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“Who?” I asked, though my voice was so raw I doubted he understood.

He pressed a silver vial to my lips. I did not understand why he wept. “Shara Isador, my queen.”

Liquid moistened my lips, and a tiny spurt of hope flared within me. Perhaps a sip of water. Even soured wine. Anything to remove the taste of rotting illness on my tongue. But all I tasted was blood.

Queen’s blood.

The tiny flicker of hope sputtered. No queen could heal this curse except she who wrought it, and she had met her end with its creation. Though I swallowed every drop he gave me. A taste of something not my own tainted sick was still a relief. Indeed, the liquid might as well have been nectar, rivaling my fondest memory of anything I had ever tasted before. Pure, sweet, and clean. Not rotten. Not laced with poisonous barbs and acids to tear through bonds forged by goddess blood. It soothed my parched lips and raw throat.

Closing my eyes in bliss, I followed the coursing liquid through my ravaged body. Softness. Gentleness. Beauty. Light. Laughter. Love. All things I thought lost forever, even precious memories long-ago destroyed, now crisp and clear. I remembered the feel of warm spring sunlight on my cheeks. The crisp bite of snowflakes melting on my skin. The way a field of daisies looked at dawn, glistening with dew, while the last shreds of fog plumed into the warming air. Un-trampled and pristine before the battle began.

Afterward, the warming blaze of a campfire and a bowl of stew. The hearty chew of a fresh loaf of bread.

The comforting, familiar smell of a stable. Fresh, sun-ripened hay. Horses. Even their manure.

Natural odors of a life well lived. The life of a knight.

I had known few worldly comforts in my life of war and death before the curse, but I had camaraderie with my brethren. Laughing around a fire, drinking mead to celebrate another successful campaign. My loyal steed, charging fearlessly into battle every time I asked him to go. The creak of my saddle. The smell of well-tended leather. The balance of a well-made sword in my palms. My skin calloused, my knuckles cracked from the cold and the blood, but my fingers had been strong. My body had been powerful enough to swing the sword and carry the weight of my armor.

Until I had been injured, which landed me in the bowels of hell.

Now, I was weak. Wasted. Rotten. Leaking befouled blood nonstop.

I lifted my hand—reveling in the act. Muscles long ago wasted away were revitalized. My torn, corpse-pale skin now smooth. My fingers moved when I asked them to. I lay the very tips against the man’s bowed head, and tears of wonder filled my eyes at the soft texture of his hair.

“What have you given me?”

“I don’t know.”

He’d said his queen told him to give the drink to me, though this man was human. The ones who’d opened the iron cage had been Aima, like me. If their queen lay nearby…

Dead. Dying. Like her Blood who’d opened my prison.

“Please. Do something. She could have taken the vial herself, except it was too late to save her Blood. She refuses to live without them.”

Fresh vitality surged in my body, though I wasn’t sure what I could do to help. Especially if they were already dead. I started to lift my head, shifting my body out of its iron shell. Hot blood spurted from the old wound near my groin. Apparently even the magical elixir the man had given me could not heal the debilitating wound that had sealed my fate.

A dolorous stroke indeed, for what worse thing could be done to a knight than make it impossible for him to ride or walk? Better that I had died honorably in battle. Even if I had lost an arm, I could have swung the blade with my other.

“Help me to her.”

The man locked an arm around my waist, taking some of my weight off the bad leg. Every excruciating step made blood pump from the torn skin and muscle, dribbling blood on the floor in my wake. At least the illness had been cleansed from my blood so I didn’t spread plague.

In the next room, a somber pall hung in the air. Two more humans wept near a ring of huddled, dead Aima. A third male knelt nearby, neither human nor Aima, his mouth twisted in a grim snarl. He held a knife in his hand, though I felt no sense of danger for myself. In fact, the man appeared more likely to use it on himself than any other foe.

Bodies lay crowded around the center, where their queen must lay, though I couldn’t see her yet. One of them had kept his shape after death, a large black dog which lay in the arms of another male. Some living birds flapped and crawled over the bodies but not feasting like vultures. Instead, they called in deep, melodious coos to rival any religious dirge.

I paused near the black dog, bending down to touch his broad head. The first creature I had seen in hundreds of years. The only better sight would have been Tommy Boy, my favorite warhorse. Squatting even a little put strain on the old wound, making blood spurt onto his black fur.

His flesh rippled. His chest began to rise. His gigantic paws twitched, running once more in his sleep, making small woofs and eager sounds as if he dreamed fondly of chasing bunnies through a thicket.

The female gasped. “Of course. Your blood must carry the antidote now. Quickly, bring them back. Please!”

Antidote. Could it be possible? The very origin of contagion might now release these poor dead souls who’d freed me?

I captured blood in my palm and slung it over the bodies. Dropping a wide swath on the ones close to me. Almost immediately, my blood sank into their flesh. Color returned to their pale corpses. Oozing sores closed. They began to stir. Eyelids fluttering open to gaze upon me with shock.

“My queen.” The man tugged me insistently, closer to where the other humans crouched. “Please help her.”