Valoria’s middle sister, an innocent girl who’s scared of the dark.
Baronesses Katerina and Shealea, friendly faces around the palace, with whom I’ve shared a laugh or dance at countless parties.
Several of Valoria’s cousins have left us, too.
Even Duchess Aventine, the noblewoman who laughed at Noranna, who Valoria was sure had tried to kill her before, is blameless in this slaughter. She, too, lies among the dead.
And now we could lose Danial.
I knew the oleanders signaled something was coming—something terrible—but this is beyond my worst nightmares.
As my gaze travels back over Sarika, realizing how close we’ve come for a second time to losing Valoria, I’m tempted to add my screams to those of the frightened and grieving partygoers around me. Thinking of how close I came to almost losing Meredy, to watching her die just like Evander, I could scream until my throat is raw and my voice is gone.
But I’ve faced death before. I won’t let it render me helpless again.
Between us, Elibeth and I move Meredy inside, carrying her and many others up to the healer’s wing of the palace. Yet long after we’ve left the area, long after the dead have gasped their last breaths and the healers have collapsed from their efforts, the partygoers’ screams still fill my ears.
I claw at my head, wishing I could pull them out of my scalp, but they refuse to be silenced. Maybe I don’t want them to stop. Those screams are all I have left of Bryn, Sarika, and Noranna. All I have left of my friends.
Those screams beg me to make sure no one else meets their fate.
Someone has to pay for this. Someone has to suffer. The men who broke into the palace intending to start a fire—was this the work of their friends, seeking revenge? Or the work of an angry spirit? I want to watch the guilty one die—better yet, I want them to die by my hand. That way, I can make sure it’s nice and slow.
XXVII
The spacious waiting room in the healer’s wing has never felt so stifling.
Jax and I share an oversized armchair that’s lumpy from years of use, giving Simeon the other chair to himself. He won’t look at either of us, having gone silent after expressing his guilt at being the first one saved and, therefore, the person to suffer fewest effects from the poison. Now he keeps his head bowed as he thumbs through a messy, age-stained book with the cover missing. When I asked him what it was about, he mumbled that it had something to do with heartache. I wonder if Meredy gave him the book we used to read together, but I don’t get any more out of him.
I’m sick of silence.
Behind the tall white doors on the other side of this room, Danial’s fellow healers are trying to save him from succumbing to the price of his magic. Usually, healing only paralyzes a small part of him for a short while, but he saved so many lives tonight that the paralysis went deeper. They’re worried it might stop his heart.
Also behind those doors somewhere are Meredy and everyone else whom Danial and the other healers saved. They’ll need sleep and a few days of extra care to fully recover, and until then, all the rest of us can do is wait.
I’m sick of waiting, too.
Behind those doors somewhere, Valoria is being given a potion for shock, a potion so painfully familiar that my teeth ache at the thought of it sliding down her throat. But she needs it to get through the night. Her brother and one of her sisters are gone, and she lost Hadrien and her mother just months ago. Little Ruthie is with Elibeth, playing with her hounds and trying to forget the horrors she just witnessed. She’s all Valoria has left now.
Well, unless Jax and I, and the rest of the wolf pack, count for something.
He shifts restlessly beside me, toying with the empty flask in his hands. I’m sure he’s itching to refill it, because that’s what he does when he can’t change things and he’s angry at his own powerlessness.
When I can’t change things, I usually go swing my sword around, but I can’t leave Simeon here. I won’t. Still, I don’t know what I can do for him. I know that worrying solves nothing and helps no one, and yet, it washes over me in waves.
More than anything, I’m sick of feeling helpless.
Suddenly, Jax leaps to his feet and sucks in a breath as though stung by something. He swipes his hand across a small table holding a tray of drinking glasses, seemingly for no other reason than to watch them shatter on the tile floor.
Simeon doesn’t even flinch, but I have to admit, the sound is oddly satisfying.
Abandoning the chair, I knock over the tall ceramic water pitcher resting beside the now-empty spot where the tray of glasses was.
Water soaks the fancy slippers I forgot to remove earlier, so I rip them off, standing carelessly among the pieces of shattered glass and clay.
Jax grabs the vase beside the entryway and hurls it at the closed doors behind which we can only guess at how our friends are faring.
I put my fist through a painting of a rose garden.
