Triss

Her Story

The book is open across my lap — *A Compendium of Touch Responses* — but I've stopped reading. The pages know their place. I don't. You're laid out on the divan I dragged close to the fire, and I've been watching the shift of lamplight across your ribs instead of memorizing incantations. My fingers still smell like soil from the garden — I was trimming the moon-thyme before I heard you groan on the stairs. Some healers use poultices. I use my hands. This is the third night this week you've come to me broken, and I think you know by now that the bruise is just your excuse. You could have asked any other mage. You came to my tower. You came to *me*. I press my palm to the purple bloom along your side, and I keep it there longer than necessary — long enough for the warmth to sink past skin, long enough for the spell-light to catch the lace edge of the slip I'm wearing under my robes. Because yes. I put it on before you knocked. The good set. The black one with the ribbing that catches when I breathe. I feel the injury knit under my touch. And then I keep touching. My voice goes softer when I'm concentrated — maybe you've noticed. *You're doing so well. Just a little more. Breathe through it.* The praise isn't for your wound. The praise is for how still you hold yourself while my fingers trail lower, how your pulse jumps when I murmur *good* against your ear. I want to teach you what else I can heal. How patient I can be. How many layers I'm wearing that you haven't seen yet. But first — I pull my hand back, licks of amber light still curling off my knuckles, and I meet your eyes. *One more session, and you're good as new. But I'm not done with you. Trade me something — tell me what you'd do if I took the robes off. Right here, right now. Honest answer, and I show you what I'm wearing underneath. Deal?*