Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Aurelia
B y the time I reach my bedroom, the queasiness has given way to wracking shivers. My hand shakes as I bring the key to the lock. It takes me three tries to fit it into the keyhole.
I stagger into the room and shove the door shut behind me. A sudden rush of feverish heat leaves me sagging against it.
A lantern is glowing on the vanity, my nightgown laid out on the bed, a fresh carafe of water on the side table. Melisse arranged everything for my arrival but must have assumed I’d have returned earlier if I wanted her direct help.
I can’t blame her for thinking that way. I’ve dismissed her early most other nights, preferring to prepare for bed in privacy.
More chills and searing heat sweep through me in waves. My legs wobble, but I push myself off the door toward the bathroom.
A dip in the tub might help settle the strange sensations surging through my body. Bring me back into proper equilibrium.
I’m halfway across the room when my stomach lurches even more emphatically than before. I race the last several steps and throw myself over the toilet just in time for it to catch the mushy remnants of my dinner coming back up.
My stomach heaves again and again until I’m sputtering nothing but saliva. My throat burns with acid and the rest of me with the prickling hot fever that seems to have won over the chills.
This is more than just a struggle to recover from my trial. I’m outright ill.
Even though my limbs feel as though they’re on fire, shivers keep coursing through them. I slump over on the floor, fighting for focus, for clarity of thought, for steadiness.
My hand presses against my sternum over my godlen sigil. Elox, help me through this, give me the strength to recover. The focus to use my gift…
First, I need to drink something. Hydrate myself after all the fluids I just lost. I need?—
My mind flips over on itself and sends me crashing into darkness.
In my faint, I must knock my head against the floor. When I surface back into consciousness an uncertain amount of time later, a sharp ache is pulsing through my skull—and the side of my forehead that’s pressed against the tiles feels particularly tender.
Fever still crackles beneath my skin. My stomach has settled into a slow boil of nausea, nothing left in it to expel .
I inhale and exhale in ragged breaths, holding on to the locus of calm at the center of me.
I haven’t come this far just to die on a bathroom floor. I can heal myself.
Gritting my teeth, I reach out to my gift and train it on the symptoms raging through my body. How can I fix whatever’s wrong with me?
Images waver through the haze of my thoughts, but they drift away just as quickly. Swallowing makes my throat sting. I grimace at the sour flavor.
Water first. Then medicine. I won’t accomplish much if I faint again in the middle of the concocting.
Cool resolve gathers in my chest. It takes enough of the edge off the fever for me to ease myself onto my hands and knees.
With every step I crawl across my bedroom, my head throbs in tandem. I let my awareness sink down into the center of me, into that one small still place like a tiny temple within.
Find your peace, and anything is possible , the devouts of Elox like to say.
I don’t register that I’ve reached the side table until my head bumps into one of the legs. After a minute or two gathering myself, I sit back on my heels.
I spill more water than makes it into the cup, but the liquid feels gloriously cold against my scorching flesh. I swipe a damp arm across my forehead and sip.
Three shallow swallows, and my stomach starts to cramp. I clench my jaw and my fingers around the glass.
Should I yell and hope a guard will hear me who can bring one of the palace medics?
That thought provokes a series of more unnerving questions: What will Marclinus think if I turn into an invalid after his trial? How will the emperor evaluate me?
Will Tarquin decide I mustn’t be hardy enough to stand beside his heir after all? They executed one of the other ladies for simply dropping a dish.
I manage to tamp down my nausea and take another sip of water. The fever blazes on, but in this moment I feel as if it’s burned away everything but my path forward.
I can take care of this setback on my own. I don’t have to appear weak in front of anyone other than myself.
If Their Imperial Eminences never find out, so much the better.
Through some combination of inner fortitude, feverish delusion, and sheer force of will, I scoot along the side of the bed and across the rug to reach my trunks. My tea box sits right at the top of the one containing everything that’s not clothes. I pause to recover my strength and lift it out.
The wooden container isn’t only a tea box. With trembling fingers, I pry free the upper layer that holds the tins of various dried leaves and flowers and set it aside.
The larger compartment beneath that offers more of a mishmash: a couple dozen small linen bags of herbs, nearly as many vials of ingredients best preserved in liquid or gel form, a few jars holding premixed concoctions I thought it might be useful to have ready, no longer including the salve I gave Prince Raul.
