Marcus watched her from the bed.
He did not offer her a dustpan, a cloth or direct attention one would give if one cared whether she cut her fingers on the sharper edges — which she did, twice, because he was watching her and she understood that the small quiet cost of letting him watch her bleed a little was part of the therapy of his own recovered composure.
She knelt on the cream carpet like a penitent before an altar that had long since stopped believing in gods. Each time the glass bit into her fingertips, a bead of pale gold welled up and Marcus's eyes followed it with the lazy satisfaction.
She did not heal the cuts.
The small beads of her pale gold blood welled against her fingertips and she let them, because Marcus was looking, and because a part of his healing cycle was fed by the demonstration that his servant could bleed for him.
She gathered every shard.
