But even as she offered comfort, Sage was doing her own calculation. How many more times could she accept these scraps of genuine connection? How many more migraines would it take before Elizabeth learnt to be vulnerable without being forced to be so? How long before her own patience finally, irrevocably broke?
Not tonight, Sage decided. Tonight, I'll stay. But I won't wait forever.
She could feel the limit approaching—not today, not this week, but soon. The patience she'd cultivated through sheer force of will was finite, and Elizabeth was spending it faster than she realised.
Eventually, Sage spoke quietly, almost to herself: "Sometimes I think you're more real when you're hurting than when you're winning."
And Elizabeth, for the first time, didn't argue. Just sat there in her pain, finally honest, finally present.
It wasn't enough. Not really. But it was something. And for now, Sage would take it.
Hours later, as the migraine finally began to recede and Elizabeth drifted toward sleep, Sage moved closer and, carefully, infinitely gently, ran her fingers through Elizabeth's dark hair.
It was a gesture that suggested care, tenderness, genuine concern - the kind of gesture Elizabeth usually rejected or ignored. But this time, Elizabeth didn't push her away.
Elizabeth's breathing slowed. Her shoulders, which had been tensed throughout the evening, began to relax. And for the first time since Sage had known her, Elizabeth appeared to simply accept being cared for.
Sage continued the gesture long after Elizabeth had fallen asleep, her fingers moving through that dark hair with the tenderness she normally kept carefully locked away.
'I love you,' she thought, but didn't say aloud. I love you, and I hate that I have to watch you suffer to see the real you. I love you, and I'm terrified that by the time you learn to love me back, I'll have nothing left to give.
She thought about the auction house, about Elizabeth spending ten thousand pounds on a manuscript purely because Sage had wanted it. About the mechanical precision of their relationship, the way Elizabeth delivered affection like contract terms—measured, conditional, always with an exit clause.
But she's trying, Sage reminded herself. In her own broken way, she's trying.
It wasn't enough. But maybe, if Elizabeth kept trying, if these moments of genuine vulnerability became more frequent than the cold calculations, maybe it could be.
Sage stayed awake beside Elizabeth through the night, watching her sleep, wondering how many more nights like this she had in her before her patience finally, irrevocably broke.
Elizabeth woke to sunlight and the sensation of Sage's hand still in her hair, and the first feeling that moved through her was irritation at the violation of her boundaries.
The second feeling was something far more complicated.
She lay motionless, not wanting to alert Sage that she'd woken, and tried to process what had happened. She'd been vulnerable. She'd accepted care. She'd permitted Sage to touch her without strategic calculation.
The experience was deeply unsettling.
Elizabeth should have felt nothing. Should have recognised that this moment changed nothing, that Sage's tenderness was just another tool Elizabeth could use to maintain control.
But something in her chest was moving in a way she didn't recognise—a sensation that felt dangerously close to gratitude, or guilt, or something equally useless.
No. I don't feel guilt. I'm not wired for it.
But the lie tasted hollow even as she thought it. Because the migraine had stripped away something essential, leaving her exposed to feelings she normally suppressed through sheer force of will.
She pushed the sensation away. Gratitude was weakness. Gratitude suggested that she owed Sage something in return for the care offered. Elizabeth didn't owe anyone anything.
But as Sage began to stir, as she slowly withdrew her hand and opened her eyes, Elizabeth found herself unable to maintain the complete coldness she usually deployed.
"You stayed," Elizabeth said, the words surprising her with their vulnerability.
"Of course I stayed," Sage replied softly.
But there was something in her voice—not anger exactly, but a kind of weariness that suggested her patience with this dynamic was not infinite. Elizabeth heard it clearly: the unspoken 'but I won't keep staying forever'. Not like this.
Elizabeth understood, in that moment, that Sage was beginning to break. That the constant giving without reciprocation was finally catching up with her patience. That if Elizabeth continued to treat her like an acquisition, Sage would eventually leave.
The thought terrified her in a way she didn't want to examine too closely.
Because losing Sage would mean losing the one person who'd seen her at her worst and stayed anyway. The one person who'd cared enough to sit through three hours of Elizabeth's absence, who'd held her through pain without demanding gratitude or acknowledgement.
I don't want to lose her.
The admission felt like defeat, like surrender, like everything Elizabeth had spent her adult life refusing to become.
"The migraine—" Elizabeth started, then stopped.
She'd been about to dismiss the incident as irrelevant, to perform recovery and competence and to return to perfect control. But something in the way Sage was looking at her—with such clear exhaustion and such persistent care—made the performance feel hollow.
"I know," Sage said quietly. "I'm here."
Elizabeth didn't respond. She couldn't respond. Because responding would mean acknowledging that Sage mattered to her, that her presence mattered, that the vulnerability of the previous evening meant something.
And Elizabeth Wynsor had spent her entire adult life learning never to acknowledge such things.
She filed the moment away as she always did, tucked it into the corner of her mind where she kept all the things she refused to process.
But something had shifted. Something had cracked in the architecture of her perfect control.
She didn't know yet what that crack meant. Didn't know yet that it was the beginning of something that would eventually reshape her entire understanding of what it meant to want something real rather than something acquired.
She just knew that for the first time in her carefully constructed life, Elizabeth Wynsor was afraid of losing something other than power or money or status.
She was afraid of losing Sage.
And she had absolutely no idea how to process that fear.