Chapter Four
THE BODY HIT the carpet with a muffled thud as Ix’s considerable weight fell all at once.
Eric rushed over, barely registering the eerie cold emanating from the mirror.
When he rolled Ix’s body over, his eyes were open, glassy, but unblinking.
There was no response when Eric shook him. “Ix. Ix. Ixthan!”
Ixthan’s skin was icy. No, worse than icy.
It was so cold Eric felt the warmth leech unnaturally out of his own skin, instantly sucked away.
He looked around for Petra. She wasn’t here naturally, he was just so used to going everywhere with his twin and she would have known what to do.
Eric cursed and leaped toward the servant’s bell immediately, yanking it as hard as he could.
It would be at least five or ten minutes before any of them got here, damn Ix for not having a regular rotation of servants.
Eric dragged him – gods, Ix was heavy – towards the fireplace, his hands already chilled and gray by the time he managed to get Ix in front of the fire.
It was burning low, probably because the servants hadn’t been in all day, so he tossed more wood into the fireplace, clenching his hands into fists to try and force the warmth back into them.
What else? Eric remembered the year Petra had fallen into the frozen pond when they had been ice skating, the way the servants had draped her with covers.
He grabbed the blanket on the armchair, folding it over Ixthan and covering him from the neck down.
He apologized, in his head, for invading Ix’s bedroom without permission as he barged in, stripping the heavy down duvet off the bed and bringing it back to the study.
The first blanket was already rimmed with frost rind as he bundled the duvet on top.
Eric had no idea how long it took for the servants to get there, only that he yelled for them to fetch more blankets and to summon the mage healers.
Someone arrived and stoked the fire up, much more effectively than he had, and someone else started to rub warmth into Ixthan’s hands and arms through the blankets, so Eric knelt down and followed suit.
People were talking above his head, though he didn’t know who.
“Is he —”
“There’s a heartbeat. He’s still breathing.”
“Oh, thank the gods.”
At some point, the mage healers arrived, out of breath.
They usually stayed within the hospitium, the dedicated healing wing of the Magisterium, a brisk eight or ten minute walk away.
Mages rarely specialized in healing magic and only a handful of healer mages existed at all, a precious resource reserved for the most extreme and rare of illnesses or emergencies.
The last time Eric had seen one of them in public had been that outbreak of the plague a few years ago, but the king’s own son probably counted as an emergency.
Eric stood, reluctantly, to give them room next to Ix, but stayed within touching distance.
Things were a blur after that. He ended up sat on a chair in Ixthan’s room, with no recollection of having walked.
They’d moved Ix onto the bed. Whatever magic had been making him unnaturally cold and turning the air to frost had faded, thankfully, so they’d rubbed him dry with towels, changed the blankets for fresh dry ones and placed heated bricks around him.
Someone had pressed a warmed mug into Eric’s hand and something wet on his forehead that made him jump.
“Eric. Eric.” The voice sounded as if it had been saying his name for a while.
“What?” Eric said, annoyed. He couldn’t stop watching Ix. What if he woke up? A shadow passed over his vision and Eric blinked, his eyes focusing. The king came into view. Oh, gods, he’d just batted the king off with a ‘what’.
“Your Majesty!” said Eric, leaping to his feet to bow and splashing lukewarm tea all down himself. He hadn’t even remembered he’d been holding onto that. He added with a wince, “I didn’t… see you…”
“Indeed,” said the king. He handed Eric a handkerchief, a square of cloth that was of no help whatsoever, but Eric took it and dabbed away a spot of tea anyway. “You should go home.”
There was nothing Eric wanted to do less, but he must have looked absolutely miserable for the king to be so direct with him. “Oh, no, Sire. I would rather – that is, I’ve been staying here recently. I mean, next door. The rooms next door.”
“I’m not throwing you out,” said King Ruben, with just enough amusement that Eric felt embarrassed. “You need to rest. And eat something. Ixthan is in good hands. There’s nothing more you can do.”
“Oh. Yes, Your Majesty,” said Eric, and staggered out.
