Siena looks fearfully at the door, and I pull it closed, leaving only a sliver of a gap so we can hear if a guard approaches.
“Ask me what? You’re planning something, aren’t you?” Siena asks.
I don’t answer right away, as I wonder if what I’m planning is insane.
“You’re planning to save your prince,” Siena guesses.
Am I that obvious? But Siena’s spirits are up. A fire lights in her eyes, and she’s smiling. I can’t help but smile back. My plan could get us all killed, but isn’t it better to die trying to do the right thing than live the rest of our lives in terror, locked in this kitchen?
“It’ll be risky,” I warn.
“I want to help, but the guards are always watching us,” Siena says.
“I know. You know your way around plants, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Siena says, gesturing to her basket. “My father taught me how to forage when I was young.”
“And they let you pick them for the pantry?”
“Once a day, they let me into the gardens. The king keeps thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of varieties in his gardens. Why?”
“I need you to find one for me: a bell-shaped blue flower called devil’s breath. It looks like this.” On a scrap of baking parchment, using the nub of charcoal I keep in my pocket to write down recipes, I sketch the flower the marquis used on a night that feels like it was ages ago now. Another life. “It’s often used as medicine.”
Siena furrows her brow as she studies my sketch. “I might have seen it, but I’ll have to check. What do you want to do with it?”
“Find me this flower, and I’ll get us all out of here.”
Chapter Forty-One
Dietan
From the bottom of the pool, I stare up at the tiled ceiling, noticing how the ripples on the surface make the glittering tiles shift and shimmer like scales on a fish. It’s almost hypnotic, the way the patterns writhe and dance with the movement of the water. Underneath, sound is a faraway hum, except for the heavy thrum of my heartbeat in my ears. Everything feels distant and removed, so peaceful that I think, maybe—gods willing—that now I can finally die. Maybe this time, they’ll let me go. I can fall into sweet oblivion.
But no. The hand pressing on my chest yanks me upward by my shirt, dragging me out of the water just before I drown. I cough violently, my chest heaving as the perfumed healing water gushes out of my mouth in a desperate spray. The air burns my lungs as I suck it in.
Then a fist connects with the side of my face, sharp and brutal, breaking the skin inside my cheek. The copper tang of blood blooms across my tongue. I see stars. A cascade of white-hot light explodes behind my eyelids as my head snaps sideways. I reel, but the steady hands holding me up don’t let me fall. My body tries to shield itself, instinctively jerking my hands up to protect my face, but they’re bound behind my back.
Useless.
I groan, low and guttural, frustration and pain pooling into one sound.
Another blow. I don’t see it coming. The crack of the strike sends pain radiating through my skull, so instant and hot it feels like I’ve been branded.
The guard holding me up digs his knuckles into my chest, fisting my shirt so tightly I hear the seams threatening to tear. I tense, flinching under the pressure, but there’s nowhere for me to go.
“Again.”
Namreth.
His voice echoes off the walls, cold and inescapable like the prison I’m trapped in. The sound slices through the dimness of the windowless room, through the pain. It feels burned into my bones.
I’m shoved underwater again. The healing waters rush over me, cool and tingling, washing away the bruises and swelling. My mouth, sore and swollen, heals in seconds. The split skin inside my cheek smooths over as if the wound never existed. It’s almost comforting, almost serene—but I know it won’t last.
My chest burns with the need for air as innumerable moments pass. I look up at the ceiling again, at the shimmering scalelike tiles, my thoughts drifting somewhere far away.
Home. If I were home, I’d be sitting in the library with a book, maybe listening to the waves crash outside the window. Or I’d be at one of those royal balls with Jared and Marcus—the ones I always found so intolerable and dull.
It’s true that we never realize what we have until it’s gone.
