“You’ll have your choice of assistants, apprentices, however many you need.”
I frowned. “I usually work alone….”
“And you’ll continue to, with me, with the children—though Holy First please, never let them get ill—but you’ll want to train others in how to administer your cure.”
“My cure?” I repeated. My head felt like a kaleidoscope spun out of control.
The king nodded. “For the Shivers. Now that you’ve solved its mystery, we’ll need to spread word throughout the capitol, throughout the country.” His smile was painfully bright, cutting into me like a knife. “You’re going to save thousands, Hazel. What more could a healer ask for?”
Itwasthe very thing I’d wanted to do, the thing I’d used to justify so many of my recent actions. I’d ignored the deathshead and kept the king alive to be used as a glorified test subject, telling myself the cure would save so many.
And now he was giving me the opportunity, the platform and reach, to do all that and more. What morecouldI ask for?
But there wasn’t a cure. Not one I could replicate. I’d cheated and used one of my candles, giving Marnaigne a new, illness-free life. I couldn’t do that again and again, with every stricken person in Martissienes.
No.
A cure, a real cure, would need to be discovered.
And soon.
Chapter 41
The workroom was hot, theair thick with steam and humidity.
I pushed aside a loose lock of hair, feeling as wilted as the leaves I fed into the boiling pots.
My back ached. My arms ached. My head throbbed.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten a full night’s rest.
Since moving over to the family’s wing of the palace, I’d been given an arsenal of supplies, the finest that Marnaigne’s money could buy. My workroom was lined with medical texts and treatises. Brand-new pots and pans, vials and stoppers, mortars and pestles. A whole articulated skeleton stood in the corner, its bones having been forcibly donated by some poor soul who’d met their end on the executioner’s block.
It had been a month since I’d saved the king.
A month since he’d appointed me court healer and promised the country I’d soon be saving them all.
An entire month had gone by, and I still hadn’t come up with the cure.
The Shivers had spread through Châtellerault with devastating momentum. Whole households fell ill overnight. Servants woke to find their lords and ladies fallen into contorted messes of golden, twitching limbs. Marquises came down for breakfast only to discover their entire staff had died, leaving behind pools of blackened fluids no one dared touch.
I suddenly had my pick of patients to examine, but every time I brought my hands to their faces and cupped their cheeks, I saw nothing. No cure, no sparkling beacon showing me the way toward salvation, nothing.
My gift was gone.
Merrick had done as he’d promised and taken care of my ghosts. I no longer had to worry about coming across their staggering forms in unguarded moments. I no longer heard their scratching pleas for admittance. I no longer had to worry about my memories being stolen.
But something inside me had changed with their removal.
Merrick had taken my ghosts, but also, it seemed, my gift.
I tried everything I could think of to summon my godfather but was only met with stony silence. I understood: he was mad; he needed time to cool off.
But time was something I didn’t have.
Every day for nearly a month, the king asked for updates on my progress, asked when I expected to have the cure ready to send out.
And every day I lied to him.
