Chapter 51
Roses.
My nose wrinkled at the cloying sweetness rising from the bath, steam curling into the shafts of morning light that spilled across the tiles.
The servants had already released the water from the valve in the wall, the rush fading to a trickle.
Now they moved with hushed precision, drizzling oils across the surface and crushing herbs between their fingers so the scents bled into the air.
I stood at the edge in my robe, arms crossed tight against the cool breeze drifting from the balcony.
I had never seen roses before coming here. But now their smell followed me everywhere, perfuming the halls, pressed into my clothes, steeped in my bath.
If you had shown me a rose in Amyklai, I would have been in awe of it.
Now, I hated them.
I was about to drop my robe and step into the bath when Alcmene’s hand shot out, clamping around my arm. Her nails bit into my skin. “Don’t touch the water!” she cried. “Look at it!”
I jolted back, my eyes widening as I saw that the roses floating on the surface had begun to blacken at the edges, their petals shriveling, sizzling as if the bath were eating them alive.
One of the younger girls, Lysa, barely past her fifteenth summer, had been kneeling beside the bath with a jar in hand, and she jerked back in surprise at Alcmene’s cry. Her foot slipped. Her hand flailed.
And it plunged straight into the water.
Lysa’s shriek split the chamber, shrill and shattering, bouncing off the walls until the sound seemed to claw through my skull and scrape down my spine.
She crumpled sideways, gaping at her hand, her body writhing as steam hissed up where her skin met the bath.
The flesh bloomed scarlet before our eyes, blisters swelling and rising like furious pearls.
The other girls screamed with her and one stumbled back and nearly tripped over her chiton, while another froze in place, her hands clamped uselessly at her mouth.
The water itself seemed to writhe. It frothed and churned as though alive, the surface no longer clear but slick, filmed with something oily and unnatural that hadn’t been there a breath before.
I dropped to my knees beside her, gripping her shoulders and hauling her back with all my strength. I was careful to not let another inch of her skin graze the water that had already marked her.
“My lady,” Alcmene gasped. “What should we do?”
“Look in there,” I said, pointing at the apothecary chest tugged beneath the basin shelf. She grabbed it frantically, pulling out satchels of dried yarrow, comfrey root, lavender buds, grabbing fistfuls of whatever she could.
“Hold her while I grind these. The oils will draw out the heat,” I ordered, and Alcmene held Lysa down as I took the pestle and crushed the herbs with shaking hands, withstanding the urge to vomit.
I pressed the mixture gently over Lysa’s red, seared skin, but she shrieked and twisted away.
Blisters rose in defiance of our efforts, and her sobs were wet and ragged.
“It’s not working,” I choked, panic crawling cold beneath my skin as I pressed the cloth to Lysa’s blistered hand. Her screams only grew harsher, raw enough to tear her throat.
My head whipped toward the girls huddled against the wall. “Don’t just stand there—go! Fetch the poison master! Now!”
“He went with the king,” one of the servants whispered, her eyes shining with fear.
“Then one of the priestesses!” I snapped, though I doubted they had the power to do anything about this.
“No,” Alcmene said.
The girl I’d shouted at froze mid-step, wide-eyed, caught between us.
I rounded on her. “No? She’s burning alive, Alcmene—we need someone who can stop this!”
Alcmene’s hand shot out, gripping my wrist hard enough to still me. Her eyes were steady, unblinking. “The priestesses can’t help her. Not with this.” She swallowed, her voice low but certain. “We need him. We need Theron.”
I reared back as if the very name had burned me. “No—”
Lysa screamed again, shrill enough to shake the walls, her body arching against the floor. The sound ripped straight through me, stealing the rest of my words.
My chin dipped once, stiff and unwilling. Alcmene caught it instantly and she was gone, bolting through the doorway. I pressed my forehead to Lysa’s, ignoring the rancid scent radiating from her injured hand. “Hold on. We’re getting help. Just breathe.”
It felt like an eternity as we waited. I had no idea how long had passed—ten minutes? Thirty? The light outside was crawling inch by inch across the wall.
“Where is he?” I whispered to no one, anxiety laced beneath every syllable.
At last, footsteps stirred in the hall. Much too slow for the occasion.
The door creaked open, swinging wide, and Theron emerged, drifting across the threshold with Alcmene right behind him.
Black fabric hung loose from his shoulders, the unbelted tunic shifting with each step. A single silver ring caught the light as he lifted his hand to the doorframe, pausing there as if for effect. His lips curled as his gaze found mine.