Hesitated, with the damp handkerchief still clenched in his hand.
By the time he had finished dithering over whether to return a spoiled, soggy handkerchief, the king had turned back towards Ixthan again, consulting with the healers. Never mind.
When Eric lay down, stripped to his underwear because he couldn’t be bothered to find nightclothes, he stared blankly at the ceiling until his vision swam. The memory of rolling Ix over and seeing him unresponsive, gray as a corpse, filled the back of his eyelids every time he closed his eyes.
Eric did not remember drifting off, but he woke up some time later in exactly the same position, stiff as a board, his head full of fog.
He groaned, stretching out his ossified muscles.
The days got dark early this close to midwinter, which meant that it could be any time at night, but at least it felt like he had slept properly.
That had been rare for him these last months.
When Eric hunted around in the dark for a candle – Ix had never bothered to get enchanted magelights since he was always capable of lighting his own – he was startled to see it was the early hours of the morning.
He must have slept through the entire evening and night and it was almost sunrise again, no wonder he felt rested.
By the single candle, Eric slithered into fresh clothing after a dubious sniff of his old shirt.
A tray rested outside of his door on a small wooden cart, a covered plate of food and a decanter of whiskey.
Oh hells, it must have been meant for his dinner, and was probably sent from the king.
He didn’t feel worthy of such consideration.
His last meal had been long enough ago that Eric fell upon it ravenously, scarfing down the slices of cold meats whilst still standing over the tray.
Someone must have heard him make a noise because a young woman poked her head out from Ixthan’s room.
Eric froze. She saw him hunched over the food like a raccoon, slid her eyes out of contact, and pulled herself back into the room, pretending she hadn’t seen him at all.
Eric couldn’t even bring himself to care.
It was miraculous how a stomach full of food could settle him like nothing else. Fed, watered and now back enough in his right mind to feel embarrassed at being caught by the servants, Eric carefully wiped his hands clean before heading down to Ix’s door.
He knocked. The same woman as from a moment ago answered the door and let him in with a straight face. “Lord Marrawshire.”
It took a heartbeat before Eric remembered that meant him. He was Earl of Marrawshire now. “How is he?”
“Prince Ixthan regained consciousness briefly, but he slept through the night. His temperature is normal too,” said the woman in a hushed tone.
She was wearing a blue apron over her mage’s robes, making her an apprentice healer.
“The healers are still trying to figure out what happened but this is a normal sleep now.”
Eric had seen Ix asleep before, had seen the way the sharpness of his smile softened when he relaxed into unconsciousness.
This was not that. He seemed smaller, more fragile.
His skin was pasty-gray, in a way that Eric had never seen on him before.
In hindsight, he hadn’t known that the demonblood princes could get ill in the same way as humans.
Ix had never caught so much as a cold or the sniffles in all the years he’d known him.
It was a bit annoying, especially when Eric couldn’t even look at a tree without sneezing in the spring.
The room was mostly empty, with one servant stacking heated towels and bricks high on the bed to keep him heated before leaving as well. One healer remained, her hands outstretched but not touching Ix’s face in some sort of magical working.
“It might have been a demon,” said Eric quietly so as to not startle her, as he slid into a seat on Ix’s other side.
“Ix was working on the mirror, the last I knew there was a, I don’t know, a magic reflection?
Something in it moved and he said it was a demon.
But he also said that it shouldn’t be able to cross over. ”
The healer looked at him sharply. “What? And you didn’t mention this earlier?”
Eric blinked, taken aback, and she held her hands up quickly.
“Apologies, milord, I’ve been up all night but that’s no excuse. It’s just that this information is important. And we must act at once if there is a demon on the loose. Can you show me?”
“It’s in his study. He doesn’t usually – I mean, it doesn’t matter now,” said Eric with a grimace.
It didn’t feel right for him to let someone into the study but Ixthan’s privacy had already been invaded when everyone had trampled through in that initial emergency.
Surely helping the healer figure out what had happened was more important.