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Lilliandra sleeps like she’s dead. Nothing graceful about it — no careful posture, no elegant fold of limbs like she pretends at when someone might be watching. She’s sprawled across the bed at a diagonal, blankets kicked half-off, one arm flung above her head as if she tried to fight the fever in her sleep and lost.
Her hair clings in damp curls to her temple. Her mouth is slightly open. She makes a small sound as she breathes. It’s almost a snore.
Miraak stands at the bedside and watches her breathe until the rhythm stops being something he counts on his fingers and becomes something his body accepts.
Then he moves with the quiet efficiency of a man who has tended to injury and exhaustion for longer than most dynasties survive. The basin is already on the table near the bed, water warmed. He wrings a cloth out until it’s merely damp and lays it across her forehead with practiced precision.
Her skin is hot. Too hot.
He presses two fingers beneath her jaw, feeling the rapid thrum there, and his mouth tightens. Of all indignities, of all the petty mortal failings he has endured since stepping fully back onto Nirn — hunger, sleep, the way joints complain in weather — this is the one he dislikes most because it is common. Unremarkable. A thief that steals strength without ceremony.
He reaches for the thread of magicka in himself — smooth, familiar, clean. It answers at once. The light of restoration gathers under his palm, not radiant, not showy; simply there, an obedient heat that becomes an obedient cool as he shapes it.
Lilli’s brow eases. Her breathing steadies further.
And still, even as he holds the spell against her, the heat under her skin does not vanish. It blunts. It softens. It refuses to be ended. He withdraws his hand slowly, annoyed at the world for daring to have rules that do not bend for him.
He turns to the small table by the hearth. The kettle is there. He has learned this ritual by watching her perform it in healthier days: water, heat, herbs that smell like crushed mint and sharp citrus, honey when she can be coaxed into allowing sweetness.
He does not need the warmth of the fire the way she does, but he tends it anyway because she will notice the difference even asleep. Because he has learned her comforts the way some men learn prayers. When the tea steeps, he sets it aside to cool.
He sits on the edge of the bed, weight dipping the mattress, and watches her face.
The fever has made her look younger in a way he hates. Not because she is fragile, but because the softness is a lie her body tells when it is overwhelmed. Her lashes rest light against her cheeks. The sharpness of her mouth is slack.
He tucks the blanket over her shoulder.
Her hand twitches, seeking, and for a heartbeat he thinks she is waking. But her fingers merely curl against the sheet like a child’s, grasping at nothing.
He catches her hand before it falls.
Warm. Too warm.
The instinct is old: anchor. Claim. Stay. He does not speak it. He only holds her hand, thumb resting against the pulse that insists on racing.
Minutes pass. Or hours. Time becomes something measured by the sound of her breathing and the occasional soft hitch when the fever climbs again.
Eventually, she stirs. Not fully waking — just drifting toward it. Her brows knit like she’s attempting to solve a problem in her sleep. She swallows, grimaces, and turns her face slightly into her pillow. Her eyes crack open; they are unfocused at first, too dark in the low light. Then they find him. Recognition settles, and with it a flicker of irritation — as if even sick, she resents being seen. “Mm,” she rasps, voice sanded down. “Don’t look so smug.”
He lifts a brow. “You’re fevered.”
“Astute.” Her eyelids droop. She squints at him as if trying to decide whether he’s real. “You’ve been hovering.”
“I have been present.”
“You’ve been hovering.”
He would deny it out of principle, but her hand tightens around his fingers as if her body has decided to betray her pride for her. He says, instead, “Drink.”
He reaches for the cup on the bedside table. When he brings it to her lips, she makes a faint, disgruntled sound — half protest, half gratitude — and takes a careful sip. Then another. Her throat works visibly.
She exhales through her nose, eyes closed, as if the warmth hurts and comforts at once. “Disgusting,” she mutters.
“It’s tea.”
“It is—” she coughs, a short, sharp thing that leaves her blinking watering eyes. He waits, patient in the way he only allows himself to be with her. When the cough passes, he offers her the cup again. She drinks because she knows he will not stop.
Her gaze flicks to his face. She studies him with the sleepy, fever-soft focus that makes honesty slip through cracks. “You’re… good at this,” she says, as if surprised.
He snorts. “You routinely attempt to kill yourself by overwork.”
“That’s a slanderous simplification of my research ethic.”
“It is accurate.”
She hums, the sound threaded with amusement and fatigue. Her fingers shift, and before he can decide what she’s doing, she pulls his hand closer.
