Chapter 39 Odessa
Thirty-Nine
Odessa
I sat on my cliffside with my knees hugged to my chest, staring toward the storm brewing on the horizon.
The afternoon breeze had quickly turned into a gusting wind, whipping my hair into my face. The cold cut through my clothes. The scent of rain filled my nose. Lightning sparked and popped with white flashes.
In the east, the sun was still fighting to be seen through the gray, billowing clouds, but it was losing that battle.
I could relate.
After the awful meeting with Father, I’d needed to escape the castle. His castle. My feet had walked themselves out here, and now I couldn’t seem to make them go back.
All this time, I’d hoped to earn his trust and confidence. But he was never going to tell me his plans. Maybe, deep down, I’d known he’d never let me in and that’s why I hadn’t told him how to find Allesaria. I hadn’t given him Ransom’s cuff.
I hadn’t earned Father’s trust.
And he’d shattered mine.
“There’s my queen.” Ransom dropped to a seat at my side, his shoulder brushing mine as he draped his arms over his bent knees.
We sat together, wordlessly watching as the rain began to fall over the ocean, blurring the line where the sky met the sea.
“Where’s Evie?” I asked.
“With your brother. The nursemaid promised to watch her and Faze.”
The nursery with Nathalia was the safest place in the castle. And I hoped that Evie would find a friend in Arthalayus. Even if our time in Quentis was short.
“Did my father find you?”
“Yes. He wanted to know about the crux scout. He sent his new general to expedite preparations.”
Well, at least he was taking the migration seriously. “Did he ask about Banner?”
“No.”
I sighed and leaned my head against Ransom’s shoulder. “They want me to be the woman I was, and I don’t know how to go back.”
Ransom bent and kissed my hair. “You were always this woman. I knew it the day I watched you jump off this cliff. You were always my queen. It’s not your fault they weren’t paying attention.”
Tears filled my eyes as the ache in my heart spiked. “I don’t want to stay in Quentis. If we set sail tomorrow, do you think we could make it to Perris before the migration? Take shelter there? You said we might have more time.”
Leaving meant I wouldn’t have access to my father’s healers, but that didn’t mean I had to give up on a cure. I’d just find healers in Turah.
Ransom shifted to dig something from his pocket. A letter, the envelope folded in half. He handed it over, letting me pull the parchment from inside. “This was waiting for me when I finished meeting with your father.”
The handwriting was feminine and crisp. “From Cathlin?”
He nodded.
“I don’t want to read it if it’s bad news.” If it meant reliving Zavier’s death.
“He’s alive.”
My entire body exhaled as I signed the Eight. “Thank the gods.”
“They’re sailing here. For Evie.”
No surprise. Zavier wouldn’t be apart from his daughter during a migration.
“Cathlin sent this from Ellder with a pony rider,” he said. “They were leaving the same day it was sent but knew a rider and trade ship would reach Quentis first.”
“When will they arrive?”
“I don’t know. This was sent a week after I left. She wasn’t sure how quickly they could travel with his injuries. But soon. If I had to guess, they will likely be here within the week.”
“Then we’ll have to wait for them.”
“Yes.” Ransom nodded.
A week seemed like no time at all. It wasn’t. Except a week could mean the start of the migration. A week meant we might not have time to get back to Turah.
Damn.
It had been more than one month but less than two since Ellder and the crux scout. We were living on borrowed days unless Ransom was right and we had more time. There’d been no word of other scouts yet.
“Okay, we wait.” For Evie’s sake, and Zavier’s, I’d endure my family. And use every resource at my disposal. “Then while we’re here, I’m going to task my father’s healers with finding a cure for Lyssa.”
Ransom’s frame locked. “Odessa, this is wasted effort.”
“Not to me. I know you don’t believe it’s possible, but I can’t watch those dark veins spread from your heart and do nothing. If it fails, then at least I can say I tried. Your mother believed in a cure. Let me believe in it, too, even if you don’t.”
The hopelessness in his green eyes, the way he’d already accepted death from this infection, made my heart ache.
“Please. Don’t ask me to give up hope.”
Ransom closed his eyes and exhaled. “How often do I tell you no?”
I curled into his side, hugging his arm. “Thank you.”
“Do you trust your father’s healers?”
“I don’t know them very well.” But I also didn’t know if we had another choice. “I’ll meet with the head healer and give him a vial of your blood. I’ll say it came from an infected monster.”
