Chapter Fourteen

 

Kilian

Kilian had never been so cold. Which was saying something, because he was almost always cold. But without alcohol in his system to fool his brain into thinking he was warm he couldn’t stop shaking. His body was wracked with painful jerks and shivers that set his teeth on edge.

His head was killing him, too; he’d never had so painful and so constant a migraine before. He had no appetite and, when he did eat, it wasn’t long before he simply threw the food back up. A fever had broken across his brow which, even when setting him on fire, altogether felt like he’d been plunged into a biting lake of ice water.

But Kilian was no idiot. He knew he deserved each and every inch of pain his body was currently experiencing. It was a just punishment for keeping himself inebriated for the past nine of his twenty-five pitiful years. His system literally did not know how to cope without any alcohol. Dully he thought about calling the doctor in to help him only to remember that he’d fired the man for so unfairly allowing his father to die.

I am a horrible person, he thought, brain rattling in his skull as he shivered beneath several blankets on his bed. It’s no wonder nothing’s happened with Elina since she got drunk with me.

This wasn’t strictly the reason, of course. For the past few days Kilian had been so ill and barely-conscious that he’d pushed Elina to help the other servants in the castle instead of looking after him. But still. He’d hoped she’d insist on waiting on him every moment of every day anyway, rather than take him up on his offer to leave him alone.

For Kilian was miserable alone. And he’d always been alone, so he was always miserable. It was only in meeting Elina that he could even acknowledge this, however, since to admit to being lonely was pitiable.

Yet despite calling me pathetic Elina is still here.

Kilian was ashamed by his drunken admission of loneliness to her, especially since she’d had no trouble expressing the same feelings to him from the very beginning with regards to the people of Alder. He’d never felt so dishonest.

“Shut up, brain…” he mumbled, groaning as he twisted in bed. It didn’t do well to think about the person he’d become after all these years. And it wasn’t as if Kilian had drastically changed in personality when he’d started drinking; he had always been an unpleasant person. Elina’s mother, Lily, would be able to attest to that, from when she watched in horror as three-year-old Kilian burned the clothes she’d so carefully made for him.

He was a snob. He was bad-tempered. He had a superiority complex a mile high. He was impulsive and cowardly and cruel-tongued and –

“I want Elina.”

The words were barely a puff of breath upon the air in his room. Though the fire was burning brightly, Kilian’s chambers felt like ice. Or, rather, Kilian himself felt like he was made of ice, in a furnace that could never melt him.

He was so cold.

Kilian could only really tell what time of day it was by when he spied Elina arriving at the castle in the morning, since when he wasn’t lying in bed he was collapsed by his window, watching the wind relieve the forest of snow only for more to replace it.

She was almost always accompanied by the woodcutter, Daven, though occasionally another person or two decided to join their morning walk even though the weather was horrific and the hour ungodly. The fact that it was always men talking to Elina only served to make Kilian’s mood worse – was she so oblivious as to not understand what they were interested in? It was clear as day from where Kilian sat, watching, even through the snow.

But Elina seemed to be enjoying the company. He couldn’t help but wonder if, now she had been accepted by her town, she was no longer interested in Kilian, no matter how reluctant that interest had been in the first place. He had to remind himself that he’d forced Elina to get drunk the day she kissed him and they ended up in the bath together. Even Kilian could see how her actions could be explained as being the result of coercion rather than being voluntary.

It only made him feel worse.

Even though it was definitely colder outside than in his room he longed to be down there, amongst the swirling snow. He’d always hated the castle grounds before – for no reason whatsoever other than Kilian hated everything – but now they were tantalising. He couldn’t set foot in the gardens, or the courtyard, or the forest. He couldn’t use the hot springs, the only part of the castle and its grounds he would ever profess to enjoying.

He couldn’t show Elina around all the places he used to hide from his parents and brother, or the spot in the forest where he’d disappear to with a stolen bottle of wine even as young as thirteen. Kilian had never wanted to tell anyone about his childhood before. And, now that he did, Elina didn’t seem to be interested enough to listen to him talk about it. Kilian didn’t like how that made him feel at all.