She presses her lips to the back of his knuckles. It is not a chaste peck. It is a slow, warm touch — lingering. Possessive in its own quiet way.
Miraak stills.
Lilli draws back just enough to look at him. Even fevered, her eyes carry that familiar, wicked spark. “What?” she whispers. “You’ll live.”
He huffs, the closest he’ll come to a laugh. “Don’t kiss me when you’re ill.”
Her mouth quirks. “Make me stop.”
“I will,” he says, and then — because he cannot help himself — he adds, “when you are well enough to fight about it properly.”
She smiles like she’s won something. Then her eyelids flutter and she slumps back into the pillows, the victory immediately forgotten by her body’s demand for sleep.
Miraak sets the cup down and adjusts the blankets again. He smooths her hair back from her temple with two fingers — gentler than he ever thought he would be with anyone — and watches her drift.
When her breathing deepens, he stands. He should leave the room. He should return to the table. He should do anything other than remain here, staring as if he can intimidate the fever into surrender.
Instead, he stays.
It begins, as these things always do, with something small.
A faint scratch at the back of his throat when he swallows.
He pauses by the hearth, half a log in his hand, and frowns as if offended by the sensation itself. He drinks water. It does nothing. He runs a small thread of restoration over his own chest and throat, the spell sliding through him like clean light. For a moment, the scratch fades.
He tells himself that is that. He tells himself he is not some fragile mortal man catching a common illness like a child. He tells himself this as he continues through the day as Lilliandra rests.
By the next day, he can no longer lie.
The ache has spread behind his eyes. There is a heaviness in his limbs that does not belong to fatigue. When he stands, the room tilts slightly to the left. He grips the bedpost until it stops. He does not feel sick, he insists silently, furious. This is merely… a temporary imbalance.
Lilli stirs; she blinks up at him. Her colour is better now — still pale, but her eyes are clearer. Restoration and sleep have done their work, at least partly.
“Your face is doing something,” she murmurs.
“My face is fine.”
“It’s doing the thing it does when you’re trying not to admit—” Her gaze sharpens, suddenly more alert. She sits up a fraction, eyes narrowing. “Oh.”
“Do not.” His head aches the more he begins to argue with her.
“Oh,” she repeats, the word blooming into delighted, breathy amusement. “No.”
“I am not ill.”
“Did I say anything?” she asks, far too pleased for someone who was half-dead a day ago. “But you are. You caught it.”
“I did not.”
“You did,” she insists, voice rough but gleeful. “You—”
He tries to glare her into silence. It works on lesser beings; it does not work on the elf who has watched him bleed and mend and rage and choose her again and again.
Lilli swings her legs over the side of the bed with exaggerated care, as if proving she’s functional. She stands — wobbly, but upright — and steps closer. Her height makes her looming affection even more insulting. She reaches up and presses the back of her hand to his forehead.
Miraak flinches away on instinct.
“Hold still,” she says, voice suddenly gentler beneath the tease. He holds still because the hand on his brow is warm in a different way than fever — warm with her. Her eyes widen a fraction. “Oh,” she says again, this time softer. “Miraak.”
He hates the note in her voice. Concern has always felt like a chain to him, even when it’s offered with love. “I am fine,” he repeats.
She lets out a short laugh that turns into a cough. Then she steadies herself, palm sliding down to cup his cheek. “I’m going to do to you,” she says, “exactly what you did to me.”
He scowls. “Threatening.”
“Correct.” She leans down and kisses him — quick, purposeful — right at the corner of his mouth. As if sealing the verdict. Then she pulls away and points at the bed with mock severity. “Sit.”
“I do not—”
“Miraak,” she says, and somehow the single word carries all the weight of eighty years of knowing him. “Sit.”
He opens his mouth to argue, but the pounding behind his eyes says otherwise. He sits.
Lilli’s smile is immediate. Triumphant. Fond. Irritatingly tender. “There,” she says, as if she hasn’t just forced the world’s most stubborn ancient man to obey her like a chastised apprentice. “See? You can follow directions.”
Miraak’s glare is immediate. It is also… a little unfocused, as if the indignation has to swim through the fever first before it reaches his eyes. “I am allowing this,” he says hoarsely.
“Mm.” Lilli nods with solemnity. “A historic act of mercy. Future scholars will write theses.”
He makes a low sound that might be a threat. It comes out like he’s trying to bully the air and failing.
Lilli’s smile flickers — fond, sharp at the edges — and then she reaches out and cups his jaw again. “Chills?” she asks, quieter.
