Chapter 46
The ground beneath my knees feels like I do, like something will give way and I will fall forever. I strain my eyes, trying to glimpse him through the curling mist.
A heavy cry has a thousand birds flying from their perches into the air and I fight against my blocked acupoints. Heat pools at my eyes, my chest aches.
Come out. Please come out. Make it. Make it.
Time seems to slow. Falling leaves are suspended in the air and then float towards foggy tendrils. Animals come up to me, sniff me, leave again. Shadow and moonlight play chase over my face.
I stare resolutely towards the caves.
Please.
I concentrate on moving my fingers first. All my energy is trained to one hand, to one finger, to the tip of it. If I can make this one twitch, and then another . . . There must be a way . . .
A pearl of sweat worms down my temple, a tickle I can’t wipe away, but—
There. One finger bends.
I shut my eyes and focus on more movement. Any. The forest shivers around me, time creeps by, pained groans catch on the breeze. With all my determination I shove at the invisible chains holding me still.
Gradually, my limbs regain life. My arms and legs are heavy, as if made of stone, but with a surge of will and a gasp, I push to my feet. Stagger a step towards the miasma, and the caves, and Quin, beyond. Another step.
Please.
Please—
A dark form appears, the fog veiling him light enough to make out his shape, the pain with which he moves. He’s hunched around his cane; each step seems to jolt through him like he’s being stabbed. His cloak is a bundle at his side that he grips hard.
Energy sluices through me and my movements snap against the lingering bonds.
Quin staggers out of the miasma. He loses his grip on the cane and I catch his sagging weight, arm around his waist. He presses his bundle to my chest, struggling to speak. “I have . . . immortal bone.”
His head droops, but I’ll—
“Heal my people first.”
I shake my head, already trying to rummage in the cloak. He grips my wrist. It’s a feeble hold, but the weight of his meaning is not feeble at all. “Promise me.”
Frustration warms my limbs and I help him hobble back to the horse. He manages to pull himself up with me shoving and steering him into the saddle, but his limbs slacken as we ride and I clench my thighs around him, one arm firm at his waist. “Hold on, hold on, hold on.”
His response is weak, scratchy; I spur the horse on harder and faster. “Stay awake!”
My arm crushes around his middle, I jam myself against his back, I bite his shoulder. His hiss is barely audible. I dig my heels into the horse, and bite him over and over—
His wispy grunts of pain stop.
His body goes limp.
“Wake up. Now.” I gallop on in a thick cloud of road dust and cry out for help, and suddenly Bastion is there, catching the king’s tumbling weight as he falls from the horse.
Heart jammed in my throat, I help carry him into one of the empty cottages and lay him on a raised bed.
My voice comes out strangled. “I said wake up!”
He’s unconscious, but breathing. I take his pulse. He’s deeply traumatised from an hour of unbearable pain. His body has locked down. “No, no, no, no. Come on, Quin. Wake up.”
“Is it bad?” Bastion asks, eyes narrowed on the king.
I read his pulse again. Bile races up my throat and I shake my head.
“Cael?”
Words choke up my throat.
“When will he wake?”
Will he wake, is the question.
“He promised to be the last to receive treatment.”
I grit my teeth, remove a sliver of immortal bone from the bundle Quin collected and thrust the rest to Bastion with instructions to prepare it.
He pauses beside me. “He’s being hunted. It’s only a matter of time. It’s better this way.”
“Go,” I yell at him.
“I’ll make sure to keep this quiet,” he says on the way out.
He strides off, and I layer a blanket over Quin. “You’re not allowed to die,” I tell him and watch his face for any flickering movement under his closed eyelids. When it doesn’t come, I bring my mouth to his ear, “I don’t allow it.”
I leave him with this vow and find that Bastion has sent one of his men to guard Quin’s cottage. Summoning all my concentration, I spend the next hours making Quin’s ordeal worthwhile. Immortal bone will heal anything. Anything except death.
