Leopold obliged, even bringing it to my lips for me.
“Thank you,” I said, falling back into the nest of pillows.
“So whatisthe best way to check for a fever?” he asked, keeping hold of the glass, waiting for me to need it again. “In case my skills in the medical arts should ever be called into service. I think I may have a promising career before me.”
I studied him, unable to reconcile my initial memories of Leopold with the prince who sat before me now. He was a puzzle piece worn too out of shape to ever slide back into his intended position. “The best way foryou,” I teased, “would be to call in a healer and have them take it for you.”
He smiled but waited.
“The inside of your wrist,” I finally said, relenting. “Its own temperature is more stable, letting you actually feel the changes in others.”
Wordlessly, he reached out and laid his wrist over my forehead. His touch was far more tender than I would have ever given him credit for. “You still feel warm to me,” he said after a long and charged moment had passed.
“Heatstroke,” I diagnosed. “I can’t believe I fainted.”
“It was quite a shock. The executions,” he said, gently. “It’s not surprising you swooned.”
I shook my head and instantly regretted it. “I’m made of far tougher stuff than that.”
“You don’t have to be,” he pointed out. “I’ve no doubt you’ve seen more than your fair share of things, terrible things. But”—he gestured around my suite of rooms—“there’s no one else here now. No one else ever need know.”
I shifted uneasily, glad to realize I was still in my formal gown and hadn’t been undressed in my unconscious state. Even so, I pulled the coverlet up over my chest, feeling far too exposed.
“Thank you for taking care of me in my…absence,” I said before adding, “and for your discretion.”
“It’s a very hard thing to see.”
“Watching someone die?”
“Watching lives be taken against their will,” he corrected me.
The memory of my father’s face flickered through my mind, and all I could see was his expression of shocked horror as the end came rushing over him. His was the first life I’d ever taken. He had not gone down easily.
“When I first saw it happen on the front—a soldier right beside me was struck across the throat with shrapnel—I couldn’t stop screaming.” Leopold licked his lips, and his voice was strained and drawn too thin. “Sometimes I think I’m screaming still.”
“I’m sorry,” I heard myself murmur, but was too caught up in a haze of remembrance. Mama had asked to be released, had smiled as she drank the potion I’d mixed, but the others…
Yes, those had been very hard things to see.
“You apologize too much,” Leopold noted. “You didn’t dress me in a uniform. You didn’t send me into battle.”
“I’m sorry all the same,” I said, realizing that he was wrong and that my actions inadvertently had done exactly that. If I’d not saved Marnaigne, if I’d let Baudouin storm his way to the throne…how many lives would still be here?
But how many lives did your actions save?
There was no good answer to either question.
“Did today really happen?” I asked, feeling impossibly small. “Did the king actually…?”
Leopold nodded.
“He’d told me he was going to offer clemency. Yesterday. He said he wanted to show mercy. To offer forgiveness. When I left him with Margaux, he was ready to…” I paused.
Margaux had come in after our talk.
Margaux had kept him behind closed doors, discussing something so late into the afternoon that the king had nearly missed the grand dinner he’d arranged for Leopold’s return. I’d thought it odd at the time but had chalked up his tardiness to all the many dignitaries visiting, the many things I’m sure he was busy with.
What if…
