Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
“What’s all this?” She gapes from me to Alaric, her eyes settling on our clasped hands.
“Nothing,” I say, yanking free. “Just a bit of gardening.”
“A bit of gardening?” she sputters.
Alaric frowns at his empty hand before addressing Delphine. “Is there a problem with that?”
“No, forgive me, Your Highness.” Delphine bows and backs toward the solarium door. “My business can wait.”
But her puffy red eyes and shuddering breaths tell a different story.
“Delphine, wait! What’s wrong?” I call. Seeing me with Alaric clearly surprised her, but that couldn’t possibly be what’s making her so upset.
Delphine doesn’t answer or slow, and when I jump to follow her, Alaric’s frown deepens. Who leaves a prince alone in the dirt to chase after a maid?
I’m navigating this all wrong—offending them both—but I don’t have a clue how to juggle so many tenuous alliances.
I catch Delphine by the shoulder before she disappears into my chamber. “Tell me what’s going on. Please,” I beg.
Delphine casts a wary glance back at Alaric before quietly uttering, “It’s Cloudia.
She’s taken a turn. I’ve never seen her this bad.
I’m worried she’s going to—to—” Delphine crumples to her knees, and I awkwardly collapse with her, trying to break her fall.
“I need you to come see her.” She squeezes my hands painfully tight.
“There must be something you can do, some herb or poultice you haven’t tried? ”
I nod, even as I mentally comb through the inventory of herbs I’ve grown these past weeks—all the failed remedies. I’m not a healer, and I’m out of new seeds. Out of ideas.
Except for one. There’s one plant we haven’t tried. The same plant I just so happened to cultivate with Alaric.
I look back at the tall stalks of bagrava, heavy with fruit.
It feels wrong to even consider disobeying Earth Mother by administering bagrava to Cloudia, but if bagrava tea can soothe Queen Tessa and her courtiers without driving them mad, perhaps a small dosage might be able to calm Cloudia too.
It may not cure her illness, but it might offer a little relief.
Surely, Earth Mother would be willing to overlook my disobedience this once, since it’s a matter of life and death?
Especially if I beg her forgiveness and serve her with perfect devotion going forward.
To my surprise, it isn’t Earth Mother who condones or rejects my decision.
It’s Rowenna.
You need to stay focused, Indira! You can’t flit off to help a worthless maid and her sick sister when Alaric is finally opening up.
Her use of the word worthless makes me bristle. Just because she and Delphine didn’t get along, it hardly makes Delphine worthless. And who’s to say I can’t do both? Alaric revealed so much just now. I don’t want to press too hard and make him suspicious.
Careful, sister, or I’ll grow suspicious of your priorities, Rowenna whispers darkly.
“Who’s Cloudia?” Alaric asks, bringing me back. “And what’s the matter with her?”
Delphine casts me a terrified look, and I scramble to explain in a way that won’t put Cloudia in more danger. The last thing I want is for Soren to take an interest in Cloudia’s strange illness and separate the sisters thanks to my “help.”
“Cloudia is Delphine’s younger sister,” I say. “She’s been ill recently, so I’ve been making simple remedies for her.”
“This is the friend you’ve been helping with your herbs?” Alaric asks with a note of surprise. “Your maid?”
Delphine tries to shrink back, but I clasp her hand and force her to remain at my side. “Yes. She’s been helping me, so I’m helping her. Do you take issue with that?” I raise my chin defiantly.
Alaric studies us for a long beat before shaking his head. “No, actually. I find it oddly refreshing.”
I’m certain he’s being sardonic, and I wait for him to mock me and forbid me from going to Cloudia, but he continues watching Delphine and me with curiosity rather than contempt.
“Does this mean I’m allowed to leave the palace to go to her?” I cautiously ask. “And may I take a bit of bagrava?”
Alaric tilts his head back and laughs, making Delphine and me jump. “Now you’re concerned with asking for my permission to sneak out?”
“This is different—” I start to say, but surprisingly, Alaric reaches for my satchel, which was propped against the planting bed, and holds it out. “The bagrava doesn’t belong to me—as you so love to remind me. Take whatever you need.”
Our fingers brush as I take the strap, and I feel it again: that sudden jolt of electricity.
The tickle of his stare dances across my skin as I pluck a few ripe bagrava and stuff them into the satchel.
I still can’t believe he’s allowing this.
There must be a catch, some angle of attack I’m missing.