I help the daughter whose mother I couldn’t save first. When life blooms again inside her and colour touches her cheeks, her eyes meet mine coldly before she turns her body away. My chest aches. At least now she can cry.
Olyn tells me to heal the others before her, but I insist. I need her to help me. It takes a lot of energy to channel healing through the body, and though I’ve learned how to do much more than I once could, I’m still one vitalian after all.
“We can stretch the reach of the bone. Make a broth with it. Let them drink it.”
“A crude technique.” I sigh.
“Don’t look down on other methods.”
“It’ll draw out the healing process. They’ll still have scales for days, rashes might take weeks to—”
“Yes. It will be uncomfortable. But it will reach ten times as many.”
Ten times as many.
There’s no question.
I swallow. “Still not enough for everyone.”
“But it will help the worst cases and half the others.”
“Ration the broth according to progression of the illness.”
Olyn nods.
“Don’t tell the others there isn’t enough. Tell them . . . they can only receive the cure at a certain point or it won’t work.”
“I understand.”
Heavily, I press on. The family of four, who are overjoyed when my spell takes away their scales and they can breathe easily again. The farmer is second to last, and upon hauling in a healthy lungful of air, he shouts out his thanks to the heavens.
I look over with a furrowed brow at him leaping out of bed. “It wasn’t the heavens that saved you.”
He flushes and keeps a tight hand on the pouch at his waist. “How is your wife?” he asks meekly.
I’m slammed with the memory of ‘pregnant’ veiled Quin. Then slammed again with the image of Quin unconscious, tucked in blankets. “My wife . . . can overcome anything.”
“Your baby is healthy then?”
I swallow. “Mm. His mother’s good looks and my good mind.”
For a moment I think I hear a laugh, and imagine Quin coming up behind me. “Good mind? Muddled, you mean.” I jerk around, but the space behind me is quiet, still. No one is there. I’m exhausted. My mind is playing tricks.
When I turn back, the farmer is hurrying towards the exit, my golden feather still in his pouch.
I hear a woman’s moan through the walls. Megaera.
Quin doesn’t even get the privilege of voicing the pain he’s suffering inside. I slam my eyes shut. I have barely any immortal bone left in my system.
With a hardened heart, I stride out of the cottage and return to the luminarium.
Olyn snatches my arm and pulls me into a corner. “The broth is all gone. We’ve won ourselves time, but there are still many infected.”
I have enough bone to save one more life.
The knot in my stomach tightens. Even if the ignisleaf and dragonfire moss come, Quin has made me promise to heal him last. What if waiting ruins his health to a degree he can’t be saved at all?
What if he never wakes up?
Panic ripples through me. The king must survive. He needs to stop his uncle and help his people.
“Give them more capsules,” I tell her. “Get the recovered to sing, dance, put on a play. Keep them entertained—”
I’m already racing back out, heart pounding with every jolting step. The sickly crowds from before have transformed. Wine jugs are being passed around. A few campfires have been lit. Someone plays a fiddle.
Tears stream down relieved faces. I halt at a shout that sails over the field, hailing the king.
One by one, townspeople rise and cry their thanks towards the heavens that their king has protected them.
Wave upon wave, they bow, rise, and bow again.
Their sincere movement hustles up a breeze that gently flutters over my face.
“Praise the runaway king. Our true king.”
My heart skips a beat. This is what he wanted—hope for his people.
But the price he’s paying . . .
“You’re their king,” I croak, staring towards the golden trees where we’d rested together. “But you’re also mine.”
I run.
He’s where I left him, lying serenely on a raised bed, surrounded by darkly oiled wood, gridded windows that stamp diamonds onto the floor next to him, a cold hearth.
I dismiss the vespertine who was guarding him and when we’re alone, I move across the room to his bed, my footsteps creaking over the old floor.
So loud in the night, in the quiet of his deep slumber.
I drop to my knees. “You must wake.”
I grab his hand and drag my fingers up to read his pulse. Weak, but fighting. “Please wake up. Please?”
He doesn’t so much as twitch.
“I’ll blame you for everything if you don’t.”
