Ronan
Icradle Sylvie to me as I wait for Quinn to return. I feel the slightest stir of her shoulder against my body.Please, Sylvie. Please be alright.
My beautiful, darling Sylvie. I’m not going to lose her. I’m not. Not again. I can’t lose her.
The panic shifts to anger. What was Zara doing to her? What was she doing to the shadow-born, and why?
Was it all to get to me? Is Sylvie in this state because of me?
Sylvie knows something, I realize. She’s trying to tell me something with her feelings, but I can’t understand it.
“Just rest,” I tell her. “We’ll figure it out when you’re better.”
The pain in my ankle makes itself known as my heart rate returns to normal. I reach out and touch it, trying my magic once more.
It’s working, a little. It’s slower than ordinary, but something is happening at last.
“Finally.” I stop what I’m doing and focus on Sylvie, sending a light into the room so I can see her clearly. I do what I can for the wound on her leg; she’ll need a nature-born to prevent it from scarring, but it shouldn’t cause her much pain. Then I remove the tube from her arm—at least most of the blood from the bag went back in—and I heal the small hole it leaves behind.
Only then do I return to my own ankle. Thankfully, the flesh there is thin, so although the wound is deep, it’s accessible to my light. I’d feel better if I had an elixir, though.
Zara would have made one for me. Fuck, I’d been so blind. She had done so much of my care the past couple of years, refusing to let the other alchemists do it. And I’d let her. I’d appreciated the personal attention of the Guild Mistress. I’d appreciated the presence of someone light-born, the only one I’d met after my father died. It blinded me to her true intentions.
But it does validate what I’ve long suspected about the nature of light magic.
I feel multiple people coming through the halls we traveled to get here before I can hear them. Stella and my guards.
“In here,” I call. I stand up, lifting Sylvie into my arms once more.
“Sir?” Stella freezes inside the door at the bloody scene, torch in hand.
“Help Quinn and Taran down the hall.”
They rush through the room, pushing Zara’s body to the side as they vanish into the darkened corridor. They return only minutes later, trailing behind Quinn, who shoves an alchemist into the room. “Heal her, and maybe I won’t kill you.”
The alchemist examines Sylvie as others trail into the small room. He lifts her limbs and examines the movement of her eyes as I hold her. “Tincture of hemlock,” he says, his voice trembling. “One of the Guild Mistress’s. There’s no antidote, but from her movements, the Guild Mistress didn’t use enough to kill her. It will wear off on its own in a few hours.”
She could have died. Gods, she could have died.
Why didn’t she die? What was the purpose of keeping her alive? “Why didn’t Zara kill her?”
“We need them alive for the alchemy, sir. Forgive me, your majesty,” he says, cowering before me. “I didn’t know—”
“Enough,” I say. They were using the blood of the shadow-born for the fucking alchemy. I should have known. The rage rises in me as he sputters, trying to justify himself. If he doesn’t get away from me this moment, I’m going to kill him. And I might need him alive to help Sylvie and the shadow-born. “Get him out of my sight.”
Stella rushes forward and takes the man away into the hallway. It’s a sorry scene in the little room and the hallway beyond. My guards are either restraining alchemists or holding up one of a group of people in decaying rags that looks like they haven’t had a proper meal in weeks.
I look over the shadow-born, trying to find Vesper, but I don’t see her there among them.
Damn. Sylvie nearly died tonight,andI was too late to save Vesper.
This is my fault. They were in this mess because of me. I did this.
And then I notice a woman with reddish brown hair.
“Vesper?” I ask. Her hair is so filthy I can barely tell, but it looks like it might have been Vesper’s vibrant red once. And there are holes in her ears that once held earrings. She’s unrecognizable otherwise. Her face is gaunt, and her skin is sallow. She looks days away from death.
Fucking hell, what did they do to her? She’s only nineteen. She was just meant to track Cyrus when he left the palace. It’s my fault she ended up here.
