Chapter 40 Isabeau
forty
Isabeau
Consciousness trickled back like water through a damaged dam.
Slow at first, then a sudden rush that left me gasping.
A deep voice wound around my foggy thoughts, telling tales of adventure and friendship I couldn’t quite grasp.
My body felt hollow, scraped clean from the inside out by the poison I’d willingly absorbed.
The price of magic. The cost of saving a life that wasn’t mine to save. I kept my eyes closed, letting the rich timbre of that voice wash over me, anchoring me to a world I wasn’t sure I wanted to rejoin.
“And so Sir Roland faced the dragon not with his sword but with his words. ‘We need not be enemies,’ he told the great beast. ‘For what threatens your home threatens mine as well’.”
The voice paused, a rustle of paper following the silence.
I cracked my eyes open, light stabbing into my skull like needles.
Prince Alain sat beside my bed, his broad shoulders hunched over a leather-bound book resting in his lap.
His hair fell across his forehead in dark waves, and his profile in the afternoon light looked like something carved by an artist obsessed with perfection.
God, I hated that my body responded to him.
The flutter in my chest, the warmth that pooled low in my belly whenever he was near.
Traitorous reactions from flesh that belonged to others.
My shoulder throbbed in reminder, the claiming mark a brand that tied me to three princes trapped in hell while I lay here, being read to by a man who embodied everything they fought against.
“Sir Roland offered the dragon his most precious possession,” Alain continued, unaware of my wakefulness, “his mother’s golden locket, in exchange for friendship. And in that moment, the two became unlikely allies against the shadow that crept across the land.”
His voice softened on the word “friendship,” as if the concept were precious to him. It made something in my chest twist painfully. This man who commanded armies and passed judgments was sitting at my sickbed, reading fairy tales. The juxtaposition was almost too much to bear.
I must have made some sound, because Alain’s head snapped up, those icy blue eyes finding mine.
The smile that spread across his face was like watching the sun break through storm clouds, unexpected and almost too brilliant to look at directly.
It also warmed me in ways the sun did for my whole body to feel its heat.
“You’re awake,” he said, closing the book with a gentle thud.
“How long?” My voice emerged as a croak, my throat raw from what I vaguely remembered as hours of vomiting.
He set the book aside, reaching for a glass of water on the nightstand. “Two days this time.”
Two days. Two more days of separation from my beasts, two more days of their suffering. I needed to speed up my healing and leave this place. I accepted the water, his fingers brushing mine as I took the glass, sending unwelcome sparks along my skin.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, his eyes searching my face with an intensity that made me want to hide.
I took a careful sip, the cool liquid soothing my throat. “Better,” I admitted. “The burning is gone.”
Fragments of memories surfaced as I spoke.
Me writhing in sweat-soaked sheets, my veins filled with liquid fire, choking on my own bile as the poison fought to expel itself from my system.
And through it all, not Brigida’s weathered hands but Alain’s strong ones holding my hair back, wiping my face with cool cloths, refusing to leave even when I begged him to go rather than see me so undone.
“You stayed with me.” It wasn’t a question, but I needed to hear him confirm it, needed to know I hadn’t hallucinated his presence in my delirium.
A flush crept up his neck, coloring the skin above his collar. “I did.”
“Why?” The question slipped out before I could stop it, raw and honest in a way I rarely allowed myself to be.
“Because you saved my friend’s life,” he said simply. “Because you took poison into your own body to heal him. Because no one should suffer alone.”
Heat bloomed in my cheeks. I’d spent months in isolation, months with only my own ragged breathing for company in that dungeon. And now this man, this prince who should have been my enemy, had witnessed me at my most vulnerable—sweating, vomiting, crying out in pain.
“Thank you,” I whispered, looking down at my hands. They were steadier than they had been in weeks, the skin no longer paper-thin and translucent. My body was healing, despite everything.
“No,” Alain said firmly. “Thank you. Thibaut is alive because of you. Whatever else lies between us, I owe you a debt for that.”
The mention of Thibaut brought reality crashing back. What I’d done could not be explained away by herbs and poultices, not really. The speed of his recovery alone would raise questions. Questions that could lead to stakes and fire in a kingdom like Durand, here in the The Noble City.
