Lumiere left the table without a word.

  She didn't look at any of them. She simply gathered herself, mantle drawn tight, and walked out with the careful composure of someone who knew she could not keep it if she stayed.

  Rocher moved on instinct.

  He took one step after her, the urge sharp and unformed, like reaching for a falling object. He didn't know what to say to her. Only that he couldn't let her go like that.

  Evelyn's hand closed around his shoulder.

  He stopped.

  Her gaze had already shifted past him.

  "Sera," she said in a commanding voice.

  For a moment, Seraphine hesitated. Then she nodded and followed Lumiere out, the door closing softly behind her.

  The room felt smaller without them.

  Evelyn finally turned to him. Her expression was set, professional, but there was a tightness around her eyes that had not been there before.

  "There will be time for reckoning ter," she said. "This is not it."

  Rocher swallowed. "Lumiere shouldn't be alone."

  "She won't be," Evelyn said. "But neither should Cire."

  That nded heavier than she probably intended.

  Evelyn stepped closer, lowering her voice. "Right now, you still have a task. You can't afford to be distracted."

  "I know," he said. The words came out too quickly.

  She studied him for a beat.

  "There will be plenty to be angry about when this is over," Evelyn continued. Her eyes sharpened. "Whatever you do in there had better not add more."

  Rocher met her gaze with equal resolution.

  "I won't forgive you if you take advantage of this," she said.

  He swallowed, jaw tight. "I understand."

  He did. And he didn't.

  Because he could already feel how narrow it was—how little space there was between helping Cire and doing something monstrous.

  Was it even possible to reach her without taking something else?

  The thought followed him down the short corridor, each step heavier than the st.

  He stopped in front of the bedroom, his hand hovering near the tch.

  He couldn't do it.

  A memory surfaced then, unbidden.

  Crossreach.

  Cire.

  Staying with the consequence.

  He closed his eyes once. Drew a breath he didn't feel he deserved.

  Then he opened the door and went in.

  Clothes y scattered in haphazard piles on the floor.

  A sleeve half-turned inside out, the hem of the trousers twisted as if Cire had pulled them off in haste and then forgotten them entirely.

  He bent and gathered them up without thinking. Folded them, because it felt strangely important that they be orderly, even if nothing else was.

  He gnced over.

  She y curled on the bed, wrapped tight in the bnket, shoulders hunched, knees drawn in. The fabric clung to her, darkened in patches. When he stepped closer, he saw the tremor in her frame—fine, relentless shivers that did not ease even in the warmth of the room.

  The sheets beneath her were soaked through.

  Concern cut through him immediately.

  He crossed to the small table and lifted the waterskin, testing its weight. Still enough. He uncorked it and knelt beside the bed, careful to keep his movements slow, visible.

  "Cire," he said quietly.

  Her head jerked up at the sound of his voice. For a heartbeat, her eyes found him—wide, unfocused—and then she scrambled backward, clutching the bnket tighter around herself, breath coming fast and shallow.

  He stopped at once.

  "I brought you water," he said, keeping his voice even. "You don't have to take it. I'll just leave it here."

  He set the waterskin at the edge of the bed, close enough to reach, far enough not to crowd her. Then he stood and turned away, giving her his back.

  A hesitant shuffle against the sheets. Then the soft, frantic sound of swallowing—uneven gulps that did not bother to hide their urgency.

  He turned his head despite himself.

  Cire had pushed the bnket aside enough to kneel on the bed. She held the waterskin with both hands, fingers clenched tight around the leather as she tipped it up, drinking as if afraid it might be taken from her. Water spilled down her chin, darkening the fabric at her p. She didn't seem to notice.

  "Hey, slow down—"

  Something in his chest tightened.

  She looked smaller like this. Too earnest in the way she drank, like the act itself required concentration. There was a disarming, almost painful honesty to it—a vulnerability that caught him off bance before he could stop it.

  Adorable was the wrong word.

  And yet it came to him anyway, soft and treacherous.

  The thought barely had time to form before pain nced through his skull.

  He sucked in a sharp breath as the headache surged, sudden and familiar. His vision swam for a moment. He squeezed his eyes shut, one hand bracing against the bedframe until the worst of it passed.

