“What is Anima Rex, truly? You already know. I scattered the answer throughout your marrow, injected it into your veins, and hid it in the folds of your brain. I buried it in your mother’s grave. When you are ready, you will find it. And I hope that when you do, you are surrounded by those you trust. The ones you cannot trust — and there will be many — will turn you inside-out for the merest scrap of this legend. This is the allure of Anima Rex. This is your burden. This is my sin. 

It is a small price to pay, when all is said and done.”

-Journal of a Nameless Genius, page 3

Nemira stared at the cat on her lap. The cat stared back at her with all three of its searing golden eyes.

"And that's all he did?" she asked the cat, blinking blearily at it. She would give anything to collapse into her pillows and not think anymore.

The cat turned in a delicate circle, stepping on her thighs with light paws. The aetherian was a daemonic sage. Most eschewed physical labor and working directly with summoners at all unless one could appeal to their sense of irrepressible curiosity. Nemira liked them quite a bit, for even the little sage sprites were willing to engage in extended conversation with her.

"Once my horned kin stepped onto Swordhand Square, I could no longer follow him," the cat told her in a child-like, melodic voice. "A great arcane force keeps me away from that place. A numen could breach it, but not I. Ah, how vexing...I would have so loved to see who the horned one met, to hear the words he said..."

Nemira nibbled absently on the tip of her thumb, turning the information over in her tired, feverish mind. Sai-em had most likely been reporting back to whatever paladin ran Nova Hall. That was all well and good, he was still a member of their order even after he had given the Dayam's Oath to her, but did it mean anything that he had waited until well after midnight last night before leaving? Uncertainty pulled the corners of her mouth downward. There was still too much about Sai-em she didn't know.

"You who bear the Firmament-gilded tongue, would you like me to continue observing the horned one for you?"

"No." She shook her head. The simple action dizzied her immensely, her whole room blurring before her eyes. "There's no point if Nova Hall is protected from you. Thank you, though, my watchful friend. Come and go as you please."

The cat gave a long, charming meow in reply, its form dissolving into speckles of gentle light.

Nemira fell back onto her pillows with a groan. Too much to consider, too much to do. She wanted a bath. She wanted to visit her mothers. She wanted to sleep, but every time she tried...

Hazy visions of the faceless man filled her head. The violent shudder that tore through her in response made her muscles ache with its force.

"Kha-hesh?"

Sai-em elbowed the door open. Nemira didn't get back up.

"Did you eat your soup?" he asked.

She waved a vague hand in the air. The soup he had given her sat untouched on her nightstand. Three times she had attempted to bring a spoonful to her mouth with a trembling hand, and three times her stomach threatened to rebel at the slightest whiff of vegetables and rice noodles reaching her nose. "I'm not hungry."

His face loomed over her. He had a bucket of water in his gloved hands and a deep pinch to his face that had not eased since last night. "Is there anything you need?"

Nemira's froze, and then her eyes popped wide and she shot up in bed. "Council letter."

"What?" Sai-em hastily set the bucket on the floor and reached to steady her.

"Council letter! I need to send an after-assignment report to the Council as soon as possible, and they expect it on time, so please—" She lurched forward, grasping for a pen or piece of paper that wasn't anywhere near her bed. There was no brain in her head anymore, but a mound of sopping wet and steaming pile of cotton her skull could barely contain. "It'll take just a minute or two to prepare and send out."

"Kha-hesh, that is so incredibly unimportant right now."

Eyes throbbing, aware that she was being ridiculous but unable to stop herself, she slipped away from Sai-em's bracing arm and fell back onto her bed, curling up into the fetal position against the wall.

"Leave me," she said miserably, curling her arms over her head. "Let me wallow alone in my wretchedness."

She heard Sai-em sigh from somewhere above her. "If low godfire sickness hits you this badly, how did you ever manage to take care of yourself after you saved me from the end of the Road?"

"I didn't," Nemira told the inside of her elbow. "I lay on the bathroom floor until I could get up again and asked a sprite to alert my parents of my condition if I wasn't back on my feet within a day."

