Amarande. Luca. Their kingdoms. The continent.
He wondered if his focus would narrow day by day until it was but a mere pinprick awaiting his final arrow of vengeance. Or, if when he got that first sweet taste of revenge against Amarande, the blackness would immediately devour his body whole.
Until he achieved that first goal—squeezing every last drop of pain from Amarande before sending her to the stars with a wound mirroring his own—he wouldn’t think about the rest. Even if it took so long that he eventually couldn’t sleep at all, he’d see it through.
He would see Amarande out and leave everything she loved burning as her flame fell to ash.
Though dawn was still hours away, Renard padded out of his bed, threw open the doors to his balcony, and stepped into the Pyrenee night. The starlight reached for his skin, pale and fevered.
“Not yet. Not until I bring her with me.”
The night replied with a seeping quiet, the kind that allowed him to think. Past the anger. To the necessities. Survival.
He returned to his bedroom, and carefully cradled two vials holding his remaining lifeblood in his hands.
Taillefer had indeed answered his prayers.
Tucked within the hundreds of bottles of poisons and potions andelixirs were two slim vials of the tincture that had saved his life: astral ember.
Perhaps the vials were meant for Taillefer himself. Or maybe for Domingu, who probably kept his own supply under lock and key lest anyone attempt to use it to revive his unfortunate wives. Be that as it may, it was Renard’s gain.
Renard lay upon the cool stone floor of his balcony, watching the twinkling night sky until the first fingers of dawn brought both light and sound, the temporary clearness to his mind furring over, like moss upon a stone upstream. The anger flared, funneled and pinched; and the infernal flame within him surged, his skin burning more with each passing moment that brought him closer to his next meeting with Amarande.
Surely she’d received his message by now. Surely she was on her way. Surely she wouldn’t ask nicely for her brother or her mother.
And surely his revenge would start there.
As the morning chapel bell tolled eight times, Renard finally left his balcony and called for the medikua.
She appeared almost instantly along with the breakfast he wouldn’t eat. The pigeons would feast upon it—like the day before and the one before that. Sustenance of any kind save for the tincture was becoming of as little use to Renard as the rest he could not get.
The medikua and Renard had a routine now, and thus, they moved soundlessly to their places. Renard removed his tunic and lay upon the newly made bed, while the medikua set her tinctures on the dressing table near the door leading from his bedchamber into the parlor and the library beyond. The queen’s suite sat undisturbed on the other side of the door, still faintly smelling of the poppied lavender soap Taillefer had used to disarm Amarande’s senses.
The medikua cleaned his wound and repaired the sutures. The affected skin would never heal, and thus the sutures needed constant, careful consideration. Infection was still and forever a possibility. The skin and organs beneath it may have been rife with necrosis, but the gash was still a door to his internal system, and therefore it was crucial it stay sewn shut.
After the cleaning and suture check, the medikua withdrew her ancient vial of astral ember, and began to apply it. Every bit of black must be covered in a thick layer. Enough to feed the organs beneath. Theprocess was slow and methodical, the old woman’s eyes skimming close to Renard’s skin to ensure absorption of the clear serum, which went on as thick as honey yet was as cold and biting as a Pyrenee winter.
Halfway through the process, she paused. He could hear her move away and rifle around. “What are you doing? You haven’t treated my left side.”
“I must open a new bottle.”
Renard propped himself upon his elbows. “What? Already?”
She held up her original vial. It was indeed empty. “Your Highness, I have never treated someone with such advanced necrosis.”
Anger beat in Renard’s chest like a second heart—the necrosis was advanced because his mother removed the medikua before she could continue to work on him. But if the healer had told Inés of her treatment, the queen would’ve likely ensured he never woke up. He couldn’t fault the old woman for following forced orders to head to Basilica, but he could fault his mother.
And he did. For everything. Very much.
“Yes. Do it.”
If they’d already finished the medikua’s supply, it was possible now that despite Taillefer’s additional vials, there wasn’t enough tincture left within the Bellringe to make it another year. To when the medikua’s newest vat of astral ember would ripen to full maturation in Taillefer’s old workshop. The king would deal with that problem after Amarande.
The medikua retrieved one of the two vials and slit the wax seal about the cork. Renard settled in, lying back upon his pillows. Waiting for the cool sting of the serum seeping through his deadened exterior.
He felt the application, but the iciness was absent.
“Why… why is it not working?”