As I stare down at them, my gift surges to the forefront of my mind. The components I need swim up before my eyes.
Fuck. That’s quite the combination.
Whatever’s gotten into me, it’s serious. The ingredients tell me it’s going to take a real kick to propel this illness out of my body .
I pluck out a few of the bags, a vial, and a pot of a thick gel that’ll emulsify the mixture together. But two of the items whirling through my aching head aren’t in the array before me. They’re ingredients I assumed would be on hand at my destination, without considering that I might end up in a position where both leaving my room and asking for help were precarious propositions.
There’ll be plenty of garlic in the kitchen. And the palace cooks gather most other herbs fresh each day—I’ve seen thyme growing in the herb garden.
I just have to get to it.
My gaze slides to the mortar, pestle, and tiny oil stove among my brewing equipment. With all the throbbing and searing that’s taken over my body, I’d like nothing more than to sit and do what work I can right here.
But the longer I wait, the more the infection will take hold. I don’t know if I can count on being able to move around the palace even in ten minutes’ time.
Gods help me, I don’t know if I can count on it now .
I have a couple of aids that should dim the worst of the agony for a short while. Rummaging through the box, I fish out a sliver of ruddy root that I hastily chew. An astringent taste fills my mouth. Within seconds of swallowing, my nausea starts to ease.
I grasp a chunk of papery bark and suck it against my cheek. Its flavor is more bitter, but it should gradually ease at least some of the pain radiating through my body.
These are only temporary solutions, though. I have to take advantage of them quickly.
I set my feet flat on the floor and gradually unfurl myself upright. Heat continues sizzling beneath my skin and my headache pounds, but after a few breaths, my legs stop wobbling .
The chill of resolve I felt before thickens, spreading through my limbs. It doesn’t remove the discomfort, but it sets me apart as if my mind is sealed off in that serene chamber within.
Elox is watching over me. He’s lending me the strength I asked for.
He doesn’t want me faltering from my purpose either. The peace I’m hoping to bring my people honors him more than it does any other godlen.
I take a few tentative steps forward. It’s easiest when I hold my head high and my posture stiffly erect, as if my body is a machine I’m directing with a whirring of clockwork rather than my own physical essence.
I’ll have to navigate two hallways, a staircase, another hallway, and then I’ll come to the kitchen. I think there’s a door straight from that room into the garden I need. Not far at all, on the measure of it.
Ha.
As I propel myself forward, I sink my teeth into the bark in my mouth, gnawing more bitterness out of it. The throbbing in my skull fades a little more.
One foot after the other. I cling tightly to the threads of calm I’ve found.
The hallway outside my chambers seems quiet. I suspect my fellow competitors will have taken right to their beds, as I probably should have rather than roaming the woods. If the rest of the court is indulging in some frivolity, it’s far enough away that I only catch one bellowing laugh diminished by the distance.
It’d be nice if my luck held. But I reach the end of the first hall just as the three princes who’ve plagued me come striding around the bend.
“…get complacent,” Prince Bastien is saying to his co mpanions in a flat but insistent tone. At the sight of me, his voice dies and his feet jar to a halt. Lorenzo and Raul stall in their tracks where they’re flanking Bastien.
The slender prince flicks his gaze over my body. A harsh edge creeps into his voice. “Well, look at this. The princess of Accasy appears to be perfectly alert and off on late-night adventures.”
It seems my efforts at looking as if I’m perfectly fine and not about to keel over are working.
I don’t have the time or energy to wonder why Bastien sounds annoyed by the fact that I’m wandering the halls.
“Good night,” I manage in a stiff voice, because it’d be odd if I didn’t acknowledge the men right in front of me at all, and step around the trio as gracefully as my mechanical grip on my body allows.
The princes are startled enough that I’ve made it a few steps past them before their footsteps scuff against the carpet, spinning and hurrying after me. Bastien mutters something about how “she was making excuses to get away from you,” which doesn’t make much sense either, because I haven’t attempted any justifications.
He calls after me in a low but disdainful tone. “Where are you going, Princess?”
I keep my response efficiently short. “Kitchen.”
