She looked down at her sleeve. She had forgotten about the arm. The cut from Callum's blade had dried into a long, rust-colored stripe against the white linen of her gown.
"It needs cleaning."
"Later."
Oswin looked at her for a moment. He didn't argue further; he simply reached into the supply shelf and held out a folded strip of clean, white linen. "At least bind it. Ye’re nae useful to him if ye bleed out and go down as well."
She took the linen, the fabric cool against her palm. "Thank ye, Oswin."
He nodded and stepped back, retreating into the shadows of the room and giving her the table.
Giving her the man.
She cleaned the wound herself, her movements slow and reverent.
She had learned much from the healers at Kinlochaline, but more than that, she trusted the desperate love in her own fingers more than the skill of a stranger.
She wrapped the linen, neither too tight nor too loose, and when she finally straightened, she noticed for the first time that her own arm had been weeping red since the alley. It had dried in a long, rusty stripe against her sleeve.
She ignored it. It didn't matter. Only the man on the table mattered.
She pulled a heavy chair to his side and sat, her eyes fixed on his face. He was pale. Not the healthy paleness of the winter mist, but the specific, ghost-white of a body that had bled out its strength.
His breathing was slow.
Too slow.
She reached out, covered his hand with hers, and squeezed before she whispered, “If ye die on me, Ivar, I will find yer spirit wherever ye are and make ye regret it!”
The room was a hollow of silence, smelling of tallow and sharp herbs. Outside, the harbor was still a hive of noise. The creak of timber, the distant hiss of water on fire, but inside this room, time had stopped.
Torvald came to her side, his presence a stabilizing weight.
"Go," she whispered, not looking up. "They need ye out there."
"Aye." He lingered for a moment. "Dinnae worry. He’s harder tae kill than ye think, Matilda."
"I ken that."
"Aye," Torvald said softly. "I thought ye might." He touched her shoulder, a brief brotherly comfort, and left her alone in the amber glow where she held Ivar’s hand. She didn't count the minutes. She didn't have to.
She was still there when the fever finally struck in the dead hours of the night. A creeping, predatory heat moved up his arm and flushed his face. She changed the linens with tireless hands, bringing fresh water herself. She was pressing a cool cloth to his jaw when his eyes suddenly snapped open.
There was no gentle surfacing. He woke with the violent, total alertness of a warrior who had spent his life in the shadow of a blade. His hand shot out like a strike, catching her wrist before she could recoil. He surged upward, his left arm bracing against the table.
"Matilda." his voice was a raw, unrecognizable rasp. "They’ve got her... the passage..."
"Ivar," she said calmly, but when he tried to get up, she threw her weight against his chest, her hands flat against the heat of his skin. He had no strength to truly fight her, but the sheer, fevered desperation of his movement nearly threw her. "Ivar, stop! Look at me!" She said a little louder now, still trying not to scare him.
His eyes were glassy, burning with a light that wasn't there. He was looking past her, his mind trapped in the smoke and the blood of the alley.
"Look at me!" She took his face in her hands, forcing his gaze to find hers. She wasn't gentle. She was firm, the same way he had been with her in the storage room when her world was falling apart. "I am right here. Look at me, ye stubborn man!"
Something in his gaze shifted. The glassiness shattered.
"Matilda." It was different this time. A gasp of breath filled with relief.
"Aye." She kept her hands on his face, her thumbs stroking his cheekbones. "I'm here. Ye’re in Duart. Ye have a hole in yer side and a fever in yer blood, and if ye try to rise again, I will personally hold ye down."