Текст книги "In the Veins of the Drowning"

Автор книги: Kalie Cassidy

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

King Theodore’s soldiers moved like specters, silent and quick. Even their armor hardly rattled through Fort Linum’s too-quiet darkness.

We wound down the stairs that led to the empty entry hall in a neat, long line. Outside, the winds cut through the valley, catching on the corners of the fort. They moaned like a woman dying. I tried to not take it as an ill portent.

Theodore descended ahead of me, Agatha behind, and I cradled the vase of seawater to my chest like a mother would a babe. It was this meager seawater that would allow me to use my power to get us past King Nemea’s men.

Agatha whispered over my shoulder. “You were in the king’s chamber. You’re wearing his robe. You’re wet with seawater.” The damp silk of said robe stuck to the open wounds on my back. My long, wet hair covered the bloodstains. “Tell me what’s happened?”

I craned to look at her over my shoulder. “I promise, I will tell you everything when we’re safe on the ship. Please, please, just do not panic when I do.”

Her eyes flashed. “Panic! Why would I panic?”

“Gods, Agatha.”

She bit her lips between her teeth, stopping up her worry and questions, and gave me a weak nod.

An ugly feeling seized me at the thought of confessing to Agatha. A braid of shame and pride twined through me like a second spine at what I’d done to Evander. As I descended the stairs and passed Nemea’s throne room, I thought of the inscription upon its wall. The monster is always slain. I thought of Evander’s blank, blue-lipped face, and a pang of uncertainty struck me. Perhaps I was just as monstrous as he had been. Perhaps my own slaying was yet to come.

King Theodore’s commander—Lachlan—gathered us all close when we reached the towering main doors. “There are never guards stationed in the courtyard. We’ve always seen them gathered at the stables and barracks at the base of the mountain stairs,” he said quietly. Then his stern eyes locked with mine. “We’ll need you to get us past those guards. We need horses from the stables to get down the mountain road and to the king’s ship in Port Helris.”

My mouth went dry. A tremor had begun in my muscles, either from the cold or shock, I couldn’t say. I fought against it and gave Lachlan a tight nod.

The lead guard pulled the massive door just wide enough for us to squeeze through sideways, and one by one, we wound our way through Fort Linum’s entrance like a silent serpent. The wind had cleared the sky so only the bright, swollen moon and a speckling of stars filled it. It lit the pale stones an eerie, watery blue. Agatha and I huddled against the fort’s rough wall. A gust whipped my hair up and into my eyes while the six guards spread through the courtyard, swords drawn, checking the smears of shadow cast by the pillars.

Theodore faced me and stepped nearer, his body cloaking me in sudden warmth. “Swear fealty to me now,” he said, low and close. “Before you leave Nemea’s domain and while there’s a witness. This way he won’t be able to claim you were stolen.”

I scowled and held the vase tighter. “You can’t possibly think it will matter to him. And how will he know? He’ll respond the same regardless.”

“It matters to me,” he said. “I won’t have the disloyalty of stealing another king’s subject in the night as a nick on my crown.”

My scowl only deepened.

He stepped even closer, gaze bearing down on me, and my breath caught. “Considering what I have done for you tonight, the least you can do is bend the knee.”

I held his glare for three beats of my hammering heart. It turned my stomach—kingdoms and the inane rules that shaped them. I did not want the gravel cutting into my knees. I did not want to step from one ruler’s fetter into the next. The responsibility of honoring, and kowtowing to, and obeying another man who would not do the same for me in turn. And yet it was the way of things.

I turned to Agatha and shoved the vase at her. “Hold this.”

With the courtyard cleared, the guards came back and made a wall around us. Lachlan leaned in, sounding nettled. “Quickly, quickly, if you don’t mind.”

I shot him an icy look. Then begrudgingly, shakily, I lowered myself to my knees. The gravel was as sharp as I’d expected. “What do you want me to say?” Theodore looked so severe staring down at me, his nose and brow highlighted in the moon’s opalescence.

