⚠️ Content Notice:
This chapter contains depictions of trauma, suicidal thoughts, and abuse. Reader discretion is advised. If these themes are distressing, please skip this chapter.
The clinic's facade was a sheet of glass that reflected the city's late-morning glare, bright enough to make Elara narrow her eyes. Adrian didn't slow. He held the door for her without looking at her and crossed the lobby with the clipped stride of a man who disliked waiting rooms on principle. White light. White tile. The ghost-squeak of rubber soles. Elara drifted beside him like a shadow that hadn't decided whether to belong to him or not.
A nurse checked them in, froze when she took in Elara's frame, and then composed herself with professional efficiency. "Dr. Kade will see you right away," she said—too quickly, as if speed could smother worry. Adrian's mouth pulled into its habitual line, that almost-smile he wore when he was dangerously close to losing his temper.
Ysabel Kade swept into the room with a tablet and a sharp ponytail. She stopped three steps in.
"What the hell."
Her eyes shot to Adrian. "Did you do this?"
"No," he said, voice flat.
"She's—Adrian, she's—" Ysabel's gaze cut over Elara, caught on collarbones that jutted like outcroppings of bone under skin, on wrists too fine for the hospital band. "She's severely underweight. And those are not just old scars."
Elara, seated on the edge of the exam table, set her hands neatly in her lap. She looked like someone waiting to be told which line to stand in next.
Adrian didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. "She's my wife," he said. "You're my cousin. Pretend you remember both facts."
Ysabel blinked, stung, and then exhaled through her nose. "Right." She eased the tablet against her hip and softened her tone for Elara. "I'm Ysabel Kade. I'm going to talk to you, examine you, and run some tests. If anything is painful or too much, you tell me and we stop. All right?"
Elara's reply was simple. "All right."
Ysabel's fingers were warm, brisk, efficient. She weighed Elara; the number made her mouth go tight. She checked blood pressure (low), pulse (thin and quick), temperature (slightly cool). She asked questions Elara answered with that composed, detached steadiness: appetite, sleep, menstrual history. At "none for a year," Ysabel's eyes flicked to Adrian. The muscle in his jaw jumped once and went still.
"May I look at your back?" Ysabel asked quietly.
Elara unbuttoned the top two buttons of the borrowed shirt and turned. The air cooled against her skin. The room cooled, too. The scars weren't dramatic; they didn't need to be. Thin lash-lines, some white and flat with time, some still pink at the edges. Old crescents. The scatter-map of a life measured in punishments.
Ysabel took one long breath and let it go. When she spoke, her voice was very level. "Who did this?"
"The main wife," Elara answered, as if naming a position instead of a person. "Sometimes her children. Staff. If I was in the way."
Ysabel set the tablet down before she dropped it. Adrian didn't move. He had gone very quiet, the way sea looks flat an instant before the storm breaks.
Ysabel worked. She photographed injuries for the record, then didn't save them to the cloud. She examined healing wounds, made notes on topical care, the importance of cleaning, the risk of infection. She palpated gently for tenderness. Elara didn't flinch. It made something ugly and raw ride up behind Adrian's ribs—how absence of reaction could be its own scar.
"Sleep?" Ysabel asked.
"Some." Elara's gaze was somewhere over Ysabel's shoulder. "I dream. Sometimes I walk. I wake up in corners."
"Any falls? Bruises from hitting things while asleep?"
"Yes."
Ysabel wrote: parasomnia—likely trauma-linked. "We can address that. Low-dose sedatives are risky with malnutrition. We'll try sleep hygiene first. Weighted blankets. Door chimes. Reducing nighttime stimuli. If needed, we consider short-term medication once her weight stabilizes."
Elara nodded as if this were simply an itinerary.
Food came next. "How often do you eat?" Ysabel asked.
"Once," Elara said. "Bread and water at three."
Adrian swore softly. The sound was small and indecent in a place that liked to pretend pain didn't exist.
Ysabel kept her eyes on Elara. "Do you get nauseated with larger meals? Any vomiting?"
"If I eat after I'm used to not eating, I throw up," Elara said, tone considerate, apologetic for being difficult. "It burns."
"Refeeding is delicate," Ysabel said, turning to Adrian finally. Clinical shield up. "We cannot rush this. Severe malnutrition means her electrolytes can destabilize quickly if we load her with calories. I want labs today: CMP, CBC, magnesium, phosphate. We'll start with small, frequent meals—high protein, easy to digest, every two to three hours. Broths, soft eggs, yogurts, nothing greasy. Fluids steadily. We'll supplement with B vitamins and iron if indicated. You need a scale. Daily weights at the same time."
Adrian nodded once, briskly. "Done."
"And," Ysabel continued, "we need to talk about amenorrhea—no period for a year. It could be hypothalamic from malnutrition. It could also be endocrine. We'll check thyroid, prolactin, FSH/LH. Once her body feels safe—calories in, stress lower—cycle can return."
