The pungent smell of the herb paste hit Eve's nose before Cato even reached her side. He carried the stone mortar over, the green sludge inside looking as appealing as swamp mud. He dipped two fingers into the paste and carefully smeared it onto the deep gash on her elbow.

A sharp sting made Eve hiss through her teeth, but it faded quickly, replaced by a soothing coolness that seeped deep into the torn flesh. The pain actually receded. She hated to admit it, but it worked.

She glared at him as he moved down to her knee. "You think a little bit of mud is going to make me grateful to you?"

Cato ignored her. He picked up a fresh set of wooden splints and began to realign the bones in her lower leg. His hands were large and rough, calloused from years of hard labor, but his touch was precise. He manipulated the broken pieces with a skill that belonged in a master surgeon's clinic, not a menial laborer's shack.

Eve squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head away. Every time his fingers pressed against her skin, it felt like a violation. She was a Paladin-she had healed others with a touch of light. Now, she was being patched up like a broken piece of furniture by a stranger.

Once the last splint was tied, Cato stood up and walked over to the small hearth. He picked up a pot and poured a thick, grayish porridge into a bowl. The smell of boiled grains and wild roots filled the tiny room. It wasn't appetizing, but it was warm. Eve's stomach clenched, then let out a loud, traitorous growl.

Her face burned with instant humiliation. She snapped her head back toward him, her eyes blazing. "Take it away! I'm not eating anything you give me!"

Cato walked over and sat on the stool beside the bed. He scooped up a spoonful of the sludge and held it in front of her mouth.

Eve clamped her lips shut and jerked her head to the side, pressing her cheek into the rough pillow.

Cato didn't pull the spoon back. He just held it there, inches from her face. The silence in the room stretched, broken only by the crackle of the fire.

Minutes passed. The smell of the food seemed to grow stronger, taunting her. She hadn't eaten in over a day. The hollow ache in her stomach was turning into a sharp, gnawing pain that made her head spin. She could feel his gaze on her, steady and patient. He wasn't going to give up. He wasn't going to argue. He was just going to wait.

She thought of her vows. A Paladin never yields to the enemy. But a voice in the back of her head whispered that she wasn't a Paladin anymore. She was just a starving girl with broken legs. She had to live. If she died here, in this dirt-floored shack, the truth about what happened in the Frostbound Abyss would die with her. Revenge was a meal she couldn't afford to miss.

Cato shifted slightly, pushing the spoon a fraction of an inch closer. The warmth radiating from the food was a physical force against her cold skin. Her throat convulsed, a desperate, involuntary swallow that she couldn't suppress.

He saw it. She knew he did.

"You..." she started, trying to summon a threat, but her voice was too weak.

Her resolve crumbled. The primal need to survive crushed her pride into dust. Slowly, agonizingly, she turned her head back. She opened her mouth.

Cato slid the spoon inside. The porridge was bland, tasting mostly of wood and water, but the heat spreading down her throat and into her stomach felt like salvation. She swallowed, and he immediately loaded another spoonful.

One bite after another. Eve stared blankly at the ceiling, her body operating on autopilot. She felt detached, hollowed out. A single tear leaked from the corner of her eye, sliding down her temple and into her hair. It wasn't a tear of gratitude. It was a tear of pure, undiluted rage at her own powerlessness. She was the pride of the Azure Blade, now reduced to an infant being spoon-fed by a nameless laborer.

Cato noticed the tear. He paused for a fraction of a second, then resumed feeding her, his movements becoming slower, gentler, as if handling something infinitely fragile.

The next morning, Cato appeared beside the bed with another bowl of porridge. Eve looked at it, then at him, her jaw set in a stubborn line. She wasn't going to make a scene today. She would eat, because she had to. But she wasn't going to like it.

Cato lifted the spoon to her lips. Eve opened her mouth and swallowed. Perhaps it was the tension in her throat, the way her body still rebelled against accepting anything from him—but the thick porridge caught awkwardly, triggering a violent spasm. Immediately, she started coughing. The angle was fine; it was her own resistance that choked her.

The coughing fit was a disaster. Every hack sent shockwaves through her broken ribs and shattered legs. The pain was blinding, stealing her breath. She gasped, her face turning red, then pale, cold sweat breaking out on her forehead.

She glared up at Cato through the tears in her eyes, blaming him entirely for the design of the human esophagus.

Cato set the bowl down on the stool. He stood up, looking down at her for a long moment. Then, without a word of warning, he stepped to the side of the bed and leaned over her.

Eve's heart lurched into her throat. "What are you-"

He slid one arm under her neck and the other under the small of her back, his strength focused in a way that seemed to defy anatomy, completely avoiding the cage of her broken ribs. With a smooth, powerful motion, he hoisted her upper body off the mattress.

"Stop! Let me go!" she yelled, panic making her voice shrill. But her body was useless; she couldn't push him away. His arms were like iron bands, completely immovable, yet somehow avoiding every major injury on her torso.

Instead of propping her against the wall, Cato sat down on the edge of the bed. He shifted her weight, adjusting her body until her back was supported by his solid chest. It wasn't a flush press; he held her with such control that her injured spine and ribs barely made contact, suspended by the strength in his arms and torso. He settled himself against the headboard, creating a living backrest out of his own body.

Eve froze. Every nerve ending in her body fired at once. She was pressed against him. She could feel the hard slabs of muscle beneath his thin shirt, the steady, slow rhythm of his heartbeat against her shoulder blades, and the intense heat radiating from his body. It was like leaning against a furnace.

She could smell him. He didn't smell like the other laborers-no stale sweat or filth. He smelled of pine needles, crushed herbs, and dry wood, mixed with the crisp scent of the outdoors. It was clean. Wild.

