Chapter 34
Thirty-Four
I gape down at the gemstone triad—three perfect jewels that have been, quite literally, at my fingertips all this time.
I sit up, clutching the blankets to my chest, unsure if I want to recoil from Alaric and this deception—if it can even be considered that, since he has no clue I’ve been hunting for the gemstones—or if I should grab his wrist and hold it tight.
Sink my nails into his skin and claim the prize that’s been eluding me for months.
“This is the gemstone triad—the source of my and my father’s power,” Alaric explains, running his fingers across the line of stones.
“It was forged from the earth by my great-grandfather Callahan and has been embedded in every Vanzadorian king since. He referred to them as his own blood, flesh, and bone, which I know you asked about, and I’m sorry I waited so long to explain.
I just didn’t know if I could trust you.
” Alaric ducks his head sheepishly. “I was worried you might try to use me, but now I know better. We want the same things and we’ll work together to accomplish them. ”
He smiles and reaches for me, and I feel like I’ve been kicked in the chest.
He was right to doubt and mistrust me. If he’d explained the meaning of blood, flesh, bone when I first asked, I wouldn’t have hesitated to drag him back across the Tomb Flats to Tashir.
I would have been thrilled to see our roles reversed, so he was the captive husband—tortured and starved until he agreed to wield his power for the betterment of my country.
And if he’d refused to cooperate, I would have lopped off his arm or scraped the stones from his flesh.
I would have found a way to implant them in my own skin, because that’s what Rowenna would have done—what she would have told me to do—and I would have listened without question.
It would have been the perfect way to avenge Rowenna and prove I was a competent heir for Tashir.
More than just a second-born sister or a gardener.
But now the thought’s unfathomable. Unbearable.
Especially when Alaric’s looking at me with those hypnotic eyes and hopeful grin.
When I can still taste his mouth on my lips, feel his fingertips on my skin.
I would sooner cut out my own heart than rip the stones from Alaric’s wrist, and I don’t know what that says about me and my duty to my country or my ability to lead them.
I blow out a breath and thank Earth Mother Rowenna’s no longer speaking to me. Her disappointment would be crushing, her demands more adamant than ever, reminding me it isn’t too late to do the right thing. I could still use Alaric and the gemstone triad.
Alaric reaches for me and gently tilts my chin up. “Hey, what’s going on in that brilliant head of yours?”
“I understand why you kept this from me,” I finally say. “I can’t fault you for guarding your biggest secret when I was just as hesitant to share mine. It took me weeks just to accept that you’re not a murderer. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence,” I say with a self-deprecating laugh.
Alaric laughs too, and all the tension melts from his shoulders. “I don’t want there to be any more secrets between us. If we’re going to rule Vanzador and Tashir side by side, as true and equal partners, you need to know everything. All of me.”
He holds out his arm, inviting me to touch the stones.
“The king of Vanzador has always embedded the triad in his skin, but after the memory you witnessed, when I broke the stone of flesh and Besnik died, my father destroyed the larger stones to keep our power safer and closer. These pieces are all that remains of the triad, so someday, I will pass them on to my own son or daughter. Our son or daughter—I hope.”
He looks at me from beneath his thick lashes, and my heart might burst from pumping so hard. My hand shakes as my fingertips skim across the triad, because this feels like a promise—a thousand times more sacred than our wedding vows—and I’m determined to honor it.
Honor us and the future we will make.
“Thank you for trusting me with this,” I say.
“I’d trust you with my life,” Alaric answers, pressing his forehead to mine.
My eyes flutter closed, and I wait for the warm brush of his lips, but my chamber door bangs open instead, and we fly apart.
Delphine shrieks and holds her arm over her eyes. “You really need to start tying a ribbon on your door, so I know if it’s safe to enter.”
“Or you could try knocking,” Alaric says with a good-natured laugh.
