“Ugh, fruit,” Hadrian half-groaned, half-begged, already feeling as though he might actually salivating at the mouth, if his body was finally no longer too dehydrated to manage it. His stomach would be easily sated, after the shit it had been trying to digest – not literally shit, in most cases, although he had tasted something he thought might be dung; but after the boiled leather of his own shoes for something to chew on, he would kill for a pear or a plum. A pineapple. A mango. A banana. He could envision the stores they had in their travel tents, all the things he’d been without. “I could murder a watermelon.”

And she was making tea, but after that he would ask or want for nothing: just her presence, just the luxury of being here. “But I’ll get it – you don’t need to wait on me hand and foot.” Hadrian protested, trying to sit up and then potentially haul himself off the bed she had not so long ago helped him into. But – whether from what he had just said or catching sight of his bare feet at the end of his bed, and remembering the unpleasant toughness of old leather, his face blanched and his insides cramped.

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