There’s a practice common in war, where doctors are few and healing legacies fewer, she admitted.An ambric device known as a timbre.
I’d never heard of such a thing before. In the Dusklands where I was raised, the only real medicine was prayer. At Coeur d’Or, there had always been at least one legacy in residence with a healing ability—Vida and her brother, Mender, had both possessed the gift of knitting bones and sealing wounds. Besides, the most serious complaints at court were usually bad hangovers and broken hearts.
It keeps a person alive, up to a point. But it’s unpredictable for legacies. There tend to be … consequences.
Like what?
She shrugged.Sometimes the cure we need isn’t the cure we want.
For a while, I’d hoped a better solution could be found. But the medics and scholars I’d summoned from the lower city weren’t more help. And after a few days of examinations, Sunder had fixed me with a smile like venom and said:
I’m alive, demoiselle. But if you keep letting them poke and prod me, we’ll be taking bets on whether they can kill me before I kill them. And my money’s on them.
So he’d gotten his timbre and I’d sent them all away. And Sunder was right—he was alive. For now.
“Does it hurt?” I whispered, stupidly.
“Of course ithurts,” Sunder snarled. He pressed his hand to the timbre and flinched when it pulsed brighter.
Waves of pain radiated from the device, digging grooves along his hip bones and raising the veins on his forearms. He hissed and curled forward. His pupils were blown wide and dark, nearly blotting out the green of his irises. When they met mine, his desperation was like an arrow through my skull.
“Just breathe.” I reached for him, but he flinched away. I let the hand drop, guilt and relief souring my stomach. I wasn’t going to push it. I’d learned too well what it felt like when a boy whose legacy was pain couldn’t control it any longer. Because that’s what the timbre had done to him—even as it saved his life, the ambric had attached to his legacy and amplified it, feeding into his own powers yet flooding him with agony. He’d lost nearly all control of his abilities. Instead of being able to deal pain with a thought, he hadbecomepain. It was tearing him apart from the inside out.
And it was my fault.
“Just breathe.”
He gave a curt nod and took a shaking breath. I inhaled too, counting as I did.
“One … two … three … hold.”
He blew out a lungful of air. A whisper of tension slipped off the hard line of his shoulders.
“Again. One … two … three … hold.”
I don’t know how long we stood like that, face-to-face yet miles apart, counting breaths and tallying regrets. Sunder finally calmed, his muscles unclenching as the livid lines striping his torso slid back to the ambric timbre, which dulled and winked dark. His shoulders slumped, and his hand dropped away from his stomach. I shifted my feet, suddenly awkward.
“Your shirt,” I said, to fill the yawning silence. “It’s ruined.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He dropped the shredded fabric to the floor. He ran a hand through his sweat-damp hair, and slouched toward the bed. “I’ll send for more tomorrow.”
He slumped into bed, flinging his head back against the pillows and clenching his eyes shut. I watched him for a long moment; the troubled line between his straight brows, the ragged ends of his too-long hair, the uneven pulse leaping in his throat. I gathered my dressing gown around my shoulders and crept toward the door.
“Rest well,” I whispered, with my hand on the knob.
The door had nearly swept shut behind me when Sunder’s voice drifted across the room.
“Demoiselle.” A long silence made me think I’d dreamed his voice, but then: “Do you want to stay?”
His words brushed my heart with translucent colors. Yes, I wanted to stay. Scion, I wanted to stay so badly it was like a laceration in my chest. I wanted to climb into that bed and fit myself into the circle of his arms. I wanted to touch him without feeling like it might kill us both. I wanted to kiss him and forget.
I had once reviled him for his legacy, for his inborn ability to cause pain with a touch. But it was I, in the end, who had hurt him. It might be the ambric timbre radiating agony through his body, but sometimes it felt like I had held the knife to his stomach and slid the blade home.
“Please?”
The word was barely audible, but it undid me. I crossed the dusk-lit room on quiet footsteps. I slid beside him beneath the mountain of blankets and furs, feeling the feverish heat unspooling off his skin. He used to be so cold. Beneath the familiar crisp bite of genévrier and frost, he smelled like sweat and something else—something dark and metallic that lingered on my tongue. He turned on his side to face me, lifting a hand toward my face. I suppressed the urge to flinch. He laughed, but it rang harsh as a tarnished bell.
“I wouldn’t dare touch the Duskland Dauphine without asking permission.”