Alain must have read the worry in my eyes. “No one knows,” he assured me. “The official story is that you’re a talented herbalist. Nothing more.”
Relief washed through me, followed quickly by suspicion. “And you? What do you believe now?”
His gaze dropped to his hands, strong fingers laced together so tightly the knuckles went white. “I believe that magic is more complicated than I was taught. I believe that you are...” he paused, searching for words, “...extraordinary.”
Something fluttered in my chest that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the way he looked at me. I squashed it ruthlessly.
“Would you like to see him?” Alain asked, changing the subject. “Thibaut. He’s in the infirmary, regaining his strength.”
I nodded, suddenly desperate to escape these four walls that had become both sanctuary and prison. “Yes.”
Alain stood, moving to a chest against the wall and pulling out a robe of soft blue silk. “Can you stand?”
I pushed back the covers, swinging my legs over the side of the bed.
My muscles protested after days of disuse, but they held when I tested my weight on them.
Alain crossed to me quickly, holding out the robe.
As I slipped my arms into it, I noticed for the first time that my hair hung over my shoulder in a neat, intricate braid.
I touched it, giving him a questioning look.
“I had a sister,” he said, a shadow crossing his face. “Odette made me learn to braid her hair when we were children, and our older brother refused even when Odette would plead to him. Said her ladies-in-waiting never did it tight enough for riding, so I learned.”
The confession caught me off guard. This glimpse of the boy he had been, the brother who plaited his sister’s hair with careful fingers, seemed almost too intimate to bear. I laughed softly, trying to dispel the heaviness that had settled between us.
“It’s well done,” I said, tying the robe’s sash around my waist. “She taught you well.”
His smile was sad, loaded with years of grief I couldn’t begin to understand. “She was a demanding teacher.”
I slipped my arm through his when he offered it, letting him support some of my weight as we moved toward the door.
His body was solid warmth against my side, and he smelled clean and masculine, like leather and cedar and something uniquely him.
I hated how much I noticed it, how my body instinctively leaned into his strength.
He could still choose to kill me. And that’s where I kept my focus. Preservation was a must. I’d gotten this far. I couldn’t lose sight now.
The guard outside my door straightened as Alain approached, surprise flashing across his face at seeing me upright.
“We’re going to the infirmary,” Alain informed him. No explanation, no request for permission. Just the statement of a prince accustomed to being obeyed.
The guard bowed and stepped aside, and just like that, I was out of my room. The hallway stretched before us, sunlight streaming through high windows, illuminating tapestries and artwork I’d only glimpsed through my doorway before. Freedom, or the illusion of it, made my heart race.
Alain matched his pace to mine, slowing when my legs trembled, pausing when I needed to catch my breath. The poison had taken more from me than I wanted to admit, setting back the recovery I’d made from months of starvation and confinement.
“Why hasn’t your magic healed you completely?” Alain asked after we’d descended a flight of stairs, his voice low enough that the occasional passing servant couldn’t hear. “It worked so quickly on Thibaut and even now against the poison in you.”
I considered the question, thought about the warmth that still stirred in my belly, waiting to be called upon again. “I’m still learning what I can do,” I admitted. “The magic inside me... it’s new. Or rather, I’m new to it.”
Alain’s brow furrowed. “You didn’t know? Before?”
I shook my head, a bitter laugh escaping me.
“I knew I was different. That my eyes marked me as something other than fully human. But actual magic?” I shrugged.
“It only manifested when I needed it most. Twice, before I entered the Forest but after…” After Gaspard made me his prisoner, after the rape and torture, after I ran soaked and bleeding into trees that should have killed me but instead embraced me as one of their own.
Alain’s jaw locked at the reference to my past, to the story I’d told him of what happened after my father was taken. “It saved you, then.”
“And damned me,” I murmured. “A powerful entity—” I couldn’t say the Dark Lord, couldn’t risk revealing too much, “—used my own gift against me and placed me to suffer in that dungeon for three months. Drained it to feed himself. That’s why I was so weak when you found me. Why I’m still not fully recovered.”
His grip on my arm tightened slightly. “Three months,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “You said you were in that dungeon for three months.”