I made it down the steps before throwing up into a swag of curtains. The sweat beading at my temples chilled, and despite the heat, I shivered. Footsteps raced after me, and I somehow knew it was Leopold. I curled into a ball, rubbing my arms and bracing against the wave of utter misery that threatened to overtake me.
It didn’t matter how small I tried to make myself. Leopold found me almost instantly. “Hazel,” he said, his voice breaking through the white noise filling my head, his fingers tracing against my shoulder blades with concern. His touch was as light as a hummingbird and just as restless.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I repeated as my stomach twisted again. I struggled to swallow the biting bile. It burned as it went back down my throat, but I would not allow myself to be sick in front of the prince. “I’m sorry.”
I wasn’t sure if I was apologizing to him or his uncle.
“Hazel,” Leopold said again, kneeling now. I turned my shoulders, trying to hide the evidence of my weak stomach. “Hazel, it’s all right. You don’t have to— Are you shaking?”
I shook my head even as I trembled.
He ran his hand across my back, harder now, as if trying to drum up warmth for me, as if the air wasn’t already as thick as sludge, sweltering and humid. It was tainted now with the coppery tang of blood.
I felt as if I couldn’t draw enough breath. I felt as if the ground had somehow flipped, somersaulting my axis and skewing my sense of equilibrium. How could the king have done this?
Baudouin I could understand. He’d incited a rebellion and waged a bloody civil war in his attempt to unseat the king.
But his wife had not.
Their young son had not.
And King Marnaigne had carried out their murders cheerfully, with all the spectacle of an operatic villain.
The memory of his deathshead washed over me, roiling my belly with more bile hot and foul.
I wanted to ground myself in the earth, wanted to rest my too-heavy, too-muddled head upon Leopold’s chest and let the waiting darkness rush up and claim me. I wanted…I wanted…
I caught myself just before I swooned against the crown prince. Flashes of lights danced across my vision, and the only thing I could make out around their blinding brilliance was my brother.
Bertie strode off the stage like a hero coming home from war. He tilted his face back and forth, basking in the golden radiance of his moment, then stooped to snatch up Baudouin’s severed head. Ashe held it aloft in triumphant jubilation, the crowd screamed King Marnaigne’s name, and my world faded to black.
“There you are,” a voice said sometime later.
I assumed it was later.
I assumed it was later and we were elsewhere, but I didn’t know for certain because my eyelids were too heavy to open. Too heavywith the last traces of groping, grasping oblivion. Too heavy and far too tender to open and see any more of the world’s horrors.
“Drink this,” the voice said, and I felt the press of a glass against my mouth.
I parted my lips, swallowing the blessed water in greedy sips. It was cool and had been sweetened with cucumber and mint, and I knew then that I must be at the palace, because where else would anyone sweeten water with cucumber and mint?
The person holding the glass let out a dry husk of a sound that I supposed was meant to be laughter. “Look at me, healing the healer.”
Leopold was beside me, gently offering me sips of water.
Leopold.
I felt the touch of his fingers on my forehead. “A fever,” he murmured too softly to be speaking to anyone but himself.
Against my better judgment, I opened my eyes and squinted at him in the chamber’s dim light. I was in my room, in my bed, and my curtains had been drawn. Leopold perched on the side of my bed, a look of grave concern darkening his face.
I blinked at the unlikely scene, certain I was hallucinating. “You can’t actually feel a fever using your fingers. Not accurately.” I struggled to arrange the pillows behind me so that I could sit up without feeling as if I were about to keel over once more.
“No?”
His irises were wide and dark, reminding me of the first time we’d met. He’d caught me sleeping then too.
“You were just holding the water. I could feel how it cooled your fingers when you touched me. Anything would feel hot to you,” I said, nodding to the pitcher at the bedside table. “Could I havesome more, please?” My limbs felt like weighted clay, incapable of movement.
