He looked like a husk, skin stretched taut over brittle bone, cheeks sunken so deeply they cast hollows in the torchlight. His hands, once rumored to grip sword hilts tighter than any of his sons, were curled against his chest like withered leaves. Each shallow breath rattled in his throat, barely audible.
Meri moved forward first. She didn’t flinch, but I saw the flicker in her eyes. The sadness.
Zander followed, and for the first time since I’d known him, he looked… lost.
“This isn’t possible,” he said, voice rough. “He didn’t look like thistwo days ago.”
Meri’s fingers hovered over the king’s chest, her magic glowing faintly gold as she scanned him. Her brows drew together. “He’s been… drained,” she whispered.
“Drained?” I echoed.
“Not by natural illness,” she said. “This is decay. Something isleechinghim. Stealing strength, piece by piece.”
Zander took a staggering step back. “Who could do this?”
“Fae magic,” Meri said quietly. “Dark-rooted. Possibly blood magic… or worse, something older.”
My stomach knotted.
Someone inside this castle was unmaking a king.
And doing it slow enough to ensure every son fought for a dying throne.
Zander stood at the edge of the king’s bed, fists clenched at his sides, his breathing shallow as he stared at the crumbling figure that had once ruled an empire.
Meri’s hands hovered above the king’s chest, the soft gold of her magic pulsing like a heartbeat. She didn’t speak for several seconds, her brow furrowed deep in concentration.
“Can you stop it?” I asked her quietly. “The… decay?”
Her lips thinned, and she didn’t look away from her work. “Maybe. But not with standard healing. This isn’t rot of the body, it’s rot ofessence.Something is draining him at the root. A poison would be easier. And kinder.”
The doors banged open behind us.
“Itoldyou it was the Order,” Theron’s voice snapped through the chamber like a whip. “He was poisoned. Likely during that last summit when the envoy visited from Uriden.”
Zander’s head snapped up. “You don’t know that.”
“I don’t have to,” Theron replied, striding toward the bed with his ever-present guards in tow. “Who else has the knowledge and reason? The Order has always worked in shadows. This is their doing.”
Meri straightened slowly, turning toward him. “With all due respect,Your Grace,I have seen dozens of poisons in my time, and I can heal them all.”
“Thenwhyisn’t he healed?” Theron demanded, his gaze flicking to the king’s wasted frame.
“Because this isn’t poison,” she snapped back, her voice sharper than I’d ever heard. “Not in the traditional sense. Poison kills the body. This is somethingolder.This eats at the magic inside the king. The very thing that feeds his fae heritage.”
I held my breath. So did Zander.
Theron sneered. “Convenient that a healer suddenly can’t do her job.”
“Icould,if I wasn’t being second-guessed by a boy who can’t tell the difference between venom and spell rot,” Meri fired back, stepping between him and the bed. “If you truly cared foryour father’s life, you’d listen instead of looking for someone to blame.”
Theron’s expression darkened, but he didn’t lash out. Not here. Not with the king between them.
His gaze cut to Zander. “I hopeyoucan see what’s happening. The Order has infiltrated more than we realized. They’ve taken our father. They’ll take more if we don’t act.”
Zander didn’t reply. Not yet. He looked between the healer… and his brother… and then down at the withered shell of the man who’d raised them both.
Something deeper was happening here.
