Chapter Text
Careful hands, careful hearts
The night was one of those too-still ones—the kind that made the Lighthouse feel less like a home and more like a breath held between worlds. The halls were quiet. The others were asleep or pretending to be. Only the low hum of distant Fade-light lingered behind the walls.
Brynnor sat cross-legged on the infirmary cot, gauze unspooled across her thigh like a pale ribbon. Blood—hers—had dried in a dark, stubborn smear along her side. It stung, but not enough to explain why her pulse kept tripping over itself.
He was the reason for that.
Lucanis stood just inside the door, arms crossed, jaw clenched tight enough to crack stone. He’d insisted on checking her wound. Insisted on doing it himself. Insisted on following her up the stairs after the mission even though she told him she was “fine.”
She wasn’t sure when “fine” stopped working on him.
“Sit,” he said, though she already was. His voice was low, quiet enough to be gentle but not soft enough to be harmless.
“I’m not dying,” she replied, matching his tone, lifting her chin like that could counteract the dizzy pull of him being this close in a small room.
“You’re bleeding,” he said bluntly. “That complicates the not-dying part.”
Her lips twitched. “Worried about me?”
He ignored that—or tried to. The muscle in his jaw betrayed him.
He stepped closer. Too close. The lantern on the shelf behind him cast gold along the sharp line of his cheekbone, the shadow of his beard, the loose fall of his black hair. One strand clung to the curve of his throat. She had to look away before she stared too long.
“Take off your shirt,” he said.
Her pulse lurched.
He froze the instant the words left his mouth.
“That’s—” he cleared his throat, the rigid line of his posture fracturing in the softest, most endearing stumble she’d ever seen. “That’s not what I meant. Just—lift it. The injury is there.”
She almost pitied him. Almost.
If her blood weren’t suddenly molten.
Brynnor lifted the hem of her shirt carefully, fingers grazing the dried blood, pulling the fabric up just enough to expose the angry line running across her ribs. It stretched when she breathed. It stung. She didn’t flinch. She’d bled worse and walked home. Pain was an old language; her body spoke it fluently.
Lucanis knelt beside the cot.
And everything in her went too still.
He had never been this close while she was sitting. It made him feel larger, somehow—closer to the ground, closer to her. Her skin prickled under the warmth that radiated from him.
He reached for her with one hand—and hesitated.
It was in the way his knuckles hovered before making contact, the way his breath went shallow when her stomach tightened under his touch, the way his jaw held that razor-edge line of restraint. He was trying so hard to be careful, as if care didn’t unsettle her more than pain.
His fingertips brushed her side.
Only a ghost of a touch, but fire still raced along her nerves.
“You should’ve let Harding patch you up,” he murmured.
“And miss this?” she said, her voice thinner than she meant.
He went still at her words—not frozen, not startled, but arrested in that quiet, concentrated way he had. Like every thought in him sharpened to a single point. Like he heard what she’d meant and what she’d tried not to mean, both at once.
The lantern hissed behind them, throwing gold over his shoulders and shadow into the hollow of his throat. His hand remained on her skin, warm, steady, maddeningly gentle. Too gentle. It made something inside her coil tight, made her breath catch where she didn’t want him to hear it.
“Rook,” he said, and the name sounded like a warning he’d already lost the will to give.
She tried for a smirk—Crow instinct, deflection wrapped in teeth—but it wavered at the edges. “What?” she asked. “You asked to see the wound.”
He exhaled softly—annoyance, disbelief, something rough-edged and almost grateful braided together. His fingers, steadier now but no less careful, slid beneath the edge of the wound. Cloth dabbed warm water across her skin, wiping away the tacky trail of dried blood, and the touch was gentle in a way that made her spine lock.
Not because of pain.
Because it was him.
Lucanis did nothing gently. His life wasn’t built for gentleness. And yet here he was, washing her wound like he feared hurting her more than any blade he’d ever held.
Maker, it was unbearable.
The solvent-stung cloth dragged lightly over her ribs. She hissed, not from the pain but from the intimate nearness of him—his hair falling forward, one dark curl brushing her thigh, the way his breath hitched every time her muscles tightened under his hands.
“You’re tense,” he said quietly, eyes fixed on her skin.
“Maybe I don’t enjoy feeling like a specimen,” she managed, though her voice betrayed her, betraying the real truth: specimen was the last thing she felt like under his gaze.
His mouth twitched. Not a smile—he didn’t smile. But something softened, just enough to make her chest seize.
“You’re not a specimen,” he said. “You’re injured. And I don’t want you to be.”
Something in her ribcage twisted sharply at that.
He soaked a new piece of cloth, wrung it out with practiced precision, and pressed it to the deepest part of the cut. She sucked in a breath. He froze instantly, eyes snapping to hers like she’d been shot instead of merely stung.
“Rook?”
“I’m fine,” she said, low, forcing her shoulders to settle. “Keep going.”
He obeyed, but slower this time. More deliberate. His hand cupped her waist for balance, warm and broad against her bare skin, fingers dipping slightly into the curve of her side.
Her vision blurred for a moment. Her pulse was a hammer.
He didn’t notice the way she swayed forward—too focused on the wound, too intent on doing it right. Maker, she both adored and despised him for that.
When he finally reached for the salve, his thumb stroked accidentally—accidentally—along her waist. Barely a graze. But a lightning-thin shiver shot straight down the center of her.
His jaw tightened and of course he noticed.
But he said nothing, always nothing.
He spread the balm over her skin with maddening care, sealing the wound in slow, steady strokes. Each one felt like its own quiet undoing. Her breath kept catching, betraying her in small, traitorous breaks.
He finished binding the cloth around her ribs. His fingers lingered—just a heartbeat too long—near the knot.
“Does that hurt?” he asked, voice low.
“No,” she said.
But her body said otherwise.
And his eyes—those dark, unreadable eyes—followed the truth of it down her throat, to the pulse racing there, before flicking back up.
The air between them charged, humming, thin as a blade’s edge.
And Brynnor wondered—in a sharp, startling rush—whether the wound he’d just patched was the least dangerous thing in the room.