12 Theodore #3
There were moments that had seared themselves into me with the hiss of a hot brand. Watching my father die. Leaving Hector and Antonia’s to take up my crown. The black blood that had oozed from Imogen when she’d severed our bond, and the unnatural hollowing-out of my body that had followed.
And now this. Bringing Imogen back from the edge of death, then watching her leave, to be cared for by Lachlan.
“The chancellor lives,” Healer Carras said behind me, as they washed the blood from their hands. They looked shaken, stupefied. “But he is not… well. You will be able to do more for him than I can, Your Majesty. After you rest and clean yourself.”
I nodded absently but found myself wandering toward my stateroom door with clumps of bloody sand still smeared over my forearms. I went out onto the deck and down to the passageway, where a row of opulent cabins sat.
Halla’s cabin was the first. The walls within were hand-painted with a mural of Varya’s sprawling vines. When I’d been a prince, that cabin had been mine. Markis’s was next. Aleka always took the cabin at the very end, preferring its large window to the smaller portholes of the others.
And in between them was Eftan’s. The door gave a hollow scrape as I opened it.
Every time he traveled aboard the Eleuthios he picked this same cabin. Two portholes. A small but stately bed. Supple furnishings in earthy colors. But I knew that he picked this cabin for its desk.
I stared at it, unblinking. It was the size of my breakfast table, and he always dragged it to the center of the cabin.
As a boy, I remembered thinking the table held more papers upon it than those of the recorders who kept track of the kingdom’s taxes.
I had the same thought now. I used to watch him circle the table as he worked, ordering his piles, making his notes, and reordering them again.
He preferred to stand while he worked, back hunched, feet shuffling.
Despite the disquieting nostalgia, I stepped farther into the cabin. Aleka had tucked herself into an empty corner of the wide desk and pored over her own small stack of papers.
When the door snicked shut, she rose, then flinched as she took me in. Blood and sweat and addled exhaustion. “Your Majesty.” She bowed. “Has she died, then? Queen Imogen.”
It sounded very much like she cared. I shook my head in answer. “Eftan’s asleep?”
She dipped her chin reverently. “Yes.”
I stopped at the edge of his bed and took the heavy velvet curtain into my hand, but I didn’t draw it open.
“He is in rather bad shape.” Aleka didn’t come too close. She never did. Instead, she spoke as if giving an official report, one hand resting on her stomach. “The injury that Queen Imogen inflicted was rather severe.”
I opened the curtain slowly. Eftan’s face was marred with light scars of newly healed skin where Imogen’s talons had sunk into his flesh.
He’d been washed and changed. As I sent my power searching through him, I realized it was not the wounds or blood loss that had harmed him so gravely.
It had been her silent lure. His breaths, his heart, his mind, had gone sluggish.
That spark that kept a body functioning had been doused.
“It wasn’t the injury to his neck,” I said to Aleka. “He went too long without air.”
“Can you help him?
I’d brought a sailor back from drowning once. I’d brought many back from the brink of death. Even feeling as weak and empty as I did, I was certain I could do the same for Eftan now.
I set my hand to his chest. The slow strike of his heart against my palm set my stomach tightening. He was not close to dying, nor was he close to waking.
That was precisely the way I wanted him.
Like this, he could not hurt Imogen further. Like this, Imogen would not be his murderer. This was the best way to keep her safe. I pulled my hand away and stepped from the bedside.
Aleka came forward, her sharp eyes darting between me and Eftan.
“Very good, Your Majesty. I’m certain he will wake soon.
” She lifted her folder up and scanned the page.
“In light of all that’s happened, I think it advisable that we carry on with the wedding feast as it was intended to occur.
The food will go bad otherwise, and with the crew’s growing worry over our heading to Anthemoessa, it will do much for morale, the least of which is your wife’s. ”
I gripped the post of the bed as my vision began to go shadowy.
“Are you all right, Your Majesty?”
“Yes.” I gave my head a shake. “I just need sleep. I don’t care whether you have the wedding feast. Do what you think is best.”
“Very well.” She turned over her page. “You should rest now, and bathe, before the festivities begin this evening.”
I shoved my shaking hand in my trouser pocket and nodded. At the cabin door, I stopped and gripped the jamb. “Marshal Baros?”
Aleka rose to her full height. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“When you’re through with the preparation for the feast, please come to my cabin to discuss and organize an execution.”
She curtsied her acquiescence. “Is Queen Imogen already in the brig?”
“It is not her execution that I wish you to plan.” I stared at Eftan where he lay. “It’s his.”