Chapter 13
VIENNE's POV
The fever took him three hours after we reached the tower.
I watched it happen—watched the color drain from his face, watched the sweat bead on his forehead, watched his hands start to shake as his body turned against him.
The vault slab had done more than break his leg.
The crush injury had trapped toxins in the tissue, and now they were swimming in his bloodstream, burning him from the inside out.
The royal physician wanted to bleed him. Then he wanted to apply leeches. Then he suggested an Aether-purification ritual that involved crystals, chanting, and what smelled suspiciously like goat urine.
I threw him out.
"With respect, Commander," the physician sputtered, clutching his bag of medieval horrors, "the prince requires—"
"The prince requires sterile bandages, distilled alcohol, and someone who understands that infection isn't caused by angry spirits." I shoved him toward the door.
"If you want to help, boil water. Lots of it. Otherwise, get out before I demonstrate modern surgical technique on your throat."
He got out.
Kael hovered in the doorway, looking younger than his nineteen years. "Is he...?"
"He's not dying." I said it like a threat, like a prayer, like a promise I had no right to make. "Not on my watch."
I locked the door. I stripped the soiled bandages from Cassian's leg, my stomach turning at the sight of the swelling, the red streaks climbing toward his knee like lightning bolts.
Lymphangitis. In my old world, we'd treat it with antibiotics.
Here, I had alcohol, willpower, and a complete disregard for the rules of this century's medicine.
I poured whiskey over the wound. Cassian hissed, his back arching, his eyes rolling open.
"Vienne?" His voice was raw, delirious.
"Right here." I threaded a needle—sterilized in flame, cooled in boiled water—and began stitching the worst of the reopened tissue. "Don't move. Don't talk. Just breathe."
"I saw you," he mumbled, his head lolling to the side. "On the rooftop. In the rain. You were bleeding. You were smiling. Why were you smiling?"
My hands paused.
He was seeing my memories. Or I was talking in my sleep. Or the fever was weaving his mind into the spaces between our stories.
"Because I was free," I said quietly, resuming my work. "For the first time in ten years, I was free. Even if it was just for the second before I died."
"I don't want you to be free," he whispered. "I want you to be here. Selfish, isn't it?"
"The most selfish thing I've ever heard." My voice cracked. "So you better survive, Prince. Because I'm not giving you up to a rock in a vault or a fever or your uncle's stupidity. You're mine now. And I don't share."
He laughed, weak and wet. Then the cough took him, racking his frame, and I held him through it, my blood-stained hands cradling his face, my forehead pressed to his.
When it passed, he sank back into the pillows, unconscious again. I finished the stitches. I applied a poultice of willow bark and garlic—old world remedy, but it worked more often than the physicians admitted. I wrapped the leg in clean linen and elevated it on a stack of books.
Then I sat in the chair beside his bed, and I talked.
I don't know why. Maybe because the silence was too loud. Maybe because I was terrified that if I stopped speaking, he'd stop breathing. Maybe because after everything, I was tired of being a ghost.
"I was born in a place called the Narrows," I told him, my voice low, filling the dark room. "The poorest district of New Carthage. My mother sold me to an orphanage when I was four. I don't remember her face. I remember the door closing. I remember the sound of the lock."
I leaned back, watching his chest rise and fall.
"The orphanage sold us. Not literally—this wasn't that kind of world. But they took money from the syndicates to place 'promising' children. Strong ones. Fast ones. The ones who didn't cry. I was six when Marco Delgado came to inspect the stock.
He picked me because I bit another kid who tried to steal my bread. He said I had 'spirit.' He meant I had anger. He was right."
I pulled my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. The silk gown from the gala was gone, replaced by practical black. But I still felt the weight of the ballroom, the eyes, the lies.
"He trained me. Fed me. Clothed me. Taught me to read, to fight, to kill without hesitation. By sixteen, I was his ghost. The underdog who did the hits no one else wanted. The messy ones. The public ones.