Still nothing.
I shout and storm out of the cottage, back to the one where Megaera is curled on a straw mat, clawing at air, at her throat, at the damp floor. Nail marks bite into the wood.
I curl my hands into fists, calm myself, and call up the last of the immortal bone. A ball of light glitters on my palm, bright in the darkness of the room. The pain on Megaera’s face is amplified, and I swiftly cast the cure, pushing it into her chest, her lungs—
Her first full breath is followed by a pained and sorrowful cry.
I keep the spell steady, slowing the push into her down. Her eyes are dark and mournful and she averts them. “Look at me,” I say.
With effort, she pulls her gaze back to mine.
“Do you know what’s saving you?” my voice is sharp and cutting.
Megaera glances at the stream of magic entering her and falters.
I continue on clenched teeth. “Someone risked everything for this immortal bone. Someone who deserves it more than you.”
As my words drop between us, she struggles to breathe, and I soften my spell a fraction.
“Immortal bone?” she says, her gaze flickering with understanding. This is precious; once-in-a-hundred-years precious.
“This would not only wake him,” I croak, “but cure him too. He would never suffer again.”
“Give—”
I laugh again, and it aches. The last of the spell enters her with a snap and I rock back unsteadily from the force of it, breathing hard. “He protects his people. That’s the kind of king he is.”
Our gazes hold, dark, heavy, pained.
I pull away first, and I don’t look back.
When I return, head slumped towards my chest, and drag myself over the threshold through creaky rooms to Quin, he looks too peaceful. Unmoving and elegant, and—
I lower myself to the side of the bed and glare down at his sharp nose, his jaw, his thick whitened hair. “I still blame you.”
I shift the blankets higher up his chest and my hand grazes over something hard. I pause and then pull at his shirt neck. The flutette.
I crush it in a tight grip.
It’s not a cure, but maybe . . . maybe if his body is suffering, this can offer some relief.
I press the mouthpiece against his lips but he can’t blow into the instrument, can’t make music. My gaze scrolls over his face. It’s like a marble statue, chiselled to perfection but lifeless.
“This isn’t you. You’re full of bark.” I gnash my teeth near his cheek. “Bite.”
I breathe heavily, waiting. He doesn’t respond.
I pinch the flutette hard and turn it around, the end part brushing against his lips, the mouthpiece between mine.
The first note shudders in the short space between our faces.
I close my eyes, letting the melody take shape.
A song of dreams, one to keep us tethered when everything feels lost. A tender, fragile thing.
The notes drift between Quin and me, curling around us like a shield.
Wake up.
The last note vibrates between my lips and his and lingers.
After a long while staring down at his face, searching for any sign, I tuck the flutette back into his shirt. I take his pulse. It seems stronger. Perhaps it’s my wishful thinking.
I keep my fingers pressed to his wrist, my wrist pressed onto his open palm, and tell him stories to accompany his dreams.
The first night passes without a stir. The second night is no different.
I take strands of his hair and pull hard as I plait in one, two, a dozen thin braids.
The jewelled fastenings come out of their pouch and I clip them on.
“You owe me stories. So many. I expect you to lose your voice talking. Oh, what kind of stories? Your childhood, what was it like? What mischief did you get up to? Was there light amongst the dark? How was it you ended up wishing for real change for your people? Right from the first time we met, you told me not to care about the law when a life was in the balance. How did you become such an open-minded thinker? Was it your mother’s influence? She’s certainly the rebellious kind.
“Tell me your story?”
He doesn’t stir, and I threaten to tug the jewelled fastenings free. “I’ll make you come undone before me. An unimportant par-linea, and I will not hesitate to disrespect you!”
I want to yank them all free, make him lunge at me and demand I, for once, treat him like the king he is. I want him to snap his teeth at me and threaten to make me pay. I want him to take revenge on my own hair.
Just so long as he wakes.
My fingers pinch on a gold fastening, my rapid pulse echoing in it. Tighter, tighter—
I let go, cursing.
I can’t do it.