Chapter Eleven The Difference Between Heresy and Ingenuity #3
My gaze jerked back. A second later three children pushed by, the tallest elbowing me directly in my wound.
Tory found me gasping and wheezing and yanked me through the crowd. “Move,” she said, shoving her way through the masses and into the narrow opening the guards had propped for us.
Men and women, knights and common folk, flung instruments in the arena. I barely saw them. I was staggering, desperate to shut myself away. “Bring me that hammer,” I shouted back at Tory.
I fell onto the bed in my room. When I woke, a day and a half had passed. It was the night before the melee. I had not trained, not touched a hammer or put on my armor, and I was no closer to learning about ox-eye, its visions, or who spoke to me through them.
And the pain in my abdomen was getting worse.
I sat up shakily. My crown and veil were askew, and my shift was no longer white but a rust brown, stained along the middle where my wound had wept through its wrappings in my sleep.
Someone had come and left water, bread, fresh bandages.
I knocked over the food and water, hauled up my shift, and replaced the bandage, hissing as the old one peeled away.
Knock. Knock.
Someone was at my door. I swore. Hunched over. Stumbled to the threshold and yanked it open.
Hamelin stood in the hallway. In his hands were a tray and a large silver goblet, brimming with ox-eye. “Your spirits, milady.”
I yanked it free. “Where’s Tory? She was supposed to bring me weapons and armor.”
“Melee is tomorrow, not this bloody minute.” His gaze dropped to my stained shift. “You’re, um, you’re bleeding.”
I pinched my nose. Put the goblet to my lips and downed its vile contents. “Ugck.” A moment later, the pain in my abdomen went from a booming shout to an ordinary yell. “What’s in it?” I managed. “Ox-eye, I mean?”
“Do I look like an apothecary?”
He looked like a man asking to be rid of a few teeth.
“Sorry.” Hamelin put his hands up in a mock surrender. “All I know is that it’s an old recipe. It’s got herbs, spirits—absolutely nothing worth throwing a fit over.”
“Unhelpful as always.” I slammed the goblet down so hard that the tray, and Hamelin, wobbled. “Tell Tory I’m waiting for her.”
I went to shut the door, but Hamelin’s hand was there, blocking it. “You look pale. Trouble sleeping alone?”
I said nothing. “I can’t help but notice that you and Benedict haven’t spent the night together.” The timbre of his voice was sweeter than usual—bait at the end of a hook. “Strange behavior for a king and his bride, don’t you think?”
I glared at his hand, blocking the door.
“I think about that time at the end of summer,” he murmured. “When the knighthood escorted the Diviners to Coulson Faire. I know you remember. You and I—”
“Go away, Hamelin.”
He grinned. “There I go again, opening my dumb mouth.” He took his hand off the door. “If you find yourself feeling lonely, Diviner, I’m just three rooms down. We can go for another evening stroll. Maybe even finish what we started in the glen by Coulson Faire. Benedict need not know.”
I slammed the door. Locked it. Collapsed on my cot, pain and nausea and revulsion curdling in my stomach. Slowly, the ox-eye did its work, the discomfort in my abdomen dulling, a leaden kind of heaviness weighing upon my consciousness.
Blood pumped in my ears, behind my eyes, my senses thrown asunder. White light flickered and flashed. Above me, rippling as it always did in the visions, was Aisling Cathedral’s ceiling.
Neither the abbess nor the Diviners nor the Omens were there.
But then—oh gods—the world began to shake. A catastrophic rumbling began above my head, a crawling fissure cutting into the cathedral ceiling. Ten more joined, stone breaking open and raining down upon me. The entire cathedral ceiling was breaking apart.
I cried out. When the stones fell upon me there was a rushing sound, like water splashing. Everything went black. I was alone, suppressed by the weight of the fallen-in cathedral, lost and utterly hopeless in the dark.
I gasped, and I was Sybil once more, back in my chamber in the Seacht, wondering what I’d seen and what it meant, my heart galloping and my senses righting.
The latch of my door turned.
Dedrick Lange stepped into my chamber wearing full armor.
I forced myself to my feet. “What are you—”
He caught my shoulders. Shoved me onto the floor.
Kicked me once, twice, thrice, the iron sabbatons over his boot colliding with the wound in my abdomen.
“Forgive me, Diviner,” he said. “But strategy is only effective when chess pieces move as they’re supposed to.
I can’t risk you dying in the melee—and I can’t risk you winning it, either.
That gold belongs to my uncle.” He smiled, showing me those gray teeth. “Enjoy the view from the king’s box.”
And then he was gone, locking the door behind him.
I curled into a ball, sweating and shaking. My body railed against the pain and I was sick on the floor. There was blood in my spit, bile, with dozens upon dozens of tiny white flecks of limestone within.