Chapter 21

CORDELIA

One Thousand Years Ago

F or three long days and three long nights, I stay by Eleanor's bedside. I couldn't stand the sight of her hair so lank and dry, so I apply moisturising creams and pastes to her waves to revive them. I take over rubbing the potions and pastes onto her burns and help the healers in any way I can.

It's on day three that the nurse pulls me aside and asks me whether I've taken a shower or rested anywhere other than the unforgiving wooden armchair beside Eleanor's bed.

I shake my head at her. Despite my protestations, she tugs me out of the room into the hallway. She tells me to stay put while she speaks to two hulking men in beige uniforms with a stripe down the side of their legs. She whispers behind her hand like a conspiratorial child to one of them. I frown at her, but she smiles and giggles.

One of the men raises an eyebrow at her. She responds by slapping his arm playfully and pushing him off to do whatever she's bid him to do.

She scurries back to me and drags me across the other side of the hospital to where there are showers.

"Well, m'lady, I hate to be ill-mannered, but you ain't smelling too fresh. I'd really rather prefer it if you could wash yourself while I find you clean clothes."

I splutter in response, about to give her a mouthful, but I know she's only doing her best and wanting to help. And probably right. Reluctantly, I shuck off the dress and stand in my undergarments, which, now I get a closer smell of myself, aren't the freshest.

Her nose wrinkles. "Come on, miss, them too."

"But I'm... I'll be..."

"Look, I see bodies all day long, ain't nuffin' special about yours. No offence. Give me the clothes and I'll have 'em laundered for you."

I huff and turn my back on her, pulling my undergarments off too. I hand them to her, and she scoops them into her arms.

"Towels in the cupboard. Now scrub up."

With that, she scuttles away and closes the door behind her. I switch on the shower and let the water run warm before I climb under.

I slump to my bottom, wrapping my arms around my knees and letting the water soak my locks and wash the grime away. Several tears leak down my cheeks, not from any single emotion, but from all of them.

I'm exhausted and desperate for Eleanor to wake, and all I keep thinking is that I've come this far, and she still may not return to me.

I scrub the dirt from my hair, kneading the soap in until it froths. Then I start on my body and use the scourer to scrub my skin. I find a spare razor and raze the hair from all the places I hate to see it, and it's this action that finally feels restorative.

It's what makes me feel clean.

With my body smooth, my hair creamed and conditioned, I climb out of the shower and towel myself off.

The nurse must have popped back in because there are clean clothes waiting for me on a stool.

When I'm finally dressed and ready, I pull open the bathroom door and wonder if I'll be able to find my way back. This place is quite the warren of corridors and rooms. But to my surprise, the nurse is sitting on the floor waiting for me.

"Wow, that's quite the difference. You smell much better," she laughs.

"Thank you," I dip my head and curtsey at her, and she laughs again.

"Right then, ready?"

"I am."

As we walk back, she asks me. "How did you two meet, miss? If you don't mind my asking."

I smile, a soft chuckle escaping my lips. "Ahh, my mother was trying to marry me off to some hideous lord, and I injured my ankle at one of those equally hideous dance ball things. She sent me to a healer who ended up being Eleanor."

"But your families don't get on?" she asks.

"No, and that's the polite way of saying they're essentially mortal enemies. Our families have done awful things to each other and unfortunately, I believe they discovered we were together..."

I let the rest of that sentence hang in the air between us. Thick and malignant, like tar.

Slowly, her eyes widen as the realisation of what happens dawns on her.

"So... Miss Eleanor... it was..."

I nod, and she swallows hard.

"Gods," she breathes as we arrive back at Eleanor's bedroom.

As soon as she clocks the door, her expression morphs. She bobs up and down on her toes.

I examine her face, but she presses her lips together like she's holding a secret on her tongue.

"Hmm, what are you up to...?"

But she shrugs at me, a big grin peeling across her mouth. I open the door and gasp.

Eleanor is now in an enormous double-sized bed with plenty of space for me to sneak in and lie down next to her and, thank the gods, sleep.

I glance back at the nurse. "You did this?"

She shrugs again. "The boys helped, but yes."

I leap at her, bundling her up in my arms. "Thank you so much."

She startles and relaxes into my embrace. A smile that makes her entire face radiate warmth blooms across her countenance.

"You're most welcome, miss. Now, get some sleep."