A strange shiver ran down her spine, a confusing mix of revulsion and something else she refused to name. She hadn't been this close to another human being in years.

Cato reached for the bowl, his arm brushing against hers as he scooped up the porridge. He brought the spoon to her lips again.

Eve was so stunned by the sheer audacity of the situation that she forgot to argue. She opened her mouth mechanically. The porridge went down much easier this time. The angle was perfect. He held her securely, taking the strain off her neck and ribs.

He fed her in silence, his breathing slow and even. Eve ate, but she couldn't focus on the food. Her entire world had narrowed down to the points of contact between them. The steady thump of his heart against her back was a metronome, slowly syncing with her own frantic pulse.

The heat from his body seeped into her aching muscles, loosening the knots of tension she hadn't even realized she was carrying. The constant, deep chill that had lived in her bones since the Frostbound Abyss began to thaw.

When the bowl was empty, Cato set it aside. Eve braced herself for him to push her back onto the mattress, but he didn't. He just sat there, holding her against his chest in the quiet room.

The exhaustion she had been fighting for days crashed over her like a wave. The pain was still there, but it was muffled, wrapped in a cocoon of warmth and the steady rhythm of his breathing. She didn't feel safe-the very idea was ludicrous. But her body, a traitorous vessel of meat and bone, recognized a source of immense, unshakeable stability. It was not safety, but a forced calm, like a wild animal cornered by a creature so powerful it knows struggling is futile. Her mind was still screaming alarms, but her body had already surrendered to the overwhelming physical reality of his presence.

She tried to summon the energy to struggle, to tell him to let her go, but her limbs felt like they were filled with lead. Her eyelids drooped.

Don't fall asleep, she ordered herself. Don't let your guard down.

But his heartbeat was a lullaby she couldn't ignore. Her eyes drifted shut, and she slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep, cradled against the chest of the silent laborer.

Sleep didn't stay dreamless for long.

The darkness shifted, turning cold and biting. Eve was back in the Frostbound Abyss. The blizzard howled around her, the wind tearing at her skin like broken glass. She couldn't see two feet in front of her face.

"Eve! Fall back!" a voice screamed from the snow. She recognized it as belonging to a member of her squad, but the face was a blur of white and red.

A suffocating pressure clamped down on her chest. Something was watching her from the storm. An ancient, malevolent gaze that made her soul shrivel.

She reached for "Rebellion," but the hilt was coated in a thick layer of black frost. It was so heavy she couldn't lift it. A wet, tearing sound cut through the wind, followed by a spray of hot blood that hit her face.

She tried to scream, but the cold stole her voice. A figure stepped out of the blizzard. The build was familiar-broad shoulders, a commanding stance. Bernardo Rowe? The figure leaned in, its mouth moving, but the words were swallowed by the wind. Then, a hand, cold as a corpse, pressed against her chest, right over her heart.

Eve convulsed in her sleep, a strangled cry tearing from her throat.

Cato felt the sudden spike in her temperature. He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead. She was burning up. He gently shifted her off his chest and laid her back on the bed. He grabbed a rag, soaked it in the bucket of cold water by the door, and began wiping down her face, her neck, and her arms, trying to draw the fever out.

The next few days were a feverish haze. Eve drifted in and out of consciousness, trapped in a loop of freezing nightmares and burning reality. Every time she surfaced, she saw him. He was always there, sitting on the stool, grinding herbs, or feeding her bitter, foul-tasting medicine that coated her tongue and made her gag.

He moved her limbs for her, bending her knees and elbows, massaging the muscles to keep them from wasting away. His hands were relentless, professional, and completely impersonal.

On the fifth day, the fever broke.

Eve opened her eyes. The light from the cracks in the roof no longer stabbed into her brain. She took a deep breath, and while her ribs ached, they didn't scream. She wiggled her fingers. They obeyed. She tried her toes. They moved.

A strange sensation emanated from her legs and arms-a deep, intense itch beneath the skin. It was the feeling of bone knitting back together. She knew what that felt like. But this was too fast. Even for a Paladin with a full reservoir of Aether, recovering from shattered bones took weeks, if not months. Without Aether, it should have been impossible. This wasn't healing; it was regeneration.

It had been five days. Not weeks. Not months. She lay there, watching him, feeling her body rebuild itself at a rate that defied all natural law. A faint, earthy warmth pulsed from the herbal poultices on her limbs, a feeling she didn't recognize as simple medicine. It felt like... life. Raw, potent life force being poured directly into her broken flesh.

She slowly turned her head. Cato was sitting in the corner, a whetstone in one hand and a rusted, broken dagger in the other. He was dragging the stone along the blade with slow, deliberate strokes, his eyes focused entirely on the metal.

He wasn't a healer. He was a menial laborer. But the herbs he used had worked a miracle. His medical knowledge was flawless. The questions piled up in her mind, heavy and sharp, but her throat was too dry to ask them.

She lay there, watching him, feeling the impossible mend of her own skeleton. The fever was gone, the nightmares had retreated, and she was wide awake.

Cato stood up, putting the dagger aside. He walked to the hearth and ladled some broth into a bowl. When he turned around and saw her staring at him, clear-eyed and focused, he paused for a fraction of a second.

He walked over and held out the bowl.

Eve looked at the broth, then up at his face. "How long was I out?" she asked. Her voice was hoarse, but it was steady.

Cato didn't answer right away. He set the bowl on the stool and looked at her, his dark eyes assessing her condition. Finally, he spoke, his voice a low, rough rumble, like rocks grinding together.

"Five days."