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Annette wakes with a small warm body pressed against her, another head of hair as orange as hers poking out from under the covers. She frowns, worry biting at her, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and stifling a yawn before she rests the back of her hand against Marius’ forehead.
She chews on her lip and sighs. If his fever doesn’t break soon she’ll have to fetch a healer. At least he looks to be deep asleep, though his mouth hangs open and unsteady, rasping breaths rattle from his lungs.
Something moves through the shadows of the dark bedchamber. Annette tenses, a whisp of an incantation on her lips and a glyph at her fingertips, but then a familiar weight sinks the edge of the bed beside her.
A large hand finds her knee under the covers, and if not for her son sleeping on her arm she would launch herself at the intruder.
“Felix?” she murmurs. She reaches out, and his other hand meets hers halfway, tangling their fingers. “When did you get back from Fhirdiad?”
“Just now,” he tells her, matching the volume of her voice. He leans down and brushes a kiss against her forehead.
She grabs him by the back of his neck before he can pull away. “Felix, did you travel through the night again?”
He averts his eyes and grumbles rather petulantly, “I was almost home. Why would I bother stopping to make camp?”
“Even if it’s not dangerous, rest your men and your horses.” Annette plays with the hair at the nape of his neck, slipping a finger into the ribbon tying his hair up before tugging it free.
He sighs in something like relief when his hair falls around his head. She’s not sure if she’s imagining it longer than she remembers, but then his forehead falls against her collarbone, his weight knocking the breath out of her.
“Felix,” she chides him in a low voice even as her fingers slide through his hair, somehow still silky despite the sweat of travel, “can’t you see I have company?”
He hums and raises himself up enough before he ruffles Marius’ hair. “I noticed,” he concedes. “I suspected he’d be here when I didn’t find him in his bed.”
Annette smiles, though it falters quickly. “He’s been sick,” she admits. “He’s had a fever since yesterday and a cough even longer.”
Felix, both to the relief of her beleaguered lungs and to her great disappointment, sits up beside her again. “I’ll send for a healer now,” he says. When he stands, Annette instantly misses him and his warmth all over again.
She grabs his wrist before he can drift too far. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” she says, unable to help pouting.
He raises an eyebrow at her. “Good morning, Annette?” he offers her, though it sounds more like a question.
Maybe if he hadn’t been away for two weeks in Fhirdiad while she’d been stuck in Fraldarius looking after their family and their territory a simple “good morning” would have sufficed, but since he just returned - and after committing the offense of traveling through the night at that! - she was well within her rights to demand a little more.
“You’re gone for two weeks and all I get is a ‘good morning’?” She can’t resist pouting. “Not even a kiss?”
“I already kissed you,” Felix says.
“I’m sure you wouldn’t mind kissing me again,” Annette teases. Her fingertip strokes up and down the softer skin on the inside of his wrist.
Felix sighs as if it’s some great chore, but he smiles against her lips when he leans down to press his against hers.
Annette holds him there for a moment, her hand gripping the back of his neck and her eyes shut, just breathing in the smell of travel - of horse, of pine, of sweat - and feeling his breath warm over her face. “I missed you, Felix,” she whispers.
Felix cups her face in one hand and pushes her hair behind her ear with the other. “Why do you think I didn’t call a halt at sunset last night, Annette?”
Annette grins, her whole body pleasantly warm.
The small body beside her stirs, wriggling under the covers before Marius’ face pokes out. A wide yawn splits his jaws, and he blinks bleary eyes up at Felix before he announces in a raspy voice, “Mother, Father’s home.”
When Felix covers his face, Annette laughs and says, “I noticed.” She kisses his still-worryingly warm forehead. “Now go back to sleep. He’ll still be here when you wake.”