Part of her was relieved to not have to face him immediately after their conversation earlier this afternoon. But more of her was annoyed, since she’d made herself perfectly clear that he was to walk—or at the very least sit upright—in the evenings. But in the low-burning candlelight he looked so delicate, she refrained from waking him immediately. His hair lay against his forehead like a spill of ink. Did he always wear it long, or had it grown unruly during his illness? If she wanted to, she could gather half of it into a tiny bun at the top of his head. The thought sent shivers of thrill and disgust through her.

Wren sat in the bedside chair, the wood creaking mournfully beneath her. His eyelashes were perfect black crescents against his wan skin. How tempting it was to touch him, simply because she could. How miserable would he be if he awoke to find his hair combed or his dark circles mended? Or perhaps he’d find her only inches from his face, healing his chapped lips as she traced the pouting line of his mouth …

His eyes snapped open, bleary but fierce on hers.

Wren jerked back but recovered, sitting straight-backed in her chair and planting her hands firmly in her lap. Heat crept from her collar like a rash. “You know very well you shouldn’t be in bed.”

Hal only let out a long, rasping sigh. He closed his eyes again, drawing the blanket over his nose.

“No, none of that now.” She pulled the covers away from him and cast them onto the floor. “Thrombosis is the silent killer.”

Wren helped him to his feet, her magic threading between their fingers, and held fast until he straightened to his full height. Then, she let him go finger by finger, as if worried a sudden wind would knock him over. “You need to make it to the parlor on your own, alright?”

“Yes,” he said in a clipped, long-suffering tone. “I know.”

Together, they trudged downstairs and to the parlor. It was a cramped, narrow den that someone with a greater appetite for melancholy might have called cozy. Velvet-upholstered chairs surrounded the fireplace in a semicircle, and on a pedestal in the corner was a wooden box that Hannah had called a zoopraxiscope.

When she’d cranked it, Wren nearly leapt out of her skin. An electrical light within it surged, throwing a moving image onto the wall. She had watched a stag gallop through a snow-covered wood, its every stride meticulously illustrated. People’s first reactions never disappoint, Hannah had said with a poorly concealed smirk.

Hal dragged himself to the armchair by the window and let his head fall back against the cushion. Between the pained pinch of his eyebrows and the long, exposed line of his throat, he looked so vulnerable. Wren swallowed in tandem with the bob of his laryngeal prominence.