Something expands in my chest, hot and sudden and too big for the space it’s in. I press my lips together to keep the sound inside, blinking hard against the sting in my eyes.
We did it. We broke the curse.
Mother catches my staring. “Noticed yesterday morning,” she says quietly, her needles going still. “Thought it was a trick of the light at first. Checked again last night. And again this morning.” She swallows, her jaw setting into that line I know so well, the one that means she’s holding something enormous behind her teeth. “Palace rumor has it that the pestilence is retreating.”
The door opens with the careful, practiced silence of someone who’s spent decades moving through rooms without disturbing them. Miss Hampshire.
She enters carrying a tray with a steaming cup and a small bowl, takes one look at me, and stops. “Oh, thank the saints.” The words leave her on an exhale, so relieved it sounds almost like a reprimand, as though my waking up is an inconvenience she’s grateful for. She sets the tray down on the bedside table and straightens, smoothing her apron. “Two days, Your Majesty. I trust you will not make a habit of such theatrics.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.” I push myself up against the pillows, careful not to jostle Vale, who hasn’t so much as twitched. “How is…everything?”
“Everything is…righted.” She produces a cloth from her apron and begins to polish the edge of the tray with the kind of focused aggression she usually reserves for dusty mantles. “The priests are clinging to the chapel floors in prayer, thanking God. And your husband…”
She glances at Vale’s sleeping form with an expression caught between exasperation and respect.
“Still at it, I see.” A click of her tongue. “Sleeping as though he has no care in the world. As if there is suddenly less work to be done.”
I look at her more carefully now. The angry red wound where her pustule had been is smaller, the inflamed edges pulling together with a tightness that speaks of healing rather thanfestering. The skin on her remaining fingers has lost that waxy, translucent quality, returning to something pink and alive.
Commotion drifts in from somewhere beyond the window. A murmur of voices layered over each other, hummed by a crowd that doesn’t quite know the melody yet.
“What’s that?”
“People,” Miss Hampshire says as she crosses to the window and draws the curtain back. “Lining the gates to praise their queen.”
Pale gold light floods the room, so warm and bright I have to squint. Through the glass, the courtyard is…alive. People move below, not in the shuffling, desperate way of the sick and starving, but with purpose. With energy.
“Folk from all over,” Mother adds. “Been arriving since yesterday. Lining the palace walls with crocus flowers.”
“Crocuses?”
“Reportedly, they have been pushing through the snow.” Miss Hampshire turns from the window, and the light catches the sheen in her eyes. “All across the realm. Purple and yellow, breaking through the frost as if spring simply decided it had waited long enough.”
The image settles into me like a hand pressed to a wound: the first real sign that this is over. Not the absence of rot on Mother’s neck. But how the land itself is healing, remembering how to bloom.
My throat tightens.Do you see this, Daron?
I nod, not trusting my voice.
Miss Hampshire smooths the curtain back into place and turns with the brisk efficiency of a woman who won’t linger on anything other than duty. “Your mother and I shall give you some privacy to wake properly. Broth is on the tray. You will drink it.”
It’s not a suggestion.
Mother rises, tucking her knitting into the chair with a final glance at Vale. “Rest, my child.”
They leave together, the door clicking shut behind them with a soft finality that settles the room into a hush. Just the crackle of the hearth. The distant hum of voices beyond the window. And the slow, steady rhythm of Vale’s breathing beneath my hand.
I ease back down against him, my cheek finding its place on his chest. My fingers trace the collar of his shirt, following the line to where the fabric parts and I can see the edge of his collarbone. Just warm, smooth skin and the steady proof of a heart that chose to feel everything rather than feel nothing.
I watch him for a long time.
The way his lashes rest against his cheeks. The way his lips part slightly on each exhale. The way one hand lies curled beside my hip, fingers loose and open as if, even in sleep, he’s reaching for something.
I lift my hand to his jaw. Trace the line of it with my thumb. Lean in and press my lips to the corner of his mouth. “Vale…”
He stirs.
It’s slow. A deep breath that expands his chest beneath me, followed by a languid tension that moves through his body like a cat stretching in a sunbeam. His hand finds my waist before his eyes find me, fingers tightening once, instinctively, pulling me closer before consciousness has fully arrived.
