The air in Elric's private bedchamber was thick enough to choke a horse. It was a cloying cocktail of pine-smoke from the hearth, the metallic tang of dried blood, and some pungent, yellowish salve the physician was currently dabbing onto Elric's ribs with hands that shook like leaves in a gale.
Verona stood just a few feet away, her fingers digging into the velvet of her own skirts so hard her knuckles were white.. It had been her idea, well, more of a frantic, borderline-hysterical demand, that the physician be summoned immediately. Elric had tried to wave her off, of course. He'd grunted something about "just a few scratches" and "the cold being the best medicine," but for once, the Duke of Aldenar had been overruled.
"If you don't sit down and let him look at you, I will scream," she'd told him. And he had, surprisingly, sat.
