“Little queen?” His eyes opened slowly, as if that motion were all he could manage. “You’re unwell. You shouldn’t… be here.”
“Thorn, you ass! You almost died!” Valerie shouted while Roya merely blinked. “She saved you.”
Roya’s hand rose and she pushed Thorn’s damp hair back from his forehead. “Don’t leave me,” she begged, her tears flowing again. “Please don’t leave me.”
Hearing my fierce, passionate, brave Roya beg for his love disturbed me more than I could anticipate. If he refused her now, the Guild wouldn’t have to kill him. I would.
“I promise,” he began. Across the room, shouts rang out, and Thorn fell silent. I blocked the women with my body as I attempted to see what had happened.
Shit. Gullen was escaping. Altair struggled against a group of guards while the cowardly regent ran from the room alone. “Altair! Icarus, someone catch him!” I shouted. Talon went to help, but Icarus slid down the wall, his eyes dull.
I whipped back around. “Thorn, she’s been poisoned by the Guildmaster.” My heart was pounding, as if I were running for my life. “Her power healed the external wounds, but I think the poison is inside her.” His eyes shot to Roya, who was growing paler and weaker by the second. Dying as we watched. She clutched her stomach as the air filled with a terrible scent: bitter oranges, burned sugar. A strange, sour rot of vegetation.
I pointed to Icarus. “He’s her only mate. He’s bearing half the brunt of the poison in her body right now. They’ll both die soon if we don’t help them.”
“What… What do we do?” Thorn struggled to stand and support Roya, who panted and moaned, her face nearly gray.
I tried not to let my doubt show. There might be nothing we could do, and the course of action I was about to suggest could doom us all. But I had a feeling we would all rather walk with Roya on the other side then continue in this world without her, knowing we could have tried to save her. “If she has all her mates, we can share in the poison. Mitigate its effects.”
Thorn didn’t answer. Valerie stood, supporting Roya’s other side as the woman I loved fell into what I hoped was only a faint.
“Where can we take her?” I shouted.
A woman I had seen with Roya before answered in Haviran, “To the old queen’s rooms. She had a nest; it’s been empty for decades—”
“Lead us, Naari,” Thorn broke in. I spun around, shocked at the transformation. He was himself again, whole except for the devastation in his eyes. “Kavin, carry her. Valerie, Wulfram, help me with those guards, and bring Icarus when you’re done. Meet us at the nest.”
In seconds, his quiet commands were transformed into actions. Valerie, Wulfram, and Thorn fell upon the remaining guards like a wave of death, effortlessly dispatching each one. It was almost poetic, the way their blades found their homes. I would have admired their swordwork, but I had my mate in my arms and she was dying.
I ran after Naari, down long hallways and into a section of the palace that had obviously not been used in years. Dust covered every surface, coating mirrors, paintings of what might have been the previous royal family, and exquisitely built teakwood furniture. The rooms were spacious and elegant, painted in white and light green, but when the last door swung wide, I blinked at the difference.
The old queen’s nest was a small room with one covered window set high in the wall. The room measured ten paces in each direction, with only a small door to a bare bones bathing chamber opposite the entrance. The floor was almost entirely taken up by an enormous, cushioned mattress, and white blankets, sheets, and dozens of pillows in every size and shape lay to one side near the wall. Everything looked fresh and spotlessly clean, the air smelling lightly of citrus.
“You prepared the room for her?” I asked Naari.
She nodded, tears welling in her eyes. “Save her, please. For our prince. For our island.”
I nodded, but when I lay Roya down, I knew it might be too late. “Darling?” I pulled the makeshift toga away from her body. Her wounds were mostly healed, only small lines of golden-red blood trickling from a few of the deeper cuts, especially one near her shoulder. The tissue was turning necrotic. “Water!”
Naari handed me a damp cloth and a small pitcher, and went to the door to stand guard, a wicked curved machete in one hand. I wiped down Roya’s body, terrified at the strange heat and dark veining that seemed to be warring within her. By the time I had finished cleaning off the blood, her breathing was so faint and erratic as to be almost nonexistent.
I closed my eyes, resting my hands on her chest, feeling her heartbeat slowing, and wracking my brain for answers. I knew more about Omegas than any living man, and as much about herbal medicines as most apothecaries, and there had to be something in my memory that would help now.
“What do we do?” Thorn kneeled at my side, his torn and bloodied clothing matching the devastation in his eyes. The doorway filled as Altair arrived, followed by my father carrying Icarus, who looked as bad as Roya, possibly worse. Valerie hovered just outside, knives in her hands, her eyes scanning the room and the hallway outside constantly, looking for the next attack. Altair entered and kneeled on the other side of the mattress.
I took a deep breath, and another, thinking. The answer came slowly, but once it did, I knew what we had to do. “We need to give Icarus and Roya both a heavy dose of cofi root, or whatever herb you have that is most like it.” Thorn nodded, and tore open a pocket of Roya’s battered cloak, withdrawing a vial of powdered herb. “In liquid is best, but dry if you’re worried they’ll choke.”
I was aware of my father at the door, standing behind Valerie, listening, probably disapproving. He had always ridiculed my scholarly ways as not befitting a warrior or an Alpha. I ignored him. Roya was all that mattered.
“Valerie, keep giving Icarus the cofi root every hour. Thorn? Do you know the poison she has in her?”
“It’s most likely rictal powder, from the appearance of her veins. There is no known antidote.”
“Her blood is an antidote for anything,” Valerie said softly. “Can it help her? Or Icarus?”
I shook my head. “Look, it’s tainted now. Turning black inside her body, and sluggish.” Curses echoed in the small room. “Thorn, you are her first love. Omegas undergoing their cycles require safety and comfort. They have an instinctual need to build a nest, and will invite their chosen mates into it. Roya was in heat earlier, and I think she still is. She mated with Icarus, and that’s why the poison hasn’t killed her yet. He bears half the burden.”
“Or more,” Altair breathed. “How do we help them carry it?”