"IWA weeps to hear of it."

Nemira peeked at him over her arm. "I always think that IWA is too busy traversing the planes to stop and cry over every little mortal having a bad day whenever someone says that."

"IWA attained endless compassion for all Their creations. That is the whole point of Their journey." Sai-em responded with such unshakeable conviction that Nemira didn't have the heart to further poke him into a religious debate. Maybe when she felt better. "Can you sit up for me, Kha-hesh?"

"Surely you're not trying to do what it looks like you're trying to do." She eyed him suspiciously. He had a towel and a wash cloth hanging off one of his arms.

"It may help you feel better, Kha-hesh, and it's safer than risking you slipping in your tub with how weak you are right now."

Her knee jerk option was to refuse. But unlike the food, the idea of getting wiped down didn't make her want to vomit. Still, she scowled as she struggled back into a sitting position. "This feels a bit above your pay grade, sir knight."

"It isn't." He laid the fluffy towel over her bed. "This is all well within the bounds of the solemn duties of a dayam. There's a whole manual dedicated to proper conduct, and every Rhuzian with hopes of becoming a thaumaturge has read it."

"Really?" Nemira was too feverish to feel foolish for never even considering the existence of specific literature for dayam. She made a mental note to rush downstairs and check her shelves for it as soon as she could. "Goodness, is it difficult to acquire?"

"I don't know, but I have it memorized if you ever need to ask questions about it." Sai-em picked up the bucket of water and set it on the nightstand next to her uneaten bowl of noodles. "Later, though. If you are uncomfortable with me seeing you nude, I can simply wash your back and leave you to wipe down the rest of yourself."

That assurance brought her back to the reality of her situation: a sternly good-looking nephilim offering to give her a sponge bath. It felt a little ludicrous, and she might have laughed had she the energy. Instead, she pulled off her nightshirt without much preamble and shimmied over her bed and onto the square of towel with clumsy movements.

"Do your worst," she sighed, once properly positioned before him. "I am at your mercy."

"You speak as though I plan to execute you." Sai-em looked deeply unamused, but that was his default state as far as Nemira knew. He dunked the washcloth in the bucket, rang out the excess moisture, then knelt and began washing her feet.

The minutes trickled by more slowly than she thought they would. She's been to enough Rhuzian public baths and Yamban hot springs that others seeing her naked didn't bother her. The awkwardness came in the complete lack of reaction from Sai-em. She studied his face whenever she thought he wasn't looking. Placid and focused. His gloves and long sleeves ensured that he would never touch her bare skin with his own even on accident. The perfect nurse. And really, what else had she been expecting? She stank of stale sweat, and the protective braid she had attempted to slick her thick curls into the night before had come out a lopsided mess. Nothing about her at that moment inspired amorous thought.

Nemira tried her best to suppress a glower as Sai-em wiped down her chest and torso. Even if she had been at her most charming, what did that even matter? Sai-em took his role seriously, that much was too obvious to be some kind of act. If she asked him to fulfill some of the more old-fashioned duties as her dayam once she recovered, he wouldn't hesitate to agree even if she looked like a toad in his eyes. It was an incredibly poor way to measure attraction, when all was said and done.

"Are you comfortable, Kha-hesh?" He took her arm, holding it out with great care and running the sudsy wash cloth over it.

Her mind wandered over to thoughts of her master. Confident and straight-forward Myami-heshi at the height of her power, refusing every warrior who came calling as a dayam save for a single childhood friend she adored like a sister. It made her a terrible conversation partner on the topic.

There's little less interesting to me than the idea of experiencing all that a dayam has to offer me. Pay the issue no mind, my girl. We have far more pressing things to discuss.

“Kha-hesh?” He paused, studying her face with concern. His eyes were so green up close. They reminded her of the tropical forests that stretched the whole length of New Yamba.

If only she could better emulate Myami-heshi. It’d make at least a couple of aspects of her life easier to deal with. 

“As comfortable as I usually am around you, Sai-em.” she said, giving him her most wan smile.