I tightened my grip around her, finding her wrists and massaging where she seemed to suffer, hating myself now for having tied her up because this soft tenderness felt worlds more intimate than how I’d taken her in the library. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”
I’d always been shit with words, but that sentiment seemed to cause her to melt into me. “Then stop being such an insufferable ass.”
Muffling a chuckle into the nape of her neck, I lazily rubbed her back.
She surprised me by continuing. “I’m not scared of you. I fear that all my weaknesses will stack up against me. That I will fail and be alone when I do.”
“I see no weaknesses,” I whispered.
She drew in a deep breath and, after releasing it, said, “I can tell the tonics Wyeth prepares aren’t as strong as my old healer’s. I’m starting to have to triple the doses.”
A knot formed in my stomach, thinking about how hard it must be for her to reveal this to me. The woman had gone weeks without remedies simply to not draw attention to her waning health.
“We’ll track him down and get you what you need then.”
She hummed into my chest as though sharing the weight of her concern had lulled her to sleep. I still didn’t know if I could offer her the life she may have dreamed of, but maybe there was still enough left of my heart to try to be there through good days and bad.
Chapter 43
Sybilla
Hundreds of people crowded around the temple steps. The guillotine was set and ready as they led her out in nothing but a canvas nightdress more fitting as a potato sack than clothing. They wouldn’t even take her head by the sword, the honorable way. People watched with quiet anticipation as their adulterous Queen was pushed forward.
I tried to look away—anywhere but at her face that so resembled mine.
“Watch, Sybilla,” my father commanded from his place on the temple balcony beside me.
It all blurred together at the seams, but this time, I saw someone in the crowd. A man shrouded in a gray veil. He watched as the blade came down upon my mother’s neck. Then he looked up at me.
I gasped awake.
Krait stirred but didn’t open his eyes. Breaking free of his arms without waking him proved difficult; I had to wiggle fromhis grasp. Luckily, he was sleeping soundly. The lines of his face were all soft and unworried as his arm reached out in the direction of where I’d just been.
I shouldn’t have felt warmed by that.
Remaining angry with him grew harder and harder.
Still reeling from the vivid nightmare, I stepped silently around the room and pulled a blue duster over my nightgown. Glancing back at the sleeping King, I wondered if he could ever be the type of man to force me to my knees before a blade.
My heart told me no.
I was sure my mother’s heart had told her the same, too.
I needed to put my hands to work on something so that my mind would stop pinwheeling. My comb was missing from the vanity—I’d left it in Elsedora’s room. Thinking maybe Krait had one to spare, I opened the top drawer, then the middle, then the bottom. The edge of a piece of parchment caught my attention.
It bore my name.
I held it up to the golden sunlight from the window.
I. Phynnic idealist
II. Stubborn as a bull
III. Has little control over her own power
IV. Impatient
V. Vulgar
