I couldn’t nod, or even really think. There was only pain.
Then, there was tugging.
“I think we should remove your binding.”
My eyelids shot open at those words.
The room was dark, unfamiliar at first, until the events of the day came back to me. “No. I’ll be fine.” I tried to move, to prove I would be okay, but the pain had me breathing through my teeth with a single flinch.
“I think you need a healer,” Astrid deduced as she stood there, looking at me, eyes appraising as she crossed her arms over her aproned chest.
“But . . .” It was too dangerous, but I didn’t need to say that.
“There is a non-spy healer on staff, she wouldn’t say anything—I would tell her not to.”
I considered her proposition. I likely really did need a healer, but just Astrid knowing my secret already made me feel far too exposed so I shook my head. “I’ll be fine.” I shifted my weight so I was sitting on the bed. “Some rest will help.”
A dark eyebrow arched. She didn’t believe me. But she didn’t have to. It was my secret, and the less people who knew the better. If the viscount found out, he would have me executed, I was sure of it.
More than one child wasn’t allowed.
“All right. I’ll let you make the decision this time, but make sure you act as injured as possible when they come for you tomorrow. They need to let you rest. I don’t know what they have you doing but . . .”
There weren’t many positions for women in a household like this. That I knew. And seeing as Astrid was a cook, and maids didn’t usually show up with scores of broken ribs, I knew what she was assuming.
Neither of us said it though.
She took a hesitant step forward, pressing the small blue stone back into my hand. I fought not to wince as the pressure caused my shoulder to shift a smidge.
“If things get worse in the night, put it back out and I’ll send for the healer.”
I dipped my chin. I wouldn’t be doing that.
Astrid gave me one last glance, filled with a special sort of pity, before closing the door behind her.
It didn’t take long at all for darkness to reclaim me once more.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I didn’t even have a chance to test my acting skills, as by the time the light of the sun seeped through the cracks of the exterior wall, I had yet to be able to move myself. Thus, when Syrus and Markus came to collect me, they had to carry me between them just as they had done to bring me to my room the night before.
As I was unceremoniously dumped on the floor of the reading room, I hoped that Viscount Adis would have some sympathy for me.
In the end, I never found out if he had sympathy for me or not as the moment I was dumped on the cold stone floor, he snarled, and I was lifted once more. I wasn’t even sure I had been fully out of Markus and Syrus’s grips before the plans had changed. It didn’t matter though, as the constant stabbing in my side was the current worry. I could worry about the details of the rest later.
On what I thought was the way back, I debated how I wouldplace the small blue stone outside my door once more. But before I could consider the details of collecting it from wherever I had dropped it the night before and somehow crawling my way to the door, I was deposited somewhere that was arguably not my room.
It was slightly larger than my cell, perhaps the size of two of my rooms pushed together—meaning it still wasn’t much, but it was bigger. There was a woman there, with black hair braided down her back. It was hard to focus through my swimming vision, but I could have sworn she was holding a bunch of herbs in her hands.
“Oh!” The voice was higher-pitched than Astrid’s, and it only took me a moment to deduce where I had ended up.
I was seeing a healer anyway.
And she might be one of the ones who was a spy.
Panic clawed its way through my insides as I ran over all of the ways I could keep her from removing my chest wrap as I was shifted onto a narrow cot similar to the one in my room. But first, I absolutely had to get Markus and Syrus out of the room.
“Water,” I croaked, faking a cough. It sounded weak, and the cough stabbed everything I had been trying to keep still, but it was enough.
Only Syrus left, but the women in the viscount’s household were far more resourceful and observant than I had originally concluded.
