Ten percent and falling.
One foot at a time. Grit your teeth through the pain. Grind them into dust if you must. Showing weakness is how you get tossed aside as worthless. Now the right foot. And then the left. Careful. Don’t let the spasms tumble you down the stairs. Hold the wall. It’s your hand that’s slippery, not the stone. You’re drenched in sweat. Cold sweat. And tears. Don’t let him see. You’re almost there.
Five percent and falling.
“Elizabeth?”
“I said I’m fine,” she choked out. “Just tired. I need to rest. I’ll see you in the morning. Don’t wait for me for breakfast. I might sleep past noon.”
Her stomach gurgled. She was definitely going to vomit. She lurched down the corridor, each excruciating step less stable than the one before.
There it was. Her bedchamber. She pushed open her door and banged it shut behind her, locking it with one hand as the sword fell limply from the other and clanged to the stone floor.
Zero percent.
Lights out.
22
Elizabeth awoke with a gasp. She kept her eyes shut tight. Slowly, carefully, gingerly, she began the inch-by-inch inventory ritual. She started with her toes. Not a full wiggle—a slight, experimental flex.
Her knees twitched in response, which caused her hip to jerk, which caused her lower back to grip her in the sharp talons of a vicious muscle spasm.
Perfect. Splendid.
She didn’t bother checking the rest of her body. She just lay there, concentrating on evening out her breaths, in through her mouth, out through her nose, slow, steady. There. Like that. She would get through this. She always did.
She cracked open one eye. Early morning sun streamed through the windows. She’d survived the night. Somehow.
Her fingers flopped at her sides, then found something light and smooth and sticky. Her flask of gin. Empty. She’d probably guzzled its contents in one swallow.
Now there was nothing to take the edge off. Her head was pounding, her mouth thick, and her body ached as though she’d spent the night being beaten with a mallet.
It was tomorrow, then. Twelve or more hours of semi-consciousness had slipped away. The bedchamber door was locked tight. She vaguelyrecalled several knocks at it, intermittently. And a voice. Probably Stephen’s. She’d called out that she was fine. Unless she’d dreamed the interactions.
She forced open the other eye. The high stone ceiling greeted her. Relentless gray. Cold. Pitted. Unfeeling. God, she hated this castle. Why had she ever thought she liked castles?
A few minutes passed. Or an hour.
She tried her toes again, slower this time. Her knees tensed, but didn’t flinch. Which meant her hips stayed stable, and the muscles of her back didn’t rebel against her.
Good. An excellent sign. Moving her toes meant she was at fifteen percent Elizabeth. Sure, it sounded like a lot less than fifteen percent, until you factored in that she’d moved her toeswithout pain. That was the key. If she took it slow, she might get up to twenty percent today, or twenty-five. Maybe even thirty.
The problem was, holding still only tempted her muscles to stiffen. The more she babied her limbs, the more vehemently they reacted when she tried to use them. On the other hand, doing too much too fast was the quickest way to drop back to zero. The trick was to do the gentlest of stretches. As constant of motion as she could stand, without pushing her body too far. Coaxing it back to life. Limbering one joint, one muscle at a time.
It was a good plan in theory. Backed by years of firsthand experience. It was also boring as bloody hell. Lying here, doing nothing. Stretching her toes, testing her wrists.
Usually her upper body was all right. But not her lower back. Her hips were often a mess, and the knees not so great, but the rest of her often returned to form within a day or so of the first onset of a flare-up.
She tested the theory by moving one arm, then the other, then raising them toward the ceiling. Everything was fine until she liftedher shoulders a little bit. Her back decided to take umbrage with the movement. She sucked in a sharp breath and let her arms fall back to her sides.
Bloody hell. She was helpful when swashbuckling and worthless when convalescing. There was nothing Elizabeth hated more than waking up like this.
Ordinarily, she could go reasonably long stretches between flare-ups, but the castle was physically challenging. It had only been a matter of time. There were countless stairs, low overhangs, crooked steps, uneven floors. Stretching, crouching, crawling, hammering, twisting. A bloody swordfight.
And now she couldn’t do any of it. She was letting Miss Oak down. Letting the whole family down.
Letting Stephen down.