It was Lachlan who answered. “Make it up.”

A gust ripped through us, raking my damp hair into the air. I clawed it from my cheeks and met Theodore’s gaze with as searing a look as I could muster. “I denounce the ruler of the Isle of Seraf.” Another gust boomed. Cold and howling, it pulled tears from my eyes. It muffled my soft words, sent a chill over my body. “I… I swear my… loyalty—”

Theodore lowered himself to his knees before me, his eye to mine, and my every thought dissipated. He was close enough for me to whisper and still be heard. My brow buckled with confusion at the gesture.

He gave a sharp nod. “Quickly.”

I fumbled through my memory for the long and dismal oath I’d made to King Nemea when I’d been younger. “I, Imogen Nel, pledge my loyalty to you, King Theodore Ariti of Varya. I… will try… to honor you in word and deed, will and action. Before Eusia—” I shook my head. Cleared my throat. “Before the Great Gods, wherever they may be, I swear it.”

The side of his mouth gave a wry downward curve. “You’ll try?”

I nodded. “I swear it.”

He gave me a hard look and helped me to stand. The shaking in my limbs was too much now to hide and Theodore steadied me with both hands at my waist. Agatha watched us with astonishment as she handed me back my vase.

“What?” I asked.

She shook her head, eyes blinking rapidly.

The group split up. Theodore and I, accompanied by four guards, hurried toward the stairs that led down to the stables and entry gate. Agatha remained with Lachlan and the sixth guard. We came to the edge of the first step and my vision rippled at the abrupt, shadowy drop.

“This is the way you entered the fort?”

“Yes.” Theodore set warm fingers to my elbow when he saw how I swayed. “They’re uneven. Some are very short. Others are much higher than they should be.”

“There has to be another way.” Panic skittered over my skin, through my chest. “Nemea couldn’t have made all the guests climb these.”

“My lady—”

“I’ll spill it. I can’t see three steps down in this dark and I’ll misstep and spill it and we’ll all die for it.”

“That’s a possibility.” There was not a flicker of emotion in his voice, but his gentle touch on my elbow firmed. “But if you do not move forward, death—yours, mine, Agatha’s—is a certainty.”

Behind us, the wind screamed around the edge of Fort Linum in a pained warning. This was not where I wanted to die, in the place that had made me small and frightened. I straightened my spine under Theodore’s scrutiny. The man who thought he knew me—who’d called me a coward. I adjusted my hold on the vase and took the first step down.

My progress was too slow. I felt with my bare foot for the edge of the step, making my way down with Theodore’s hypervigilant aid, and feeling certain that I would never be warm again. My teeth clicked loudly in my skull. My whole body shivered. The silk robe I wore whipped against my bare legs. I stopped on a particularly narrow stone tread and tried to calm my trembling.

Theodore looked up at me from the step below. The terror—the worry—in his eyes made my stomach dip. “Ah, fucking Gods,” he grumbled. “Come here.” He reached up like he was going to wrap me in his arms.

I stepped back. “What are you doing?”

“Your Majesty,” the guard behind me whispered. “We need to keep moving.”

“A minute.” Theodore scowled. “The lady is about to freeze to death. She needs to warm up.”

“You’re not suggesting that you warm me.” His blood pumped through my veins but the thought of being touched, of letting him press his body to mine, felt far too intimate.

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “The other people here are clothed in metal, so yes, it would be me.”

The guards ahead of us came back. “We’re only halfway down, Your Majesty. What would you have us do?”

Theodore’s gaze lingered on me for a moment. “Go ahead. See what’s waiting for us at the bottom. If you think we would be overwhelmed, return. If not, tuck yourself away among the rocks. We’ll be down shortly.” Theodore looked to the two guards behind me. “Wait for us ten steps down.”

When we were alone, Theodore let out an enraged huff.

