When Anastasia stepped out of her room, she found the royal guards bowing to her. "The prince is in the infirmary," they informed.
"Why?" Her eyes were wide and the next moment she found herself running to the infirmary.
The royal guards rushed after her. The leader puffed as he spoke, "He is unwell." What else could he say given the fact that he didn't know why the prince was unwell and why he hadn't returned to the bedchamber for the whole night. Frankly, he didn't like the crown prince's character that day. He left a deity like wife to spend it with someone else?
Anastasia reached the infirmary in record time. Her face was red with worry etched on it and she was panting when she entered. Upon seeing a mummified Ileus, her heart leapt out of its ribcage. "Ileus!" she said and rushed to his side. The man was draped in green linen from neck to toe. The healers were kind enough to not wrap his face in the green linen, which was smelling so bitter that Anastasia had to put her hand on her nose to stop the bile to rush out of her mouth.
Ileus opened his eyes and turned to see his anxious wife. "I am fine, sweetheart," he said as he tried to get up but couldn't. He felt better after a dreamless night. His limbs were too stiff but the warmth they were wrapped in was comforting.
"How did this happen to you?" she asked, totally flustered. "Did you break your bones? Is your skin burnt? Did anyone thrash you?" She looked up and down his body while holding his hand.
The healers who were standing near the medicine table chuckled. Thrash the Crown Prince? One of them said, "No, m'lady, he is just weak and needs to heal. We were about to remove these wraps."
"Weak?" a crease formed on her forehead. "How? Why?" Another volley of questions. "What did you do?"
He grunted as he tried to turn towards her, but he was so badly mummified that he couldn't. "I want everyone to exit the room," he ordered before he set on to talk to his wife.
The healers bowed and exited the room, closing the door behind them.
"Okay, now tell me, Aly. What happened to you that made you so weak?" she asked, her eyes wide like a puppy. She squeezed his hand.
"I had to go back in time, sweetheart. Mother had asked. And the process was complicated, so I ended up exhausting every bit of my power. It will take a few days before I regain it."
She pressed a hand to her mouth. "That's horrible!" she said and then shifted right next to his chest. She helped him prop his head up. His hair was so tousled. She tousled them back from his forehead and pressed a kiss there. "Did you get any success?"
"I think I did," he replied, basking under his wife's warm breath that fell on his face. He measured the distance between their lips and their eyes, their noses merely a few inches away.
"That's wonderful," she said. "Should I call the queen for you to report to her?"
"No," he said absentmindedly as he felt that the linens between his thighs were getting tighter and tighter. And painful. "Haldir must have already apprised her."
"Oh, I see," she said and leaned forward to brush his cheeks with her knuckles.
She shouldn't have leaned forward. The neckline of her gown had plunged and her cleavage revealed. The upper swells of her breasts were so bloody inviting that he had this sudden flash in his mind as to how his shaft would look wedged between them. Gods. The linen became tighter. "H— how are you feeling?" he managed to garble some words. If she was pregnant, then he wondered if he had to avoid sex. His mind was sent into a tizzy of torture when her breasts moved and the swells wiggled.
She let out a sigh. "I puked again," she said in a tired voice. "In fact, I have come to ask the healers if I have a stomach infection."
What? Oh no, no, no. If she asked the healer, he would come to know that she was pregnant and then— "You were just stressed, love," he gave her a possible reason. "You have been working so hard."
"True…" she said, as she leaned forward and pressed another kiss on the crown of his head. This time her breasts touched his face and the linen around his hips and thighs became unbearable.
"Ah!" he groaned.
She jerked back. "What is it darling?" she asked, scared that her kiss had hurt him.
"Could you just remove the linen from my thighs?" he said. "It is painful there."
"Of course!" she replied with a worry in her eyes and set to work. Carefully, she removed the first layer, and then the second, and as soon as she removed the third layer, his erection sprang free. "Aly!" she exclaimed. "You shameless, shameless, wretched—"
"How can I help if I have such a sexy wife who is shoving her boobs on my face?" he replied, almost whining. The healers had asked him to refrain from any kind of physical activity including sex. To hell with them. "This one need so much attention. It craves for you every moment. See?" His erection twitched and pulsated under her eyes.
"You are unwell, for god's sake. You can't have sex!"
"Says who?" A tense crease formed over his forehead.
"Says the green medicine on your shaft!" she said and burst out laughing.
Never in his life was he this angered by the healers. They didn't even leave his penis? He was definitely going to fire them from the palace. "You have to help me out here Anastasia," he growled. He needed his wife around his cock urgently. Suddenly he realized how much he missed her.
She shook her head. "First these wraps need to get out of you and then I will touch you."
"This is so unfair."
Over the next half an hour, Anastasia helped him to remove the bandages and give him a good bath. It goes without saying that he pulled her inside the bath.
Wrapped in a fluffy white towel, Anastasia helped Ileus to sit on the bed with propped up pillows. He was indeed very weak. Her heart went out for him. Did Adrianna know that using so much magic would weaken him bodily? Was she so desperate to know as to who abducted her daughter that it came with a heavy price like this? The food tray was between them and Anastasia gave him a buttered toast with roasted chicken stew. And she— well she had cherry tomato salad for that was the only smell she liked. And Ileus— he watched her having it with trepidation.
She was sitting on his legs and eating the salad. "So, what did you see, Ileus?" she asked.
He tilted his head and stared in the blank. "Lots of dense fog and someone hissing at her in an unknown language. I was astonished the Iona could understand the language because she spoke with the thing hidden inside the fog in the same language."
"Really?"
"Yes," he said and his eyes fell on her cleavage. The girl had cleverly avoided sex with him in the bathtub. No more.
