“A tonic to soothe the nerves.”
Even through the haze of pain, I remember that the usual calming tonic is gray and smokes at the surface. “Are you sure?”
Danial almost smiles at that. “This one is stronger than those we normally give. It’ll help. Trust me.”
Somehow, between sobbing breaths, I drain the glass. It tastes like the small, hard green apples the Sisters of Death sometimes use in their pies. I close my eyes when Danial takes away the glass, suddenly exhausted.
I don’t want to scream anymore. I don’t want to do much of anything. I can only think of Evander, the Deadlands, and the Shade, but almost like an outsider. I know I should be hurting, but the pain can’t sink its hooks as deep into me as it did moments before I drank the potion.
“How is she?” someone asks from out of sight.
My head is too muddled to place her voice right away, but I recognize her long red braid when it swishes past the door. MasterCymbre doesn’t come in. Instead, she draws Danial into the hallway, and I don’t have the strength to wonder why.
With Simeon’s arms around me, I lie back and listen to his heartbeat, to the vibrant rhythm of life, until I slide into the nothingness of a dreamless sleep.
***
The sun still rises and sets, like it always has. It seems cruel that it wouldn’t stop, just for a little while, to show how much darker the world is without Evander in it.
I stop looking at the sun.
Without it, one day blurs into the next, until two or three or five have gone by.
***
Walking alone down the palace corridor that leads to Jax’s room, to my room, and a few doors beyond that, to Evander’s former room, I have no destination in mind. Nothing to fill my days.
I’m always alone now, even when someone is right beside me.
Footsteps jar me out of my drug-induced daze long enough to recognize Danial striding toward me, wearing his sturdy cotton healer’s whites and the gold pin with double turquoise gems that signifies his master status. He opens his mouth to say something, but my head spins violently and the polished marble corridor becomes a blur as I sink to my knees.
The sixth dizzy spell in as many days.
Cool, gentle hands smooth my hair back from my forehead.
“Evander?” My heart skips as I gaze into the bluest eyes in all of Karthia.
“No,” he says, frowning, but I’d know that voice, that face, those eyes anywhere. He kneels beside me, his forehead lined with concern, trying to get a better look at me. But I fling my arms around him, frantic, knocking the breath from him.
“How is this possible?” I laugh. “It’syou...”
“Odessa.” Evander frowns harder still, leaning away from me.
I pull him near, surprised by his resistance. “I thought you were dead!” I whisper fiercely into his neck.
“Odessa!”
Evander gives my shoulders a sharp shake, and suddenly in his place is Danial. He’s kneeling on the floor beside me, gazing into my face with so much worry. “I’m not him, Odessa. You’re having delusions.”
I cross my arms and shake my head. I know he’s right, but I don’t want to believe him. If delusions are the only way to see Evander, then so be it. I’ll take what I can get.
“I can heal your body again and again,” Danial says distantly, like he’s talking to someone else even though he’s looking right at me, “but I don’t know what else to try for your mind—you look dead on your feet, Sparrow!”
Tears slide down my face, seeping onto Danial’s fingers. The look he’s giving me shifts from one of worry to something worse: pity.
Lost girl, his eyes say.Broken girl.
He bows his head like everyone else does when they see me lately. It’s like they’re scared that if they hold my gaze too long, if they look too deep, they’ll lose something that matters to them, too.
