The scent reached him before consciousness did.
Herbs. Medicine. The sharp, clean bite of something antiseptic beneath the sweeter undertones of dried flowers and something else he couldn't name. Familiar in the way that a place becomes familiar when you've been desperate enough to need it.
Nero knew where he was before he opened his eyes.
He lay still for a moment, letting awareness seep back into his body the way water seeps into dry ground. Slow. Unhurried. His body ached with the deep, pervasive soreness of someone who had been comprehensively broken and then imperfectly reassembled. Not the sharp, immediate pain of fresh injury, but the duller complaint of healing things that hadn't quite finished the process.
He was alive.
That fact still managed to surprise him sometimes.
