“I brought you lunch.” She lingered in the doorway, breathing in the rich smell of barley and herbs as it wafted from the bowl of soup in her hands.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Try to eat anyway,” she said irritably. “It’d mean the whole world to me.”

As she met his hazy, dispassionate gaze, she couldn’t decide whether to feel relieved by his semilucidity. On one hand, it minimized the chances of his reflexive paranoia injuring them both again. And on the other, it meant they had to interact.

“I’ll try,” he said at last.

How low had her expectations sunk that his concession pleased her? Wren settled into the chair at his bedside. Fragrant steam billowed from the bowl, weaving a partition between them. She counted five of his rasping breaths before she wanted to crawl out of her skin with discomfort.

“So. Are you docile today?” she asked as pleasantly as she could manage.

“Yes. Are you?” There was no wryness in it. Only a deep, wrung-out weariness that almost chastened her.

“As much as I ever am,” she muttered. Wren dipped the spoon into the soup and tried not to feel self-conscious as she blew over the surface. Healing any soup-induced blisters would be a ridiculous waste of her magic. As soon as she extended it toward him, he angled his chin away from her like a petulant toddler.

“I can do it myself.”

Hal and his goddessdamned pride. By the end of this ordeal, she swore she’d develop a twitch in her eye. “Be my guest.”

She set the bowl down on the side table hard enough that the broth sloshed over the lip. As he reached for it, Wren watched a single moment unspool into eternity: Hal, uncoordinated from illness, swiping the spoon from its perch; the silver winking as it hung suspended in midair; his mouth twisting into a grimace. Then, in a rush, the spoon clattered to the floor, far too loud in the tense silence of the sickroom.

Hal frowned at the weathered hardwood as if it spanned the bottom of a chasm. She squinted at the reddening tips of his ears. Frustration? Embarrassment? It was such a strangely human thing. So achingly normal, she didn’t care to interrogate it.

With a sigh, Wren bent over and fetched the spoon for him.

He must have moved at the same time because she nearly clocked him in the chin as she came upright. His nightshirt still hung open, the expanse of his chest and the elegant arch of his collarbones bared only inches from her nose. Close enough that her breath fanned softly against his skin—close enough that she detected the way he shivered. She jerked backward, heat zipping up her neck.

“Uh.” The spoon dangled limply between them. “Here.”

Hal took it from her with a peculiar expression. “Thank you.”