CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Our hearth crackled and filled the house with warmth as I shook my boots off and left them by the door. I braced myself for Asha’s embrace before remembering she would not come running.
It’d been a hard winter.
I rubbed my icy fingers together, my bones aching beneath the tight, chilled skin. The sound of clinking knives and pulled drawers floated from around the corner. I peered into the kitchen, where Kelara stood chopping kale, frost biting into the dark green leaves.
“How is she?” I asked.
She shrugged. A muscle in her jaw twitched. “You can go see her for yourself.”
I opened my mouth to say something, anything. But lately, I never seemed to say the right things.
“How was your demonstration?” she asked. The knife thudded against the wooden cutting board as the leaves split into shreds.
“It went well.”
“And your research?”
The question hung between us.
“I’m going as fast as I can.”
She grimaced. “I know.”
“Is Mama here?”
“She’s at the shop.”
I glanced at the shredded kale, now piled high.
“That’ll be good for Asha. Get her strength up.”
Kelara didn’t reply.
My shoulders fell. My steps were heavy as I walked into my niece’s room, unsurprised to see her curled on her side, her steady breaths reminding me she was still stable, still alive.
She’d lost a lot of muscle mass, her already small, fragile body having wasted away these past few months.
Her bones poked out beneath her skin. I treaded closer, lightly placing a hand to her forehead.
It was still cold. Too cold.
Mama had tried everything, just as she had with Papa—poultices, potions, and every herb in the shop where she worked. Master Carter had, too. But the reality was that we knew exactly what Asha had. And we knew all too well what happened to those who’d caught it.
It’d been six months since we attended Gina’s funeral. I feared another was on the horizon, one that would bury us with it.
A knock at the door broke me from my grief. I clicked Asha’s door shut behind me, seeing Anna loitering in the sitting room.
A towel tightened in Kelara’s hands as she passed me.
I gave Anna a smile. “Thanks for coming.”
“Anytime,” she said. “I’ve stolen the books you asked for.”
“Hush,” I said, even though I knew Kelara cared little for contraband taken from the palace. “You shouldn’t be telling people.”
“Well I’m telling you.”
I rolled my eyes. “The study is this way.” I tilted my head. “Are you helping or not?”
Her mouth curved. “Always, Lyra.”
As we tiptoed past Asha’s room, it was hard not to think of Papa as she lay bedbound, the small rise and fall of her slumbering body the only proof she was living.
And it was hard not to think of how Papa’s illness had ended—with a final, lonely breath. And then silence.
Gone were daydreams of triumphs over princes.
Now, I was consumed with premature grief, with the desire to find the source of this sickness and the cure before time ran out and one of the few lights in my life was gone for good.
Anger kindled in me, too, knowing a partial cure existed in royal hands—ones so focused on perfection that innocence would die, and continue to die, from his stubbornness.
Anna and I sank onto the settee in the study. I pushed aside a stack of Kelara’s balancing books, and pulled the first tome off the pile Anna had smuggled for me.
And I begged spirits and saints alike for an answer before it was too late.