He snorts, as if there’s something ridiculous about my answer. “Still so hungry after that feast? Off to raid the palace cupboards? And it seems you don’t even trust your maid to fetch a snack for you.”
I don’t know why he has a problem with any of that. What’s it to him? Shouldn’t he want me to eat the emperor out of house and home if I take a mind to?
It’s easiest to say nothing. I keep my mouth clamped shut, bark braced between my teeth, and my feet moving onward, step after step.
The stairwell is just up ahead. I’ll be able to hold on to the railing going down. It won’t look strange at all as long as I don’t clutch it like a drowning woman.
Bastien picks up his pace, his boots thudding against the thick carpet behind me in time with the fever blaring beneath my skin. “You’re not answering because you’re up to something. I think you need a little company on this expedition.”
The thought of the princes tagging along through my entire awful trek sends a renewed shudder through my gut that I almost can’t rise above. My frustration slips my control instead. I spit the words through my clenched teeth. “Fuck off .”
There’s a moment of stunned silence and then a rough noise of consternation melding with an amused tsk of the tongue I can tell is Raul.
“Watch out, Bas. You’re bringing out that wild fire. I knew it had to be in her somewhere.”
I ignore him too, veering toward the staircase.
Unfortunately, all three princes march after me down the broad steps. My palm skids against the gilded railing, sweat beading there in the brief moments I grasp on for balance.
Bastien comes up with a retort about a minute too late. “Cursing at me isn’t going to stop me from keeping an eye on you.”
No, I hadn’t really expected it would. I go back to ignoring him, drawing relief from the knowledge that the kitchen doorway is just around the next turn.
No clatter of pans or clinking of dishes reaches my ears—the staff will have cleared out for the night. No one needs to know I slunk in there… except for my increasingly irritating pursuers.
Lorenzo must convey some comment with gestures, because Bastien speaks again in a more hushed cadence as if replying. “She obviously lied. She didn’t flee because she was ever so tired. Half the palace is already in bed, and here she is roaming.”
Through my sickly daze, it sinks in that he’s talking about my excuse for leaving Lorenzo in the orchard. He’s claiming that I made up a story.
I can’t tell him off without revealing how close to incapacitated I actually am. After Emperor Tarquin and his heir—and I suppose Fausta and Bianca—Bastien is the last person I want aware of my weakened state. Especially when he’s acting like such an ass.
I’m not sure I could defend myself without the calm center I’ve held on to cracking and everything else falling apart.
“Why so rigid tonight, Lamb?” Raul says in a cajoling tone. “I know you enjoyed my company yesterday.”
I swerve through the kitchen doorway in silence. I might have to repair every smidgeon of progress I’ve made with these men after tonight’s performance, but at least I’ll be alive and well to do it.
My years of potion-making in the kitchens of my family’s royal residences have left me familiar with the typical layouts. The Darium approach to organization isn’t much different. It only takes a swift scan of the vast counter space to spot a basket in one corner with several bulbs of garlic poking their white faces from the top.
As I stride stiffly over to pluck one up, my gaze catches on a kettle tucked away on one of the storage shelves. The images brought by my gift shift and flow through my thoughts.
I’m going to require some boiled water.
I slosh a little from the kitchen taps into the spouted metal pot and set it on the main stove. The fire within must be intended to burn all night, perhaps with magical enhancement to ensure it never dwindles too much. The heat that wafts over me barely feels warm compared to the blaze of my fever.
The princes have followed me into the room. Bastien scowls at me. “If you’re hoping to confuse us by grabbing random objects?—”
I don’t bother to wait to hear what new accusing remark he’s going to make. The flavor has leeched from my bit of bark—its numbing effect on my pains will be dwindling.
My headache pounds harder on my way to the small door at the far end of the kitchen. My fingers stumble over the deadbolt but manage to shove it over.
I step out at the edge of the herb garden I’ve encountered during my occasional strolls outside. My eyes are going bleary, but with several hasty steps amid the tight rows, I spot the tufts of thyme in a dense patch.
I don’t need that much. As I bend down to snap off a few sprigs of leaves, I quietly spit the scrap of bark into the dirt.
When I straighten up, a wave of dizziness rocks me. I stiffen my limbs against it and skirt the watching princes on my way back into the kitchen.
