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“Dad?”
He opens his eyes a crack in the candlelight and she wrings out the cloth, places it back on his forehead.
“How do you feel?”
“Better…” he murmurs and his voice is quiet and brittle. She touches his temple and it burns, and she feels a twist of pain and anger that seems to linger in her for longer every time this happens.
“What did he want this time?”
“Claudia, you know it isn’t like that…” her father stops, shuts his eyes, seems to gather himself back together slowly. “There are things we need to do, you understand that.”
Mostly of course that is true, she does understand, her father is the High Mage of Katolis, it is a role that comes with certain privileges, he has the ear of King Harrow. It is also a position that comes with hidden costs. She knows all about those too, has known for years, since her mother left. Mostly he will try to hide it from her, then there are times like this when that is no longer possible.
She will sit by him then, wipe the fever of magic from him, wait for the sickness to pass. That seems to take longer every time too.
“Can’t someone else do this dad? I don’t understand why it always has to be you.”
He sighs and opens his eyes, they burn with the light of the fever, stare at her, red rimmed, shaded with tirdness.
“There isn’t anyone else who can do this.” He moves to shift himself up and she puts her hand behind his back. She can feel the heat of expended magic that lingers on his skin.
“I could, I could do something. I could help you.”
She watches him even out his breaths, the room is cold but the sweat is a sheen on him, dampens the sheets.
“No. Not yet. Things will get better Claudia, then it will stop.”
He has told her this for years. She thinks that he might even have believed it once, that the kingdom would thrive and all would be well. There was a time she had believed it too. She had believed so many things, that her mother would return, that things would be like they were before, that the king wouldn’t need so much and her father would get better, return to the same man she used to know.
She remembers that most of all. When he hadn’t used to look so tired, when he would joke with her and Soren, the three of them laughing at the silliest things. The way he had thrown them up in the air when they were little, pretend he was going to drop them, and catch them in his arms. She had loved that, had loved the way he would fill his stories with the most wonderful magical things and bring them alive on the palms of his hands.
He had appeared like a pillar of strength, towering above them, something sweet and safe. On dark nights when the winds howled around the castle and ghosts and shadows filled their dreams they could go to him and he would make them disappear with just a few words and the warm embrace of his arms.
She had thought that adults were invincible then, that they never had nightmares, that they would always exist that way, like beacons of hope and love in the darkness.
She knows differently now.
These days her father is tired all the time, stitches himself together with morning potions and magical ingredients in the cold light of day. One day she will do that too.
“I know dad, don’t worry.”
He closes his eyes, the heat radiates from him, and she wrings out the cloth again. She won’t let it break her, it is her turn to be strong. She has seen the price he has paid, the one he tries to hide, she has seen it written right through the core of him. This price is smaller, bearable, she can split it off, deal with one thing at a time. First the fever, then he can sleep.
Then another day will dawn, and another, and it will be better. She takes a dry cloth to brush back the damp strands of his hair.
“Has Soren been?” She pauses for a moment before taking his hand with her own.
“Soren’s very busy with training dad. I’m sure he’ll come later.”
She knows that Soren won’t come though, because he cannot bear to see their father like this. It eats through him, makes him short and grumpy, but he doesn’t understand. Soren can never really understand because magic doesn’t flow through him. He will never know its mysterious complexities, taste the peculiar drive of it. Magic has been given to them to fix a world that is broken, to give humans hope. There is a sacrifice to it too though, it drains things from you, she has felt it.
It takes its toll, the toll accumulates, it becomes like dropping ink into a bowl of water, at first it disperses, is hardly visible and then slowly the water turns black and there is no way to make it clear again.
It’s the reason she will always understand her father better than Soren.
Her brother is strong and full of life, and she will keep it that way, the same way her father does. Soren will never see the depths of themselves that they have to draw on, how it gets a little worse every time, and it is better that way, better for him to stay out of those shadows, she isn’t sure he could endure them. There is a light in Soren, the same sort of light there had been in her mother. They all miss the light of her terribly.
It is hard to walk in the darkness, the light in Soren wouldn’t survive.
So she is the one that sits here, who keeps the candles burning and wipes the dreams filled with fever away.
Her father needs her.
That is what she has to remember. There is no one else, only her.