Delphine stiffens and looks to me with panic, but I’m almost relieved. I knew he wouldn’t let us go so easily. Alaric Alaverdi is as cold and unrelenting as always. Nothing between us has changed. The sporadic glimpses of softness are just a ruse—a tactic to throw me off-balance.
Alaric clears his throat again and says, “Do you think…do you think I could come with you?”
“What?” I nearly trip over my feet as I whirl back around.
Alaric looks up hopefully from his fidgeting hands, and the swooping in my stomach increases a thousandfold.
“Perhaps there’s something I could do to help your sister,” he says to Delphine. “I have access to healers, books, and ingredients.”
It’s a terrible idea for so many reasons, but I find myself inexplicably wanting to sayyes. After helping me grow the bagrava, it feels strangely right he should come with us.
But Delphine blurts out a more sensible answer. “Surely, you have more important things to do? I-I mean, it would be an honor, of course, but my house isn’t fit for royalty. And Cloudia would be so embarrassed to be seen in such a state.”
“Of course.” Alaric stands, brushes off his breeches, and offers a pleasant smile, but the light is gone from his eyes, and the butterflies in my belly are still. “Go. I’ll ensure no one notices your absence.”
I try to catch his gaze—to communicate what, I’m not sure. I know better than to trust his motives. But I also feel a strange surge of protectiveness. I don’t want him to feel rejected, yet again, when he’s finally let down his guard.
“Alaric?” I call out softly, but he’s already fallen back into the arrogant stride he uses around the Fortress, disappearing into his chambers without a backward glance.
“Come on.” Delphine pulls me through my own chamber and out into the hall, where we weave down corridors I’ve never seen and into the chill of an extravagant and secluded courtyard. She skirts around areflecting pool and behind a stone obelisk that conceals a gate leading out into the broader city.
As her blond braid disappears through the gap, I marvel yet again at how she seems to know every nook and cranny of the palace—even places like this opulent garden, where a chambermaid would never have cause to visit.
It’s suspicious, Rowenna agrees.Yet another reason why you should be listening tomeinstead ofher.
I don’t answer. I’m not in the mood to argue, especially over something like this. How could helping an innocent, suffering girl ever be wrong?
Delphine leads me through the winding, snow-dusted streets until we reach a gray stone cottage with fresh thatching and a door painted a merry mint green. It isn’t half as dreary as I expected, and I’m about to say so, when Delphine bypasses the green door and continues around the side of the house, down a staircase, and into a basement that smells of standing water. The door creaks loudly and emits a gust of dirty straw and beetle carcasses.
“I know it’s bleak,” Delphine apologizes, “but we can’t afford anything nicer on my wages alone. We used to live a few streets over, in a second-floor apartment that was bright with sunshine, but Mrs. Higgens wouldn’t let us stay when Cloudia lost her job. Said half of us had to go if we could only pay half as much, so of course, we left together.”
Delphine keeps her eyes on the ground and gestures for me to enter. As I pass, I place a hand on her shoulder. “I know you’re accustomed to serving the courtiers in the palace, but my people are humble too. Dreadfully poor by Vanzadorian standards. And like you, we live underground. So believe it or not, I feel more at home here than I ever have in Soren’s glittering palace.”
A small grateful smile lifts Delphine’s face as she follows me inside.
It’s a single room with a wooden table in one corner, a basin filled with both the dishes and the washing in another corner, and a squatcoal stove burning hot in the third. Heat pours into the room, and the sudden shift from freezing to stifling makes me queasy.
I yank at the already low neckline of my gown. “Why is it so hot in here?” I start to say, but my voice falls away when I spy the white-faced, blue-lipped girl lying on a straw mattress in the final corner.
Cloudia looks to be captured in ice—so deathly pale she’s almost translucent, staring up at the ceiling with vacant, unseeing eyes. Her body, however, twitches and jerks. Her back arches while her arms twist and her legs flail. All the while, her face remains blank and still. It’s unsettling. Unnatural. And I have already retreated a step when a scratchy voice spills through Cloudia’s chapped lips.
“I don’t want to see!” she wails. “Not again, not again!”
After repeating herself three times, Cloudia falls quiet, though her body continues to writhe.
It might be the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen, and I’m no longer surprised my herbal remedies did nothing. But I can feel Delphine’s eyes on me, so I try to keep my expression calm and neutral—like the healers in Tashir—even though I’ve never felt more out of my depth. “Has she always thrashed about like this?”
Delphine wipes her tears with the back of her sleeve. “Yes, but it’s gotten worse lately. Her speaking is the real change, though. She never used to say anything, which was worrying in its own way, but this is so much worse. I can’t imagine the torture that must be playing across her mind. She doesn’t even sound like herself. That strange, rasping voice is so—so—wrong.”
I catch one of Cloudia’s flailing hands and gently stroke her fingers as she squirms. “Cloudia, my name is Indira. Your sister brought me here to help you.”
No response.
“It’s clear you’re suffering. If speaking is too difficult, squeeze my hand to let me know you hear me. Or even just blink your eyes.”
Nothing.
Delphine gulps back a sob and covers her mouth. “Do you think the bagrava will truly help?”
