The Fever

Midway through the fourth week, the silence returned to the manor.

Elsie woke up and realized the stove hadn't been stoked. The kitchen was cold.

"Bram?" she called.

No answer.

She found him in the Conservatory. It was a glass-walled room filled with exotic, carnivorous plants that Bram tended to with loving care. Usually, it was his sanctuary.

Today, he was collapsed on the floor beneath a giant Venus Flytrap named "Audrey."

"Bram!" Elsie dropped her duster and ran to him.

He was burning up. His skin was radiating heat, his fur damp with sweat. He was shivering violently, his claws digging into the dirt.

"Don't... touch..." he rasped, his eyes unfocused. "Molting... fever."

"Don't be ridiculous," Elsie said, putting a hand on his forehead. It was like touching a radiator. "You're burning up."

"It happens... every decade," Bram groaned. "My magic... recalibrating. It is... hideous. Go away."

"I am not going away," Elsie said. "I am your wife. Legally. Which means in sickness and in health, unfortunately."

She couldn't move him—he weighed as much as a piano—so she brought the infirmary to him. She dragged blankets, pillows, and buckets of cool water into the conservatory.

For three days, the fever raged. Bram was delirious. He thrashed and growled, his magic lashing out, causing the carnivorous plants to snap their jaws and the windows to rattle.

Elsie stayed. She bathed his face with cool cloths. She spoon-fed him broth. She read aloud to him from *The Melancholy of Shadows* because the sound of her voice seemed to settle him.

On the second night, the fever broke.

Bram lay still, his breathing shallow. Elsie was sitting on the floor next to him, leaning against a pot of ferns, exhausted.

"Why?" Bram whispered.

Elsie opened her eyes. Bram was watching her. His eyes were clear, the gold soft and dim.

"Why what?"

"Why do you stay?" Bram asked. "I am a monster. I am hideous. I tried to scare you."

"You're not a monster," Elsie said softly. "You're just... lonely."

Bram closed his eyes. "I wasn't cursed, you know."

Elsie paused. "What?"

"Everyone thinks I was cursed by a witch," Bram murmured. "But I wasn't. I chose this."

He turned his head to look at her. "I was a man once. A very handsome, very wealthy, very empty man. I was surrounded by people who wanted things from me. Money. Status. Power. It was all so... fake. So exhausting."

He lifted a heavy hand, looking at his claws. "So I used an ancient ritual. I made myself into something that would drive the fake people away. I wanted silence. I wanted truth."

He looked at Elsie. "But the silence... it got very loud."

Elsie reached out. She took his massive, clawed hand in her small, ordinary one. She didn't flinch.

"I know about being invisible," Elsie said. "I spent my whole life trying to fade into the background because I thought I was too boring to be noticed. I thought ordinary was a bad thing."

Bram squeezed her hand. "You are not ordinary, Elsie. You are... essential. You are the warmth in the stone."

Elsie felt a blush rise to her cheeks. "It's just the sourdough."

"No," Bram said, his voice rough with emotion. "It is you."

They fell asleep like that, hand in claw, on the floor of the conservatory, surrounded by hungry plants that dared not bite them.

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