“Where? Where does it itch?”
“Behind…the ear.” He tries to lift his hand.
I watch, breath held, as his wrist trembles. The tendons strain, his knuckles turning white with exertion, but his hand lifts a fraction of an inch off the mattress before gravity reclaims it with a heavy, lifelessthud.
A chill sweeps through me.
No, he can’t do it.
“I got it,” I whisper, forcing my voice steady. “Let me see.”
I lean forward, gently moving his sweat-dampened hair aside. The skin behind his ear is inflamed, a dark, angry purple. I touch it lightly with the damp cloth, intending to soothe the itch, but the moment the fabric makes contact, the skin moves.
No. It slides.
A layer of wet, gray flesh sloughs off onto the linen, revealing the raw, weeping meat beneath. The rot isn’t just in his lungs anymore; it’s eating its way out of him.
“Just a bit of dry skin.” My stomach lurches violently. I swallow the bile, my hand shaking as I toss the cloth onto the floor. “I need… I need to get the comfrey salve for that. It’s in the infirmary, but I’ll be quick.”
Daron merely grunts.
I rise before the anxiousness in my stomach becomes too heavy, and hurry from the room. The hallway is silent this morning. A lantern flicks in a wall sconce, throwing thin light over my skirts as I hasten along the runner rug before I passdoors, nooks, more doors. Once I take care of Daron’s wound, I’ll still have to check on Mother, see if?—
A hand clamps over my mouth, a hard, brutal seal that stifles my scream before it’s born. An arm, rigid as steel, hooks around my waist. With one hard yank that lets air whoosh from my nose, someone pulls me into an alcove of tapestry and shadows.
Heart pounding, I thrash. “Mh-hmm!”
Heels kick at shins.
Fingernails claw at leather.
“Quiet, Your Majesty,” a voice hisses in my ear—rough, urgent—and the hand tightens over my lips until my teeth threaten to shatter. “Quiet, or Kael died for nothing.”
The man hauls me backward through a narrow door, into darkness that smells of mildew and old stone. The door shuts right before my eyes. My feet scramble,plop-plop-ploppingdown a spiraling stone staircase. Deep. Deeper.
Darkness presses against my eyes, black and absolute, the stench of vinegar replaced by rust and damp earth. Until the man finally stops and releases me.
Flint strikes. Sparks hiss.
“Who the hell are you!?” I scramble backward, back hitting the damp stone wall, fingers digging into the mortar to the sound of a torch sputtering to life. “What do you want from me?”
“Please, Your Majesty, lower your voice.” He brings the torch between us, letting the flame skitter over thick brows, a sweat-slicked forehead, cropped hair as brown as his mud-streaked travel leathers.
“I know you.” Not by name. By memory. “You’re the messenger. The one who came into Kael’s room that day.”
“We cannot stay here.” Torch in one hand, he wraps the other around my arm, pulling me over slick stone. “Walk, Your Majesty. Walk with me.”
“What? Why? What do you—” Stone shifts beneath me, letting me stumble over a rock, arm flailing for balance while a rat squeaks somewhere and skitters into the dark. “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere, so long as we keep moving.”
“Why?”
“Stillness is like a bell that Death can’t unhear,” he says over his shoulder, not slowing as he guides me along chilled cellar walls, barrels, mounds of stone where they crumbled from the ceiling. “It’s the nature of the grave to be still. His senses are more likely to drift to us if we linger.”
The sheer conviction in his voice—the palpable terror coating his words—makes my feet catch up before my brain agrees with that logic. “Why did Kael crown me queen? What am I supposed to do? He said you’d come. He said you’d explain.”
“I would’ve found you quicker, but I couldn’t take the risk of Death finding me out first.” He takes a sharp left that leads us into a wider cavern that smells of old wine. “As Kael’s only confidant, I’m complicit in undoing this fucking curse, and Death would torture that knowledge into silence if he knew my identity. Name’s Corvin, Corvin Hale.”
