Chapter Text
That morning, Darius woke up to a pair of arms clenching him tightly and a messy head of blonde hair spread below the pillow.
His son’s arms.
His son’s hair.
He tried to move Hunter softly, hoping he wouldn’t wake up. His motions, slow yet steady, weren’t enough. Titan, if he ever had any doubts about the kid being a grimwalker his stiffness and almost imperceptible breath left no questions. Stonesleeper lungs did have their effects.
After he managed to free himself somehow, the first thing he noticed was the way in which none of the blankets were crumbled on Hunter, but below him. He supposed those were part of the risks of falling asleep sitting with the kid on his lap, yet he couldn’t help but feel a pinch of guilt at the feeling of the slightest breeze coming from his window.
Ventilation was a must for a good sleep in his opinion, and he guessed if Hunter’s stiffness was an indicator his theory was right. It allowed him to not feel as if he suffocated under the fine covers, but he wasn’t so sure about sleeping on them.
On a first impulse, he reached for Hunter’s forehead.
Darius wondered whether he had acquired some sort of father magic after signing the adoption form, because he was right. Even before actually touching the skin, he could feel the unusual heat Hunter irradiated.
Perfect start to his dad journey.
Worried, but trying to care for Hunter’s sleep nonetheless, Darius rushed downstairs to grab a bowl, ice and water, and a rag. Hurrying as much as he could without spilling the water, he arrived by Hunter’s side within seconds. He hoped Hunter wouldn’t be startled by the cold, soppy feeling of the rag against his forehead.
Hunter turned around, trying to find a more comfortable position and trapping the rag between his cheek and the bed. Even though a small puddle began forming around it, what concerned Darius the most was that he didn’t even think of bringing another rag in case something like this happened.
Now that Hunter had started moving in his sleep, if he was right, it wouldn’t be long before he woke up, and the last thing Darius wanted was for Hunter to wake up feverish and alone.
He considered the possibilities and decided to try and fetch the rag, even if that meant waking Hunter up. Once he was conscious and aware enough, he could go get another one, or some ice for that matter. Even though he hadn’t gotten the thermometer yet, he could tell the fact Hunter was radiating warmth was nothing good.
At that moment, a thought struck him.
Was the healthy temperature threshold the same in grimwalkers and witches?
Oh Titan, how could he have never even thought of that before?
While in the Emperor’s Coven, the few times in which he had been able to shake Hunter’s gloveless hand he felt quite warm. He had certainly gotten a surprise when the first time he touched Hunter’s hands after well, everything, and every time after, the boy usually felt a little colder. A little bit colder than most people Darius knew, even. If that was an indicator, he had way more to worry about.
He couldn’t even search for information on grimwalkers on a crystal ball, he had tried before with no results. The Bonesborough library would have surely been purged of any of that knowledge since the very second Belos was named Emperor of the Isles. It was out.
While he would have had a better chance at the castle’s library, it had been practically destroyed in its entirety, and Titan knew where the remnants were stored. Eda had mentioned something about wanting to have them in a new library vaguely one night, as she rambled over maybe-plans for some sort of school. He really had to ask her, but of course, that would mean grabbing his scroll and waiting for whenever she decided to start her day.
Maybe that illusionist kid, Augustus? Gus, as Hunter always called him?
Darius vaguely recalled a day when Hunter had told them about how he got stuck in the Human Realm, everything about the way they fought Belos before. If he was right, and the boy had actually dived into Belos’ mind, maybe he could have seen something, anything on grimwalker health.
As he was about to race for his crystal ball or scroll, he remembered he didn’t even have Gus’ Penstagram handle. How was he even supposed to contact him? He would have to wake Hunter up for that too. Plus, he wasn’t sure how he would take it if a forty-something ex-Coven Head texted his kid out of the blue, and he wasn’t sure how Gus’ father would take it either.
Darius was running out of options.
Softly, he nudged Hunter as tenderly as he could.
“Hunter? I need you to wake up.”
The boy shot up, alarm filling his eyes, to which Darius quickly added.
“Don’t worry, it’s me, you’re not in trouble.”
Slowly, Hunter unclenched his fists and stretched a little, only to find his joints slightly sore and his vision blurry.
He tried getting up, but Darius dashed and instructed him to lie down before his feet even touched the floor.
