Or, rather, like himself, but more aware of his body and his thoughts and his desires. His desires had surprised Tahlen. He wasn’t going to share them with his grandmother. “I feel wild, or almost so.”
“Your age, I would say,” Grandmother had answered. “My child settled into their ears at this time. Before they sliced them to look more like everyone else and hid the scars with cuffs of gold.”
Grandmother never shared much of her thoughts on her child, other than to refer to them as Zelli’s parent and to pay some of their expenses in the capital, and to sometimes remark, if Zelli’s parent was mentioned, that trying to escape the family ties to the fae by fleeing to the capital had only earned them a fae baby. Then she would sigh.
This time, she hadn’t. She’d taken Zelli’s hand, studied his flushed face and watched him absently rub his chest, then said, “Or it’s Tahlen.”
She’d probably enjoyed making Zelli jump, revenge for leaving her to worry.
“You’ve been extremely close to him for several days, and your fevers did get worse after he arrived here. I’m not exactly sure how, but I’ve always suspected things are differentfor the other side of our family in more ways than the obvious where romance or what-have-you is concerned. Is there anything else I should know about, Mizel? Anything you’re not telling me?”
The color that had spread through him at the touch of Tahlen’s hand had come to mind, but Zelli had stayed silent rather than try to form the words to describe it.
Grandmother had finally released him and stared thoughtfully into the distance. “I’ll speak with Tahlen tonight and then with some of these guards tomorrow. The one who arrived before them mentioned your name. Which at least meant I knew you were alive.”
Zelli drank his cold tea to help him swallow the guilty lump in his throat from the memory. But after that, Grandmother had kissed his forehead and told him to go to his room as usual for the duration of his fever, and that she’d send food. She hadn’t responded to his pressing questions about the possible fate of the guards, or to his defense of Tahlen, except to finally say, “You acted like a Tialttyrin. Now go.”
Having soaked a great deal of his pains away, and taken care of some of his lust-fever desires while trying to summon clearer memories of the night before, and with some food in him, Zelli heaved himself out of the chair by the fire, leaving the tray on the table for now so he could fall face-first onto his bed and curl up in the warm darkness behind the heavy curtains.
He moved only to scratch at an itch that wasn’t really there.
“When you ignored me, it hurt,” he said to any listening fae, family or otherwise. “But now this? You could allow mesomedignity around him, you know. You answer wishes as you see best, but is this truly what’s best for me? What am I to discover this way?”
Tahlen was likely talking to Grandmother by now. He might come here afterward, if only to check on the status of Zelli’s discomfort. Or he might not, but Zelli quailed at the idea of the walk through the fortress in his condition to find Tahlen, and then, if Tahlen was less than excited about helping him, the miserable walk back.
He wriggled up to grab a pillow to bite but stopped at the gentle knock on the door.
“Zelli?” Tahlen asked, as though the door wasn’t unlocked and he couldn’t simply walk inside if he wanted to. “It’s Tahlen” he said next, leaving Zelli to boggle for a moment that Tahlen would assume Zelli didn’t know his voice when one of Zelli’s distinct memories of the night before was telling Tahlen how much he liked it.
Zelli flew off the bed and ran to the door to fling it open.
“I wasn’t sure if you…” Tahlen trailed to a stop at Zelli’s sudden, breathless appearance. Tahlen had scrubbed away some of the travel dust, although his hair looked too dry to have been washed, even if it had been combed and rebraided into one his simpler nighttime braids. He was in no armor, at least, and clean clothes, and stared as if Zelli had left him stunned.
Zelli didn’t know why; he was mostly dressed, and even if he hadn’t been, Tahlen had seen him in less.
Tahlen leaned in, evidently concerned about eavesdroppers. The family apartments were occupied by older relatives who had long since gone to bed and were several rooms away from Zelli, in any case. Any guards were stationed outside at the entrance to the corridors for their chambers rather than in the corridor itself. But Tahlen kept his voice down. “You didn’t look well when I left you with your grandmother. Do you still need me?”
Zelli gazed up at him, itching and restless, his spine liquid, his face hot.
Tahlen seemed worried, maybe because Zelli didn’t speak. “Is there anything I can do?”
“I ache even hearing you,” Zelli revealed in a daze, then recalled himself enough to straighten and add, “not like yesterday. Not to lose all reason. But Ihavebeen lying in bed thinking of you.”
“Zelli.” Tahlen shut his eyes before saying it, then opened them to give Zelli a look that should have been chiding but was so bright Zelli couldn’t be sure.
“But you must be more tired than I am.” Thinking about why that was made Zelli shift from foot to foot. “Did you eat? Did Esrin forgive you?” He poked his head out into the hall but as he’d expected, he and Tahlen were very much alone. “Would you like to come in?”
Once the invitation was extended and he’d stepped back to let Tahlen in, he remembered the last time Tahlen had been his room. Tahlen might have been remembering it too, because he made his expression blank and went to stand in front of the fire, exactly as he’d done the previous time.
Zelli nervously chewed his lip, but closed the door and then moved to follow him.
Instead of launching into a speech about courtship and admiration, Tahlen studied Zelli, starting at his bare feet and legs and ending with Zelli’s damp hair.
“You got a bath?” Zelli asked, voice high.
Tahlen darted one glance to his cloak and the trail of clothes Zelli had left on the floor. “Are you in any pain?”
So hehadcome here to see about Zelli’s discomfort. Zelli tried to be pleased by that and found he wasn’t.