“Of course,” Delphine splutters, “and normally I would, but I wasn’t thinking straight.” Her big blue eyes find mine, wide and terrified. “Cloudia’s been speaking more, and there’s something you need to see.”
“Of course.” I leap to my feet, rummaging for my clothes. “I’ll be ready in a moment. You don’t mind, do you?” I ask Alaric, who starts to shake his head, but Delphine cuts in.
“I think His Highness should come too.”
Alaric glances at me with surprise and delight, and my heart melts at his eagerness—and Delphine’s acceptance. These different people and parts of my life are starting to come together.
As soon as we’re dressed, Delphine leads us out into the cold fortress city.
I assumed she’d take us back to her home and Cloudia’s bedside, but she marches briskly in the opposite direction, past homes, shops, and schoolhouses until we’re in an entirely different quarter of the city with densely packed buildings.
When she stops in front of a sign that says VAYNIR’S FINE FURS AND EXOTIC TEXTILES, Alaric and I share a confused look.
“Fashion is your sister’s pressing concern?” he teases.
“Don’t pretend it isn’t your top priority too,” I say, brushing invisible dust off the lapels of his emerald-green jacket.
“Quiet, both of you,” Delphine whispers harshly, shocking us both into silence. She glances furtively down the street before tugging us around the corner of the building. “Not everything is as it appears.”
She guides us to a nondescript door and, after rooting around in the flower bed, produces a key. Holding a finger to her lips, Delphine eases the door open and motions for us to follow her inside.
The hallway is long, dark, and dusty, and I instantly want to retreat back into the cold fresh air.
This desire quickly becomes a need when I venture a few steps farther and an unmistakable stench invades my nostrils.
My throat spasms, and I catch myself against the wall, looking around for the source of a smell that has no place in a Vanzadorian textile factory.
No place anywhere on this mountain. Yet the fetid aroma of rotting flesh wafts down the hallway, even more potent than the tea in the queen’s solarium.
Almost as noxious as the smoke-filled sky the day our bagrava fields burned
I shoot a horrified look at Delphine, who has buried her mouth and nose in her shirt.
I do the same.
Behind me, Alaric coughs and then full-on gags. “What in the name of the kings?”
“This way.” Delphine points toward a glowing doorframe at the end of the hall, and we tiptoe toward it. Once we’re huddled outside, she points to the keyhole.
Alaric’s eyes find mine, silently asking if I want him to look first. As much I appreciate the offer, I shake my head. Whatever’s happening here clearly has to do with my bagrava.
I bend toward the keyhole, heart hammering so loud it sounds like a fist against the door in the unnatural quiet. I half expect someone to fling open the door and catch us.
I hold my breath and peer through the keyhole into a large open room.
It’s as vast as any of our storehouses in Tashir, except instead of being filled with animals and produce, it’s filled with beds.
Row after row of steel beds are crammed side by side, and each bed houses a body—old and young, infants to the elderly, boys and girls alike.
The strange conglomeration of people lie stiffly on their backs, staring blankly at the ceiling, even the babies.
The wrongness of it feels like spiders creeping down my shirt.
Babies are supposed to coo and cry. Children are supposed giggle and chatter.
Adults are always yelling and arguing over something.
But everyone in this room is as still as a corpse, aside from a handful of men and women in white smocks, who weave through the narrow paths between beds, blotting foreheads and fluffing pillows.
“I don’t understand. Is this a hospital?” I ask Delphine, but it’s Alaric who answers, shaking his head as he nudges past me to look for himself. “Of course it isn’t a hospital. We have two actual hospitals in the Fortress. Why would anyone need to hide in a warehouse for treatment?”
He squints into the room, and I swear I feel the muscles down his back stiffen one by one. “What is this?” he turns on Delphine. “How did you find this place?”
Delphine takes a shaky step back. “It-it was Cloudia. She became more lucid last night, after another dose of Indira’s bagrava tincture, and she started talking about people dying again.
I still didn’t think anything of it until she began reciting an address.