The ones that required a woman small enough to slip through windows and cold enough to shoot a man while he slept."
I laughed, but it had no humor. "I was good at it. I told myself it was just survival. Just business. Just the way the world worked. I didn't let myself want anything. Not friends. Not love. Not a future. Wanting got you killed. Wanting made you weak."
I looked at Cassian. At the bruises on his face. At the way his hand twitched in his sleep, reaching for something.
"And then I died. And I woke up here. In her body. With her memories. With her rage. And for the first time, I had something worth wanting. A name that meant something. A brother who needed me. A kingdom that needed burning."
I swallowed hard. "And you. I got you. Even though I tried not to. Even though I made rules and boundaries and threatened to break your nose if you fell in love with me."
I stood. I moved to the bed. I took his hand—warm, too warm, but alive—and I held it.
"I love you," I said.
The words felt foreign. Dangerous. Like pulling the pin on a grenade and holding it close.
"I love you, Cassian Thorne. Not because you're a prince. Not because you're useful. I love you because you see me. The real me. The mafia underdog and the dead warrior and the woman who doesn't know how to be gentle. You see all of it, and you don't flinch. You jumped under a rock for me.
You crawled through sewage for me. You stood in front of a kingdom and chose me."
I pressed my lips to his knuckles. "So I'm choosing you back. Even if it's selfish. Even if it's stupid. Even if we both die tomorrow. I love you. And that's the truth."
His fingers tightened around mine.
I froze.
His eyes opened. Clear. Aware. Burning with fever but focused on my face with an intensity that made my breath catch.
"Say it again," he whispered.
My heart hammered against my ribs. "You were awake."
"For the part about the orphanage. And the bread. And the grenade." A ghost of a smile. "I missed the beginning. But I caught the end." He squeezed my hand, weak but insistent. "Say it again."
"I—"
"Please."
I sat on the edge of the bed, my free hand finding his cheek, my thumb tracing the sharp line of his jaw.
"I love you, you idiot."
His smile widened, genuine and exhausted and so beautiful it hurt. "There it is."
"You tricked me."
"I was delirious. Then I was eavesdropping. Then I was—" he coughed, wincing, but his eyes never left mine, "—completely, irrevocably in love with you. Still. Again. More."
I leaned down. I kissed him.
It wasn't like the sewer. Wasn't like the desperate, hungry clash of two people running from death. This was slow. Tender. The kind of kiss that said I'm staying. The kind that healed something deeper than flesh.
His hand came up, tangling in my hair, pulling me closer. I tasted salt—tears, his or mine, I couldn't tell—and the faint bitterness of fever, and underneath it, him. Cedar and gunpowder and stubborn, stupid hope.
When we broke apart, his forehead rested against mine.
"I don't care who you were," he said, his voice rough.
"Vienne Delgado. Iraia Voss. The Silver Wolf. The Lady King. I don't care if you came from another world or another life or another hell entirely. I love the soul wearing the skin. I love the woman who reset my shoulder in a wine cellar and threatened to burn my kingdom to ash. I love you."
He pulled back, his eyes bright and serious. "And I'm going to marry you."
I blinked. "You're delirious."
"I'm certain."
"You can barely stand."
"Then I'll lean on you." He grinned, reckless and royal. "You can be my cane. My queen. My king. Whatever title you want, as long as you're mine."
"You're insane."
"And you're in love with me. So we're evenly matched."
I laughed. I couldn't help it. The sound burst out of me, startling and real, filling the room with something that felt like sunlight.
The door exploded open.
We both reached for weapons—me for the dagger on the nightstand, him for the cane blade beneath his pillow—but it was only Kael, wild-eyed, clutching a sheaf of papers.
"You need to see this," he gasped. "Both of you. Now."
The truth spread like blood in water.
Jinx had done it. While I'd been tending to Cassian, while the city had slept, she'd taken the letters from the vault and copied them.