Elara's eyes flicked, not quite curiosity, not quite hope. It was more like she was filing the information under a category called Other People's Lives.
"The scars," Ysabel said more gently, "will fade with time. The trauma behind them won't disappear on its own. I can refer a therapist who understands complex trauma. If you want."
Elara considered, then gave the smallest shrug. "If you think it's useful."
Adrian made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "Useful," he echoed under his breath, like the word offended him.
They drew blood. Elara watched the vials fill with detached interest, as if this, too, belonged to someone else. Ysabel returned with a starter bag—protein shakes, electrolyte packets, a little jar of salve that smelled faintly of herbs, a list printed and highlighted.
"Small meals. Salt, potassium, magnesium. Watch for swelling, cramps, dizziness. Night routine." She tapped the paper. "And call me if she faints."
Ysabel hesitated at the door. The doctor was gone; the cousin stayed. "Ade," she said softly. "This isn't a project. She's a person."
His throat worked. "I know," he said.
Ysabel looked at Elara. "He's a bastard," she told her matter-of-factly, "but he's our bastard. If he scares you, you call me."
Elara inclined her head, polite. "All right."
They left with the weighted bag, the printed plan, and a silence that thrummed like a wire between them.
—
The car smelled faintly of sandalwood and leather. Adrian drove like he did everything else: precise, aggressive, ruthless with hesitation. City blocks slid by. Elara held the bag on her lap, reading the highlighted words without moving her lips. She did not look sick; she looked like an old painting left in a damp room—colors pale, details fine, frame still beautiful.
"Do you have questions," Adrian said, not a question.
"No," Elara replied. "You heard everything."
He gripped the wheel. "That's not how questions work."
She lifted a shoulder. "I don't know what to ask."
"How about, 'How long until I'm not dizzy?' Or 'What should I do if I wake up on the floor?' Or 'Is it normal to throw up when I eat after starving?'" His voice rode the edge of a snarl and didn't fall off.
"It's normal," she said, and it was almost gentle, as if comforting him. "Burning. Then it stops."
"None of this is normal." The words hit the dash like stones. A red light halted them. Adrian exhaled, forced his hands to loosen. "From now on, if you need something, you tell me."
"To whom did I tell it before?" It wasn't sarcasm. It was a sincere question. She turned in her seat to face him, eyes clear. "When I asked the main wife for winter clothes once, I didn't get any at all. The next winter they said it taught me patience."
The light went green. Adrian didn't move. A chorus of horns rose behind them; he rolled the car forward and changed lanes without checking if the lane would forgive him. "That won't happen again," he said. He sounded like a verdict. "You ask me now."
Elara nodded once, as if he'd instructed her to wash her hands before dinner.
"And food?" He shot her a look, unguarded for a heartbeat, the grief in it raw and startled. "Bread and water at three? That ends today."
"It's a rule," she said. "If I asked after three, next day's food would be rotten. For a week sometimes."
He looked at the road like he wanted to break it. "If anyone touches your food in this house," he said very softly, "they don't work in that house the next day."
"Why are you angry?"
"Because," he said, and there was the barest tremor—anger's twin, grief—"it's obscene that you have to ask me why."
She absorbed that. The city blurred along Elara's window: pedestrians, a dog tugging a leash, a girl laughing into her phone. Life that happened to other people.
"I slept with dogs," she said after a moment, conversationally. "In the kennel behind the farmhouse. They were warm."
Adrian's hands went white on the wheel. He made himself breathe in for four, out for four like he'd learned once, a lifetime ago when control wasn't optional but oxygen. "How old," he asked, "were you."
"Since I remembered." She tilted her head, thoughtful. "I had a mat for a while. Then I didn't."
"And you never learned to read." Not a question, but softer than thunder.
"I can write my name," she said. "Sometimes I copy letters."
His mouth opened, closed. He pressed the back of his knuckles to his lips, like the words were sharp and he'd cut himself on them. "We'll fix that," he said.
She blinked. The idea landed somewhere in that neat interior and sat there, unalarmed, like a stray cat allowed to remain on the porch.
Traffic freed. They moved again. They didn't speak for a few blocks, and the quiet grew teeth.
When Elara finally did, her tone didn't change. It was the same calm he'd come to recognize—flat water that hid depth.
"They said I should have died instead of Helena," she said.
The name was a match. Adrian flinched as if a spark had landed on his skin. He didn't look at her. He stared straight ahead. "Who said that," he asked. Each syllable careful.
"The main wife," Elara answered. "Some others."
His knuckles went white again. "They're wrong."
"She drank," Elara continued, almost thoughtful. "She wanted to drive. I wasn't the one at the bar. We hit the guardrail. It was loud. After, there was red everywhere. She didn't move." She said it the way one recites a grocery list. "If I could choose, it would have been easier to stop there."
The steering wheel creaked under his hands. He pulled the car to the curb too quickly, shoved it into park, and turned to her.
"Stop." His voice was low, rough, like a hand dragged over gravel. "Do not ever say it would have been easier if you died."