But then I think of the feel of his hands atop mine in the dirt, the buzzing silver button he willingly shared.
“Ready?” Delphine asks.
I nod and hurry toward the door, eager to get away from the unsettling swooping in my stomach. But before we slip out, Alaric clears his throat.
Delphine stiffens and looks to me with panic, but I’m almost relieved. I knew he wouldn’t let us go so easily. Alaric Alaverdi is as cold and unrelenting as always. Nothing between us has changed. The sporadic glimpses of softness are just a ruse—a tactic to throw me off-balance.
Alaric clears his throat again and says, “Do you think…do you think I could come with you?”
“What?” I nearly trip over my feet as I whirl back around.
Alaric looks up hopefully from his fidgeting hands, and the swooping in my stomach increases a thousandfold.
“Perhaps there’s something I could do to help your sister,” he says to Delphine. “I have access to healers, books, and ingredients.”
It’s a terrible idea for so many reasons, but I find myself inexplicably wanting to say yes. After helping me grow the bagrava, it feels strangely right he should come with us.
But Delphine blurts out a more sensible answer. “Surely, you have more important things to do? I-I mean, it would be an honor, of course, but my house isn’t fit for royalty. And Cloudia would be so embarrassed to be seen in such a state.”
“Of course.” Alaric stands, brushes off his breeches, and offers a pleasant smile, but the light is gone from his eyes, and the butterflies in my belly are still. “Go. I’ll ensure no one notices your absence.”
I try to catch his gaze—to communicate what, I’m not sure. I know better than to trust his motives. But I also feel a strange surge of protectiveness. I don’t want him to feel rejected, yet again, when he’s finally let down his guard.
“Alaric?” I call out softly, but he’s already fallen back into the arrogant stride he uses around the Fortress, disappearing into his chambers without a backward glance.
“Come on.” Delphine pulls me through my own chamber and out into the hall, where we weave down corridors I’ve never seen and into the chill of an extravagant and secluded courtyard.
She skirts around a reflecting pool and behind a stone obelisk that conceals a gate leading out into the broader city.
As her blond braid disappears through the gap, I marvel yet again at how she seems to know every nook and cranny of the palace—even places like this opulent garden, where a chambermaid would never have cause to visit.
It’s suspicious, Rowenna agrees. Yet another reason why you should be listening to me instead of her.
I don’t answer. I’m not in the mood to argue, especially over something like this. How could helping an innocent, suffering girl ever be wrong?
Delphine leads me through the winding, snow-dusted streets until we reach a gray stone cottage with fresh thatching and a door painted a merry mint green.
It isn’t half as dreary as I expected, and I’m about to say so, when Delphine bypasses the green door and continues around the side of the house, down a staircase, and into a basement that smells of standing water.
The door creaks loudly and emits a gust of dirty straw and beetle carcasses.
“I know it’s bleak,” Delphine apologizes, “but we can’t afford anything nicer on my wages alone.
We used to live a few streets over, in a second-floor apartment that was bright with sunshine, but Mrs. Higgens wouldn’t let us stay when Cloudia lost her job.
Said half of us had to go if we could only pay half as much, so of course, we left together. ”
Delphine keeps her eyes on the ground and gestures for me to enter.
As I pass, I place a hand on her shoulder.
“I know you’re accustomed to serving the courtiers in the palace, but my people are humble too.
Dreadfully poor by Vanzadorian standards.
And like you, we live underground. So believe it or not, I feel more at home here than I ever have in Soren’s glittering palace. ”
A small grateful smile lifts Delphine’s face as she follows me inside.
It’s a single room with a wooden table in one corner, a basin filled with both the dishes and the washing in another corner, and a squat coal stove burning hot in the third. Heat pours into the room, and the sudden shift from freezing to stifling makes me queasy.
I yank at the already low neckline of my gown. “Why is it so hot in here?” I start to say, but my voice falls away when I spy the white-faced, blue-lipped girl lying on a straw mattress in the final corner.
Cloudia looks to be captured in ice—so deathly pale she’s almost translucent, staring up at the ceiling with vacant, unseeing eyes.
Her body, however, twitches and jerks. Her back arches while her arms twist and her legs flail.
All the while, her face remains blank and still.
It’s unsettling. Unnatural. And I have already retreated a step when a scratchy voice spills through Cloudia’s chapped lips.
“I don’t want to see!” she wails. “Not again, not again!”
After repeating herself three times, Cloudia falls quiet, though her body continues to writhe.