Rolling around in bed to try and untangle himself from a blanket currently wound around his leg, Kilian yelped in surprise when he accidentally overshot the movement and ended up on the floor. When he bashed his head upon the wooden floorboards his vision went white, then black.

*

When he came to, Kilian was still lying on the floor exactly where he’d fallen, feeling even worse than he had felt before. His head felt like it was going to split open, but when he retched nothing came out. There was nothing left for him to throw up.

The room was almost dark; the fire had burned low and the sun – wherever it had been behind the clouds – had clearly long since set.

I can’t believe I knocked myself out for hours by falling out of bed, Kilian thought, laughing bitterly. But the only audible sound that left his mouth was a garbled cry; fumbling in the darkness he reached for a metal pitcher of water that sat on a table by his bedside. When he poured the stinging, freezing liquid down his throat more of it escaped his mouth than was swallowed, leaving trails of ice water running down his neck.

He wished the water were vodka. Or wine. Or ale, which he hated. He couldn’t stand the pain of merely existing anymore. And so Kilian staggered to his feet, clutching his well-worn overcoat around himself as he tried desperately to find any kind of alcohol whatsoever in his room. When no bottles became immediately apparent, he began pushing chairs over and knocking down tables, smashing ornaments and vases to the floor in his quest to find something that would numb his existence.

There was nothing.

All he had to do was call for a servant and Kilian would be handed over anything he so desired. But if he did that then he knew he’d truly failed, and he’d never be able to stop drinking until his sorry excuse for a life was well and truly spent.

Kilian sagged against the window. For there was his answer – he couldn’t drink, even if he found some irresistible volume of alcohol hidden away in a corner of his room that he was yet to upturn. He had to endure the unendurable until he was no longer in pain.

“How long will that be?” Kilian sighed, voice weak and insubstantial as he shivered violently. He didn’t even have the capacity to shout for a servant, much less Elina, and he was the one who’d told them all to leave him alone. Kilian’s solitude was his own damn fault, and he knew it.

In a moment of madness he undid the latch on his window, hauling open the man-sized panes of glass until he could stand on the window ledge and feel the full force of the wind buffet his entire body. It should have been strong enough to drag Kilian off the ledge and down, down, down to his death.

But he could not leave the castle, so the wind did nothing to him.

He was ashamed when tears began to well up in his eyes. Kilian wasn’t even sure he wanted to die. He was certainly too much of a coward to run a blade through his heart or slit his throat or swallow poison or even let himself freeze to death. But falling through the window into a storm of his own making…

There was something poetic and circular about it, like it was the way Kilian was supposed to die. Except that he couldn’t. Maybe that was why he liked it; it was something he could never have.

“Oh my god – Kilian!”

Elina slammed into his back and wrapped her arms around his waist, dragging him away from the window ledge as far as she could. Kilian didn’t even resist.

“What were you – why were you doing that?” she asked, voice hysterical as she continued to cling to him. Elina was warm and Kilian freezing; he relished the embrace.

“I wasn’t doing anything,” he said weakly, which was technically the truth.

“Don’t lie to me! You think I can’t work out what you were –”

“I can’t leave the castle, Elina. If I was going to kill myself it wouldn’t be by jumping out of the window.”

“That…that sounds like you tried, to see if it was possible.”

Kilian didn’t respond, confirming Elina’s suspicions. He didn’t want to turn around and face her when he still had tears in his eyes. But he was shivering so badly, and he hardly felt able to support his own weight.

“Kilian, why did you – why would you tell me to work with the other servants when you’re like this?” Elina asked quietly. With utmost care she took a step backwards and, when Kilian followed, another, and another, until they reached his bed. Then she let go of him, shaking out and rearranging the pile of blankets upon it before gently pushing Kilian on top of them.

“Get in there. Now. I’m going to get the fire going again and bring you food, and you’re going to eat it.” In the darkness she couldn’t see his tears or, if she could, Elina didn’t acknowledge them.

