Chapter 25: Fever
The seventh day dawned with a deceptive calm. Eleanor had managed to sip a full bowl of broth the night before. Her color was less ghostly. Alistair, coaxed by Vedrus’s firm reasoning, had slept for four hours in his own bed, the silence of the chamber feeling unnatural and accusing. He returned at first light, expecting to find her sleeping.
Instead, he found chaos.
Corvin was bundling woolen blankets around Eleanor’s shuddering form. Her teeth chattered so violently the sound echoed in the quiet room. The bedding was already damp with a cold, clammy sweat. Her eyes were glassy, fixed on some unseen horror in the canopy above.
“It came on in minutes,” Corvin said, his voice tight. “One minute resting, the next… this.”
Alistair was across the room in three strides. He touched her forehead. It was like marble fresh from a winter stream. “Eleanor.”
Her gaze slid to him, but there was no recognition, only animal distress. A full-body convulsion wracked her, a shudder that seemed to start in her bones and rattle her teeth. “C-c-cold,” she managed to bite out.
“Fetch more blankets. Heat stones,” Alistair ordered, his voice flat. The fear was a familiar, acidic taste in his throat again. He climbed onto the bed, ignoring propriety, and pulled her into his arms, trying to still the terrible shaking with the weight of his own body. He was a furnace compared to her. She curled into the heat instinctively, her icy hands clutching at his shirt.
“L-Lucian…” she whimpered into his chest.
“He is not coming today,” Alistair said, his mouth against her hair. “He is safe. You must fight this. Do you hear me? This is just a fever. A stupid, ordinary fever.” He was convincing himself as much as her.
Vedrus arrived, his bag in hand. He took in the scene, his old eyes narrowing. He checked the wound site, felt her pulse, and listened to her laboring chest. His expression was grim. “The body is fighting infection. This is the battle. We can only help her weather it.”
For hours, they battled the chill. Then, as the sun reached its zenith, the storm inside her shifted. The shivering ceased so abruptly it was its own kind of alarm. The cold sweat burned off, replaced by a dry, raging heat. She pushed the blankets away, her movements weak and flailing. A flush spread from her chest to her throat.
“Hot,” she gasped, her voice cracked. “Too hot.”
The cool cloths they applied to her forehead and neck steamed. She drifted in and out of a fitful sleep, mumbling disjointed phrases about Ashworth orchards, about signing a treaty, about the color of a dress. Once, her eyes flew open, clear and terrifyingly lucid. “The baby is crying,” she stated, staring at the empty cradle.
“Ronan is with his wet nurse. He is fed. He is quiet,” Alistair assured her, wiping her brow.
She stared at him, the green of her eyes diluted with fever. “You’re lying. I can hear him.” Then the clarity vanished, swallowed by the heat haze once more.
The fever broke near dusk, as suddenly as it had come. It left her washed ashore on the sheets, pale and utterly hollow. The vicious fire had burned away not just the infection, but every ounce of hard-won strength. She could not lift her head to drink. She slept for sixteen hours straight, a sleep so profound it bordered on unconsciousness.
When she finally woke, she was different. The path back had been washed out. A hole had been gouged in her vitality, and the winds of exhaustion howled through it.
A month passed in a slow, grinding procession of weak sunlight and long shadows. Eleanor’s world shrank to the bedroom, then to the bed itself. The ambitious goal of sitting in a chair by the window was abandoned after a failed attempt left her gray-faced and breathless for an hour. Vedrus spoke in low tones with Alistair outside her door. Words like “cardiac strain” and “prolonged convalescence” drifted in, clinical and cold.
She hated it. The frustration was a silent scream inside her ribcage. One afternoon, watching a dust mote dance in a sunbeam, she said to Alistair, “You should go back.”
He was reading a trade report, his chair turned to catch the light. He didn’t look up. “Go back where?”
“To the council. To ruling. You’re hovering. It’s… stifling.”
This time he did look up, his blue eyes piercing. “My presence stifles you.”
“Your incessant watching does.” She drew a careful breath, the act still requiring thought. “I am not going to dissolve into a puddle if you attend a budget meeting, Alistair. Go and be king. Bore me with petitions about grain tariffs later. It will give me something to look forward to.”