  When he opened them again, the moment had shifted. Cire was back in her cocoon.

  He was almost grateful for the interruption. It stripped the softness from his focus, left him steadier, more himself.

  Without looking back at her, he walked around the bed to the far side. It was rger than any he'd ever seen, but the mattress still dipped noticeably where he sat.

  For a moment, he just stayed there, head in his hands, girding himself for the next wave.

  Something shifted at the edge of his vision.

  Cire had inched closer, the waterskin held out in both hands. She stopped just out of arm's reach, waiting.

  Slowly, he reached up and took it from her, careful not to spook her with the movement.

  The opening touched his lips. He tipped it, then frowned and turned it upside-down.

  Empty.

  A breath left him, longer than he meant it to be. For a moment, he'd let himself hope it might be that simple. That care alone might be enough.

  It wasn't. Of course it wasn't.

  He stood and went to refill it.

  The pump handle resisted for a moment before giving way. Water surged up with a hollow groan, clear and cold. He held the waterskin beneath it, watching the leather swell as it filled.

  His thoughts ran in circles.

  What was he supposed to do now?

  The simplest answer presented itself at once. Step closer. Close the distance, even if he was unwelcome.

  It felt wrong.

  She had flinched from his voice. Scrambled away like he might strike. Whatever this infection was doing to her, fear had found purchase there, and he could not pretend otherwise.

  A short, bitter ugh escaped him before he could stop it.

  Once upon a time, he wouldn't have hesitated. He would have trusted his instincts, trusted momentum to carry him through. Things had a way of working out when he acted, or so he'd always believed.

  Cire ruined that illusion simply by existing.

  She was not someone who could be swept along. She was sharp, deliberate, infuriatingly thoughtful. Despite what Evelyn and Seraphine cimed, despite the certainty in their voices, he could not shake the fear that she would never feel as intensely as he did.

  No. His forehead touched the wall, eyes shut hard. That was wrong.

  He didn't need her to want him.

  He just wanted her to be there again.

  The distinction hurt more than he had expected.

  A slow breath. Then another. By the time he straightened, the moment had been folded away with everything else he couldn't afford.

  He shut the water off and turned back toward the bed.

  The mattress dipped again as he put one knee onto it, careful, announcing his presence through the shift in weight. He extended the waterskin, holding it out where she could take it or refuse it as she chose.

  "Here," he said, looking away.

  Then a second headache struck him, smaller than the st but sharper for how sudden it was. It hit behind his eyes and dropped straight through him, stealing his breath.

  He sagged where he knelt, one hand braced against the mattress, the other still holding the waterskin out between them. For a moment the room tipped, edges blurring.

  When he opened his eyes again, it was no longer in his grasp.

  Cire was there instead, closer than before.

  Close enough that he could feel the warmth of her through the air between them. She had taken his hand and drawn it into her p, fingers curled around his with a careful deliberateness.

  Her thumbs rested in his palm, moving in small, uncertain strokes, as if she were tracing the lines there without knowing why they mattered.

  He didn't pull away.

  He didn't close his hand around hers either. He left it open, receptive, the way it had fallen.

  For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

  Her head was bowed, eyes fixed on what she was doing, brow furrowed in faint concentration. The bnket had slipped from one shoulder. She seemed to be searching for something.

  "Cire," he said softly. Just her name, offered the same way he had offered the water.

  Her thumbs paused.

  And then, very slowly, she looked up at him.

  Her eyes were gzed.

  Distant, like she was looking through him rather than at him. He could not tell whether she knew who he was, or whether her name meant anything more than a sound.

  His throat tightened.

  But his body was screaming at him to move.

  Something half-remembered surfaced—not a scene, or a thought, but a certainty lodged beneath both fear and desire. The knowledge that when words failed her, when choice colpsed under pressure, this had once been a pce where she had not recoiled.

  His free hand shot up, instinctive, but he stopped short of cradling her face, dropping it instead to support his weight.

  Then he leaned in, letting his lips brush hers.

  It was barely a kiss. More of a question than an act. Soft, tentative, gone almost as soon as it arrived.

  He pulled back, breath held, heart hammering.

  And waited for her answer.