Chapter 53: Death Bed.
POV: Amari Stormborne
One thing Amari didn’t expect when she went to visit Aris was seeing someone on their deathbed laying in his living room.
She carefully placed the box of donuts she brought for Aris on the tea table in the living room, slowly walking towards the man laying in the sofa next to it. Silas looked like a mummy covered in thick bandages, only his head being the part of him that managed to escape the cruel fate. He slowly blinked his eyes open when he sensed Amari approach, carefully turning his head to get a better look of her.
"You look like you’ve seen better days."
Silas gave her the sly grin that he always put up when he wanted to change subjects.
"This is the best day I’ve had in a while." He shifted, adjusting the hand he had tenderly placed on his stomach. "I’m living the dream."
Amari looked at him. At the bandages. At the careful way he’d adjusted his hand, the particular stillness of someone who had learned exactly which movements were acceptable and was staying within them.
"The dungeon?" she asked.
"The dungeon." He confirmed.
She pulled a chair from beside the tea table and sat down in the unhurried manner of someone who had decided to see the interaction through before they move on to the next. She looked at the bandages again, this time trying to determine the extent of the damage that had been done to this poor soul.
"Chest wound," She said after a moment. "Given how much trouble you’re having breathing, i presume its a deep gash?"
"Cracked ribs too," he said, pleasantly. "Three. Yura, our healer, did what she could but healing has diminishing returns after a certain threshold of stupid decisions in one afternoon."
Her eyebrows raised slightly.
"Stupid decisions..."
"Yes, though the number is contested depending on who you ask." He paused, taking a deep breath. "Our captain says four, Yura insists on six, my personal opinion is two."
"Whats the difference?"
"They’re counting the fodders as separate decisions. I disagree on philosophical grounds."
Amari considered this, barely holding back her chuckle.
She decided to probe a little bit.
"The fodders did this much damage?"
"The first one threw me through a thousand year old tree."
She let the chuckle out, surprised herself how funny this guy could be when he wasn’t trying to be annoying. She leaned back on the chair, eyebrows raised in an impressed way.
"What about Aris?"
He paused.
Something suddenly moved in Silas’s expression. Brief. The particular quality of movement that happened when a subject arrived that a person had strong feelings about and had organized those feelings into a manageable configuration and was maintaining that configuration.
She waited patiently, letting the man take his time with answering.
"Upstairs," he finally said. "Sleeping, allegedly."
"Allegedly?"
"Lyra’s word, not mine." He shifted again, slightly, the movement producing a brief tightening around his eyes that he smoothed over quickly. "He came back from the dungeon, ate about half of what Lyra put in front of him, and went to his room."
Another long pause, Silas hesitating to get the words out.
"He hasn’t come down since."
Amari shifted, leaning forward.
"How long has it been?."
Silas looked at the ceiling. "Eleven hours."
Amari looked at the stairs leading upwards.
"He does this sometimes," Silas said. Not explaining, exactly. More the tone of someone confirming something they’d observed enough times to have an opinion about.
"After something serious... he goes quiet. Pulls back. Lyra says it’s how he processes."
Another long pause.
"I think she’s right but I also think this time is different."
"Different how?"
Silas looked at her with the direct quality he had when he wasn’t using his usual deflections. Without the sarcasm and the easy grin and the casual armor of it, his face had a different quality—older? maybe, or just more honest.
"He was surp... rattled," Silas said. "In the boss room. For a moment." He looked back at the ceiling. "I think it did a number on him, haven’t gotten the chance to talk it out yet."
Amari was quiet for a moment considering the answer.
Then she picked up the box of donuts from the tea table, stood, and looked at the stairs again.
"Go to sleep," she said to Silas.
"I’m not sleeping," he said, in the tone of someone who was going to be asleep in four minutes.
"You’re going to reopen the chest wound fidgeting."
"I’m not fidgeting."
"You’ve adjusted your hand position six times since I sat down."
A pause, Amari letting the silence hang between them.
"Go to sleep," she said again, and went upstairs.
***
The door to Aris’s room was slightly ajar, which told her more than enough to confirm the suspicions Silas had.
Believe it or not Aris did not leave doors ajar by accident, everything he did was deliberate, including the things that were designed to look incidental. A slightly open door from someone who valued privacy above everything meant something, something that was extremely important to Amari at the moment.
She hesitated in-front of the door, then ended up knocking anyway.
Silence.
Taking that as the invitation for entry, she pushed the door open.
The room was dim, the curtains drawn against the afternoon light, the specific quality of dark that a room achieved when someone had made a considered decision about the amount of light they wanted and had implemented it precisely. The room itself was neat in the way Aris’s spaces were neat—not performed tidiness, just the natural order of someone whose external environment reflected the control they maintained over everything else.
Aris was in the bed.
On his side, facing the wall, the blanket pulled to his shoulder, still fully dressed in the clothes which she guessed he’d come home in.
Aris was particular about his clothes and his space and the specific rituals of his ordinary routine. Coming home and getting directly into bed in field clothes was not something he did.
She set the donut box on his desk.
Pulled the chair from beside it and sat down.
And quietly waited.