“No.”
“Yes.” She tilts his face a fraction left, then right, like she’s assessing a wound. Her brows draw together. “Don't lie.” Pride tries to rise. His body chooses that moment to betray him again: a shiver that runs through his shoulders.
Lilli makes a soft, exasperated sound through her nose — affection disguised as annoyance. She bends and presses a quick kiss to his cheek, just beneath his eye. “Fine,” she says briskly, like it’s a verdict. “If you’re going to be dramatic.”
She turns on her heel and crosses the room. Miraak watches her go with narrowed eyes, as if expecting her to return with a dagger. Instead she returns with… blankets.
Plural.
He starts to sit up straighter, suspicious. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like.” She shakes one out with a snap, the fabric blooming. “You are shivering.”
“I do not need—”
“Yes, you do.” She steps closer, and in one smooth motion she tosses the blanket over his shoulders.
The indignity of being blanketed hits him like a second illness. He freezes, offended, then twitches as another chill crawls up his spine. The blanket catches the tremor and muffles it. That makes it worse. Now she can see it.
Lilli’s mouth quirks. “Oh, that’s delightful.” He glares harder. She leans in again, hands smoothing the blanket down as if he’s a sulking child. But her fingers linger at his shoulders, warm and steady. Her touch is careful in the way it only ever is when she’s trying not to show she cares.
“You’re going to drink water,” she says, brisk. “Then you’re going to drink something warm. Then you’re going to stop trying to stand up like you can intimidate your immune system into obedience.”
Miraak’s eyes half-close despite himself. It is an indignity that his body relaxes under her hands. Another proof that she has rewired him in quiet ways he never asked for.
“Restoration?” she asks.
“I tried.”
“And?”
“It… soothed,” he admits, grudging.
Lilli makes a thoughtful sound. “So, it’s like mine. It can’t erase it. Only… buffer.” He hates that she’s right. He hates that the world has petty little illnesses that ignore his magic.
Lilli leans in again and kisses his temple. Not teasing this time. Not triumphant. Just warm. “You’ll be fine,” she murmurs, as if she’s telling it to his body, not his pride. “You’re just… catching up.”
“Catching up,” he repeats with disdain.
“With the fourth era,” she says, a smile in her voice. “Welcome.”
He makes a low, irritated sound.
Lilli’s answering laugh is quiet, pleased — then she sobers as the sound catches in her throat. She clears it, swallows, and pretends she is only efficient, not soft. “Stay,” she says, and turns back toward the hearth.
Miraak watches her cross the room like he expects her to vanish into a Black Book at any second. Instead, she kneels, rummages through the small cupboard by the kettle, and comes up with a tin of herbs he recognizes — because he watched her buy them once, months ago, and then pretended he hadn’t. She fills the kettle and sets it over the flame in the practiced way of someone who has been ill often enough to learn what helps.
He should be irritated that she knows this. He is — faintly. Mostly he is preoccupied with the way the room feels too warm and too cold at once.
When she returns, she has a cup in one hand. “Drink,” she says, echoing him with such accuracy it would be flattering if it didn’t sound like mockery.
Miraak takes it with stiff dignity. The steam grazes his face. He hates that it smells comforting. He hates that his hands feel a fraction too warm against the ceramic. He drinks. It helps in the way sunlight helps a winter room — real, but not enough. His throat eases. The ache behind his eyes remains. He sets the cup down with care, then closes his eyes for a moment too long.
Lilli’s hand lands on his shoulder again, steady. “Lay down.”
“I am sitting.”
“Mm. And soon you’ll be listing. Lay down.”
He opens his eyes, unimpressed. “I do not list.”
“You absolutely will,” she says, and the fondness in it is a knife she pretends she isn’t holding. “You’re trying to pretend you’re fine. It’s very dignified.”
“I will throw you into the lake,” he mutters.
“Lake Ilinalta? In the dead of winter?” she asks, bright. “How romantic.”
His glare attempts to sharpen. The fever blunts it again.
Lilli reaches up — careful, deliberate — and touches her fingers to the side of his throat beneath his jaw, feeling for warmth, for pulse, for the way his skin betrays him.
His pulse leaps under her fingertips like it’s offended to be caught.
“Running hot,” she says softly, the teasing ebbing for a beat. Then, as if she can’t tolerate the tenderness on her own tongue, she adds: “Congratulations. You’re experiencing what I call ‘being mortal.’”