“I’m fine,” I said, though my body quaked. It was foolish—I knew it was—to not accept his help.

“Clearly.” His hands were propped on narrow hips. “But this incessant blood bond will not let me ignore the fact that you’re shaking. You’re cold. You’re scared—”

“Don’t you dare call me a coward again—”

He held up a hand. “I said you were scared.” In the moonlight, I could just see the sincerity that softened his eyes. “I’m scared too.”

My fingers flexed against the vase I held, but I said nothing. I couldn’t decide if knowing that he, the descendant of a Great God and king, was also scared made me feel better or worse.

“Tell me what you need.” Again, his voice was so perfectly empty of feeling, deep and resolute in his chest. But that look in his eye made me believe that he meant it.

“I need to stop shaking,” I said. He nodded and our gazes held. Then he offered me a hand. It was so warm, with calluses over his palms and the pads of his strong fingers. Guided by his steady hold, I stepped down onto the wide slab he stood upon. He took us toward the rock face. It was slightly concave, and he stepped into its curve, placing himself at my back. Neither of us spoke as he swiped at my damp hair to pile it over my shoulder. Nor did we speak when he tugged me slowly backward, into the sphere of his warmth. My body tensed when my back touched his hard chest. The sore skin there ached, but quickly, the heat of his body seemed to soothe it. He looped an arm around the front of my shoulders, and it was as if a band of sunshine bloomed over my collarbone. Slowly, carefully, he wrapped his other arm over my stomach, below the vase I held.

“Don’t spill it,” I whispered, as if he were not already handling me with the utmost care.

I didn’t think he was breathing as he gently pressed me further against his body. My twitching muscles were so exaggerated next to his steadiness. I could make out the lines and divots of his chest, his stomach. The hard press of his thighs against the back of my own. Self-consciousness leaked through me. If I could picture the intimate details of his outline, he most certainly could picture mine.

He spoke softly, lips beside my ear. “Your back. Why didn’t you tell me you were bleeding?”

“There were more important things to worry over,” I said, staring out into the darkness. “It hardly hurt compared to the binding.”

“I can’t heal the wounds with the silk stuck to it.” We stood like that, listening to the wind, and my body began to mirror Theodore’s stillness. He leaned against the rock, and I leaned against him, and for the briefest moment, I closed my eyes and imagined I lay on my stomach in the sun. That its rays sank through my skin and muscle, to my very center. It felt like the blood bond in my gut glowed.

“Are you ready?”

Theodore’s low voice jolted me. My head had fallen back against his shoulder, chin tipped up toward the stars. I jerked upright. “Yes.” I moved too quickly, trying to pull my body away from his. His arm snagged on the bottom of the vase. Water sluiced over the edge, soaking the front of me. “Shit.”

The water felt strange.

In the tub, it had sparkled over my skin and burrowed toward that dark, steady pulse in my middle. Now the water made that same place feel strained. It was as if something inside me were close to fracturing, as if the source of my power had become incongruent.

Theodore set his hands to my shoulders. “What is it?”

I shook my head, not wanting to speak what I’d felt, and started down the stairs once more. It was easier now, with Theodore’s warmth lingering over me, but it sat uneasily. Every kindness, every favor, was a debt to be repaid, and I already owed so much.

Quickly, nimbly, I moved down the stones, relying on myself alone. His boots scuffed over gravel behind me as he tried to keep up. We came upon the first Varian guard crouched around a bend. I lowered myself beside him. Theodore knelt close on my other side.

The entry yard had come into view. A wide, stacked stone gate ringed an open paddock, and beyond it stood the well-kept stable house. Torches burned on either side of the stable doors, with two more at the paddock gate. They fought to stay lit in the gusts, which made their flames strobe through the clearing. Four guards were clustered at the gate. They spoke and laughed, but the wind carried their sounds away.

“Are there only four?” I whispered over the guard’s shoulder.