He studied her, looking for the lie, the bravado. He saw only a profound weariness and a stubborn core that refused to be extinguished. He closed the report. “Two hours. In the morning.”
The next day, he went. The machinery of the kingdom, rusty from neglect, groaned back to life. He returned at noon, expecting to find her asleep. She was awake, staring at the ceiling. He described Lord Braydon’s tedious argument over harbor duties. She smiled, a faint, real thing. It felt like a victory.
He began to spend the afternoons in his study, receiving ministers. The castle breathed a sigh of relief. The king was returning to himself.
But Eleanor was not. She slept through his departures and often through his returns. She ate little. Conversations were short, punctuated by her need to close her eyes and gather strength. The hole in her strength was bottomless.
On the one-month anniversary of Ronan’s birth, Alistair emerged from a protracted and irritating council session regarding the insurrection in the Southern Reach. Lord Gefroy’s voice still droned in his head. He needed air, silence, and the dim sanctuary of his study.
He turned the corner into the west wing’s main corridor, a long, vaulted passage of gray stone lined with tapestries of forgotten battles. And he stopped.
She was there.
Eleanor stood about twenty feet away, one hand braced flat against the cool stone wall for support. She was dressed in a simple robe of deep blue, her hair a loose cascade of red down her back. She was looking out a narrow arrow-slit window, her profile pale against the dark stone.
His heart arrested in his chest. It was the first time he had seen her outside that room in thirty-one days.
She must have heard his footsteps cease because she turned her head slowly. The movement seemed to cost her. A sheen of sweat glistened at her temples. Her breaths were visible, careful little inhalations that lifted her shoulders.
“What are you doing?” he asked. His voice came out quieter than he intended.
“Taking a walk,” she said. The ghost of her old defiance was there, in the arch of her brow, but it was whispered now, not shouted.
He walked toward her, each step measured. He saw the tremble in the hand pressed to the wall. He saw the way her weight listed slightly to one side. “How far?”
“From the door to here.” She gestured weakly back down the hall to the door of their chambers, which stood ajar. It was a distance of maybe fifty feet. It might as well have been a marathon.
He stopped in front of her, close enough to see the faint violet shadows beneath her eyes, the parchment-like texture of her skin. She smelled of lavender soap and underlying fatigue.
“And now?” he asked.
“Now,” she said, drawing another of those careful breaths, “I am considering the return journey.”
He didn’t offer his arm. He knew she would refuse it. Instead, he just looked at her, this woman who had been carved apart and put back together, who had been to the edge of the dark and fought her way back just enough to stand, trembling, in a drafty corridor. The sheer, obstinate will of it humbled him.
“The council was dull,” he said, leaning a shoulder against the wall opposite her, mirroring her stance. “Gefroy still cannot comprehend basic supply chain logistics. I nearly had him hanged for stupidity.”
A real smile, weak but genuine, touched her lips. “A month ago, you would have.”
“A month ago, I had less patience.” His eyes never left hers. “Why are you out here, Eleanor?”
She looked back out the arrow-slit, at the sliver of gray sky and distant green hills. “I needed to see something that wasn’t a ceiling rose or the pattern on a teacup.” She swallowed. “I needed to know I still could.”
The simple admission hung between them. It was the raw, unfiltered truth he was always trying to pry from her. And it cost her more than any defiance ever had.
“The view is better from the south terrace,” he said casually, as if discussing the weather. “When you’re ready.”
She nodded, just once. Then her breath hitched, not with emotion, but with strain. The walk back suddenly seemed like a mountain range.
Without a word, Alistair pushed off the wall. He stepped closer, turned, and simply lifted her into his arms. She was frighteningly light, a bundle of bones and will wrapped in blue wool. She made a small sound of protest that turned into a sigh of utter exhaustion as her head fell against his shoulder.
“This is not me carrying you,” he stated, starting the slow walk back to their chambers. His voice was a low rumble in his chest. “This is a strategic relocation of a valued asset. The corridor is drafty. The asset is compromised. It’s a tactical decision.”
A weak chuckle shook her frame. “Always the strategist.”
“Always.” He held her a little tighter, feeling the frantic, bird-like flutter of her heart against him. It was too fast. It was all wrong. But she was in his arms, and she was awake, and she had, against all odds, taken her walk. For now, it was enough. The mountain of her recovery still loomed, but today, they had climbed the first, crucial step.