“Spare me,” he says, but it comes out hoarse and tired.
“I won’t,” she says simply, and it’s so matter-of-fact that it takes the fight out of him for a moment.
She tugs gently at the blanket on his shoulders, guiding him toward the bed. Miraak resists out of habit — out of pride — right up until the room tilts again and his stomach gives a faint, unpleasant roll.
He sits for a heartbeat, then lies back reluctantly, as if he’s conceding territory. He stops resisting. Lilli catches the shift instantly. She doesn’t gloat. She just moves closer, one hand braced at his elbow, the other firm at his back. The bed accepts him with a soft dip.
Lilli pulls the blankets up around him without asking permission. Two layers, tucked at his sides. He stiffens when she tucks the edge under his hip.
“Stop that,” he says weakly.
“No.”
“That is—”
“Comfort,” she says, and presses a kiss to his forehead like punctuation. “Unfamiliar, I know.”
Miraak’s eyes squeeze shut. “You are insufferable.”
“Always.” She climbs onto the bed at his side and sits cross-legged, as if settling into her post. She studies him with that same ruthless attention he turned on her earlier: the pallor of his skin, the tightness around his eyes, the shallow way his breaths catch like they’re trying not to commit to being real.
Then she reaches over and smooths hair back from his brow, fingers gentle despite the sharpness she tries to keep on her face.
His eyelashes flutter. “That’s never a good look on your face,” he murmurs.
“I’m thinking,” she says.
“My point proven.”
Lilli’s mouth quirks. “I’m thinking that you, Miraak, are going to sleep. And I’m thinking that if you try to get up, I will sit on you.”
He opens one eye. “You cannot—”
“I absolutely can,” she says, and there’s a flash of heat behind it that has nothing to do with illness. Then she softens, just a little, and traces her thumb along his cheekbone. “And if you don’t sleep, you’ll make this last longer.”
Miraak’s jaw works. A retort rises. Pride gathers itself. His body betrays him with another shiver.
Lilli’s brows lift. “Mm.”
He glares, but it’s half-hearted now. Exhaustion is a tide, pulling. “Fine,” he says, voice rough. “I will… rest.”
Lilli’s smile is immediate, victorious — and then she leans down and presses a kiss to his cheek, slow enough to feel like an apology for the victory. “Good,” she whispers.
Miraak exhales through his nose. “Do not watch me.”
“I’m not,” she lies without shame or pause.
He makes a sound that could be outrage. It turns into a sigh. He shifts, trying to find a position. He fails. The blankets feel too heavy and not heavy enough. His bones ache in a way he hates. Lilliandra offers one of her pillows and soon he settles into their bed in some comfort.
For a few minutes, she stays upright beside him, hand resting on his shoulder through the blanket, feeling the tremors when they come. Her touch doesn’t press. It simply stays. Steady. Present.
Miraak’s breathing begins to slow despite himself. His face softens in increments, each one a small surrender: the unclenching of his jaw, the release of his brow, the way his hand — resting near his chest — finally relaxes.
She watches the moment his pride loses to sleep. It is not dramatic. It is not graceful. It’s human.
She pulls the blanket from under her and shifts down, easing her body alongside his, and tucks herself close enough that her warmth can bleed into him without smothering. Her head rests against his shoulder. One arm drapes across his chest, not possessive — just there, a quiet claim.
Miraak makes a small, displeased sound in his sleep and then, after a moment, settles into her as if he’s been doing it forever.
Outside, the wind worries at the windows. The house creaks with its own age. The world is large, indifferent, full of threats grand enough to feel worthy of legend.
Inside, Lilli keeps watch.
She listens to his breathing and counts the spaces between shivers. When his fever turns his skin too hot, she slips from the bed long enough to wring cool water into a cloth and lay it at his brow — careful, precise, the way he did for her.
When she returns, she doesn’t bother pretending she isn’t worried. She presses a kiss to his temple, to his cheek, to the corner of his mouth. “The fourth era,” she murmurs against his skin, fond and fierce. “You’re going to hate it.”
Miraak, half-asleep, grumbles something unintelligible.
Lilli smiles into the dark. She stays awake a while longer, watching the rise and fall of his chest beneath her arm, listening to the storm of his body slowly tire itself out.
And when her own exhaustion finally catches her, she lets her eyes close with her head against his shoulder — close enough to feel him, to anchor him — like she’s guarding something precious and stubborn and painfully, absurdly alive.
His hand tightens around hers again in his sleep.
Lilli’s fingers squeeze back.