“Four here. Another six or so at the entry to the mountain road.” He pointed off into the blackness between two towering crags of stone. There were more torches at their base, illuminating a small huddle of guards, but the light was faint, and Nemea’s men were dressed in armor that was the same color as the night.

I pulled in a breath and held it. Worry gnawed at me. Worry over how my tremors were returning, over getting us all down this mountain. Over Theodore and his safety.

“We need to go now,” said the guard, impatiently. “Lure the nearest men. Then I’ll retrieve the rest of the party.”

He made it sound so simple, but it felt suddenly impossible. I had no sense of my power. It was a lump of clay, and I was an untried artist. Whatever form it had taken tonight had not been because of my skill and understanding of it. I looked down at the vase of seawater. What if it wasn’t enough? What if I, in my shivering, fear-locked state, could not keep any of us from a brutal, bloody end, all because I was too craven to face a death that I’d earned?

“Imogen.” My given name on Theodore’s lips quieted my thoughts. The distant firelight flickered over his stricken features. “I’ll be right behind you.”

I could only nod. Slowly, I took the vase and began to pour the water over my chest, my shoulders. It soaked into the dark green silk and into my skin. Instantly, that string in my chest reverberated, but the strange, fractured feeling returned too. I closed my eyes and fought to focus past it. My heart galloped, breath quickened. Then the first ooze of oily power poured between my ribs. The bloody skin around my spine seemed to stretch with the pressure of my wings, but I smothered their emergence with a desperate thought and focused my intention. I wished to lure, and the darkness in my gut surged into my throat.

I stood and took a single step down.

Theodore’s fingers grasped mine. “Be careful.”

Our gazes stuck. “Yes, Your Majesty.” I had to force myself from his side, past his crouching men, down the last of the crooked stairs. The pebbles in the clearing poked into the soles of my feet. The chill, though I felt it, didn’t make me tremble now. With each step I took, however, I felt more and more amiss. I clamped my jaw against the stretching, twisting sensation in my stomach and stopped before Nemea’s guards at the edge of the torch’s orb of light.

The first guard to see me jumped. It was the pock-faced boy who’d forced me into my room earlier. I cocked my head, taking him in. He looked even younger with his black helmet removed, all round cheeks and unkempt hair. Though he reached for it, he never touched the hilt of his sword.

Silent lures had shot from my throat.

His face began to change—brown eyes bulging, cheeks turning a deep, ugly red. The wind in the clearing died completely. The torches burned steadier. The other guards slipped under my lures before they could make a sound. And one after another, the four of them choked and convulsed until they collapsed into an unmoving heap.

My eyes grew wet with tears. A swirl of nausea made its way up from my stomach. I’d not thought to kill them.

A shout echoed from the entry at the mountain road. The rest of the guards there had seen me. They assembled and panic fell through me at the sight of their swords and daggers and crossbows. I wished for darkness so no arrow could find me, and a gust extinguished the torches. I started toward them, intention on my lure once more, when an angry pain burst through my stomach. I hissed, pressing my hand over the spot, but I kept moving toward the advancing guards.

They were close enough now that my power should have stopped them, but they didn’t freeze. Though I’d sent out my lure, their bodies didn’t go slack. I squinted through the moonlit night, focusing past the way my blood raced, to see that they’d only slowed. They moved as if through water. The straining pain in my middle grew and grew. I clamped my teeth, trying desperately to keep the guards at bay.

“Imogen.” Theodore’s agonized voice lanced the darkness. It stopped me dead in my tracks.

But Nemea’s guards kept advancing, plodding yet barbarous. Teeth bared, swords raised. I stumbled backward, trying to keep space between us, but the pain was spreading through me like ink through water. I landed hard on my backside. Gravel crunched behind me as Theodore’s men ran to my aid. A scream scraped through my gritted teeth when I realized one of Nemea’s guards was already upon me. I clawed at the gravel, trying to scramble away on my knees, but the building agony in my gut made me slow.

