The Cost

Isolde was wringing out a cloth in the basin by his bed on the third morning when Thane stopped breathing.

It wasn’t dramatic. That was the worst part of it. No gasp, no struggle — only a silence where his shallow, ragged breath had been a moment before. She was across the room and shaking his shoulders before her mind had fully caught up to what her hands already understood.

“Physician!” Her voice tore out of her raw, nothing careful left in it at all. “Now, I don’t care what else he’s tending to, get him in here now—“

The old man came at a run. He pressed two fingers to Thane’s throat, then his wrist, then bent close to his mouth listening for breath she couldn’t hear herself. Three of the longest seconds of Isolde’s life passed before Thane’s chest hitched, stuttered, and resumed on its own. Shallow but…