Morgrith reached across the table.
His fingers brushed mine as he took the bread from my trembling hands—that same lightning-shock, that same sudden awareness that made my breath catch. He tore off a small piece. Dipped it in honey, slow and deliberate. Held it to my lips.
"Open," he said.
Gentle. Implacable. A voice that expected to be obeyed.
And god help me, I obeyed.
The first bite undid me.
It wasn't the food itself—though it was good, the bread soft and fresh, the honey sweet with something floral I couldn't name. It wasn't even the taste, though that too was better than anything I'd eaten in years, better than the hard bread and travelers' rations I'd lived on, better than the lukewarm broth I'd choked down between healings.
It was the act.
The impossible, unprecedented act of someone holding food to my mouth. Waiting. Watching my lips part. Placing it carefully on my tongue like an offering, like a gift, like something sacred.
I'd fed countless patients. Held cups to fevered lips, spooned broth into mouths too weak to manage alone. I'd watched my grandmother do it before me, watched her tend the sick of our village with hands that never stopped giving. I'd learned from her that this was what wound-walkers did—we provided. We poured ourselves out for others until there was nothing left.
No one had ever poured anything into me.
Morgrith watched me chew. Watched me swallow. When I'd finished, he tore another piece of bread, dipped it in honey, and held it to my lips again.
"Open."
I opened.
He fed me piece by piece, unhurried, patient as stone. The bread gave way to cheese—soft, creamy, melting on my tongue. Then fruit, sweet and cold, each slice placed carefully between my lips. He didn't speak beyond that single word each time. Didn't explain what he was doing or why. Just watched me with those dimmed starlight eyes, steady and knowing, as if he could see every hungry part of me I'd tried so hard to hide.
The tears started somewhere around the third piece of fruit.
I didn't feel them coming. One moment I was swallowing, the next my cheeks were wet, hot tracks sliding down toward myjaw. I reached up to wipe them away, embarrassed, horrified—I didn'tcry, hadn't cried in years, had learned long ago that tears accomplished nothing and cost too much—
Morgrith caught my wrist.
Gently. Not restraining, just stopping. With his other hand, he produced a cloth—soft, dark, appearing from somewhere I couldn't see—and wiped my cheeks himself. Slow strokes. Careful.
Then he dipped another piece of bread in honey and held it to my lips.
"Open."
The sob that tore out of me was nothing like the sound I'd made when absorbing his pain during the ritual. This was worse. This was twenty-seven years of loneliness cracking open all at once, flooding through walls I'd built so carefully, so patiently, brick by brick by brick.
I'd walked home alone after every healing. Watched through windows as families gathered around dinner tables, as mothers held children, as husbands reached for wives. I'd wrapped my arms around myself in cold guest houses and told myself it didn't matter. That being needed was enough. That wanting more was greedy, was dangerous, was the kind of hope that broke you when it didn't come true.
I'd buried every dream of being held in that drawer in my mind. The one where impossible things went to die.
But Morgrith was holding bread to my lips. Morgrith was wiping my tears with cloth that felt like woven shadow. Morgrith was watching me fall apart with an expression that held no judgment, no discomfort, no desire to fix or flee.
Just patience. Just presence. Justthere.
My hands came up to cover my face, and I bent forward over my knees, and the sounds that came out of me were ugly and raw and utterly beyond my control. All the nights. All the mornings.All the times I'd healed someone's child and watched them hold that child close, knowing no one would ever hold me that way. All the times I'd told myself it was fine, it was enough, I was fine—
The chair scraped. Movement beside me. And then hands—large, trembling slightly with their own weakness—were gathering me close.
Morgrith knelt on the stone floor beside my chair. He shouldn't have been kneeling anywhere, not in his condition, not with his diminished body and his fragmented powers. But he knelt anyway, and he pulled me against his chest, and his arms wrapped around me with a strength that seemed impossible given what he'd just sacrificed.
"I know," he murmured into my hair. "I know, little one."