My stomach clenched like I was going to vomit, when a searing pain lit my thigh. Nemea’s guard loomed over me, his sword cutting slowly through the outside of my leg. I could feel the cold blade deep inside my muscle, flaying it wide.

One of Theodore’s men slid to a stop above me, spraying stones with his boots. He moved so quickly, his sword arching over him and down into the guard’s extended arm. A sickening wet crack rent the air. A guttural, pleading wail. The guard’s arm came clean off at the elbow. It fell over my stomach, dark blood spurting onto my wet silk robe, the sword that had cut me still held in its clenched fist.

The rest of Theodore’s men arrived, slashing easily into the slow-moving guards. Groans rang out, the foul rip and thud of swords slicing through flesh. Bodies folded to the ground, and then Theodore was beside me, pulling me up to stand.

The pain in my stomach fled completely.

His hands were in my hair, cupping my cold face, gripping my shoulders as he took stock of me. “You’re okay. You’re okay,” he kept repeating to himself. Grooves sat between his inky brows. His face was sweat-strewn and terrified. Hard fingers swiped at the tears on my cheeks, and then he stooped and ripped aside the robe to look at my leg. “Shit.”

He hefted me up into his arms. As he ran us toward the stables, he set his lips to my ear. “I can fix it,” he promised. “You won’t even have a scar.”

“I don’t care about a Godsdamned scar,” I hissed at his lie. He set me atop a horse and climbed up behind me. “Just get me off this mountain.”

OceanofPDF.com

OceanofPDF.com

I did not often dream.

When I did, the images were fragile, broken, blurred. As if I viewed them from high above, through a veil of clouds.

But now I dreamed in lurid detail.

A faceless woman floated upon the surface of the sea, her body bobbing over the churning waves. She was naked, without hair. Where her eyes should be were seared, empty sockets. Something swam below her. Far below, where the sunlight could not reach. Like a great monster with a shriveled stomach, it frantically searched the depths with a clawed, unquenchable need. Its eyes were milky and veinous. Its skin slick and mottled with decay.

But its heartbeat was strong. It pulsed through the water and through the air. A steady thump, thump, thump of desperation. Of want.

Finally, the lurking thing strained up and up with delight, for it could sense the woman’s warmth leaking from her and desired to feast upon it.

Right before it reached her—right before I woke—I realized:

I was the woman. I was the water. I was the monster.

My eyes shot open to bleary, amber light. I did not move. I couldn’t. My body still seemed to bob atop waves, but now it hurt with such vibrant pain that I couldn’t even moan.

I rolled my head over a cool pillow. Sleep still clung like spiderwebs, but I could just make out the large room. A few ornate lanterns swayed from the ceiling, casting their light through the dark space. Everything was gilded. The walls, the intricate vines carved into the bedposts, the settee. I squinted at the figure on the far side of the room. The broad yet trim shape. The dark hair and darker gaze.

I blinked, and the king of Varya came into focus. A black lock of hair hung over his creased brow. He rifled through a box of small glass vials and as I watched him, the memories came. The strange pain in my middle that had brought me to my knees in the gravel yard of Nemea’s mountain. The slow, excruciating slice of a sword through my leg. Theodore clinging to me as we rode down the mountain atop a stolen horse. The jostling had tugged me in and out of consciousness, but I remembered the warmth of his power pouring through my bleeding thigh, the soft roll of his voice at my ear telling me to stay upright, to keep my hold on the pommel.

The bed lurched, swayed, and I realized… we were on the ship. I was on the sea. I could feel it in my body, through my pain, through the pitch and wood.

“We made it,” I rasped. Then, in the next breath, “I’m gonna be sick.”

Agatha was at my side in a rush, holding an empty washbasin below my chin. I heaved into it, coughing, then shuddered at how it flared my pain. Theodore moved himself and the box of medicines closer. The nauseating twist in my stomach eased.