The mountain of her recovery still loomed, but today, they had climbed the first, crucial step. He placed her back among the pillows with a precision that felt like reverence. She was asleep before he finished drawing the blanket to her chin, her breath shallow but even. Alistair stood guard until Vedrus arrived for the evening assessment.
The physician’s examination was thorough and silent. He listened to her heart for a long time, his expression unreadable. “The walk was reckless,” he finally said, his voice low. “And necessary. The spirit must sometimes provoke the body to remind it of its purpose.” He closed his bag. “The rhythm is still uneven. The weakness is profound. But there is no new damage.”
“How long?” Alistair asked, the question gritty with spent fear.
“There is no timeline for this.” Vedrus met his king’s stare. “It is a daily negotiation. Some days she will claim ten feet. Some days, she will not lift her head. You cannot command it.”
The next week was a testament to Vedrus’s words. Eleanor’s strength was a fickle tide, leaving strange deposits of energy and then retreating. She managed to sit in the cushioned chair by the fire for twenty minutes, wrapped in a wolf-fur throw. She held Ronan, her pale fingers tracing the soft curve of his head until her arm grew leaden. She listened to Alistair’s reports, her commentary sharp but offered from a horizontal position.
Their conversations resumed, quieter, layered with a new and fragile understanding. The specter of the fever and the hollowing fatigue had chastened her defiance, but not broken it.
“Gefroy sent a basket of leeks from his gardens,” Alistair mentioned one evening, sorting through correspondence at her bedside table.
“A peace offering for your near-hanging?” she asked, her eyes closed.
“An insult. His leeks are notoriously woody.” He tossed the letter aside. “I’m having them boiled into a soup and sent back to him with my compliments.”
A faint smile. “Diplomatic.”
“It’s a threat he’ll understand.” He watched her, the firelight dancing over her still features. “You would have suggested something more violent.”
“I’m conserving my energy for better things.”
One morning, Eleanor hears a commotion outside her door. It was a frantic, scrabbling sound, followed by a hissed, “Wait—” from a deep voice. The door burst open before she could even turn her head.
A toothy Lucian, a whirlwind of five-year-old energy in a rumpled tunic, launched himself at her. He aimed for the bed but his momentum carried him right onto her midsection. “Mama! You’re awake!”
A white-hot lance of pain shot through her. The air left her lungs in a shocked, silent gasp. Her vision sparked.
Alistair followed, a sheepish, frantic look on his face. He moved with swift horror, his hands hooking under Lucian’s arms to peel him away. “Gods, Lucian, gently! I said gently!” He deposited the boy firmly on the floor, his own face ashen as he turned to Eleanor. “Eleanor. Breathe. Look at me.”
She was curled around the agony, tears leaking from tightly shut eyes. She forced a tiny, shallow sip of air. It felt like breathing broken glass.
“I’m sorry,” Alistair said, the words raw. He hovered, his hands outstretched, afraid to touch her. “He slipped his nurse. He was just… he missed you.”
Lucian’s triumphant grin had collapsed. His lower lip trembled, his eyes huge. “I hurt Mama.” It wasn’t a question.
The searing pain began to recede, leaving a deep, sickening throb. Eleanor uncurled, one hand pressed to her stomach, and forced her eyes open. She saw Alistair’s guilt and Lucian’s impending devastation. She drew another careful breath.
“You just… surprised me,” she managed, her voice thin. She held out a trembling hand to the boy. “Come here. Properly. Slowly.”
Sniffling, Lucian crept forward. Alistair guided him, a steadying hand on his small shoulder. This time, Lucian carefully laid his head on the pillow beside her, his little body tense with the effort of stillness. Eleanor’s hand found his messy hair, her fingers shaking as she stroked it.
“I drew more ships,” he whispered, his voice muffled by the linen.
“I want to see them all,” she whispered back, pressing her lips to his temple. Over his head, she met Alistair’s gaze. The terror in his blue eyes was only just receding. She gave a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of her head. It’s alright.
But it wasn’t. The incident underscored a brutal truth. The world, even the loving, joyful part of it, was now a physical threat. Alistair’s jaw was a hard line. He saw not just a boy hugging his mother, but a variable he had failed to control, a weapon that had breached the perimeter.