Did they already suspect her trickery, somehow?
“Your father mentioned that you have some chronic health concerns. We have our own doctors here, and they need to be familiar with you and your…conditions. Or did you have a problem with us trying to help you?”
She shook her head; to do anything else in that moment would have been asking for trouble, and she already had enough trouble to sort through.
“That’s what I thought.” He stepped closer. Cupped her chin. Lifted her gaze to his. The warmth of his fingers and the ice of his eyes set off a multitude of conflicting feelings in her. “So you will not give Doctor Elric any problems. Is that understood?”
She offered a curt nod. It was enough to satisfy him, apparently, because he let her go and then headed for the door.
She watched him leave, her chest pounding. “Monsters.”
She didn’t realize she’d said the word out loud until the prince paused with his hand on the doorknob. She thought she’d seen his pointed ears twitch, too, picking up that word that had been little more than a faint whisper as it escaped her.
He turned, and she fought the urge to shrink away from his gaze as he asked, “Did you say something?”
She shook her head. Then she finally made herself bow to him—only because doing so meant she didn’t have to look into his piercing gaze.
He left without another word.
And this time, she waited until the door was closed behind him before she muttered, “I said nothing at all,myprince.”
Chapter 5
The doctor arrived only minutes after Prince Tarron left.
“Doctor Elric,” he told Sephia, and this wasallhe told her before he went to work, picking up where the servants had left off in their torturing. He used strange instruments to inspect her eyes, her ears, her throat. Most of them were sharp. All of them were cold. He studied her pulse and her breathing, took several vials of blood, and he muttered to himself all the while.
Sephia was a breath away from panicking the entire time.
He’s going to realize I’m hidden by witch magic.
Any moment now, he’s going to realize the truth, and perhaps he’ll scream for the guards, or the king, or he’ll kill me himself—
But he never did any of these things.
After what felt like an hour at least, he stopped poking and prodding and instead reached for one of the many medicinal jars he’d brought, this one filled to the brim with some sort of salve that smelled like ash with a hint of flowers. He dabbed his thumb into the salve, swirled it around, brought it up and swept it across the back of Sephia’s neck.
A tingling started at the base of her skull and swept down her back. It felt like her skin was being peeled away. Like whatever magic he’d used was searching her for buried secrets. She thought again of her visit to the witch in the Ocalith Woods, and a shudder ripped through her.
“Keep still,” Doctor Elric ordered.
Sephia kept still, but she could not keep silent. “What is that you’re using? That stuff on your fingers?”
“An old diagnosing trick.”
“And what are you hoping todiagnose?”
The doctor sighed, pushing a few strands of his long white hair behind his tapered ears. “I am simply making certain that you aren’t carrying anything that could be dangerous to our kind. Your father himself warned us of a sickness that has long ailed you.”
“I’m not contagious.” Sephia gritted her teeth. She used to hate it when the Middlemage children teased Nora and acted as though getting too close to her would be the end of them. If whatever her little sister carried was contagious, Sephia would have caught it herself a long time ago.
The doctor grunted. “You never know with humans.”
You never know with the fae,she wanted to snap in response.
She was going to end up losing her tongue at this rate, as often as she kept having to bite it.
The doctor said nothing else, just went back to shoving his cold instruments against her skin and muttering. He was callous, rough. He treated her like a prisoner instead of a princess—and like a prisoner sentenced to death, no less. Almost as if he suspected that she wouldbe sentenced to such a fate before the day was over with.
