Sunlight spilled into the room, gray as the day before. A shadow had crossed over the sky with the threat of rain. Would’ve been a shit day in the blight fields, but behind the thick walls of the Palace Ike found himself somewhat calmed by it. Rain wasn’t so bad on the inside, when it wasn’t soaking your robes and turning the ground to mud underneath you. He figured he could get used to it.
Could probably get more used to sitting on the bed beside Nerinai. Under better circumstances, of course.
He spent the night sleeping on the floor and occasionally stirring to check on her. Every few hours her body would be wracked with fits, leaving Ike clueless as he watched her twitch and bleed from the nose. What was worse was the mess. Early on he realized that, and gingerly took her feather cloak off to keep it clean. He couldn’t figure what would be worse, her waking up without the cloak or her waking up in a puddle of blood, but he took a guess.
Then in the morning he grabbed a bowl and a cloth, got some water and set on cleaning the blood from her face.
He started with her at the nose, rubbing as hard as he dared without pushing her to wake up. He’d never really seen anybody bleed from the nose so much. There was one guy in the hovel, who happened to have an allergy to the blight. Odd thing, that. Unfortunately Ike only knew him a week before his nose wasn’t the only thing bleeding.
Ike had to admit that taking care of her felt good. Like a part of his honorable duty was fulfilled with each flake of dried blood washed off. Honestly, given the circumstances, he was a little ashamed of how good it felt to be proven right. Nerinai had needed him, and in that moment he came to her rescue.
Eventually he moved over to wipe away the trickle from her ears and realized how uncomfortably close he was to her face. Before he could pull back though, her hand snapped up and grabbed his wrist.
“Ike,” she started, her eyes just barely squinting open.
Ike gasped. “You said my name.”
“Please move away from my face.”
“Twice!”
Apparently she didn’t see the humor in this and shoved him back. Ike grinned as he fell back on his palms. She was alive, awake, and characteristically annoyed at his very existence.
She pushed herself up on the bed and slid painfully over to the header. He watched, hands hesitant to offer help but standing by at the ready. Every inch she slid over he could see was done in pain, and she had to catch her breath at the end. The Raveness was more mortal than many gave her credit for.
“Are you… you know. Ok?” He winced at his own obviously stupid question.
“Just fine,” she quipped. Not that he believed her, or she believed herself.
He offered her a glass of water, which she refused. He offered her the bowl of water and cloth, which she refused. If there was one thing Ike had absolutely not missed about his charge it was the stubbornness. The way she laid against the headboard she looked like a corpse from one of the paintings in the monastery, black uniform plastered to her body from the sweat and blood mixing together and her face utterly pale.
For a moment that lurched past how long a moment should properly last, the two of them sat in silence. Nerinai kept her eyes shut and struggled to keep her breath calm while Ike watched, tapping his knee impatiently.
Eventually he thought, fuck it, and stood up.
Not a second later she opened her eyes to give him the ‘who said you could breathe’ look, and whispered, “Guardian. Would you be so kind as to stay out of my face while I rest?”
He flushed, stuck on his words for a moment. “I–-- that wasn’t–-- I was helping. You were a mess!”
“And so you decided to breathe on my face?”
He turned away, frustrated. Wasn't like he had any clue how to help her now. Were he a spiteful man he would’ve just walked out then and there, and would’ve been right to do it. Nerinai had made it clear time and time again that she wanted nothing to do with Ike or his stupidity, so the both of them would be better off never speaking again.
Instead, though, he turned back to her and asked how he could help.
Very briefly she grimaced and sighed, then pointed over to the chests on the other side of the room. “Bring me the vial chest. Looks like you already know which one is which, anyways…”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
So she knew he’d been through her stuff and wasn’t spearing him through with black ichor. One point of victory to Ike, he thought as he grabbed the chest and slid it over. He knelt down in front of it, opened the different rows of multi-colored glasses of a hundred different substances and looked up to her to tell him which one. She led his hand–-- sighing after every misunderstood direction–-- to glasses with rose petals, moss, and a bramble of some brown root.
He handed them up to her and watched her mix the three things together in the palm of her right hand, then with her left summon a puddle of the black ichor and tossed the ingredients in. Then she exhaled, and Ike could see the color return to her face in seconds.
An impressive trick. Who knew how many muckrakers could’ve been fine with just a few garden materials tossed in the icky soup. And yet, none ever were.
