I pressed the back of my hand to his brow, dabbing at the damp. Hewinced and shuddered.
“Jonas.” When I touched his cheek, his stronger grip snatched my wrist, dragging me over the top of him when he rolled onto his back.
I let out a shriek when his eyes snapped open. Black as the deepest sea, empty and ominous with his mesmer. I didn’t have a frightening thought, so where was the nightmare?
“Don’t.” The word was rough, broken. “Don’t touch her.”
“Jonas.” I clasped his face. “Can you hear me? It’s Skadi.”
His features pinched, but the darkness of his eyes looked straight through me. “Let her go.”
Gods. He wasn’t truly awake.
Panic tangled in my throat when all at once his hands fell away, and he went still. Those haunting black eyes remained pinned on the ceiling. His chest hardly rose in a breath.
“Jonas!” I shook him. Nothing. “Gods, wake up.” One palm patted his burning cheek. My voice cracked. “Please, wake up. Dammit.”
He was deathly still, but his skin burned. Healers. He needed a healer. One of the Mediskis.
I tumbled from the bed, tripping on the edge of the quilt, but hastened to my feet and sprinted from his chamber.
“Dorsan!” I pounded on my guard’s door, frantically closing my robe. “Dorsan, wake up!”
Dorsan opened the door in a frenzy, hair askew, and topless. The most disheveled I’d ever seen the man.
“There’s something terribly wrong with the prince. He’s . . . he’s ill, or . . . I don’t know. Go fetch a Mediski alver, a Mediski.”
Dorsan might’ve held a bit of resentment for being the guard charged with stepping into a new kingdom, but he was loyal to the marrow. No hesitation, not even a moment’s pause to dress, he nodded and hurried down the corridor.
Before he rounded the corner, another man nearly crashed into him.
“Sander.”
The second prince was breathless, his own eyes darkened, and his steps were swift. “Where’s Jonas?”
“He’s in there, something . . . something’s wrong.”
Sander explained nothing and shoved into his brother’s room. As though he knew what to expect, the second prince clambered onto the bed and started shredding quilts off his brother’s overheated body. “Come on, Jo, snap the hells out of it.”
“What’s happening?”
Sander didn’t stop working, keeping a thin linen over Jonas, and rushed to a small bowl with cool water for washing the face and hands. He dipped a small cloth inside.
“Can you get me more of these?” He looked to me. “It helps to cool him.”
Hands trembling, I followed Sander’s orders, soaking linen cloths and helping arrange them on Jonas’s head, neck, and arms.
“Sander.” My voice quivered. “What’s happening to him?”
His brother sat back on his knees, lifting his ominous dark gaze to me. “Jonas is sometimes attacked by his own mesmer.”
“What!”
“He gets trapped in a deep fear that becomes a nightmare, then burns as a fever.”
Unknowingly, I curled a hand around my husband’s limp palm. “Is it . . . dangerous?”
“Yes. If we do not cool him, it’s possible he won’t be free of the attack.”