He stared at her, helpless. “I can’t keep anything down. I can’t feel anything except the cold, even in my stomach. It hurts, Elina.”

Her expression crumpled. “Then why would you tell me not to look after you? I could have helped you!”

“I…” Kilian looked away. “I wanted you to insist on looking after me yourself. I wanted it to be your choice.”

“Are you an idiot?!” she yelled, stepping forward as if to slap him but tripping on a box Kilian had thrown to the floor instead. She cursed aloud. “What did you do to your room? Why are you like this? Why are you –”

“I don’t know what to do with myself. I want to die.”

“No you don’t.” Elina’s eyes were shining in the darkness, overly bright and, Kilian realised, just as teary as his own were. “You don’t want to die. You’re going through withdrawal. You’re starving. You’re freezing. But you’ve been struggling through it for days now – if you wanted to die you’d have done it already.”

Kilian said nothing. He didn’t know what to say. He was so tired of everything, but he knew he couldn’t sleep.

Elina sighed. “Get in bed. I’ll sort everything out. Just…try and get warm.”

And so Kilian complied, crawling beneath the covers whilst watching Elina struggle to close the window, start up a new fire until it was roaring, then ask a servant to bring through some food. She didn’t try to clean up properly, merely pushing away things on the floor into the corners so that she wouldn’t trip.

When the servant brought through a bowl of soup and some bread they didn’t question the mess of the king’s chambers, nor the state of the man himself. They merely handed Elina the food and ran off.

She perched herself on the bed, glancing at Kilian from beneath her lashes. “Sit up, Kilian. You can’t eat lying down.”

“I already told you, I can’t keep any food –”

“Sit. Up.”

He wasn’t used to being ordered around. For a moment he considered chastising Elina for having the audacity to do so. Instead, he complied. “Are you going to feed me?” he asked, some of his usual sarcastic way of speaking finally returning.

When Elina nodded seriously and immediately shoved a spoonful of soup into his mouth Kilian was too surprised to retort. “I’m not going to stop until you’re done with the whole thing,” she said, bringing another spoonful of soup up for Kilian to drink as soon as he’d swallowed the first one.

Twenty minutes passed in this fashion, during which time the fire began to properly heat up the room. But Kilian was still so cold, and the pain in his head was yet to abate. When he winced in response to it, Elina brought out a small vial of powder from a pocket of her dress, pouring it into a cup of water before handing it to Kilian.

He stared at the cup dubiously. “What are you giving me?”

“Powdered willow bark. You should have been taking it for the pain already.”

“I don’t need something like that to –”

“I’m not going to listen to a man who drinks his pain away tell me he doesn’t want to take medicine that will do the same thing.”

This version of Elina was ruthless. But Kilian realised it was what he needed, so he swallowed down the water in one go.

Finally she smiled. “Good. Keep sitting until that hits you, then lie down and go to sleep.”

“You’re not – don’t go, Elina.”

Kilian hated how desperate he sounded.

Elina moved the now-empty tray of food onto the only table that Kilian hadn’t upturned. “I won’t,” she said quietly. “The weather is too bad for me to leave, anyway. You did say you wanted to trap me here, before; I should have expected this.”

“I didn’t –”

“I know you can’t help it,” she cut in. “You’re in pain. It’s okay. I’ll help you through it, so just focus on not being sick.”

He laughed weakly. “Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who feels like this.”

“True; I merely have to be able to stomach looking after you like this.”

“Please stop making cruel jokes; it hurts to laugh.”

Elina’s lips quirked at the comment. “Noted. Close your eyes, Kilian. Just try and relax.”

It was easier said than done. Even when the willow bark took the pain away from his head and settled his stomach, finally allowing him to keep down food for the first time in days, he was still cold. Too cold. The shivering wouldn’t stop. Kilian sank below the covers, wondering how he would ever sleep.

“Elina,” he said some time later, keeping his eyes closed so he wouldn’t see her reaction when she invariably rejected him.

“…yes?”

“Lie in bed with me. Keep me warm.”

She was supposed to say no. Any sane person would have said no.

“Okay.”