The dwarf girl was seated, leaning up against the wall by the door, her head fully back against the stone and her eyes squeezed shut. At least, they were until Conlan spoke; she cracked one brown eye open, and then the other, and studied him through bleary, weary eyes. It was hours since the Joining had ended, and Signy hadn't slept a wink. Unlike Conlan who, it seemed, had found occupation of his time in drinking and other merriment—at least judging by the smell of ale that clung to him—Signy had been by herself. Ever since Imenry had left her to get some rest, she'd been by herself, curled up in a ball in bed, trying to will herself not to vomit simply by telling her body to obey. Over and over again. It had not worked.
And that was why she was here, in the tiny, awful-smelling stone privy near her bedroom—and why she had been here for, near as she could tell, almost an hour. She had heard guards call out something like a watch, part of the nightly guard she had never actually taken part in, and was waiting to hear the same refrain repeated. The waves of nausea had been coming and going—the most awful one, the one that had brought her sprinting in here to crouch over the pit and cough and hack and half-choke, it was gone now, but lesser waves had passed behind it. She had learned it was best to just stay near something she could clean easily, and wait for the whole spell to go away, rather than trying to make it back to her bed, just in time to feel her stomach seize again.
Signy had an awful lot of experience vomiting, as much as she wished that that wasn't the case.
At least being sick had helped her keep her mind off of replaying the events of the Joining in her mind, or dwelling too long, for being sick had a way of keeping her mind focused entirely on the very unpleasant present. Which was where she was jolted back to, from a foggy, half-asleep, half-queasy rumination on just that; who was here with her? It took her a moment to recognize one of the new human Wardens, the man who had drank first, who had nearly been dragged from the chamber. Her memory would not supply a name.
After a moment, she found her voice, hoarse though it was: "In my experience?" A pause; her throat burned from the stomach acids that weren't supposed to be there at all. "Nothing ever really does."