Their stares follow me. Lorenzo makes a rough sound in his throat that I can’t decipher.
Raul follows me to the cupboard where I pull out a mug. “What in the realms are you playing at, Princess?”
He’s kept his tone jaunty on the surface, but it’s hardened underneath. Is he getting annoyed with my lack of explanation?
Perfect. The frustration can be spread all around.
The kettle is already steaming. I drop the thyme into the mug and pour in just enough boiling water to fill the vessel by a quarter. Then I start my journey back to my room, clutching the mug in one hand and the bulb of garlic in the other.
I’d thought I felt terrible before. I hadn’t known how much more capacity for awfulness my body contained. My initial measures must have held off the worst of the symptoms more than I realized.
With every step, the feverish heat turns starker, raking claws through my flesh and fogging my vision. My stomach starts up its roiling again. The throbbing in my head expands down my back and through my very bones.
I’ve probably made the illness even worse by pushing myself to keep moving. But if I’d just lain there in my bedroom, I might have been dead by morning.
My awareness of my princely followers dwindles as I retreat even farther into the shrinking calm inside me. Bastien is demanding an explanation and Raul cajoling me, and I just keep striding forward, step after step, as quickly as I can.
I didn’t bother to lock my bedroom when I left it. With a waft of gratitude for that oversight, I push the door open with my shoulder and walk inside.
Just a little farther. My tools and the other ingredients wait a mere ten paces away.
But as I wobble toward them, the princes barge after me into the room. Because of course they still have no concept of privacy .
“Whether you speak to us or not, we are going to get answers,” Bastien insists.
The fever has eaten away at the cool place inside me so it’s little more than a scrap of stillness. The battle raging inside my body rises to a roar.
My control is slipping from my fingers.
“Get out!” I shout, or maybe it’s only a mumble, my tongue tripping over itself.
Either way, it makes no difference. Bastien marches even closer.
With my last bit of strength, I set the mug on top of the closed trunk.
And my legs give beneath me.
I crumple to the floor, my limbs gone so limp I can’t even grope out with my arms to soften my fall. My skin smolders, and my stomach lurches. I’m vaguely aware of retching a sputter of acid-laced water onto the carpet.
I think I hear my name. My mind wavers in and out of darkness, the impressions of shapes and sounds around me fragmenting.
Fingers brush against my forehead and jerk away. Bastien: “She’s burning up with a fever.”
“What the fuck? But she seemed?—”
“She was so quiet—the effort it would have taken her to talk… If I’d realized?—”
“She couldn’t really have been hiding that bad an illness.”
My thoughts spiral away. I gag and retch again. Pain batters me from all sides, as if beating me up for daring to fight.
I almost had my cure. I know what I need to do. But I can’t—I can’t?—
Through my haze, I catch fractured sentences from an unfamiliar voice. “You knew— What did you do to?—? ”
Has Prince Neven joined them—or has a guard overheard and rushed in?
No, no, no, I don’t want?—
Bastien’s voice has gone raw. “I didn’t think— Gods smite me, it was only a bit of spoiled meat and juices in her stew. I meant to upset her stomach a little, slow her recovery. I wouldn’t have wanted it to hit her like this .”
Raul sputters a humorless laugh. “Who knows what that crap had in it?”
And the voice I’m not sure of, as if from farther away—someone at the door? “Her sacrifice—her spleen—she said?—”
Then Bastien’s remarks about my stew sink in.
That fucking prick. Anger flares alongside my fever.
He did this to me on purpose. He might not have expected me to get so sick, but the result is the same.
The princes keep talking.
“Should we call a medic?”
Bastien sounds even more agonized than before. “How are we going to explain how we found her? We couldn’t have seen her collapse through the closed door. And they might be able to piece together what happened to her—that I did it.”
“If we leave her, who knows what’ll happen to her?”
“Weren’t you the one who insisted we’re all better off if she dies?”
“Not like this. We’re not the butchers in this place… I wasn’t finished with her.”
“Then give me a chance to think.”
“How about you think faster!”
I’m losing track of which voices are which. Maybe I only hallucinated that there was a third. But the thought that the princes might alert the rest of the palace to my condition sends a spike of panic through me alongside my anger .
Deep inside, I gather every particle of will I can.
Elox, stay with me. Let me make this cure.
