Something in the air shifts as people begin to murmur worriedly to one another.
On Valoria’s other side, her twelve-year-old brother and her middle sister start foaming at the mouth, coughing and spluttering. A few seats down, Baroness Shealea’s lightly tanned complexion drains of color as she, too, struggles to breathe. Beside her, Katerina spits a mouthful of meat into a napkin, all sense of decorum abandoned.
And it’s not just them. The sounds of people gasping all around disrupt the still night air.
I don’t understand.
I grab Meredy’s shoulders to help her stay upright through a fit of coughing, my heart pounding in my ears. There has to be something more I can do. Her face reddens as she struggles for breath against whatever is ailing her.
Slowly, the horrible realization takes hold: There was something in that sauce that shouldn’t have been.
“It’s lady’s lace!” Danial shouts hoarsely above all the choking. He’s already trying to heal Simeon, so his Sight must have revealed the type of poison coursing through his husband’s veins. “Don’t touch the food!”
Lady’s lace is a dark green plant with tiny white flowers. As kids, Evander and I called it break-your-mother’s-heart until Master Cymbre taught us its proper name. Everyone knows that it kills by forcing your airways to constrict, which means no one would be stupid enough to put it in a sauce. Unless they were hoping to kill us all.
I can tell by the way Danial looks wildly around as he heals Simeon that he wants to do more, but he can only help one person at a time, and there’s no way he’ll get to everyone before they die. There’s no way he’ll get to everyone, period. He’ll be paralyzed long before that from using his magic too much in one night.
Even with the aid of the other healers in attendance at the party—two of whom converge on Valoria at once—there’s no way all the guests will make it out of here alive. Guards run around the long tables, helpless to do anything but try to hold people up and direct the healers toward them.
Meredy collapses in my arms. Somehow, through a haze of tears, I manage to lay her on the grass a few feet away from our chairs. I lean over her and exhale into her mouth, trying to breathe for her. Her coughs become more pitiful with each passing moment.
“You can’t do this,” I murmur, patting her cheek as her eyes drift closed. She doesn’t open them again, even when I shake her. “You can’t go. I love you too much.” I stroke her hair and cradle her head in my lap. “Please, Meredy, I love you.”
I can’t sense the rise and fall of her chest anymore.
“Please, don’t leave me,” I beg through a sob, staring at a patch of grass.
It hurts to look at her. It hurts to breathe. Everything hurts.
Finished healing Simeon, Danial swoops down beside me, and I scramble out of the way as he puts his hands on Meredy’s throat. His face is expressionless, as though it went numb from healing his new husband.
A dull thud nearby manages to make me tear my gaze from Meredy for the briefest moment. Noranna has fallen out of her seat. The white foam on her chin and the way she’s not moving tell me she’s past the point of help, even as I shout for a healer to go to her. Of course, they’re all busy already.
Karston rushes to Noranna’s side at once. The scream that tears from his throat when he sees her face is so full of anguish that he sounds more like a Shade than a human. No, worse—like a Shade that’s been set on fire and knows the end is near.
The littlest Wylding girl, Ruthie, sobs as she tugs on her middle sister’s skirt, then her brother’s arm, unable to get a response from either of them. Abandoning her seat, she rushes to Valoria’s side, gasping terrified breaths.
But just like her other two siblings, Valoria is past the point of comforting Ruthie. I can’t even tell from here if my friend is still breathing.
A few seats down from Valoria, Baroness Shealea slumps in her chair, the white flower now missing from her dark hair, her arms around two smaller figures beside her. None of them move. All are too pale. I hope Shealea’s spirit finds the children’s in the Deadlands so they can continue to comfort each other in the next life. Nearby, Baroness Katerina lies equally still and silent, her forehead touching the table. Her white cat won’t stop nuzzling her cheek, not understanding that her owner, pale in life but now paler than the moon, will never respond again.
I turn my head to the side, stricken with a sudden urge to heave up the meager contents of my stomach into the cold grass. Twice. Three times. In between, I glance skyward. The stars sure are bright tonight. They twinkle sweetly, like thousands of grains of scattered sugar, like they don’t understand what they’re witnessing in the slightest.
As I wipe my mouth, Danial leaps to his feet and rushes to aid someone else.
I glance down at Meredy as I take her in my arms again, scrutinizing her face. She’s breathing, a little wheezily, but sounding no worse than if she were getting over a cold.
Wearily, she rests her head on my shoulder and closes her eyes. “I love you, too,” she mumbles, drawing another heavy breath. As I hold her, I study the lantern light reflecting off her hair, unable to look at her anymore.
She probably thinks you’re Firiel. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.
Shaking my head to chase away the thought, I force myself to gaze through the tables. The few other healers among the partygoers are still busy assisting Danial in healing whomever they can. Good thing, too, as Danial himself seems unable to walk anymore. He rests on an empty chair, looking as though the sheer effort of sitting up is almost too much for him.
Simeon drags a figure through the grass, headed toward Danial. It’s Valoria, her crown missing, her chin slick with white foam. There’s no color left in her face.
I sob harder, holding more tightly to Meredy as she stirs weakly in my arms.
Valoria is dead. The whole world is falling apart, and I can’t do a damn thing about it. Raising the dead is forbidden now. I can’t bring back anyone here, not even Valoria, thanks to her new law. And for good reason. I remember all too well how easily the Dead can become Shades, and how a single one of those monsters can cause waves of death in the space of a few heartbeats. Still, I hate knowing I have the power to ease a little of the hurt that this tragedy will bring to so many families, yet not being able to use it.
I could.
But I shouldn’t.
I can’t. I have to honor the law. The Dead belong in their world, the living in ours.
I hate this.