Until I knew I could trust the healers, the source of Ransom’s gifts would remain a secret. The last thing we needed was another king following in Ramsey’s footsteps, trying to recreate the Guardian while killing people instead.
“Just until Zavier and Cathlin arrive,” he said. “If there’s still no word of another scout, we’re going home.”
Home. Not Quentis. Not even Turah.
Ransom was my home.
“Deal.” I rested my head against his arm, neither of us making a move to leave.
Together, we watched the storm move closer and closer.
Knowing there was no escaping the rain.
The castle’s infirmary reminded me of the stables.
The rooms were like stalls that lined a straight walkway, their walls only as tall as my chin.
White curtains hung from the ceilings and could be pulled closed for privacy, but most were left open so the staff could peer into their patients’ rooms from the hall.
A nurse led me down the walkway, his legs so long and pace so quick I had to jog every other step to keep up, keeping hold of my satchel as it bounced against my hip.
In one of the rooms we passed, a legionnaire had a gash on his arm that was being stitched closed. In another, a scullery maid was being treated for a burn on her hand.
Whenever I’d needed a healer, they’d come to my rooms. But as a child, I’d snuck into the infirmary a few times to explore or avoid a tutor.
The infirmary was mostly used for castle staff, but if the city’s larger facility was full, they would open this to the public. Even though these halls only held a few patients each day, there were at least one hundred rooms. Most of the beds had been empty for nearly thirty years.
Once the migration started, it wouldn’t be big enough. They’d likely cram two to three patients in each space.
It was built below the castle’s foundation, just like the city’s infirmary. I prayed to the Eight that the crux didn’t find their way past the rock and stone, scenting out the blood that would stain these clean, white rooms.
Nerves rocked my empty stomach like churning waves as we neared the end of the hall. I clutched the glass vial in my hand tighter.
Ransom had given it to me this morning.
Yesterday, after he agreed to let me talk to the healers about a cure, we hadn’t spoken of Lyssa again. We’d returned to the castle, drenched with rain. Then we’d collected Evie and spent the rest of the night locked away in our suite.
There was a very good chance that Father’s head healer, a pudgy man named Geoff, would dismiss me completely. I’d known Geoff since I was a young girl, and while he’d always been kind, he shied away when he looked at my golden eyes.
My lack of the Quentin starburst was something he could not explain—therefore, he kept his distance.
But he had the most experience, and if we were going to find a cure, I needed the best healer in the kingdom.
The nurse turned a sharp corner, leading me down a series of hallways. We took a staircase down to a lower level, then another. The temperature dropped as my heart climbed into my throat.
One final stairwell and short hall led us to an arched wooden door with a round gold knocker.
The nurse thwacked it twice, then, without a word, left me standing alone.
“Thank you?” I said to his back.
He was already taking the stairs two at a time.
I braced as footsteps sounded on the opposite side of the door.
A short, stocky man yanked it open. “Yes?”
“I’m looking for the head healer?” I glanced past him, but the room at his back was too dim to see far.
He stepped out of the doorway and waved me inside. “All the way back.”
“Thank you.”
He left, pulling the door closed behind him, as I inched along the entryway.
“Hello?” I cleared my throat. “Um, Geoff?”
No answer.
The scents of burning sage and rosemary hit my nose as I made it to the end of the hall and stepped into a cluttered, windowless room.
Bundles of drying herbs and flowers hung from the ceiling. Jars of liquids and tonics crowded wooden shelves. Books overflowed from the case where they were stacked, the excess piled on the floor.
The table in the center of the room was a jumbled mess of leaves, stems, and dried flower petals. Someone had set out a cutting board and chopping knife.
I didn’t remember Geoff having an underground apothecary.
A woman breezed through another doorway from a side room, drying her hands on a white towel.
She stared at me over the frame of her purple spectacles.
There was another set perched on top of her head, those red.
And hooked into the neckline of her dress was a third, the frame a vivid magenta, nearly the exact shade of the starbursts in her black eyes.
She had long, black hair threaded liberally with silver and gray.
Her tan skin was flawless and smooth, her upturned nose perfectly balanced between her rosy cheekbones.
Her beige dress was embroidered with orange flowers.
She wore ten different necklaces, as thickly layered as the bracelets on both wrists.
Her beaded earrings were so long they brushed the tops of her shoulders.
My jaw hit the floor.
The woman in the journal who’d painted flowers on a little girl’s casts. This had to be her.