Chapter Eighteen
Heat radiated through my skin and my eyes weighed too heavy to open. My muscles didn’t feel like my own. I tried to move even my fingers. Nothing.
Voices moved in and out like the tide. I couldn’t hold on to any of the words, wavering under unconsciousness, the scent of herbs filling my nose.
A cool cloth pressed against my forehead, then lifted, and pressed again. I tried to turn toward the voice but my body refused.
The last thing I recalled, Nira at the bars of the cell. Her kind eyes. That worn leather satchel. Take her to the infirmary. Now.
But that couldn’t be right. Nira dressed me for the arena, braided my hair, and whispered warnings about the boarox. She didn’t come to dungeons. She didn’t command guards.
I must have dreamt her there.
And Minha. Had I dreamt about her too? The arena, the two of us fighting the boarox, her voice cutting across the sand. Sis. The cell, the hay, her hand finding mine.
Stay with me. Don’t go somewhere I can’t follow.
Had any of it been real?
A man’s voice said my name. Not Sis. Not girl. But Star. I stopped fighting to move my muscles.
“Why isn’t she healing?” he asked.
Theron?
“There was poison on the boarox’s horns.” Nira’s voice, somewhere close to my left.
“With what?” Footfalls moved back and forth across the floor. He was pacing.
“I’m trying to figure that out,” Nira’s said. “I’ve already taken her blood.”
Bottles clinked and shifted somewhere on the table. The sound became clear, but I still couldn’t open my eyes.
“I’ve got it.” Nira’s voice sharpened with certainty. “It’s the venom from a serragator.” Liquid swished in a container. “See the blue blood on this slab of glass? If I put a drop of it on top, it turns black.”
Silence. Boots stopped thumping.
“What does that mean?” Theron’s voice came closer to my right.
He was here? He was actually here? But why? How does he know Nira?
If Theron was royalty, why didn’t Nira speak to him with a more respectful tone? No “yes, sir.” No shift in her voice.
“It means someone coated the boarox horn before the fight. The queen wanted her weakened so the boarox could kill her easily. But she didn’t anticipate the boarox bowing to her after it smelled her blood.”
Is that what the boarox did? Bow to me?
Something scraped. A chair or a stool maybe. Theron sitting.
“I don’t understand.” He sounded farther away, or maybe I was drifting.
Bottles shifted. Clack and tink. Her hands never stopped moving. “I don’t either. But there is something special about her. I knew it the second I saw her.” A pause. “Theron, you need to stop doing the queen’s bidding.”
“I have no choice.” The words came out bitter, pushed through gritted teeth.
“Everyone has a choice.” Her voice cracked on the last word. “If your father—”
“He was poisoned, wasn’t he?”
A fist connected with a table or the wall. Not hard enough to break anything, but hard enough to show anger.
“You were with him when he died,” Theron said. “The queen said it was heart failure. But you know the truth, don’t you?” The voice grew louder. “Did she use the same venom?”
His father? The king? Nira was there when he was killed? I still couldn’t make out who she was to him. Not a lover, for sure. But what did I know of his type?
“Lower your voice, Theron. You were a child. Don’t assume what you do not know.”
“What truth are you hiding from me?” His voice softened.
“When you leave this palace to do her bidding, don’t come back. Live your life in the sea.”
“Then what would become of you?”
A long silence. I could imagine him giving her a dagger stare, and Nira narrowing her eyes at him.
“I don’t care.” Her voice was quiet and final. “I’ve lived long enough.”
The darkness pulled at me again. A warm cloth moved along my arm, careful around the injury. She had cut the sleeve back to reach it and nothing more. But what concerned me most was the familiar weight against my hip—the dagger untouched, the pearls still tucked beneath the suit.
A servant who commanded guards. A woman Theron listened to. A woman who spoke of his father as though she’d stood beside him when he died. Who are you, Nira?
The door opened. Different footsteps this time, the kind that expected obedience from everyone in the room.
“What do you want, Pierre?” Theron spat.
Not prince Pierre. Just Pierre.
“The girl. Is she still alive?” He said it the way someone might note the weather.
A finger pressed into my cheek. Once. Then again, harder.
“Don’t.” Theron’s voice came sharp.
“I’m simply checking.” Another poke. “She doesn’t look like much. Hard to believe a boarox bowed to her.”
Theron snarled. “She needs to recover. Leave her.”
“She’ll recover when I’m satisfied.” He gripped my jaw, turning my face from side to side. “Interesting bone structure. And that hair—”
“Pierre.” Theron’s voice dropped lower. A warning.
A short, bored exhale came from the prince. He traced a finger over my shoulder, across my collarbone, then lower.
“I give no second chances.” The sound of a hand grabbing fabric and footsteps stumbling back a few steps.
Energy crackled and charged in the silence.
“Take your hands off me.” Pierre struggled to get the words out. “You forget yourself.”
“No.” Theron’s voice dropped low, deadlier than any shout. “You remember who I am. Nobody touches what belongs to me. I brought her here so that makes her mine.”
“If I didn’t know better, I think you like this girl.”
“She means nothing to me, as do you.”
“Awww, brother. You hurt my feelings.”
Brother? So the Seelie queen is his mother? But he doesn’t have ears like hers.
“You’re no brother of mine.”
“Careful what you say,” Pierre drawled. “Our father would be turning in his grave.”
Same father, but maybe different mothers.
“You’ll be turning in yours soon if you don’t get out. Your mother will have a reason to imprison me. I might even burn down this damn castle for what you did to my family.”
Footsteps padded across the floor. Either Theron released him or Pierre pushed back.
“When she wakes, bring her to me.”
He doesn’t know when to quit.
“The only thing I’m bringing to you is your mother’s dead body.”
A growl came from Pierre.
“Don’t you have anything better to do than entertain a woman?” Nira, who had been quiet, said, her voice coming from across the room.
Silence for a heartbeat.
The door opened, then slammed shut.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
“You have to take her out,” Nira said. “Or he’ll do the same, like he did to your sister.”
Theron had a sister. He never told me. But why would he? He owed me no explanation. He didn’t even like me as a friend.
I forced my eyes open. The light came in too bright, as did the new revelation. I could be wrong, but the evidence was stronger.
Not the dungeon.
Not the arena.
A room. White walls. A shelf filled with bottles of herbs, roots, flowers. The smell of herbs. The heat that had burned through my body was gone. Whatever Nira had injected had saved me.
I managed to turn my head.
Nira stood beside the bed, her hands cupping Theron’s face, her eyes wet. He didn’t pull away.
“Please.” Her voice was barely above a breath. “Find the others and take your rightful place. You’re our only chance.”
“I don’t know where to look for our people.” He sounded defeated in a way I had never heard from him before.
“In the sky, son. Where else?” Her hands lowered to his shoulder.
Son?
My husband passed away, and my daughter… Prince Pierre took her and I never saw her again.
The pieces fell into place. Theron, the true crown prince.
His father, poisoned by the queen. His debt: delivering Seaborn, keeping his mother safe while she lived as a servant in her own castle.
I understood his pain, grief, and the anger at the world.
He’d already lost his sister to Pierre. He couldn’t lose his mother too. My heart went out to him.
“I have yet to come across them. Besides, I’m no leader. The only thing I’m good at is killing.”
Whatever hope gleamed in Nira’s eyes vanished.
I closed my eyes before either of them could see I was awake.