As he slowly became aware after the bolt of panic faded, Hunter only got more confused, until he remembered that night.
He remembered the talk he had had with Darius, slightly more vividly than he would have liked to. Had it been so obvious how it consumed him from the inside? Hunter flushed slightly at the thought, the usual warmth that overtook him barely feeling like a change.
Still, that did not answer why his entire face was dripping with water, as well as part of the hair closest to his forehead and the neck of his shirt. Or why his body felt as if it was being lit on fire, despite the coldness he felt from around him and the need to grab a blanket.
He turned around to grab the edge of the blanket closest to him, not without his joints feeling weird to say the least. He could practically feel every fiber in the cloth, and couldn't suppress a grimace at the combined sensations. Which, of course, didn't go unnoticed by Darius.
"How are you feeling, little prince?" Darius asked, softening his usual tone at Hunter's reaction to the blanket. If that was with the set of sheets he liked the most, he had no clue how the rest of his senses might be reacting.
"Uh, weird I think," Hunter replied. "Why am I... drenched?" Words seemed to be taking him a little longer than usual, worrying Darius a little more if that was possible. Was Hunter just overwhelmed? Was it due to the fever? Was it simply a little morning slowness?
"You had a fever when I woke up."
Well, that explained quite a lot.
"Am I... better?"
Hunter didn't even know why. He didn't feel better, but it was certainly not the worst he had felt.
"Actually, that's why I had to wake you up." Darius leaned in a little closer, reaching out for Hunter's arm yet reminding not to go near his shoulders.
There was no easy way to ask, but he tried his best.
"Hunter, I- I know you don't like to talk a lot about well, being a Grimwalker, but I believe you might know more than me. Is your healthy temperature range the same as a witch's?"
Hunter tensed up a little before answering.
"Well, I've worked up with my temperature up to 37 °B I think? But optimum efficiency is a little lower." He paused before continuing, biting his lip slightly as he remembered. "Not so much though, it wasn't easy to make it down the Knee exactly because of that."
While hearing him articulate fuller sentences was a relief, Darius couldn't help but feel internally horrified at that.
"I said healthy, Hunter, not efficient."
"Well, why should I care about the healthy ranges? If I took a day off every time I was above or below that I would have worked about two days a year. If I stuck to the ranges that book on Grimwalkers said, I’d barely even get out of bed! It must have been wrong though, it said 37°B or more was dangerous, but I made it out fine."
That... was not the answer Darius was expecting.
"What do you mean about two days a year?"
"Well, I used to have fevers. A lot. And well, since Grimwalkers do have different average temperatures Unc- Belos never really allowed me to go to the Healers in the castle. Too many explanations. I only assumed it had to do with being from wherever he told me I had been rescued from, some sort of difference in the witches' anatomy, but well, you know how that ended."
Suddenly, Hunter felt a shiver shake him, only making him cover up more despite the uncomfortableness of the blanket.
"Anyways, he taught me to monitor my vitals after every mission, just to ensure I had not been cursed or whatever. My temperature, well, it was supposed to be somewhere between 28 and 31° Bloodgrees, but now that I'm thinking, it rarely stayed there."
Darius was sure something wasn’t tracking.
Either that, or it was Hunter being Hunter. He did know which one option he preferred though.
“You said you worked with up to 37°B?”
“Yep. Not my best day but hey, I only fainted twice during that mission.”
Darius felt his heart drop.
How had the boy even survived that?
“Hunter, did you ever notice a… a pattern or signs that told you a fever was coming?”
Hunter frowned for a second, trying to remember.
“Well, I usually had one, you know. Somewhere around 31°B most of the time, except for some missions. Usually, it only got better after the easy ones —routine raids, recruitment, that stuff— but it would return as soon as I was back in the castle,” he finished with a chuckle. “How weird, I had never really noticed that.”
Hesitant, he added in a slightly softer tone. “Actually. I think it kind of got worse when I was made Head of the Emperor’s Coven.”
Darius began thinking quickly of anything he could recall Hettie ever saying. Something that might help. Fever from eating too much Firebee honey, from drinking water from the Boiling Sea for too long, fever from inhaling too much Palistrom sawdust.
Until his mind landed on Raine.