“I knew you couldn’t go an entire day without wanting to see me,” he said smugly as he leaned casually against the doorframe, his eyes sweeping up and down my body until I became very aware of the fact that I was still in nothing but my robe.
“I need you to help her!” I growled as I rose to my feet, pointing at Lysa.
The gloating satisfaction slid from his face as he glanced down at the young girl. She was shaking and moaning, taking shallow, panicked breaths that were more like sobs as she clutched her blistered hand to her chest. The scent of scorched herbs clung to the air.
Theron crouched beside her in a single fluid motion, all pretense gone. No careless grin, no mocking tilt of his head. Just focus, hard and fast, his expression sharpening at the gray pallor to her skin. He pulled the cloth from her hand, inspecting the angry, red damage underneath. She whimpered.
“You used herbs?” he asked.
“Yes. It made it worse.”
He sighed, sounding irritated, and strode past me, not sparing a single word until he stood over the rim of the bath.
He dipped a wooden cup into the water, raised it to his nose, and inhaled.
A beat later he recoiled, lips twisting, his face contorting as though he’d drawn in the very stench of death.
“You were going to bathe in this?” His tone dripped with disbelief.
Heat rose in my cheeks. “I was about to,” I admitted. “Alcmene stopped me.”
He nodded. “She bought you a throne’s worth of time. This water’s been touched. Tainted.”
“Yes, I know that. But with what?” I asked, the words breaking out on a breath.
Lysa’s screams broke into gasps before cutting off altogether. Her body sagged sideways, limp, and her blistered hand landed on the tiles with a dull thud. My stomach dropped, and my fingers tightened on my robe, nervous sweat forming on the nape of my neck.
Theron didn’t move. He only cast her a passing glance, then looked back at me as though her fainting were an afterthought.
“With the thing that’s trying to cook her from the inside out,” he said evenly.
“Agrius dilitirio. Old boar poison. It only wakes with heat. Once it’s drawn in by skin contact, it festers … feeds.”
“Gods,” Alcmene swore softly. “We were trying to cool her—”
“Lavender and comfrey would be like throwing wine on a pyre.” Theron cut a hand through the air. “You fed it.”
“Someone tried to poison me,” I whispered unevenly. My gaze flicked to the bath, to the faint shimmer on the surface, and my stomach churned. “I almost—” The rest of the thought got caught in the back of my throat.
I pressed my fingers hard into my palms. I couldn’t stop staring at the water.
“Hold her,” Theron ordered, and I tore my gaze away from the tub so I could press my hands to Lysa’s shoulders.
“She won’t like this part,” he murmured. “Neither will you.”
“What—?”
He slipped the ring from his finger and pressed it to the blistered ruin of Lysa’s hand.
Light burst through the metal, veins of blue-white spidering across her flesh.
At the same instant, the sigils in his palms ignited, pulsing in rhythm with the glow, as if some hidden current flowed through him and into her.
His lips moved, shaping words I didn’t know.
The sounds were rough-edged, each syllable vibrating through the floor and climbing into my bones until my teeth ached.
Her body bucked beneath my hands, her legs kicking. I kept trying to hold her down, pressing my weight to her shoulders harder, but she thrashed with a strength born of terror.
“Help me!” I gasped, and Alcmene was there in an instant, throwing her weight across Lysa’s legs, straining to pin her to the tiles.
Still, Lysa fought, wild and desperate, her back arching so violently I thought she’d break.
“A little longer,” Theron growled, and I forced myself to hold her tighter even though it felt like I might crush her.
The light swelled brighter, spilling through his palms until it flooded the chamber, silver-white and blinding. Lysa’s shrieks cracked into hoarse sobs, then faltered as the radiance sank deeper into her skin.
Before my eyes, the angry red blisters began to blanch. The scorched flesh softened, shifting from raw crimson to a mottled pink. The swell of her hand slackened, the heat lifting from her skin as though drawn out into the glow itself.
Lysa’s thrashing eased, her body sagging beneath my hands. Her lashes fluttered once, then stilled, her chest rising and falling in soft, even breaths. The angry glow on her skin dulled to a faint pink, nothing more than the memory of pain.
Theron lifted the ring from her hand at last. The light faded with it, retreating into his palm until only darkness remained.
I stared, my throat dry, every thought scattered by what I had just witnessed. My lips parted before I could stop them. “You … you healed her.”