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“The job of a knight is serious, I know,” I said, nodding. “I’ll be facing The Dark alongside His Majesty. I’m not afraid. This is what I’ve trained for.”

“No, you misunderstand me. Only death can separate you from your position. Whether in the line of duty … or by treason, in revealing the king’s secret.”

I felt my stomach tighten with nerves. “Secret?”

“I suppose it’s better that Beric left that up to me,” she said, with an understanding nod. “Let me preface this by saying, what I’m about to tell you will contradict everything you’ve been taught your entire life. You will have questions, and I promise there will be time for those later—after the king is taken care of.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, nerves creeping up on me. I could hardly imagine what she might say next.

“You see…” She paused. “Well, I suppose the only way to say it is to say it. The king is not immortal.”

I nearly tripped over my feet. Deus Rex. The savior of England for the past two hundred years. Not immortal? “What do you mean?”

“He is human, Cali. Like you and I.”

“B-but—” I fumbled for words a moment. “But he’s hundreds of years old.”

“Yes. That is where you come in.” Before I could speak again, she held up a hand. “As I said, my dear, there will be time for questions. Oh, and the maid you brought? She will be sent home. Only trusted servants can serve in the inner sanctum.” I opened my mouth to protest, but the queen added, “But that’s a problem for tomorrow. For now … prepare yourself. His injury is rather gruesome.”

She opened the door and led me inside.

We entered a bedroom, somehow large and intimate at once—couches and luxurious rugs and pillows were scattered about. Beside the canopied bed knelt a young woman, looking after the man lying in bed.

A man who could have been none other than the God King himself.

Except … even after what Kat had told me, it was hard to believe I was looking at the king. Because this man had a massive bandage adhered to his chest … and all the stories said Deus Rex was impervious to injury. To death.

It was a struggle to push aside the truth I thought I knew to truly understand the one in front of me.

“Oh, thank God.” The kneeling woman looked at us, using the bed to push herself up to stand. “The king has been in a lot of discomfort since he woke up.”

She walked toward us, pushing her braided red hair behind her shoulder. “And by discomfort,” she whispered, “I mean he’s been insufferable.”

“That’s not helping, Elizabeth,” Kat said, giving a chastising sigh as she guided me forward.

The king was propped up by pillows in the large bed. His sweaty silver hair was swept away from his forehead, his bare chest bandaged. Even with everything Kat had explained, it still seemed strange that a figure the entirety of England called the immortal God King could be lying in bed, injured. In all the paintings his face was hidden by a veil or helmet, so I had no expectations of his looks … but it was surprising to see he didn’t look even close to two hundred years old. He looked young and pale and muscular, like a statue. Not quite beautiful in a conventional way, but striking, even with the pain lining his face.

I fought not to look as lost as I felt. This was my first time performing as a true knight. I had the weight of his secret on me now, something I could never speak of to anyone for the rest of my life. And I certainly didn’t know how to interact with the king, of all people. A curtsy, a Your Majesty, but that was all. There were so many ways I could get everything completely wrong.

But I knew how to heal. This I’d done a hundred times. And, for my position, perhaps that was enough.

I folded my sleeves away from my wrists and peeled back the bandage from the poultice making it stick to his chest … or perhaps it hadn’t been the poultice at all, because immediately the distinct stench of rotting and singed flesh enveloped my senses, made my eyes tear. I forced back a gag. His entire chest was an open gash, like a burn that had weakened the flesh and bone enough to cave in. A black gunk ran through it like veins, eking out from the wound to the bandage like threads of cursed saliva. Similar to Beric’s injury, I realized, but far worse.

Behind me, I heard Kat make a sound of distress.

It looked severe enough that having a squire with me who could amplify my magic would be helpful, but my cousin didn’t actually wield that type of magic. An extra knight would be better than nothing, but my cousin wasn’t good enough at harmonizing to bother asking if she could join me—at least, not good enough at harmonizing with me, which seemed a personal choice. Any dissonance would change the harmony, and the magic would either not work at all or do something entirely different than intended. And I’d seen the look on the queen’s face, it was clear Anise wasn’t welcome here. I wondered if my cousin would even be allowed to live if she saw what was in this room.

And while I couldn’t guarantee she felt the same, I would never wish her dead.

This would take so much longer without a squire, but what choice did I have? I had assumed the king’s knight had one in attendance. But perhaps this, in some cruel way, was my final test. A truly gifted knight is able to do without one.

Thankfully there was a lute against the wall, which I could use for the internal reconstruction. Once it reached closer to the skin, I would have to touch the wound to smooth it, so I could minimize scarring as I stitched. I could only imagine I would be part of next week’s beheading if I let the king walk around with a massive, itchy scar on his chest.

I checked the tuning of the lute, took a deep breath, and began.

Different tasks demanded different musicality, and there was nothing delicate about healing at such a stage. I strummed my chords firmly, deliberately, and my magic obeyed as I began to sing. It was almost as if the body needed convincing to function against its natural order, coaxed into renewing itself quickly, beyond what it was capable of doing on its own. But the flesh began to revive, as if God had taken up material and thread in order to sew the king back together.

This took longer than healing Beric had, not just because of the size of the wound, but because of the attention to detail. While the king’s wound had affected his lungs slightly, his rib cage was the most challenging part by far—its mass was solid and immovable, the curved bones harder to re-form than simple muscle and skin. I wasn’t nervous, only focused—I couldn’t get lost in the joy of magic as I normally did. This was the king, after all.