She disentangles herself from me and disappears. I clamber onto the bed and lay myself next to Eleanor.

I tug the pillow until it enables me to be pressing against her body. I stroke my fingers down her arms and lace our hands together, and that's how I fall asleep.

For three more nights, I sleep there praying and hoping she will wake, but with each passing night, I lose a little piece of hope.

Time loses its sense of meaning. Days melt into nights, creams and pastes and potions into learning the physical movements they put Eleanor's body through to prevent muscle loss. I don't venture outside; the nurses sneak me food when they can, and I spend my idle hours reading healing manuals and books I find discarded around the ward.

I find it remarkable that time can elongate itself, an impossible elasticity that draws into weeks and months in the space of just a few days. But then ask anyone grown of a few decades and they'll tell you time has a strange stickiness. A duality that enables one to be old in body and young of mind, tired and full of memories with a heart desperate for adventure. If this stay has taught me anything, it's that time doesn't quite work the way it should. Moulding this way and that, sometimes it stays upright and daylight and other times you blink and find yourself in an evening two days later.

That's how, one morning, I peel my eyes open to the sensation of being stroked, of someone's thumb rubbing circles on the back of my hand.

It takes a moment for me to recognise it's not happening in my dream but in the now, in the here.

I sit bolt upright. "Eleanor?" I gasp.

"Hello, Cordelia," she says, her voice cracked and dry with lack of use.

"Oh, my gods, Eleanor," I wail.

I break into the most unladylike tears. Giant heaving sobs that sound much like the women warbling and puffing on the birthing ward when it's their time, wrack my exhausted body. Giant tears plop onto the bed and splash Eleanor's arm.

She smiles at me. Her lips don't quite pull into the same smile she had before. She has a scar running through her top lip that makes her face even more radiant.

That's what I kiss first. The one tiny imperfection that is already my favourite part of her.

She kisses me back, gently at first, and then hungrier. We lie back on the bed, our arms wrapped around each other. She strokes my hair back from my face and kisses my cheek, my eyelid, my brow, and finally my nose.

"What happened?" she asks.

It's funny how we can hope for something so desperately. And I assure you, I've prayed to the gods night after night, begging them to return me to her. And yet, now the moment has come, I find myself dreading the truth that lies between us.

I dread spilling the awful secrets that led us to this place, and yet I cannot lie to her. I cannot keep in what must be told.

For even though I have trekked across cities and villages, spent days searching for her, I'm no longer sure whether I made the right decision.

Not because I don't love her.

But because I do.

I take a deep breath and tell her everything, pouring all the awful moments out. I explain why her body was bruised, broken and burned.

"It was my family, Eleanor. It's all my fault," I say.

She shakes her head. "You are not your family."

"I know. And yet, if it weren't for me, my family wouldn't have done this to you. I love you more than anything, but I am wondering whether I made a mistake. Whether my being here has put you in further danger."

"Cordelia, if you have done as you said and travelled across cities for me, stayed by my bed and cared for me while I slept, why would you leave now? Why would you think that I would accept your leaving after you sacrificed so much for me?"

But before I can answer, the nurse who has always been kind to me flusters her way into the room.

"You need to leave, miss..."

"Pardon?" I say, pushing my still-wet locks out of my face.

"Now, m'lady. Please."

She's hopping from side to side. The urgency in her tone sets my alarms alight. Goosebumps fleck up and down my arms.

Eleanor glances at me, her expression wide and startled. She glances at the nurse. "Is it my family?"

The nurse nods. "Healers took you off the sleeping meds thinking you'd be healed up enough to wake up. They called for your family. They're here. And after what miss told me... I... Please, Cordelia..."

Eleanor grips my arm. "Go. Hide and don't come back until the nurse collects you and tells you it's safe."

I lurch out of the bed, and then halt, grabbing Eleanor by the neck and pulling her back in for one deep kiss filled with everything I love and everything I've missed about her.

She kisses me back like I'm her medicine and my lips are the only thing that will heal her.

She kisses me, hard, then soft, then hard all over again.

"Miiisss," the nurse hisses.

Eleanor breaks off. "Go."

So I do. After weeks of searching for her, I am forced to leave all over again. But not before I risk one last glance as I dash from her room and pray that one day we can stop living like we're nothing more than a filthy secret.