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“Do you need the stitches redone?” Irene asked, pulling a nightshirt out of her wardrobe.
Gen shook his head; he was leaning against her back. Irene was surprised he hasn’t fallen back asleep. He had nearly done so on the way back to her quarters, and by the time they had reached Irene’s room, he had been even paler than before. “The bleeding’s stopped,” he said, then, “get the white one, with the flowers on the sleeves.”
He had described three of her nightshirts, but Irene knew which one he meant. She took it from the shelf and turned around, dislodging his head from where it rested between her shoulder blades. Gen reached for the hem of his nightshirt, and pulled it over his head, swearing quietly as he did so.
Streaks of dried blood crusted his stomach and hip, but as he had told her, the bleeding had stopped. Irene repressed a sigh of relief. She could never tell when he was lying to spare her guilt.
“I don’t think I’ll go back to my rooms in the morning,” he said, voice muffled as she helped him into a clean nightshirt. His Eddisian accent was slipping out, now that he was tired and they were alone. (She’d made a cutting remark about his accent one day while in court, shortly before their marriage, and the next day it had simply disappeared. Like so many things, it was an injury she could not take back.) “I think I’ll have my attendants brought here instead.”
“Oh?” Gen had been the one to start coming to her rooms in secret in the first place. He had told her that he didn’t want what they did in the bedchamber to be the subject of palace gossip; Irene had said there would be gossip whether or not he was seen coming into her rooms.
“Yes.” Nightshirt on, Gen sagged. Irene wrapped an arm around his waist and he leaned into her, resting his forehead against her collarbone. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
She smiled wryly and kissed the top of his head, then his temple where it had struck the door frame a few days before. “I shouldn’t have hit you.”
“I survived,” he said, then, plaintively, “I’d kiss you, but I don’t want to move.”
“You need to move, unless you intend to fall asleep in my wardrobe.”
“I could,” said Gen. “I’ve fallen asleep in worse places.”
There was an awkward pause. Someday–in a few years, perhaps–they would have fewer of those.
“I love you, you know,” he said.
“I do,” said Irene. “Let’s go to bed, Gen.”