Hundreds of times. Thousands. She'd paid every street urchin, every tavern keeper, every messenger with a fast horse and loose morals.
She'd slipped them under doors, nailed them to church doors, stuffed them into the hands of soldiers on dawn patrol.
The Voss Legion was innocent.
General Darius Thorne orchestrated the massacre.
Lord Ashford paid twenty thousand gold for their blood.
The Crown Prince was deceived.
By the time the sun cleared the horizon, the city was reading.
In the Iron Stag, a former sergeant of the city guard stood on a table and read the letter aloud, his voice cracking when he reached the names of the dead.
In the market, a fishwife wept as she recognized her daughter's unit number among the betrayed.
In the northern barracks, a young corporal drew his sword and pointed it at his captain, demanding to know if he'd known.
The truth was out.
And the truth was a fire that couldn't be extinguished.
Cassian sat up in bed, the letter in his hands, his face pale but his eyes burning with a light I hadn't seen since before the vault.
"They'll follow you," I said, standing at the window. Below us, the city was stirring. Chanting. Not yet loud enough to shake the walls, but growing. "The people. The soldiers who didn't know. The families who lost someone. They'll follow the prince who told them the truth."
"They'll follow the Lady King," he corrected. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, wincing, but waving away my help. "I'm the one who believed the lie. You're the one who survived it."
"You're the one who exposed it."
"We exposed it." He stood, shaky but upright, and reached for his cane. "Together. Partners."
He looked at me. At the silver-haired ghost from another world who'd stolen a dead woman's war and turned it into a revolution.
"There's one more truth that needs to come out," he said quietly.
"Which one?"
He reached into the bedside drawer and pulled out the royal signet. Heavy. Gold. Bearing the Thorne crown and the sword that had founded this kingdom.
"My father is dead," he said.
The words hit me like a physical blow. "When?"
"An hour ago. The physicians tried to reach me. Darius had them arrested."
He closed his fist around the signet, his knuckles white.
"My uncle has declared himself Regent. He's named me unfit to rule. And he's named you—" he looked at me, his eyes dark with fury, "—public enemy number one. Dead only. No capture. No trial."
I nodded slowly. "Then he knows the letters are real. He knows the city is turning. And he's desperate."
"He's dangerous." Cassian moved to the window, standing beside me. Below, the streets were filling. Not with rioters—with people. Citizens. Soldiers who'd thrown off their blue-and-silver armbands and donned scraps of black and crimson. The colors of the Voss Legion.
"He has the palace guard," Cassian continued. "The northern army. Morgana's new weapons. And he has her." He looked at me. "Morgana's in the palace. She arrived an hour before my father died. I don't think that's a coincidence."
Blood magic, I thought. She helped him. Or she killed the King herself.
"Then we take it back," I said.
"How? I can barely walk. You have an army of ghosts, but Darius has ten thousand trained soldiers."
I turned to face him. I took the signet from his hand. I closed his fingers around mine.
"We don't need ten thousand soldiers," I said. "We need one truth. One moment. One stand."
I kissed him, hard and brief.
"Get dressed, Your Majesty. The King is dead. Long live the King."
He stared at me. "You just called me Your Majesty."
"Get used to it." I moved to the door, pulling it open. Kael, Jinx, and Torvald waited in the corridor, armed and ready. "We're going to the palace. Not as ghosts. Not as rebels. As the truth."
"And if they shoot us?" Jinx asked, her voice small but steady.
I smiled. The Lady King's smile. All teeth and promise.
"Then we shoot back."
The sun rose over Aethelgard, painting the capital in gold and blood.
The streets were no longer silent. They were singing. Chanting.
The Lady King. The Lady King.
And somewhere in the palace, behind walls of stone and lies, General Darius Thorne listened to the sound of his kingdom turning against him.
—————
A/N:
The truth was out.
And the truth was coming for him.