Chapter 36
I drift, my mind only tethered to pain. My breath is hot and suffocating, my chest heaving. With each breath I sink deeper and I cannot tell if the dark is sleep or something worse.
Voices murmur around me, blurry light spilling in as someone forces open an eyelid.
“Fever is getting worse…”
“…some kind of episode?”
“…she’s burning up…need to cool her down.”
I am half-conscious, floating between the world of fever and dreams, each moment slipping into the next. There’s a soft sound—water, trickling. A female voice murmurs, and hands rub a wet cloth over me. Each pass of the cool cloth is my only relief, gone too quickly.
I want to grab the cloth and hold it to my throat, my eyes, my chest. I’m so hot, I must be near a fire. Why won’t someone move me farther away from the fire?
The scent of lavender wafts through the air.
“Enough.” A voice, low and rough, cuts through the haze. “I’ll take her.”
Arms lift me, bobbing gently as they carry me.
The lavender scent grows, my lungfuls of it the only ones that feel fresh, compared to the breaths I swear I sucked straight from the base of burning logs.
Water touches my feet. It’s too cold. It’s freezing.
I flinch and squirm, but the arms hold me steady.
“Shh, this will help.”
The water engulfs my calves, my hips, my ribs. I shiver, but it eases from frigid to cool, wicking away the pain from my burning skin.
The arms hold me steady as I float. I inhale lavender and exhale cool air. I can breathe.
“I can be patient, Ly,” he murmurs. “I’ll wait, without complaining. As long as you come back in the end.”
His voice sounds sad. Broken. I try to tell him that I want to stay with him too. That I’m confused and frightened.
But there is a stronger tide, pulling me under.
The world swirls again, and I lose track of the water lapping at my skin. The arms holding me disappear as roses take me away once more.
I open my eyes. It’s midnight. The roses, piled high from yesterday’s birthday celebrations, are starting to spoil, the sweet perfume cloying in my throat. My heart beats hard. Did something wake me?
I sit up slowly, brushing hair from my damp neck. My chest hums with a whisper of dread, dull and steady.
Did I say something wrong at the party? It is no benign thing, to offend my siblings. Even if I acted out of turn with other lords and ladies, it might get back to my mother or father.
I can’t think of anything I said or did. And nothing in my room seems amiss. Yet my sense of unease lingers.
In the weeks after my birthday, event invites begin arriving. My father has announced me marriageable, and it’s an open door that many a lord tries to walk through. I let the letters stack up. I can’t face crowds when something inside me is fraying.
But the Sunrise Palace doesn’t feel safe either.
Sometimes when I’m walking the corridors or the garden, my chest will tighten, my breath going shallow, and I’m sure—without reason, without proof—that someone is behind me.
The palace feels too big at night, as if the shadows are hiding something.
Even alone in my room, I itch with discomfort.
After Somnus, Seran shows up with a stack of invites he’s decided I should accept.
At one of the parties, I stumble upon Borin and his entourage in an enclosed courtyard.
Borin reclines on a velvet chaise, boots kicked up, glass in hand.
He’s laughing at something a dark-haired woman said, limbs and expression loose.
I stare at the bottle beside him, failing to look away before his companion notices.
“I think your sister might want a drink,” the woman chuckles.
Not wanting to become this evening’s joke, I turn away.
“Come here.”
I can’t ignore my brother’s direct command.
“Want some?” Borin asks.
I nod, face flushing at the circle of strangers who seem to be in on some gag I’m not. He pours it for me, so I drink. It burns. I try to hold back a cough, and choke, which delights everyone.
But after it is done burning, my shoulders drop. My jaw unclenches. For the first time in weeks, I can take a full breath.
I’m not supposed to drink much. Princes can indulge, but not princesses, who must maintain propriety as vessels of Ignar’s power.
But every party has wine, and I get better at sneaking a few cups, switching between servants with my requests, keeping outside the gaze of my mother.
It makes it easier to endure the flocking lords and the whispering advisors and the burning eyes of my father, which have found me more often in these months than they have in the last ten years.
At the winter solstice, Noctus, I spot Rinalda across the room. Even though my social calendar has me attending multiple events a week, she is still only invited to high holidays. She stands apart from the crowd. I’ve had more than a few cups tonight, and the wine inspires me to approach her.
“Rinalda.” I lean against the column beside her. “Any of these lords catch your eye? I can barely keep them straight.”
She stares down her nose at me. “Are you drunk?”
“Maybe. I guess that’s why I can’t keep anything straight.” I wave a carefree hand in the air. “How else are we supposed to endure marriagea…marriageability?”
“We?” She scowls. “What we? How dare you speak to me about this? After you are the one who found the…”
Her furious expression and tone are clear warning signs.
I try to sober up enough to follow her words, but I only manage to grasp pieces.
Letters, she is saying, letters I found, in the bedpost, the screw-in bedpost in her room.
How dare I come to her now and talk about marriage as if it is a game I am winning?
Did I think it was funny, reading them? Did I tell anyone?
The air around her blisters, the heat on my skin having nothing to do with the wine or the weather. The marble column beside her chars under her palm. She whirls and stalks away, blending into the crowd.
I sway to the next conversation, glad when the lord who approaches me brings another cup of wine. But when I sober up in the morning, I realize how lucky I was not to have to endure a painful walk back to the Sunrise Palace. Indulging in public comes with risks.
Instead of waiting for parties, I ask maids to bring wine to my rooms. They protest when a request for a glass turns into a bottle, then two.
But when I threaten to tell my father lies to get them in trouble, they stop hesitating.
Then I threaten to tell him how much they’ve been giving me to keep the liquid flowing.
The alcohol coats the unease like glass over rot. It doesn’t make the fear vanish. But it dulls the edges enough that I can sleep at night.
Until it’s not just at night—I add a splash of liquor to my tea.
Then a cup in the afternoon. It hardly even spikes my pulse when, one morning, the smell of sour smoke drifts through my window.
Guards shout and dash about the grounds, and a maid tells me intruders were discovered in supply carts.
The air stinks for the rest of the day, lingering in the courtyard where the evening events are held.
The dread I have carried since midnight after my birthday gets heavier, and I stay in my rooms, only content when I am drifting in a haze, a bottle in reach.
It’s not enough to coat the rot now. But it keeps my hands from shaking, offering the briefest distraction, even as an enduring headache grows.
Tonight I have sipped from morning until dark. The wine ran out after dinner, and I switched to something that burns going down. I lean on the cool marble railing, watching the flickering torches far below.
Something catches my addled attention.
I turn, slow to focus, and squint at the figure on the balcony with me. My skin prickles. He is not a servant. He’s wearing a hood, and he is masked. By the time I slur that he should not be here, his hands are on me.
He grips my arms with terrifying strength and lifts me over the railing.
Panic floods my veins as I tip, but it’s too late.
Nothing is there to catch me. The wind whips through my hair as I fall, the marble rushing up to meet me with sickening speed.
My body smashes into the stone, the pain white and total.
I blink once, vision blurring, his silhouette high above.
It’s the last thing I see before everything goes black.