“Wait! There is that one medic we?—"
“She’s waking up!”
Straining my muscles, I manage to push myself off the ground. I stare foggily at the equipment spread out next to me.
My gift tickles at the back of my head, flashing images of how the parts combine, how I need to bring them together.
A voice I know is Raul’s comes from behind me with a sputter of disbelief. “Look at her, picking up the pieces even now.”
The floor creaks as he must step closer, but I ignore him. My shaking hand grasps one of the linen bags and shakes some of the contents into the mortar. Then the second and the third.
Clutching the pestle, I start to grind the crystals and dried leaves into a finer powder. My body sways with the movements of my arm.
With another heave of my gut, I have to pause to retch more spittle.
Bastien crouches down beside me. His voice has evened out again, devoid of emotion. “Aurelia, you’re using your gift to make something that’ll set you right, aren’t you? Is there anything we can do?”
I lift my gaze to him, taking in his face, even paler than usual beneath the rumpled fall of his auburn hair.
Wasn’t he considering leaving me for dead? I’d laugh if I remembered how.
My incredulity must show all the same. Bastien’s mouth tightens. “If you die, it’ll be because you failed one of these stupid trials or pissed off Marclinus, not because of me. I’m not standing by when you’re this ill. What else do you need? ”
I wonder if he even notices he said “if” I die. He seemed awfully certain of that outcome the first time we spoke.
Regardless, I only seem capable of producing one answer, effective even with my voice little more than a creak. “Fuck off.”
Raul lets out a strangled sort of guffaw.
As I go back to my grinding, a hand rests gingerly against my back.
I can tell it’s Lorenzo without needing to look. That’s the only reason I don’t shrug off the steadying touch.
He hasn’t said anything horrible to me in the past half an hour. Of course, he can’t say anything at all, but some mildly coherent part of me would like to believe he wouldn’t have after our conversation in the woods.
My work is almost done anyway. I light the pot of oil under the tiny stove and set my miniature cauldron over the flame. In goes the hot water steeped with thyme, then the crushed mixture from the pestle, then a few drips of silvery oil from the vial.
Unpeeling the garlic nearly proves my undoing. My trembling fingers jitter across the papery skin.
Lorenzo’s hand firms against my back.
If he’s thinking of intervening, Raul beats him to the punch. The massive prince leans in to snatch the garlic from my hands.
Both Lorenzo and I make noises of protest, his more forceful than my weak grunt.
Raul glowers at both of us. “You’re not dying over a fucking piece of garlic.”
He tears the skin off both the bulb and one of the cloves. I stretch out a wobbly arm. “Enough.”
He hands the clove over. Ideally I’d cut it up, but I don’t have the coordination for that right now. Instead, I dig my fingernails into the smooth surface to pierce it and toss it into the bubbling concoction.
The mixture has turned into a thick gray sludge. Hardly the most appetizing substance I’ve seen in my life, but my gift tickles through me like a balm, confirming I’ve done everything needed.
I let the potion simmer as long as I dare, closing my eyes against the impression of spikes driving through my skull and joints. Then I spoon a few dollops of the stuff into a little bowl.
I blow a ragged breath over the concoction to cool it. As I bring it to my lips, the princes remain braced around me, though what they think they’re going to contribute at this point, I can’t fathom.
The sludgy substance coats my tongue with a sour and slightly metallic flavor. Wincing, I swallow once, wait to make sure my stomach doesn’t immediately expel the stuff, and gulp the rest.
The furious determination that gripped me dissipates. I lean over on my side and let myself sag onto the floor.
The carpet is comfortably soft when I’m embracing it purposefully rather than collapsing onto it.
Lorenzo reaches over to squeeze my hand. I find myself squeezing back, even though I have no idea what he’s thinking right now.
“Aurelia?” Bastien says tentatively.
I hold myself still and quiet. Gradually, the ache jabbing through every part of my body starts to fade. The fire searing through my veins dwindles.
Raul touches my cheek. “She’s less hot already.” There’s a hint of a question in his voice .
Bastien answers it firmly. “We stay until we’re sure she’s fully well.”
Fine. It’s not as if they’d leave just because I told them to anyway.
My eyelids slide shut, and my mind drifts into a healing sleep.