They stopped giving Arthur anything at all for the pain, or to help him sleep. He realised that they’d cut him off when he spent an entire day awake, Sidney sitting stoically at the end of the bed, unsmiling, saying nothing when he made demands. He raged and raged against the physician, tried to drag himself out of bed to really make a point of it, but all they’d give him was endless broth.
Gwen visited and insisted on hugging him, even though he was grumpy and sweaty and generally unpleasant to behold.
‘Get off,’ he grunted, unable to defend himself. ‘You’re embarrassing yourself.’
‘I don’t care,’ Gwen said, smiling at him fondly. ‘God, I’m so glad you’re still alive to be horrible to me. It won’t last. Get your digs in now, while you’re all pathetic and I feel sorry for you.’
She insisted on hugging him again before she left. He breathed in the clean, now-familiar smell of her hair, and felt strangely calmer.
He got better in increments, the days beginning to take shape and form. He even voluntarily drank some damn broth in the end, even though it was late at night and the serving girl had been sent away, and Sidney had to spoon it into Arthur’s mouth himself.
‘This is weird,’ Arthur said, as Sidney used one hand to tilt his head up and the other to feed him.
‘I’ve been doing this for weeks,’ he said. ‘It was weirder when you had no idea who I was, or what a spoon was.’
‘Right,’ Arthur said, taking a deep breath. ‘So I suppose it wasn’t the ghost of my dead mother cradling me and cleaning me and weeping all over me for nights on end.’
‘No,’ Sidney said grimly. ‘That was me. D’you want some wine?’
‘No,’ Arthur said quickly, surprising himself. The thought of it turned his stomach, but it wasn’t just that. ‘No. I think … might be as good a time as any to try life without. Seeing as it was never much help before. What do you think?’
‘Christ,’ said Sidney. ‘Is that all it takes, to knock some sense into a person? I need a head injury.’
‘You are a head injury.’
Sidney eventually fell asleep in the chair, which looked uncomfortable; Arthur woke him up by shouting his name as loudly as he could – which, as it turned out, wasn’t particularly loudly – and told him to go and sleep on a horizontal surface. He looked as if he might be about to argue, but then shrugged and walked into the adjoining room to collapse on to his cot.
Arthur took this as a good sign. If he were in any imminent danger of dying, Sidney wouldn’t have fallen asleep at all.
Hours later, as Arthur lay awake feeling simultaneously exhausted and as if he’d never sleep again, he heard the door open. He knew who it was by their footsteps alone. He’d certainly heard them enough by now.
‘You’re up,’ Gabriel said, seeming surprised. He looked so tense and drawn into himself that Arthur wanted to reach up and push down his shoulders.
‘Not by most definitions of the word,’ Arthur said, and Gabriel gave a humourless exhalation of a laugh.
‘Are you in pain?’ he said, sitting down carefully in the chair.
Arthur tried moving his limbs experimentally. It felt like he was dragging them through thick treacle, but they didn’t hurt.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Just … feel like I’ve been stampeded. By horses. Extremely large horses.’
‘And that doesn’t hurt?’
‘The stampede was a month ago.’
‘Ah,’ said Gabriel. ‘Right.’ He didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. He certainly wasn’t looking at Arthur. ‘Your father is here,’ he said eventually. ‘I saw him at dinner. I suppose he came to see you today.’
Arthur didn’t think he had it in him to feel angry, but he managed it anyway. His father – here. His father, inside the castle, presumably to visit his deathly ill son, but inexplicably absent from his bedside. He simultaneously wanted to rage his way through the hallways until he found him, and ask for him to be barred from entering the room.
‘Not yet,’ was all he said.
‘Well …’ said Gabriel uselessly.
‘How do I look?’ Arthur bit out. Gabriel reluctantly looked down at him. His expression could have been mistaken for dispassionate, if not for the slight tightening of his eyes.
‘We thought you were going to die,’ he said quietly. ‘I thought you were going to die.’
‘Yes,’ Arthur said, trying to sit up a little straighter and managing it at an agonisingly slow pace. ‘Well. I didn’t.’
‘I didn’t think I’d – that I’d get the chance to speak to you.’
‘Anything you want to get off your chest? The last time we spoke properly, I recall you saying something about not wanting me around, and yet here you are again—’
He stopped talking abruptly, because Gabriel had shifted infinitesimally towards him and put a painfully gentle hand to his jaw. Arthur stayed perfectly still, every nerve in his body seeming to migrate to his cheek, so that he could feel the minute detail of the pads of Gabriel’s fingers on his cheekbone, his chin, the corner of his mouth. Gabriel considered him for another second and then leaned down to kiss him. It was infuriatingly soft, just the faintest brush of his lips against Arthur’s – there for a second, and then gone again. Arthur tried to chase him as he pulled away, reaching out for him with a shaking hand to bring him back and force him to stay there, but Gabriel just interlocked Arthur’s outstretched fingers in his and took a deep, steadying breath.
‘Sorry,’ he said, looking down at their hands.
‘For which part?’ Arthur said, pressing his thumb into the creases of Gabriel’s palm. ‘Before? Or this, now?’
‘All of it,’ said Gabriel.
‘That’s not really the answer I was looking for,’ Arthur said faintly, closing his eyes, suddenly too bone-tired to look at anything at all. They sat in silence for a moment.
‘I know that you and Gwen think this should be so easy,’ Gabriel said quietly, as if he’d been planning to for some time. ‘Now that we have … what we have. Those letters. But it wouldn’t be easy. I’d have to give them to my father. I’d have to explain to him why … why they matter so much. To me. To Gwen. And he’s a good man, Arthur, but he’s keeping this country together by a thread, and he’s not going to throw all of that away for something like this.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Arthur said, his mouth dry. ‘Because I don’t think you’ve ever even tried to tell him what you actually think. What you really want.’
‘That’s not fair,’ Gabriel said instantly, but then he sighed. ‘Maybe not. But it would be an enormous battle to pick. And I’m not brave like you. Like Gwen.’
‘Ha!’ Arthur said, with such volume that he surprised them both. Lucifer, who had apparently been sleeping at the end of the bed again, looked up in annoyance. ‘I’m not brave. I don’t know what gave you that idea.’
‘Arthur. Come on. You … you go after what you want. You don’t let anything stop you. What’s that, if it isn’t bravery?’
‘Some might say – your sister chief among them – that it’s stupidity,’ Arthur said, raising a hand to meet Lucifer as he stalked up the bed looking resentful. ‘I’m a selfish bastard, Gabe. I do it all for me, and when things don’t go my way, I’m … deeply unpleasant about it, as you’ve discovered. That’s not bravery, it’s just – ego. And I’m a coward when it matters. You’d never find me really risking my neck for anybody else. That’s not who I am.’
Gabriel considered him. ‘I think you’re wrong. I don’t think that’s who you really are at all.’
‘I’m afraid it is,’ Arthur said, trying to laugh but finding himself incapable. ‘I’m a self-centred, arrogant, worthless excuse for a—’
‘Who told you that?’ Gabriel said insistently. Arthur faltered.
He knew the answer. He just didn’t want to say it out loud.
‘Well, aren’t we a sorry pair,’ he said shakily instead. He squinted towards the window; it was getting lighter outside, the clouds picked out in grey and gold. ‘I suppose you’ll need to be off.’
‘What?’ Gabriel said, confused by this sudden change of direction.
‘Sun’s nearly up,’ Arthur said, smiling tightly at him. ‘We’re out of time.’
He wanted so badly for Gabriel to disagree with him – to tell him that he’d stay – but they truly were a pair of cowards; Gabriel left, and Arthur didn’t do a thing to stop him.