Apart from him and Terra, the next closest Coven Head to them was Hettie. Raine had spent an unfortunate amount of time with the Healing coven after their every public appearance. The day they had been introduced as Head Witch, Hettie had almost had a heart attack when they went to her feeling oddly cold even beneath the raging sun coming through the open ceiling.
Darius had asked them what it was, hoping it would be somehow correlated to their stage fright. Maybe it could help them improve it? Darius wasn’t sure how much more secondhand embarrassment he could handle the next time Raine had to make another appearance like that.
”I asked her. I don’t like this stage fright thing any more than you, trust me, Darius. But it doesn’t have any correlation. According to her, it’s something called a psychosomatic —psychosomatic?— fever. Basically, stress makes it rise and my stage fright apparently triggers it, and the stress of adapting to being Head Witch isn’t helping either. So now I’m a bard with stage fright and fever.”
Could it maybe be?
The more he thought about it, the more implications he could think of. Hunter had felt stressed enough that the fever stayed there for months, maybe years even, only receding when he was away from those damn walls.
And Darius had never bothered noticing, let alone helping.
He took a couple of deep breaths, trying to shut down the sensation of his bile sac fighting to release some of the emotion. If there was something he couldn’t do now, for Hunter’s sake, it was lashing out, even if it wasn’t aimed at the boy.
Especially with his abomination form.
“Darius?” Hunter asked tentatively from beside him. He could tell Darius was trying to control himself, the question was why. Had it been the fact he had just admitted to being able to work through worse, yet not attempting in the slightest to get up?
“If I said something wrong, I promise— just tell me what it was and I won’t do it again.”
Darius turned to his side so fast he almost got whiplash.
“What? No, no, I—” He stopped on his tracks with realization, rewording his sentence as fast as he could.
“I’m mad, but not at you, never at you for being sick, Hunter.”
What was a soft way of saying I’m not mad, I’m absolutely outraged at the man you called Uncle for not being even close to worthy of that title?
“Back in the day, around the same time Raine was appointed as Head Witch, they discovered something. Adapting to the castle took quite a toll on them, and all those public appearances from the first few days were not exactly easy with their stage fright. The amount of stress, it was making them sick. Made them sick for a few months, actually, and every appearance made it worse. Whenever I’d see them after any event, they would be burning up with fever. Just like you right now.”
Hunter remembered the way Raine always looked like they were cold during those first few months. He always assumed they came from a warmer place, Palm Stings maybe. That the stone walls of the castle were simply not warm enough.
“They told me Hettie could explain it after quite some effort to find a cause. Stress can make a number in your body, Hunter. Last night was incredibly brave of you. To open up, I can only imagine how that went for you. If I’m right, all that buildup, after the past few months, was as if your body experienced it for the first time all over again.”
“What do you mean?” Hunter asked, quite puzzled as to where this was going.
“Raine had something called a psychosomatic fever. All the stress from adapting made them constantly have a low fever, but it would get worse with stress peaks, like when they had an appearance and their stage fright took over. From what you say about your time at the coven, Hunter, it might be something similar. The stress from last night’s talk probably made it worse.”
So, was that it? Simple stress? All that time doing missions, working through fevers, was all because he couldn’t handle something like stress?
Darius seemed to guess what he was thinking of, and quickly added.
“It’s not your fault, Hunter. The environment you grew up in, well, Titan knows what the odds are that you would have made it out with no repercussions on your health. It was not fit for a kid your age, Little Prince, and nobody made it easier. Even I played a part in making it even worse than it already was.”
Before Hunter could get on with some self-deprecation, Darius continued.
“We can go to a Healer to get you tested for it, eventually,” he said, a slight teasing tone at Hunter’s grimace response to the idea.
“For now, rest a little. Let me go grab— Actually, I’ll send an abomination,” he said, as he invoked one to fetch more cold rags and ice.
“You are safe here. Relax, and we’ll see if that fever goes down a little. And, for the Titan’s sake, cover with that blanket properly! How can you even bear feeling half-covered, half-not? And you’re supposed to be the one with sensory icks,” he said jokingly.
“Now, what about you show me that one movie? Cosmic Frontier was it?” Darius asked as he summoned a crystal ball, sitting beside Hunter.
None of them could repress a smile as Hunter pulled himself closer to Darius.