“It’s the blood bond that’s making you ill,” Agatha said warily, as she ran a hand through my knotted hair. “It takes some time to settle.”

I held my throbbing head. “How much time?”

“Two days.” Lachlan and Agatha answered at the same time. Lachlan sat at the far end of the table Theodore stood beside, sharpening a dagger with a whetstone. I could see him properly now. He was wiry but imposing, with wide shoulders, light brown skin, and brown-gold hair, cropped close. There was an upward curve to the corners of his mouth and a mischievous light in his eyes.

Irritation pinched Agatha’s features. “Had you told me that you had performed a sacred blood bond with the king of Varya before walking into a horde of armed guards, I could have told you that you’d be sick. I could have told you that you’d need to keep close to one another until the bond settles. But instead, you told me nothing and nearly got yourself killed.”

“Agatha,” I groaned. “A lesson learned. The next time I frantically bind myself to a king and flee my home, I’ll make sure to run all the details past you first. That’s assuming that next time this happens, you’re not in the middle of a liaison.”

Lachlan snorted, and Agatha shot him a look that should have set him aflame. “Don’t worry,” she bit out, more to Lachlan than me, “it won’t happen again.” She swept away from the edge of the bed with the washbasin, her cheeks flushed bright. Guilt lanced through me, and I noted the strain between them. I wondered what had transpired in the short amount of time they’d been reunited.

I tried to sit up, to find a quiet way to ask Agatha what was wrong, but only managed to wince in discomfort.

“Don’t move.” Theodore’s order was low and chagrined. “You’ll make your leg bleed. It’s not properly healed yet.”

I met his icy gaze across the room and stilled. There had been a kindness to him, an attentiveness, while we’d made our way down the mountain. He’d kept a hand at my back and warmed me. He’d looked at me with something like compassion when I’d been scared. Now it was all gone. He possessed all the heat and civility of a marble statue.

A heavy rolling sound, like thunder, filled the cabin. “What is that?”

“Cannons,” Lachlan said, attention on his dagger. “They’re readying them in the very likely event that Nemea sends his ships after us. You know, since his captain was murdered, and his ward was stolen away in the night.”

His harsh hazel gaze and the derogation in his tone made it more than clear: Lachlan did not think highly of me.

“If I didn’t know better,” he went on, metal ringing with each swipe of his blade, “I’d think you were trying to take advantage of Theo. He’s always been susceptible to a damsel in distress.”

Agatha flopped down onto the settee, where she cradled her forehead in her hand. “Shut up, Lach.”

Theodore gave him an annihilating scowl, but Lachlan only raised his brows placatingly. The whetstone gave another scrape.

“Take advantage of him?” It was almost comical, to picture someone so implacable and intimidating as the king of Varya being victimized.

Lachlan looked at me like I was simple. “To make yourself queen.”

“Queen?” I blinked. “What do you… I don’t understand.”

Theodore’s deep voice was quiet, filled with a soft sort of tension. “Marriages are not performed as blood bonds on Seraf, Lach. She didn’t know.”

“Marriages!” My gaze bounced between all three of them. “We’re married?”

Theodore rubbed at his eye.

“That’s fine,” said Lachlan, clearly annoyed. “But you did. And you agreed. So now, in the eyes of the Great Gods, you’ve taken a fugitive wife, right before you’re supposed to meet your fiancée.”

“Your what?” My glare shot to Theodore. A surge of inexplicable possessiveness raced through me like venom. Color sat high on his cheeks. His full mouth was a hard, flat line. I could hardly understand my emotions—the irrational, spitting jealousy, the impulse to defend him to Lachlan. “I gave His Majesty my word that I’d have our blood bond severed. I trek to the Mage Seer the moment I land on Varian soil.”

The air seemed to thin. Slowly, Agatha raised her head from her hand. Lachlan set his dagger to the table with a deafening clack.

“You’re going to the Mage Seer?” Agatha shuddered. “For a severance?”

