Thibaut’s eyes fluttered open, focusing on me with confusion and gratitude. That might complicate things because of how quick he’d woken up, but their joy might conceal the questions, wanting a miracle and receiving one.
“How...” Thibaut began.
“Don’t talk,” I ordered, summoning the last of my strength to sound authoritative. “Rest. The poison is gone, but your body needs to recover.”
Alain gestured for the guards to take Thibaut. “Return him to his quarters,” he commanded. “I want updates on his condition hourly.”
They lifted Thibaut carefully from my bed, his weight leaving an indentation in the silk coverlet. As they carried him from the room, I felt the last of my strength evaporate like morning dew under a harsh sun.
“I need to...” I tried to stand, to maintain the pretense of capability, but my legs refused to support my weight. The room spun violently, floor and ceiling trading places in a nauseating whirl.
The last thing I saw was Alain’s face, panic etched into every aristocratic line as he lunged to catch me. Then darkness swallowed me whole, sweet and silent as the tomb I’d so narrowly avoided in my beasts’ castle dungeon.
forty
Isabeau
Consciousness trickled back like water through a damaged dam. Slow at first, then a sudden rush that left me gasping. A deep voice wound around my foggy thoughts, telling tales of adventure and friendship I couldn’t quite grasp. My body felt hollow, scraped clean from the inside out by the poison I’d willingly absorbed.
The price of magic. The cost of saving a life that wasn’t mine to save. I kept my eyes closed, letting the rich timbre of that voicewash over me, anchoring me to a world I wasn’t sure I wanted to rejoin.
“And so Sir Roland faced the dragon not with his sword but with his words. ‘We need not be enemies,’ he told the great beast. ‘For what threatens your home threatens mine as well’.”
The voice paused, a rustle of paper following the silence. I cracked my eyes open, light stabbing into my skull like needles. Prince Alain sat beside my bed, his broad shoulders hunched over a leather-bound book resting in his lap. His hair fell across his forehead in dark waves, and his profile in the afternoon light looked like something carved by an artist obsessed with perfection.
God, I hated that my body responded to him. The flutter in my chest, the warmth that pooled low in my belly whenever he was near. Traitorous reactions from flesh that belonged to others. My shoulder throbbed in reminder, the claiming mark a brand that tied me to three princes trapped in hell while I lay here, being read to by a man who embodied everything they fought against.
“Sir Roland offered the dragon his most precious possession,” Alain continued, unaware of my wakefulness, “his mother’s golden locket, in exchange for friendship. And in that moment, the two became unlikely allies against the shadow that crept across the land.”
His voice softened on the word “friendship,” as if the concept were precious to him. It made something in my chest twist painfully. This man who commanded armies and passed judgments was sitting at my sickbed, reading fairy tales. The juxtaposition was almost too much to bear.
I must have made some sound, because Alain’s head snapped up, those icy blue eyes finding mine. The smile that spread across his face was like watching the sun break through storm clouds, unexpected and almost too brilliant to look at directly. Italso warmed me in ways the sun did for my whole body to feel its heat.
“You’re awake,” he said, closing the book with a gentle thud.
“How long?” My voice emerged as a croak, my throat raw from what I vaguely remembered as hours of vomiting.
He set the book aside, reaching for a glass of water on the nightstand. “Two days this time.”
Two days. Two more days of separation from my beasts, two more days of their suffering. I needed to speed up my healing and leave this place. I accepted the water, his fingers brushing mine as I took the glass, sending unwelcome sparks along my skin.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, his eyes searching my face with an intensity that made me want to hide.
I took a careful sip, the cool liquid soothing my throat. “Better,” I admitted. “The burning is gone.”
Fragments of memories surfaced as I spoke. Me writhing in sweat-soaked sheets, my veins filled with liquid fire, choking on my own bile as the poison fought to expel itself from my system. And through it all, not Brigida’s weathered hands but Alain’s strong ones holding my hair back, wiping my face with cool cloths, refusing to leave even when I begged him to go rather than see me so undone.
“You stayed with me.” It wasn’t a question, but I needed to hear him confirm it, needed to know I hadn’t hallucinated his presence in my delirium.
A flush crept up his neck, coloring the skin above his collar. “I did.”
“Why?” The question slipped out before I could stop it, raw and honest in a way I rarely allowed myself to be.
“Because you saved my friend’s life,” he said simply. “Because you took poison into your own body to heal him. Because no one should suffer alone.”
Heat bloomed in my cheeks. I’d spent months in isolation, months with only my own ragged breathing for company in that dungeon. And now this man, this prince who should have been my enemy, had witnessed me at my most vulnerable—sweating, vomiting, crying out in pain.
“Thank you,” I whispered, looking down at my hands. They were steadier than they had been in weeks, the skin no longer paper-thin and translucent. My body was healing, despite everything.
