Chapter 9: Rafe's POV: The Barn Fire

Rafe's POV

The fever came first, and I had never had one.

It climbed from my feet to my skull, hot and wet.

It took the strength out of my arms until I could not lift the cup the healer held.

I lay on my face in the keeper's infirmary and counted what I could count.

Four winters of colds I had never caught.

A broken wrist from the third summer, on a night I slept in the watch room and felt nothing.

A cracked rib from the border scuffle two springs ago, which came back now as iron under my heart.

Every hurt arrived as it had happened, one on top of another, and each was new.

The pain was not what frightened me.

What frightened me was that I knew the order of it.

It was the order in which she had woken up and not told me.

I had come home from a hundred nights in the watch room and found Ivy at the table with her hand wrapped.

She always said she had caught it on the granary door.

Once I found her limping, and she said it was nothing.

She said it every time in the same flat voice.

I had been glad of that.

I told myself she was steady and never made a scene.

Clara had made scenes.

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