Chapter 9: The Weight of It

Fenny woke in the nest with Cavan's arm over his waist and did not move.

The lamp had burned down to a blue bead, and the room was quiet.

He lay still and listened to the breathing at his back, deep and slow, and counted the days.

Eleven days since the wedding.

He had meant to be gone inside a month.

He had a plan for how a treatment ended.

He would wait out a stable week, sign a note, and have a quiet word with the Queen.

Then he would put a ring in a drawer.

He had never planned for a Prince who made a nest out of his own coat.

He turned his head.

Cavan slept on his stomach with his face pressed in the crook of his arm.

His lashes were dark on his cheek, and the long muscles of his back rose and fell.

Fenny looked at that for a while.

Then he looked at the gold.

The sunburst had slipped out from Cavan's collarbone on its cord and lay on the pillow beside his face.

It was glowing.

It beat in a slow steady yellow pulse, and the pulse matched nothing in the room.

It was not Cavan's heart, and it was not his own.

Fenny's skin prickled.

For nine years he had read every account of the condition he could find, in four languages.

None of them mentioned a gold disc that kept time.

He thought of the bathroom at the clinic.

He thought of what Cavan had said to his mother, through the door, while Fenny knelt on the tiles.

I don't want him looking at me like I'm broken.

He had gone on being a doctor and done his job.

It had been the only way to stay on his feet.

Now he was in this man's bed, and he did not know who he was to him.

A cure. A hired hand. An embarrassment in a grey coat.

I'm only here until he's well, he told himself. That is all this is.

He reached out and lifted the cord.

The disc was hot in his palm, and a hum travelled up the bones of his wrist.

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