Marlowe
King slept through most of the following day, his body finally, properly recovering now that the fever had broken for good, and I stayed close through all of it, unable to fully relax until I'd watched him wake up lucid and steady with my own eyes.
He opened his eyes properly near evening, considerably more alert than the fevered fragments from the night before, and something in his expression told me, immediately, that he remembered exactly what he'd said.
"I meant it," he said, before I could ask, before either of us could dance around the moment with careful deflection. "What I said. About you being my mate. Wasn't the fever talking, Marlowe. That's just the first time I let myself say it out loud without stopping to think it through first."
"The whole tent heard you."
"I k
