“I know, I know. I’m sorry if I sounded curt.” Vi sighed.
“Answer honestly now, princess,” Andru advised. “You may not have a chance when we return home.” Hewason her side—she was sure of it.
Vi searched for an answer to the question—anhonestanswer. Everything she could think of to say sounded as though she was channeling her best public princess face. But they were right. This might be the only opportunity she had to answer as just Vi—not the princess, not the heir, but Vi Solaris.
“Home is a funny thing…” she said, finally. “I don’t really know where home is or what it will look like. I have dreams, ideas, but nothing concrete.”
“But it’s not here?”
“Sehra has been… kind, most of the other Northerners as well… All right, hit or miss sometimes with them—not that I blame them, given how recently the war was, all things considered… But overall, yes, they’ve been kind. And Ellene is like the sister I never had.” Vi’s eyes landed on the girl in question. She was laughing, full-bellied and head tilted back, as Darrus spun her in time to the music. “But Ellene is the only one who could make this feel like home. Everyone else has always maintained a level of distance; they see me as Southern. I don’t look like them, or talk like them, and trying to would be nothing short of offensive. I know that without my tutors telling me as much.
“But I know the South won’t feel like home either, if I’m honest. I think it’ll be the closest thing—because my real family is there. I’ll finally live with them, come to truly know them, for better or worse. And if family isn’t home, then what is?”
“You’re right, family is important,” Jayme said. There was something almost wistful in her tone. “Perhaps theonlything that’s important.”
“Agreed.” Vi stood, ending the conversation. She didn’t want to talk about their families, or philosophical homes, or worry about what it would be like when she returned south. She wanted to try to enjoy what little time she had left. Her life was already changing faster than she could fully comprehend. There was work to be done tomorrow, but today she could just enjoy herself. “Want to dance, or mill about the market stalls? Or are you still too sensitive after your last cheese failure?”
Jayme chuckled and took a long drink of her cider, downing what remained in one gulp. “I think my constitution has improved enough. Walking a bit sounds lovely.”
“Are you coming, Andru?” Vi asked.
“I think I’ll stay here, just watch. I like being out of the crowds.”
“Sure thing. We’ll get you another cider before we come back.” Vi gave him a smile, one that was returned, before walking away.
Just as they started down the wide steps toward the ground together, a scream shattered the festivities.
Chapter Thirty
A man raninto the square, crazed and wailing. Behind him raced three others in the same terrifying, long-beaked masks Vi had seen Darrus wearing the night she’d escaped to the ruins.
The diseased man’s head drifted back and forth, mouth slightly parted. It had that same sickening sway that the sick noru had possessed, as though the tendons in his neck had gone slack and the pain of the awkward movement wasn’t even registering to him. His eyes were glossed over, completely white, shining red lines pulsing outward from their centers. His skin around the angry veins of magic had turned hard and glossy, almost like a pale stone was protruding from his dark flesh. The outline of the diseased tissue was straining against the healthy skin, cracking and opening into sores that oozed globs of white.
“No one touch him!” one of the men wearing the plague masks commanded.
The oozing man looked around, ready to dart again. Sehra stepped forward from the crowd. With a raise of her hand, four walls of stone bars imprisoned him. He immediately darted against them, straining madly against his prison.
Vi swallowed hard, trying to push back the first vision of her father and the man in the cage. For all she wanted to look away, this was not another vision. This was not her father in a distant land before a foreign queen. This was not an end of days, dangerously removed from her here and now.
These were the people she was responsible for and the disease that was killing them slowly.
“There’s another round of outbreaks flaring up!” one of the women lifted her plague mask to shout. “Should anyone feel ill or notice any strange sores, please immediately report to the clerics at the infirmary.”
“I would like to recommend everyone return home and regroup with their families,” Sehra announced. “In the interest of public health, we will end the festivities early. Please listen to all instructions from the clerics and thoroughly check yourselves for any signs of the disease.”
There was murmuring and for a brief moment it sounded as if there was going to be dissent at the idea. Then, a scream. All eyes jerked in the direction of a woman.
She held out her arm, scratching at something. Scratching to the point of drawing blood. From where Vi stood, she could only see healthy skin. But perhaps there was something there. Or perhaps panic made people mad.
“I think I have it. I think I have it!” she wailed.
Then, someone else. “Wait, is this one? My skin feels tough here… I think I have it too!”
The man in the stone cage gave a guttural growl, gripping the bars and snarling like an animal. Vi knew what he was going to do next, but that didn’t stop the horror at seeing him pull his head back and smash it into the stone. It was the same as the noru, the same as the sick man the queen of the Crescent Continent had shown her father.
“We should go back to the fortress.” Jayme was close now, a hand on the hilt of her sword. Vi realized that chaos was beginning to break out.
“You’re right, let’s get Ellene.” They began trying to weave through the crowd as quickly as possible.