A chill raced through me at the devastation that suddenly weighed on her. “Yes.”

Agatha’s voice went weak, impudent. “Your Majesty—”

Lachlan held up a hand. “Now, hold on.” He gave Theodore a disbelieving look, a strained and angry tilt to his lips. “You’re not actually sending her to the Mage Seer, are you? You wouldn’t. The severance will happen in the safety of the palace.”

Theodore’s broad chest rose and fell with increasing breaths, but his features were even as ever. “The severance will happen in the Mage Seer’s hut.”

“No.” Agatha rose from the settee so quickly I flinched. She stood like a bedraggled soldier, fierce and strong. Her black curls were a wild, sea-misted halo. Dirt and large tears marred her dress. “Absolutely not.”

Theodore’s gaze narrowed. “You’re out of line, Agatha.”

“I beg your forgiveness, then, because I do not plan on ceasing,” she snapped. “Please, Your Majesty, you cannot send her there.”

“Agatha.” Lachlan’s entire countenance softened as he made his way to her side. He reached out a tentative hand, but she stepped away.

“No,” she said, resolutely. She looked pleadingly toward Lachlan. “He cannot. Tell him. He cannot do this.” Her voice wobbled with tears.

I’d never witnessed Agatha in such a state. I wanted to go to her, take her hand, but as I tried to sit taller, I realized I was naked. With a violent tug, I pulled the sheets to my chin. My mind filled with questions, with dreadful, nightmarish thoughts of this Mage Seer and her severance ritual. They fell through me like stones, collecting painfully in my gut. “Tell me what’s wrong,” I said. “Is the Mage Seer dangerous?”

Agatha gaped at me. “Is she dangerous?” She rounded on Theodore. “Shame on you.” Theodore went so still, so terrifyingly quiet, but Agatha went on. “When your father ordered that Lachlan and I sever our blood bond, he sent us to the Mage Seer with nothing but a pack of food and two horses. I nearly died in that rotting hut of hers.”

The memory seemed to grind her down. Her shoulders drooped. Her voice faltered. “The severing draught… It turns the blood black and forces it through the nose and eyes and mouth. The pain of the binding is nothing compared to the severance. Lachlan could only sit and watch as I lost blood over days on a filthy pallet, without a healer, while the Mage Seer did nothing but slither around in her putrid smoke.”

An ugly silence stretched between us all. Finally, Theodore spoke, his tone barbed and labored. “I am not my father.” He paused. Pulled in a deep breath. “I know how terrible the Mage Seer is. That is why Lady Imogen will be accompanied by a retinue of guards and a palace healer.”

“I beg you to send a rider instead.” Tears slipped down Agatha’s cheeks. “Let them bring the severing draught back to the palace. Let her endure the ritual under your care. You’re the most powerful healer in all of Leucosia.”

Tension strung through Theodore. He dropped his attention back to the vials on the table in front of him. “I can’t do that.”

Agatha gaped, her tears falling now in earnest. “You can’t?”

I felt like I was sinking. Like the new shackle I’d stepped into when I knelt before the king of Varya was tightening, cutting in, pulling me down.

Lachlan’s eyes were bright with fury. “Theo, I think—”

“You can both leave.” It was an order, slicing through the room like a whistling sword. “Now.”

Agatha reeled like she’d been struck across the face. She whirled and stormed from the room. Lachlan lingered to give Theodore a final damning look. “I’d thought you, of all people, would have chosen better than this. On all fronts.” He strode with heavy steps toward the open cabin door, then slammed it shut behind him.

Theodore stood in the quiet, pinching the bridge of his nose. The moments strained, until finally, he swiped two vials from the table and came to the side of the bed. He pulled the stopper from one with his teeth and spat it to the floor. “Drink this.”

I wished I were standing and clothed, instead of laid out over the man’s bed, but I filled my voice with all the rebuke I could manage. “That was heartless of you.”