Sweeping one leg behind me, I sank to one knee and lowered myhead, feeling miserably uncoordinated. “Your Majesty,” I repeated, then bobbed back up.
There was no response. He appeared to be studying his fingers, picking at a hangnail.
I hoped it was a hangnail.
“Your Majesty?”
He flicked aside a bit of something I’d rather forgot I saw and turned to us. “Is this the girl they said would cure me? The one who lives with Death?”
Aloysius nodded.
As King Marnaigne stood, his robe parted, revealing just how far the disease had spread. “So you’ve come to gape upon your fallen monarch. Well…what do you think?” He threw back his arms, showing more affected area.
I tilted my head, trying to make sense of what my eyes saw.
Was that…gold?
He started to laugh, a bitter, red sound, and shook his head. He turned to Aloysius. “She says nothing. Is she mute? A simpleton? Struck dumb by all of this?” The robe came off then, leaving him completely naked and exposing the full extent of his sickness.
I wanted to take a step back but held my ground.
“I’m told she’s quite gifted, Your Majesty. Blessed by the Dreaded End.” Aloysius nudged me forward, but my feet would not budge.
Marnaigne scoffed. “What a blessing. Go on and look, then, girl. Then run. They all run. The maids, the doctors, even that damned farce of a seer. Everyone runs.”
If it was true, I certainly couldn’t fault them. In all the books Merrick had plied me with, I’d never come across anything like this.
The king’s body…shivered.
Series of muscles spasms twitched around the landscape of his flesh, causing fingers to twitch, shoulders to tic. As I watched, hisside began to jerk, as if being tugged on a line.
The king rubbed at it irritably, softly at first, massaging the muscles, then with firmer fingers. He pushed into the skin harder and harder as the twitching continued, finally raking his fingernails over the spot until the skin broke open, releasing an oily fluid that was neither blood nor bile.
I wanted to step forward to better see it, but something continued to hold me back. This fluid lookeddangerous.
Feeling the oil run down his rib cage, Marnaigne swore and swiped at it, smearing it across his torso, where it shimmered like gold luster. Another tic began, this time along the biceps of his left arm, and he began scratching there, repeating the process.
I felt the king watching me, gauging my reaction. Waiting for me to turn and run, like the other healers and charlatans promising cures.
After a long moment, I took a step forward.
“When did you first begin to feel as though something was off?” I asked, unpacking a satchel. I spread the tools over a credenza, keenly aware of how their surgical steel clashed against the opulent mother-of-pearl top.
We were in the king’s private study.
Marnaigne lay stretched out across the large table at its center, completely naked save for a plush towel covering his groin.
Servants had rushed forward to drape a canvas cloth over the polished mahogany before the king had lain down. The fabric wasnow smeared with gold and scarlet as weeping fluids dripped down Marnaigne’s body, creating a macabre painting.
“A month ago, perhaps a little more.” He closed his eyes, breathing out a sigh.
I lifted one of his arms, watching as the muscles twitched, leaping to life of their own volition. Marnaigne had already scratched the skin raw, and more of the shimmering gold trickled out. It was a thin, viscous fluid—like diluted paint—and was uncomfortably warm beneath my gloved hands.
He winced as I pressed into his biceps, forcing more fluid to well up. I rubbed it between my fingertips, marveling at its iridescent hue. Nothing in the human body should ever be that color.
“I’d been in my council chambers, discussing the skirmishes in the north.” He paused. “Have you…have you heard anything about my brother? It’s been so long since I’ve left the palace. I never know what people around town are saying.”
I shrugged helplessly.
