The Chimera

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Fourth Time's the Charm

Fallon is every inch a witch when he prepares Tai a remedy for his leg, bent over his task with flashing eyes.

He's less of a witch and more of a panicking young man when he anxiously checks in on Tai throughout the weeks following his injury.

"He's all right," Skander reassures him whenever he knocks on Tai's door. "Any irritation is just how he is, not from the wound." To which Fallon responds with a relieved sigh and a retreat back out the door.

Tai's room in the citadel is as ostentatious as Skander could have guessed. The four-poster bed is draped over with a velvet canopy and arrayed with soft, fine linens. A beautifully rendered hanging of an apple orchard covers a stretch of wall. The sharp, sweet smell of clove permeates the room, originating from a hanging incense burner. Brocade draperies frame wide windows that let in whatever weak December daylight the sky can stir up.

It'd be peaceful, if Tai ever let himself be at peace.

Instead he sits tense and tired at a large, sturdy table, head hanging low over a map stretched across its surface. His leg is nearly healed, thanks to the combined attentions of Dalmar and Fallon. They've warded off infection and the brunt of the pain, leaving him with only the persistent annoyance of itchiness a month later.

"I can see you scratching at it with your boot. It'll only make it worse," says Skander, nonchalantly flipping through the pages of a letter. He lounges on the seldom-touched settee in Tai's room, comfortable on the deep blue luxury of the cushions. He has no idea why Tai never sits on it.

"I didn't invite you here to act as a nurse." Tai says back, as if he isn't embarrassed to be caught in his lapse of self-control.

Skander looks at him. Tai's still scanning the map, not turning back at all. "Tell me to leave then."

"No."

Skander rolls his eyes at the papers in front of him, as if he doesn't adore Tai's contrariness.

Tai had been temporarily bedridden from the severity of the specter's poison, waiting for Fallon's witch-work to come to fruition. Even after the remedy's relief, Dalmar advised him to stay in bed for a few days to keep weight off his leg.

It was during that time that he began calling out for Lionel.

"Is your brother occupied?" He had asked him as soon as he shifted out of raven form.

Lionel, guileless and honest, said, "I can go see for myself, but I don't think so."

And Tai, rigidly upright in bed, said,  "If he likes, he may come and keep me company. I wouldn't mind."

Lionel was confused but still delivered the message. Upon hearing it for the first time, Skander had looked skeptical at the aloof tone but came to Tai's room anyway.

If he had expected a touching scene of domestic sweetness and caretaking, he was quickly disillusioned when Tai thrust a thick stack of envelopes and folded papers into his arms. "See if you can decipher that," he had said.

The papers had been the culmination of all Tai's correspondence with the Beledon city council. Flipping through them, Skander had noticed a sharp uptick in quantity about six months ago, around the time of Aedus Kade's appearance.

"I thought you were some sort of mastermind. Why do you need my help?" Skander said, knowing he should have spoken less harshly. Tai was injured but still willing to extend some sort of peace offering. Yet Skander wanted the whole of an apology. Say you need me too.

Even with his leg propped up on a cushion, confined to his bed by an insistent Dalmar, Tai had managed to look proud. "You can leave if you like. I'm not keeping you here."