She pushed herself out of bed, took a few shaky steps, and nearly collapsed before reaching her cloak. Thankfully her amazing and strong Guardian was there to catch her fall, and gently took her back to the bed. She didn't exactly slap him away, nor did she thank him. Like usual.
At the edge of the bed she told him, “You can let go now,” and he did. Nerinai sat on the edge of the bed and caught her breath. “The concoction just takes a moment to kick in.”
“And let me guess, you wouldn’t have needed my help last night, either? You had it all under control?”
She looked up at him, avoiding his eyes and focusing on something behind his head. “Yes.”
Ike very much despised confrontation. Actively avoided it when possible, in fact. But how long would he really allow himself to sit back and let Nerinai storm off into danger by herself while he sat on his ass and screwed things up alone? He just wanted her to see that he could be helpful. Was saving her life not enough? Was nothing?
No, you didn’t.” His voice turned into a harsh and brittle whisper that would break if he didn’t get out everything he had to say at once. “I saw you when I walked into that room, Nerinai, and you were just about three seconds from getting turned into diced demon meat. Don’t tell me you had everything under control when you so obviously didn’t; I mean is it really so difficult to just let me help you? I’m standing right here. Not going anywhere else. I have nothing here. Nothing. You are the one and only reason I have to exist and breathe at this very moment and yet you still want to kick me to the side like a stray with too much mange. Can’t you let me do anything useful? I get it. I’m not mister Perfection with a capital P who's gone around working with the Arcani and studying at fancy Universities, who carries around enough skill and wealth to make a Raveness shudder with ooh-la-la but I can help.”
Out of breath, he finished with a barely audible, “Please.”
She said nothing in response. Probably Ike had overstepped his place a dozen times, but he was getting pretty sick of saying nothing in an attempt to please her. Obviously she could not be pleased.
“Whatever you think, I'm not staying here anymore. Either take me with you like the Guardian I’m supposed to be, or… or I don’t know. I won’t be your sacrifice.”
She suddenly caught his eye. “What? What did you say?”
“Er, I don’t know–”
“How did you know about the sacrifice, Guardian?” That must have given her back all the strength she needed, as she stood up and closed the distance between them to interrogate him from a few inches below his face. “Whoever told you about a sacrifice was a liar, and if you truly had a shred of so-called honor in tact you would have slit their throat in my name. Who?”
He had almost forgotten how intimidating she could be. He swallowed, then pulled out the book and handed it to her. She snatched it up and started flipping through the pages frantically, then shoved it inside her own cloak.
Then she paused. “Guardian. I… must admit that you were not totally useless last night. I will not thank you for accomplishing the very baseline of your duty, but perhaps you could be of assistance.”
He beamed. “Really?”
“God, yes, Guardian, if it makes you so happy, you can do something to make yourself an asset.”
She stepped away from him and over to the desk, where she started laying out notes from somewhere Ike couldn’t see. He was overall too busy reveling in his little success. Then once she had stopped and looked back to him, he joined her at the desk, looking down at her cramped handwriting in earnest curiosity.
“I need you to do something on your own for me,” she said, then noted his sudden apprehension and sighed. “No, Ike. I won’t leave you alone again. Don’t act like a frightened puppy. I just need you to distract Donnahais and his ilk long enough for me to find something in their quarters.”
“Donnahais?” Apparently they’d both run into the old warrior–and Ike could only assume she had a much worse time.
“Yes,” she said through gritted teeth, snatching her notes away from him and organizing everything into neat piles. “I have reason to believe he’s stolen the key to a temple on the lower level.”
“Why?”
“He nearly stole the key to the greenroom where you found me earlier. That Martial knows far more than he lets on, and I cannot be certain why, but I can be certain it is a problem for the both of us.” Ike thought he would faint at being included. “So if you want to help me, Guardian, distract him. Get him away from his room and keep him out for as long as I need.”
Ike nodded. He could do that, for sure. Finally he had something to do and even an idea of how he could get it done.
For an instant he thought he could see worry on her face, a frown under that sharp nose and screwing of the eyebrows–or something like that. It was nice to imagine that she cared. Then she spun away from him, her sable cloak fluttering like a flock in the sky, and stormed out of the room, leaving him with, “Don’t fuck this up, Ike.”