She moved aside ingredients and herbs, rummaging through bottles, until she found it.
She rushed over to him and hauled him up, holding his head in her hands. His mouth was clamped shut, his jaw clenching against the pain. He was trembling.
‘Drink,’ she ordered. ‘Please.’
He forced open his mouth and she emptied the potion into his mouth. Some of it dribbled down his chin, but he swallowed the rest of it. She hoped it was enough.
‘Bis,’ he whispered, before his eyes closed. He felt heavy, frozen, still, when only a moment before he had been so alive. She laid him down gently.
Taking in a shuddering breath, she stood.
Bisma was completely and utterly alone.
29
She had one day left to find the cure, and everything to lose if she didn’t. The poison had spread past Deeba’s little arms to her chest, the dark veins reaching for her heart like the claws of death.
Bisma was her baji; she would not let that happen.
Mind whirring, she walked to Xander’s worktable, which was covered with ingredients and plants. They had gotten so close, but she didn’t know the exact measurements of what they had been mixing—Xander usually handled that, making meticulous notes.
That was it: she just needed his notes.
Rummaging around the table, she searched for his notebook, moving from space to space until she finally spotted it. But as she picked it up, she noticed something beneath it.
A keepsake box, the same as the one on Eleanora’s desk in her library.
She wondered if his would be locked, like Eleanora’s was. This wasn’t the time to investigate, but she couldn’t help but to indulge her curiosity. The keepsake box hadn’t always been there; she would have noticed it.
Something struck her then: what had Xander said, just minutes—what felt like hours now—before? That there was something he wanted to show her.
Setting the notebook aside, she tested the clasp of the box, and it opened with no difficulty. The box easily displayed its contents to her. She should not have let her curiosity take the best of her—not when there was so much to be done in so little time—but it felt like there was something she needed to know.
Then she spotted something familiar.
A spot of ink on the edge of a page. A tear-stained smudge, to be precise.
One she had put there.
Bisma pulled out the folded papers. They were covered with streaks of dirt.
With a start, Bisma realized Xander was her anonymous friend.
These wereherletters, kept safe in a keepsake box.
Blinking fast, Bisma turned back to Xander’s notebook, flipping it open. The evidence was there: his handwriting.
All this time! If she had onlylookedat his notes—looked even once!—she would have seen. Her heart hammered. She recalled Xander asking her to on numerous occasions, the expectant look on his face. But she had never been interested.
If only she had looked! He had been her constant companion, the person she wrote to when she felt there was nobody else she could unburden herself to. The friend who slowly but surely helped her lessen the fortifications around her heart.
All this time! And she had not appreciated it. She had not seen how wonderful he was!
It made sense now that her correspondent did not mind that she wrote less the more time she spent with Xander.
Xander.Of course it was Xander. Deep down, Bisma recognized that she’d always had an inkling it was him—had hoped for it even. At the festival he had been the only one to ask her to dance, after all.
Her heart ached at the memory. She yearned to go back to that moment, hours ago, when she was in his arms, her mouth sweet from sugared oranges, dancing beneath a thousand twinkling lights.