She studied his face. He had the sort of symmetry that made photographers lazy and enemies jealous—clean jaw, precise mouth, eyes too bright when angry. Today those eyes were something else, a color you only saw in deep water.
"You said on our wedding day you'd make my life hell," Elara said, not accusing. "I keep waiting. When it happens, I'll do it." She said it with a small, almost serene smile that made his stomach drop through the floorboards. "If that will make things easier."
His breath left him in a single, silent exhale. For a moment, there were no words. Then he found them, and they were not elegant.
"You are not killing yourself." The calm in his tone was colder than his anger. "Not now. Not ever."
She looked puzzled. "You said—"
"I said a lot of things I was too angry to mean," he snapped, then pressed fingers to the bridge of his nose, forced his voice down. "I don't take them back because I don't get to. But I will not stand here and listen to you decide your life is a debt you should pay with your blood."
The last word cost him. He swallowed hard, once, and met her gaze. "Do you understand me?"
Elara's eyes were clear. If she had been a child once, counting the boards in a kennel roof while winter sang through the seams, that child had learned to keep her face still. She tipped her head a fraction. "No," she said honestly. "I don't know why it matters. To you."
Because you were in my bed last night and I woke up with my arms around you and for a second I couldn't remember which life I was in, he did not say. Because every time you say something that should have shattered you years ago, I hear glass in my own chest. Because if I'd walked into that crash instead of out of it, someone else would be sitting next to you now and maybe you would have died in a kennel with no one to clean your scars.
He closed his eyes once, opened them. The words he chose were smaller. Safer.
"Because living is the rule," he said. "In my house. Under my name. You live."
She considered that, the way one considers a new kind of weather. "All right," she said at last, very softly. It wasn't agreement so much as acknowledgment. A note pinned to a bulletin board: live.
He shifted back into drive. The car rolled forward. The city breathed.
At the next red light, he said, "You will eat every two hours today. A few bites, not a feast. If you feel sick, you tell me. We'll stop. We'll walk. You won't be punished for asking for food at the wrong time. There is no wrong time."
"All right."
"You will sleep in the bed," he added, like he was building a scaffold he intended to keep standing by force alone, "and I will put a chime on the door. If you wake up in the corner, I'll put you back. You don't have to thank me for that."
Elara didn't smile. She didn't nod. She looked out the window at a line of trees, each leaf lit by noon. "I didn't think you bit unless asked nicely," she murmured, a ghost of dry humor.
His mouth tugged, betraying him. "Don't test that."
They drove the last stretch in a quiet that no longer had teeth. At the estate, staff moved quickly, as if they could feel weather changing. A chime was installed on a bedroom door by evening; a weighted blanket arrived before dusk; a chalkboard appeared in the kitchen with times written in firm block letters: 8:00, 10:00, 12:00, 2:00... The household bent around a new axis without quite understanding whose gravity it was.
In the kitchen, Elara stood at the counter with a small bowl of broth and a spoon. She took one sip. Waited. Another. Adrian leaned against the doorjamb with a coffee he didn't drink, watching her without letting himself look like he was watching.
Ysabel texted a list of trauma therapists. Adrian didn't reply. He saved the number. He ordered a set of soft cotton shirts in three sizes, underwear without seams, socks that wouldn't bite into bone. He told the housekeeper to throw out every piece of bread that tasted like cardboard.
At two, Elara ate half a soft egg and a corner of toast. At three, she paused, spoon halfway to her mouth, as if listening for a rule that used to live in the walls. None came. She finished the spoonful. The world didn't end. She looked faintly surprised.
At dusk, she stood in the doorway of the bedroom, fingers on the new chime. It gave a small, sweet sound.
"Try to sleep," Adrian said quietly, from the far side of the room. He looked at his watch as if time were a thing he could bargain with. "If you wake on the floor, we'll argue about it in the morning."
She got into the bed like someone unwrapping a delicate thing she didn't trust her own hands to hold. She lay there, eyes open, until the light faded and the ceiling became a dark sheet. Her thoughts moved slowly, like fish in a deep tank: Live. Eat when hungry. Ask. Bed, not floor. Live.
In the blue hour before full dark, she spoke into the quiet. "Adrian?"
He was a shape in the chair by the window. "Mm?"
"Helena," Elara said, and the name didn't break him this time. "You loved her."
"Yes." He didn't dress it up.
Elara's eyes tracked the ceiling's molding. "I don't know what to do with love," she said. There was no plea in it, no dare. Just fact.
"Neither do I," he answered, and for once it didn't sound like defeat.
Later, when her breath evened, he rose, checked the door chime, the water glass, the little jar of salve on the nightstand. He turned out the lamp and stood for a long moment in the dark, a figure cut out of shadow beside the bed.
He didn't touch her. He didn't make promises he didn't trust himself to keep.
He only said, very low, almost to the room, "Live."
Outside, the wind shifted in the trees. In the bed, Elara's fingers tightened imperceptibly in the sheet, as if some small animal had decided—against better judgment—to stay.