Page 123 of Fiorenzo

“He’s only just awoken,” Enzo explained to him as he set up his leather case on the nightstand.

“In pain?” Dr Malvestio enquired.

Fiore wanted to laugh.

“Yes,” Enzo replied.

“How much?” Dr Malvestio asked.

Enzo looked to Fiore.

Fiore knew only screams would emerge if he opened his mouth.

Enzo stroked his brow again. “Better than before? Or worse?”

Fiore summoned all his strength to restrain his cries as he forced out through clenched jaws, “The same.”

“A full dose, then,” Dr Malvestio cut in. “Should carry you through ‘til dawn.”

Yet Enzo didn’t appear relieved to hear this. He gazed down at Fiore, worried his lip between his teeth, then glanced up to the chirurgeon. “Has anything gone wrong, d’you think?”

Dr Malvestio paused in the midst of withdrawing needle and vial from his case. He turned to Fiore. “Does it feel at all changed? Duller? Sharper? More of an ache or more of a bite?”

Fiore shook his head and hissed again, “The same.”

And while he hadn’t strength enough to say it aloud, he caught Enzo’s gaze and pleaded without voice,Please don’t make him stay any longer. Please just let him dose me and go.

Enzo seemed to understand him, if his wan yet sympathetic smile were anything to go by.

Dr Malvestio took in the termometro beneath Fiore’s tongue and the stetoscopio in Enzo’s ears with a single sweeping glance. “Any change in the pulse?”

“Strong,” Enzo reported. “Though rapid.”

Dr Malvestio reached for the termometro—then halted as Fiore recoiled. He raised his brows again. “If I may, signore.”

Fiore nodded and forced himself to remain still as the chirurgeon pried the instrument from his mouth.

Dr Malvestio examined the termometro with a placid air. “No fever. Which makes infection unlikely. And, if the pulse is still strong, it is likewise unlikely anything has torn within. I’d rather you have your rest now and we may reassess in the morning. If it’s all the same to you, signore,” he added, glancing at Fiore, who realized only belatedly the chirurgeon had spoken to him and not Enzo.

Fiore nodded again. He couldn’t watch while Dr Malvestio filled the needle from the vial, and turned his head altogether as the chirurgeon approached.

Enzo laid his palm over where Fiore had fisted his wounded hand in the bedclothes. Fiore dared a glance up at him and found him wearing that same sympathetic smile.

Before Fiore could do anything about it, the needle jabbed into his arm, and the plunge of cold fluid into his vein sent his mind soaring above his body. It floated back down far too slowly for his liking. While his heart no longer raced with fear, he remained cognizant of its causes, and misliked how vulnerable he was in this altered state. At least the eagles had left off. And the chirurgeon packed up and went with them.

Yet despite the alchemical dose, Fiore only truly relaxed when Enzo, at long last, curled his long frame around his broken body and entwined Fiore in his strong arms.

“Better?” Enzo murmured as he stroked Fiore’s curls.

Fiore nodded and buried his face in Enzo’s collar. The warm and familiar scent of his masculine musk soothed his muddled mind. Soon he drifted off into a mercifully dreamless sleep.

When next his eyes opened, he beheld the bedchamber bursting with brilliant sunshine. Still more brilliant was the smile Enzo cast down upon him as Fiore lolled his head across the pillow to find him sitting up in bed beside him. A book lay propped up against Enzo’s half-cocked thighs, but he seemed more concerned with worrying the corner of a page between his fingertips rather than turning it.

Fiore tried to bid him good morning. Instead, he wondered aloud, “Is this your room?”

Enzo confessed that it was.

Fiore knew he ought to say something more after that. He settled on what felt like the correct polite refrain. “It’s nice.”

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