close enough that he must have been there the entire time. His back is against the opposite wall, his arms crossed, his face a mask of carefully maintained composure that cracks the instant he seesIndrie. His hands drop to his sides. He steps forward and grips Indrie's forearm, not gently, not roughly, needing to hold onto something real after hours in the dark.

"The king," Bohdi says. "How is he?"

"He's fine." Indrie's voice comes out steadier than he feels, the healer's voice, the one that delivers diagnoses regardless of what's happening behind his ribs. "He'll make it through the night. He's sleeping. He just needs rest."

The relief that moves through Bohdi is visible, a full-body release, his shoulders dropping, his grip loosening, his eyes closing for a moment. When he opens them, the composure is back, but what's beneath it is rawer than Indrie has ever seen from the man. Gratitude. Pure, unfiltered, devastating.

Bohdi takes Indrie's face in both hands, gently, and presses his forehead against Indrie's. The contact is warm and firm and holds for the space of several heartbeats, and Indrie stands very still and doesn't breathe because the gesture is so foreign, so intimate in its platonic way, that he doesn't know what to do with it. No one has ever thanked him this way. No one has ever pressed their forehead to his and breathed their relief against his face and held him as though what he'd done was not expected servitude but a gift freely given.

Indrie doesn't feel deserving of it. Bohdi is thanking him for saving the king's life, and Indrie did save the king's life, but the method, the intimacy, the shattering beauty of what happened in that room, doesn't feel like healing. It feels stolen. Something sacred that was meant for two people who chose each other and was instead deployed as medicine by a healer who had no right to want it as badly as he did.

Bohdi pulls back. His hands linger on Indrie's face for a moment, thumbs resting against his cheekbones, and then his eyes flicker. Down. To Indrie's throat. To the redness there, not bruises this time, not the marks of violence, but the raw, abradedpink of skin that has been scraped by stubble and sucked by a mouth that couldn't get enough.

His gaze lingers on the marks for a beat. Two. His expression doesn't change. Whatever he's thinking, he keeps it behind his teeth, and the restraint costs him something, Indrie can see the effort, but he doesn't say anything.

"Get some rest," Bohdi tells him. His voice is quiet. "I'll watch him. If anything changes, I'll come find you."

Indrie nods. The motion is numb, automatic. He turns and walks down the corridor on legs that don't feel entirely attached to his body and makes it approximately eight steps before Dagny materializes from the shadows, a redheaded apparition.

She grabs his arm and pulls him to a stop and her face is a landscape of worry, brows drawn, mouth tight, eyes searching his with the frantic attention of someone who has been pacing in the dark for hours.

"What is going on?" she demands. "Bohdi told me the king is ill. I heard — there were —" She falters. Her eyes move across his face, cataloguing, and then drop to his throat, to the same marks Bohdi saw, and her mouth opens.

"The king is ill," Indrie says, before she can ask the question forming behind her eyes. His voice is flat. Controlled. The healer's voice. "He'll pull through by morning."

"Are you okay?"

Indrie nods. The motion is too stiff, too sharp, and Dagny's worry doesn't diminish. She steps closer, ducking her head to catch his downcast eyes.

"You look —" She searches for the word in his language. "— wrong. You look wrong, Indrie. Are you sick too?"

"I'm not sick. I'm just tired. I need to rest."

She's not convinced. Her hand is still on his arm, her thumb making small, unconscious circles against his sleeve, and Indriecan see the war between her instinct to press and her respect for his boundaries. The boundaries win, barely.