There were dozens of excuses: we’d stripped the greenhouse bare to make his cure, the new seeds hadn’t sprouted as quickly as they should have, the wrong oil had been delivered and my batch had been contaminated. I used every pretense I could muster, buying myself time as I scrambled for the true cure.
I could feel the king growing impatient with me, hear his sentences turn terse and sharp. But—for now—his attention was divided, because while Châtellerault writhed and shuddered, Baudouin and his army continued their march toward the capitol.
Upon resuming his daily duties, Marnaigne had quickly instituted a draft, calling every healthy young man into service. Tented campsites began to bloom outside the capitol walls as squadrons were formed and the king’s armies began to take shape.
The recruits trained at all hours of the day, running drills and exercises in splendid black-and-gold uniforms. They made such a sweeping, heroic picture, young women would often line the parapets to watch them, setting up chairs and blankets on which to picnic and gawk.
But even the threat of war couldn’t completely overshadow the Shivers.
One afternoon, a cluster of spectators began to twitch, setting off a terrible reaction. Many present tried to herd them back to their houses. One girl refused to go, saying she wasn’t sick, saying it was a joke, but the frightened crowd surged around them, throwing the most ardent protesters from the wall before guards could intervene.
Mobs began to form, set on barricading the sick in their homes. Some bolder members outright killed anyone they suspected of being ill, claiming it was the only way to keep the disease from spreading.
I felt the horror of every story in the marrow of my bones.
These deaths were because of me, because I’d not found thecure.
Each day I woke before the sun and worked well past midnight, until my muscles screamed and wanted to give out, quivering so badly that a footman once thought I’d contracted the Shiversmyself. He’d raced down the halls, shouting the terrible news to all who could hear.
Still, my effort wasn’t enough.
I tried countless combinations of medicines and herbs, testing the tonics on samples of the Brilliance secretly delivered to the palace. Glass plates lined nearly every inch of flat surface in my workspace. I’d filled half a dozen notebooks with observations of eachtrial.
One day I was studying a round of samples, trying to will at least one of them into responding to a new tonic, when Bellatrice’s laughter rang out brightly, catching my attention. I rubbed my pained eyes, my concentration shot, and peeked out into the corridor.
A group of courtiers and the princess, all bedecked in gowns and garments so dazzling it hurt my eyes to look upon them, were coming down the hall. I couldn’t tell if they were on their way out or in. Several of the young men wobbled as they walked, and every one of the girls was in a fit of giggles or tears. They smelled of pomanders—citrus, clove, and other spices—the only indication that a plague had besieged the country and that the streets were overflowing with the bodies of the dead.
I watched in disbelief as they tottered by, laughing uproariously and waltzing past me without a single glance. I rolled my eyes and began to turn back to the workroom but stopped short.
This was all so pointless. Without my gift I felt as though I was stumbling in the dark, slamming my head over and over again into a wall I could not see. Nothing I’d done had worked. Nothing I’d done had given even a hint at the cure. There was nothing I’d do tonight that couldn’t be done tomorrow. I’d strip out of my damp dress, pat my poor, neglected dog on the head, and then getwhatever sleep I could before waking with a panic attack and starting it all over again.
I closed the door, feeling impossibly low. I hated this time of night. Of morning. Of whatever liminal hell this was.
“Is that you, healer?”
Leopold’s voice stopped me in my tracks, and before I turned around to face him, I took a deep, centering breath.
“Your Royal Highness.”
He was neatly camouflaged against a marble column, all black velvet and gold buttons. His cravat was left casually untied, giving him a careless air I didn’t doubt he’d spent half an hour mastering.
Since our carriage ride back from the Rift, I’d not seen much of Leopold, and while I wanted to remember that moment of intimacy—his confession to liking my freckles, to admiring my whole authentic self—his public behavior didn’t do much to assist in that memory.
“What in the name of the gods are you wearing?”
I glanced down. I’d been covered up in a linen apron all day, but my shirt was still stained with streaks of green, and the starch of its collar had steamed away hours before. My skirt was a serviceable gabardine, thick enough to keep any wayward fluids from my skin. Compared to the shimmering nymphs who had just passed by with lithe, exposed limbs and painted lips, I felt impossibly dowdy. Their cheeks had been flushed with high spirits and anticipation, not a roaring hearth and the weight of an entire country’s expectations.
I wondered what it would be like to be so careless and carefree, to dance past the dead and the dying and not feel compelled to do a single thing to stop it.
“One might ask the same of you,” I threw back.
I was frustrated; I was so frustrated. With the painted courtiers,with the king who’d trapped me in this nightmare, with my godfather and his untouchable silence, but mostly with myself. I’d been the one to stumble into this mess. I was the one who couldn’t forge her way out of it.
I could tell by the dilation of Leopold’s pupils that I could say whatever I wanted to him tonight, say it in whatever tone I wished, and he wouldn’t recall a bit of it come dawn, and I lashed out with an angry spitefulness I didn’t know I was capable of unleashing.
“You are aware there’s a war going on? And a plague? I know you spend most of your days in a drunken stupor, but you have heard whispers of these rather important events, yes?”
Leopold tilted his head, receiving my scorn with an infuriatingly placid smile. “You’re upset with me.”
