The silence of the Duke's—our—chamber was a world away from the echoing judgment of the Great Hall. The only sound was the frantic, ragged rhythm of Lysander's breathing.
He had maintained his icy composure until the door had clicked shut behind us. Then, the cost of his performance had come due.
He was on his knees before the hearth, one hand braced against the stone mantelpiece, the other clenched into a white-knuckled fist at his side. The elegant lines of his back were rigid with strain. Beneath the thin fabric of his shirt, the dark, intricate lines of his curse writhed like living things, pulsing with a sickly, malevolent light. The air around him crackled with a cold so intense it made the fire sputter.
"Lysander." I was at his side in an instant, my cool, analytical mind snapping into triage mode. This was not the time for gentle words. This was a medical emergency.
"Don't," he gritted out, the word a shard of ice. His head was bowed, his black hair falling across his face. "Just… go."
"No." My voice was firm, leaving no room for argument. I had seen his vulnerability and he had seen my cunning. The masks were gone. "The stress of the confrontation, the use of your power to intimidate Hoff… it's agitated the… condition." I used the clinical term deliberately. "I need to assess it."
I moved behind him. My fingers, steady and sure, went to the hem of his shirt. He flinched violently as I began to lift it.
"Elara, I swear to the gods—"
"Be still," I commanded, the voice of a head surgeon in a operating theater. "You are my patient. And you are worsening your own state."
The shirt came off. In the firelight, the full extent of the affliction was horrifyingly visible. The black veins weren't just on his back anymore. They crawled over his shoulders and down his spine, a grotesque, dark latticework against his pale skin. They seemed to throb in time with his labored breaths. The flesh around them was inflamed, raised and angry.
This was no mere magical curse. It was a parasitic, systemic infection. A corruption of the body's natural energy.
"The cold is a symptom, not the cause," I murmured, more to myself than to him. My hands hovered over his skin, feeling the unnatural chill radiating from it. "It's a necrotic process. It's killing the tissue, cell by cell."
He shuddered, a groan tearing from his throat. "It feels like… ice in my veins. And a fire in my bones."
"The body's inflammatory response," I said, my mind racing. "It's trying to fight the invader." I remembered the fire-berry distillate, its surprising efficacy. "The antithesis isn't heat. It's life. It's promoting cellular regeneration."
I rushed to the small medical kit I had insisted on bringing to his chambers. I prepared a fresh cloth with the distilled essence, my movements efficient and precise.
"This will hurt," I warned.
"Everything hurts," he gasped.
I began to gently bathe the inflamed areas. The moment the cloth touched his skin, he arched his back with a sharp, bitten-off cry. The contrast between the searing cold of the curse and the potent, healing warmth of the distillate must have been agony.
"Breathe through it," I instructed, my voice low and calm. I worked methodically, cleaning the corrupted pathways, my touch as clinical as I could make it despite the intimacy of the act. I was mapping the progression of the disease, noting which areas were newly affected.
He trembled under my hands, but he did not pull away. This was a new kind of surrender. Not of his heart, but of his body. He was placing his greatest vulnerability in the hands of the woman he had just acknowledged as his equal in cunning.
Slowly, the violent trembling subsided. The angry light of the veins dimmed from a furious pulse to a dull, sullen glow. The worst of the inflammation receded. He was still in pain, but the crisis had passed.
He slumped forward, his forehead resting against the cool stone of the hearth, his breath coming in ragged gasps. I finished my work and draped a heavy wool blanket over his shoulders.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of the crackling fire and his slowing breaths.
"You see?" he finally said, his voice hoarse with exhaustion and shame. "The monster beneath the skin."
I moved to kneel in front of him, forcing him to look at me. His stormy eyes were shadowed with pain and a profound weariness.
"I see a man fighting a systemic infection with every ounce of his will," I corrected, my tone leaving no room for argument. "I see a patient. Not a monster." I reached out and brushed a strand of sweat-dampened hair from his forehead. "And I see my husband."
The word hung between us, heavy with new meaning.
He caught my wrist, his grip weak but desperate. "The 'pale man'… Varian's agent… he is here because of this. He knows this is my weakness. He will use it against us."
The plot intruded, even here in our most private moment. The side quest of the mysterious assassin was inextricably linked to the main quest of the Duke's survival.
"Then we use it first," I said, the strategist in me rising to meet the challenge. "We let them think they are attacking a weakness. But we will have fortified it. We will turn your sickness into a weapon."
A flicker of that dark, calculating fire returned to his eyes. The Cold Duke was reasserting himself, forged anew in the fires of pain and his wife's unwavering resolve.
"You would turn my curse into a strategy?" he asked, a trace of awe in his voice.
"I would turn everything we have into a weapon to keep what is ours," I vowed.
He pulled me to him then, not with passion, but with a desperate need for anchor. He buried his face in the crook of my neck, his arms wrapping around my waist. I held him, the mighty Duke brought low not by an enemy's blade, but by his own body's betrayal.
And as I held him, making a mental note to increase the potency of the distillate and to research the properties of Frost-Heart ore, I knew this was the heart of the romance. Not just the kisses and the grand declarations, but this: the brilliant, ruthless villainess using her mind to heal the tortured hero's body, and the proud, cold Duke allowing himself to be vulnerable in her care. It was a transaction of trust more intimate than any wedding vow.