The last time he was shirtless outdoors for this length of time, he'd been a child back in Starkhaven, swimming in the river with the other village boys. It isn't so very cool outside, but he's not accustomed to feeling wind on bare skin.

But if she says he's got to work for the shirt, she is, after all, the healer. He sighs, mock-exasperated. "Oh, all right."

He reaches carefully for the shirt, pushing through the twinge of pain and finding that it's really not so bad now after all. "Look at that," he says admiringly. "It's better already."