Caspian told himself the first visit was obligation.
The second, courtesy.
By the fourth, he stopped naming it.
The infirmary had become too familiar—the soft shuffle of healers moving between beds, the bitter scent of crushed herbs steeping in steaming bowls, the muted wash of afternoon light filtered through pale linen curtains. Even the air felt fragile here, as though raised voices might shatter it.
Each time he entered, his gaze found her before anything else.
He did not mean for it to.
It simply did.
Some days she was upright in bed, blankets pushed aside, parchment balanced precariously across her lap despite the bandaging still visible at her wrists. Ink stained the tips of her fingers even now.
"You should not be working," he would say from the doorway.
Without fail, she looked up at him with that infuriating composure—cool, assessing, entirely unimpressed by his rank.
"I am not working," she replied evenly. "I am thinking with assistance."
The first time, he crossed the room without answering and removed the parchment from her hands.
She blinked at him.
"Your Highness."
"You will rest."
"That is not a command you are entitled to issue."
"It is today."
He placed the papers on the far table, well out of reach.
The movement was sharper than he intended.
Something hot and unfamiliar tightened in his chest—anger threaded with fear. The image of her bound in that cellar rose too easily. The rope biting into her wrists. The unnatural stillness.
The bruises had not yet faded.
He did not trust the steadiness of her hands, even when she claimed she did.
Other days were worse.
He would enter to find her flushed with fever, breath shallow, copper-red hair damp against her temples. The healer would murmur reassurances—It will break soon, Your Highness—but Caspian remained anyway.
He took the chair beside her bed.
Forearms braced on his knees.
Watching.
He had faced armed men without hesitation.
He had ridden into skirmishes with steel drawn and pulse steady.
But this—
This waiting.
This inability to strike down what threatened her from within—
It carved at him.
Once, in the dimmest hour before dawn, her fever spiked again. She murmured in fragments, words slipping between breaths.
"Not recorded… false alignment… no…"
He leaned closer without thinking, drawn by instinct rather than reason.
"It's over," he said quietly, his voice lower than he had ever used in court. "You're safe."
The word felt insufficient the moment it left his mouth.
Safe.
As though safety were a fixed condition.
As though it could not be undone by a single misstep in shadow.
Her lashes trembled. Her hand twitched weakly against the sheet.
He reached for it—
Stopped himself.
Then, deliberately, he took her fingers in his own.
They were warmer than they should have been.
He did not let go until the fever began to ebb.
When it finally broke two nights later, relief struck him with humiliating force. His knees had nearly given when the healer announced the worst had passed.
He told himself it was responsibility.
Nothing more.
As her strength returned, so did her stubbornness.
He found her one afternoon perched against the headboard with a bound volume resting against her knees.
"You are not cleared for extended reading," he said.
She glanced up, unimpressed. "The healer did not specify duration."
He stepped forward and closed the book—gently, firmly.
Her eyes narrowed.
"You are insufferable," she informed him.
"You were unconscious three days ago."
"And now I am not."
The corner of her mouth curved faintly, as though she had won something invisible.
He exhaled sharply and turned toward the small table near the window. A bowl of fruit had been left there—apples, pears, late-season plums.
He picked up a knife and an apple.
"You will eat," he said.
She opened her mouth to object.
Then reconsidered.
He peeled the fruit in slow, controlled spirals. The thin ribbon of skin fell in a continuous curl. The steady motion calmed him in a way court never did.
Tangible.
Useful.
He cut the apple into careful slices and brought one to her.
She reached for it.
Her fingers brushed his.
The contact was brief.
Accidental.
It burned.
Neither commented.
"You missed a tedious argument between Lord Merrow and the Duke of Fen," he said after a moment.
Her eyes sharpened instantly. "River tariffs?"
"Yes."
"Did Father defer or decide?"
"Deferred. He requested maritime records from the Third Era."
Her gaze flickered—calculating, alert.
"Interesting."
He watched fatigue recede from her expression, replaced by focus.
"He pressed for expanded authority," Caspian continued, "citing 'recent uncertainties.'"
"Ambiguous language," she murmured.
"Always a warning."
He offered another slice of fruit.
"And the southern farmlands?" she asked.
"Storm damage. Grain redistribution authorized."
"From which stores?"
"Western reserves."
A faint nod.
Approval.
It struck him how much that mattered.
He found himself speaking without prompting—detailing a merchant delegation from the coast, their claim that trade routes had shifted eastward, a minor dispute over fishing boundaries that felt less minor beneath scrutiny.
She listened with an intensity he had never encountered before.
Not passive.
Not deferential.
Engaged.
Sharpening him.
"And do you believe them?" she asked quietly.
"I don't know yet."
"You will."
Certainty.
Not reassurance.
He realized, with unsettling clarity, that he wanted to earn that certainty.
That he wanted her to look at him and see competence not inherited—but forged.
One afternoon, sunlight spilled warm and gold across the infirmary floor. Dust motes drifted in lazy arcs.
He had been speaking for nearly an hour about a tax restructuring that would have bored him senseless in any other company.
Alara leaned forward slightly, chin resting against her hand, eyes intent as though he recited epic poetry.
"And how did you respond?" she asked.
"I suggested a scaled levy rather than a flat adjustment."
Her lips curved. "A compromise that maintains authority while appearing generous."
He paused.
"That was the intention."
"It was effective."
The praise struck deeper than he expected.
He looked away first.
Outside the window, guards drilled. Servants crossed the courtyard. Life resumed its ordered rhythm.
Inside, time bent around the space between them.
As days passed, bruises along her arms faded from deep violet to amber shadow. Bandages disappeared one by one. She began walking short distances—slowly, deliberately.
He arrived one afternoon to find her standing by the window without support.
"You are not indestructible," he said sharply.
She turned toward him.
"Nor are you."
There was no mockery in it.
Only truth.
Something in his chest tightened.
When she slept, he watched until he was certain her breathing remained steady.
When she reached for parchment, irritation flared—not at her defiance, but at the reminder of how close he had come to silence.
He had told no one how he found her.
Had followed rumor and fragments. Had ridden beyond protocol. Had drawn steel without waiting for council sanction.
That knowledge sat beneath his ribs like an unsheathed blade.
One evening, as twilight deepened beyond the window, he set a peeled pear beside her and began recounting the day's proceedings.
Mid-sentence, he realized she was not watching the fruit.
She was watching him.
"You look tired," she said.
"I am not."
"You are."
He hesitated.
"You should be the one resting."
"And you," she said softly, "should not carry what was not yours to bear."
The air shifted.
He stepped closer without intending to.
"It became mine," he said quietly, "the moment I saw you there."
The words left him before caution could intervene.
Silence.
Her eyes searched his face—not as Keeper assessing record, but as woman assessing truth.
The space between them felt charged, almost visible.
The pull had changed since the gardens.
It was no longer curiosity.
No longer intrigue.
It was gravity.
Inevitable.
Dangerous.
He felt it in the way his hand hovered near hers. In the way neither of them stepped back.
In the way the world beyond the infirmary door seemed distant and irrelevant.
And each day he remained at her bedside—frustrated, protective, undone by how fiercely he cared—he felt the invisible alignment tightening.
Like two blades slowly, inexorably drawing toward parallel.