Haldir gasped awake, breathing heavy and fast. He called into his darkness, seeking out a warmth.
“Alfarin?”
“I’m here.” I squeezed his hand. “I’m here.”
“Alfarin.” He held tightly to my hand, wrapping it in his spindly fingers like the legs of spiders, holding it to his chest as if it were his lifeline. “It’s so cold.”
“I know.”
“It’s so cold.”
I pressed my lips together, demanding the chill in his hands that held mine to leave his body, demanding warmth to spread from myself into him, demanding — asking, hoping, for his Fire to fill his veins again.
Haldir had hardly been sleeping these last few days. I’d been at his bedside more than the medic-mage, trying to provide him some semblance of warmth in his fever-induced darkness. He’d cursed me for laying the bearskin on him, but curled into the fur, clung to it with hands too cold for the living.
He woke in the night screaming, sobbing, choking on Lumish words entwined with my name and those of Mislorr and Kurovell and I knew what must be in his dreams, but I didn’t let myself think it.
“I’m here,” I told him, and held his hand, and wrapped him in the kingdom’s thickest cloths so he wouldn’t think of Kurovell’s cold winters.
“I’m here,” I told him, and sang him every song we had learned together, and fed the fire generously just so it would burn brighter and hotter than Haldir liked the hearth in his room to be, because he was cold.
“I’m here,” I told him, and left my classes as early as mortally possible, and ignored Mother’s warnings when she found me sneaking out, because nothing was important enough to take me from Haldir’s side.
He’s a servant, my brother had sneered, what, are you fond of him? Grow up, Alfarin.
Elves can’t be trusted, Mother had muttered, he will not repay you for this kindness. Be wary, Alfarin.
He’ll take advantage of your generosity, Father had warned in a momentary clarity, then stab you through the heart. Be wise, Alfarin.
But they did not know Haldir, they had not seen the whip-scars, they had not heard his tales under dim lamplight on late nights, they had not sat across from him on the road back from Kurovell, trying not to speak but uneasy in the silence when he sat bloody and barefoot, his face a picture of his pain.
I knew Haldir. I knew he did not cry, I knew he did not need another to lean on, I knew he was stronger than I was and better suited for the Mislorr crown than any of my brothers or myself.
In the night, Haldir wept and called for me when his hands were too cold to know I held them, and, gently, I wiped away the tears and layered him with my cloak.
“I’m here,” I told him, and held his hands, cold in the way the living’s weren’t.
“I’m here.”