This address. We’ve never had any business on this side of the Fortress, so I found it odd and decided to investigate.
This is what I found, and I came to inform you immediately. ”
“How did Cloudia know about this?” Alaric demands.
Delphine shrugs helplessly. “I haven’t a clue.” Delphine shrugs helplessly.
“I haven’t a clue.”
I chew my lip, trying to make sense of it. “Do you think these people have the same illness as Cloudia? Perhaps it’s catching. Maybe there’s an outbreak, and that’s why they’ve been quarantined?”
“Maybe…” Delphine nervously twirls the end of her braid. “But Cloudia isn’t silent and still like this. If anything, she’s the opposite. Consumed by fits and outbursts. You saw her.”
“No one is quarantined,” Alaric interrupts. “I would know if there was an epidemic among my own people.”
He returns to the keyhole, and I squeeze in beside him.
For several minutes, we watch the nurses make their rounds—tucking blankets and changing sheets.
They work with cold, clipped efficiency, never talking to their patients or even looking at them, really.
For their part, the patients offer no acknowledgment or thanks to their caregivers.
All of it is deeply unsettling. I want to look away, run away, but then a pair of swinging doors open, and even more nurses enter the room, carrying trays of steaming soup.
This wouldn’t be noteworthy if not for the purple steam rising from the broth and the putrid smell, which intensifies a hundredfold.
Beside me, Alaric gags.
I do the same as the nurses begin spoon-feeding every patient.
They’re basically poisoning them. These patients are too unresponsive to stop the soup from dribbling down their chins, let alone refuse to drink it. Such high doses of bagrava will drive them mad, if not kill them entirely.
I’m about to crash through the door like a raging bull to stop it when, all at once, the silence breaks, and the patients begin to yawn and sit up, stretching as if it’s the start of a new day.
All around the room, babies cry and children chatter. The elderly moan and creak, while middle-aged men and women share quiet conversations.
I jerk back from the keyhole, my voice shaking with disbelief, awe, fear, and a dozen other conflicting emotions, because this can’t be what it looks like.
It can’t.
I had a hard enough time believing Queen Tessa and her courtiers could sip small doses of bagrava tea without becoming wild and unhinged. But this is another development entirely. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the bagrava healed these people.
We take turns watching through the keyhole.
Every minute, I expect the effects of the bagrava to overpower the patients and stir them into a frenzy.
But an hour passes, maybe more, and they never lose themselves.
Instead, their smiles and conversations gradually fade until each patient is once again lying still and catatonic on their cots.
“I don’t know what this is, but you have to stop it,” I tell Alaric. “It isn’t right. These people will be permanently damaged. Addicted.”
“I’m more concerned with who these people are and how they got here,” Alaric says, pointing to a red-cheeked baby with dark curls.
“That one looks eerily similar to Lady Hawthorne’s child, the one that died suddenly in its sleep several months ago.
And I’d swear that’s Lord Fillibus’s daughter.
” He nods at girl who looks around my age.
“She supposedly got lost while foraging outside the walls. We presumed she froze to death.”
“Is that Elodie’s mother?” I point to a woman with long silver braids who looks like the skeletal twin of the smiling woman I saw in the portraits adorning Elodie’s walls.
“Where are their families?” I wonder. “Isn’t it odd there are no visitors?
That no one has stayed to sit with or care for their loved ones—especially the younger children? ”
“What’s odd is that this facility exists and I was unaware of it.” Alaric’s voice quivers with rage.
“It must be an illegal establishment, acting outside the law,” Delphine suggests, but Alaric shakes his head, his nostrils flaring wider with each breath.
“There’s no way they would have access to this much bagrava without the knowledge and support of my father and his councilors. Which means this facility isn’t operating illegally. I’ve just been kept in the dark.”
I place a gentle hand on Alaric’s shoulder, but he brushes me off, and before Delphine or I can stop him, he grips the knob and charges through the door.