When Danial sees Valoria’s body, he shakes his head sadly. “Bring me someone I can actually help,” he tells Simeon, his voice breaking over the words.
Simeon nods, biting his lip, and embraces Valoria as her hair slowly changes from blond to a deep brown before my blurry gaze.
“Sarika is gone, Si,” Danial croaks. “You have to let her go.”
Baffled, I blink away tears and look closer at Valoria’s body to see that Danial is right. Sarika must have been wearing Valoria’s face all evening. It’s her we’ve lost, and I can’t help but feel the briefest surge of relief, followed by a stab of pain for Sarika, a girl whom I’d also come to call a friend. The garden shimmers beneath my gaze as I try to take a breath.
As Elibeth hurries toward me, I reluctantly give Meredy over to her care. I need to help Simeon find those who are fighting the poison long enough to be healed.
“Where’s Valoria?” I demand as Simeon and I kneel near several fallen forms in the grass to check for a pulse. I’m afraid that wherever she is, she might have eaten the poisoned boar, too.
“She couldn’t make it,” Simeon says hollowly. “She’s at the temple with Azelie. She said it was urgent, but she promised to make it up to us later. She sent Sarika in her place so it wouldn’t look suspicious that she was away from the palace on ‘such an important occasion,’ as she put it.”
Someone cries out—Elibeth—as Danial falls to his knees, exhausted already from using so much of his magic. Simeon stumbles toward him, tripping over something in the grass in his haste to help his husband despite feeling sick himself.
I grip the back of a nearby chair to stay standing, gazing around at everyone we’ve lost.
There’s Sarika, still bravely wearing Valoria’s face, though her hair has returned to its natural brown.
Bryn, who died while comforting Valoria’s middle sister during her last moments. From a distance, both of them could be sleeping, but neither is.
Noranna, the brilliant inventor who tried so hard to help us form defenses for Karthia, whose body Karston clings to as he makes a constant low, moaning sound.
Valoria’s brother, the boy with the nice laugh, next in line for the throne.
Valoria’s middle sister, an innocent girl who’s scared of the dark.
Baronesses Katerina and Shealea, friendly faces around the palace, with whom I’ve shared a laugh or dance at countless parties.
Several of Valoria’s cousins have left us, too.
Even Duchess Aventine, the noblewoman who laughed at Noranna, who Valoria was sure had tried to kill her before, is blameless in this slaughter. She, too, lies among the dead.
And now we could lose Danial.
I knew the oleanders signaled something was coming—something terrible—but this is beyond my worst nightmares.
As my gaze travels back over Sarika, realizing how close we’ve come for a second time to losing Valoria, I’m tempted to add my screams to those of the frightened and grieving partygoers around me. Thinking of how close I came to almost losing Meredy, to watching her die just like Evander, I could scream until my throat is raw and my voice is gone.
But I’ve faced death before. I won’t let it render me helpless again.
Between us, Elibeth and I move Meredy inside, carrying her and many others up to the healer’s wing of the palace. Yet long after we’ve left the area, long after the dead have gasped their last breaths and the healers have collapsed from their efforts, the partygoers’ screams still fill my ears.
I claw at my head, wishing I could pull them out of my scalp, but they refuse to be silenced. Maybe I don’t want them to stop. Those screams are all I have left of Bryn, Sarika, and Noranna. All I have left of my friends.
Those screams beg me to make sure no one else meets their fate.
Someone has to pay for this. Someone has to suffer. The men who broke into the palace intending to start a fire—was this the work of their friends, seeking revenge? Or the work of an angry spirit? I want to watch the guilty one die—better yet, I want them to die by my hand. That way, I can make sure it’s nice and slow.
XXVII
The spacious waiting room in the healer’s wing has never felt so stifling.
Jax and I share an oversized armchair that’s lumpy from years of use, giving Simeon the other chair to himself. He won’t look at either of us, having gone silent after expressing his guilt at being the first one saved and, therefore, the person to suffer fewest effects from the poison. Now he keeps his head bowed as he thumbs through a messy, age-stained book with the cover missing. When I asked him what it was about, he mumbled that it had something to do with heartache. I wonder if Meredy gave him the book we used to read together, but I don’t get any more out of him.
I’m sick of silence.
Behind the tall white doors on the other side of this room, Danial’s fellow healers are trying to save him from succumbing to the price of his magic. Usually, healing only paralyzes a small part of him for a short while, but he saved so many lives tonight that the paralysis went deeper. They’re worried it might stop his heart.
Also behind those doors somewhere are Meredy and everyone else whom Danial and the other healers saved. They’ll need sleep and a few days of extra care to fully recover, and until then, all the rest of us can do is wait.
I’m sick of waiting, too.
Behind those doors somewhere, Valoria is being given a potion for shock, a potion so painfully familiar that my teeth ache at the thought of it sliding down her throat. But she needs it to get through the night. Her brother and one of her sisters are gone, and she lost Hadrien and her mother just months ago. Little Ruthie is with Elibeth, playing with her hounds and trying to forget the horrors she just witnessed. She’s all Valoria has left now.
Well, unless Jax and I, and the rest of the wolf pack, count for something.
He shifts restlessly beside me, toying with the empty flask in his hands. I’m sure he’s itching to refill it, because that’s what he does when he can’t change things and he’s angry at his own powerlessness.
When I can’t change things, I usually go swing my sword around, but I can’t leave Simeon here. I won’t. Still, I don’t know what I can do for him. I know that worrying solves nothing and helps no one, and yet, it washes over me in waves.
More than anything, I’m sick of feeling helpless.
Suddenly, Jax leaps to his feet and sucks in a breath as though stung by something. He swipes his hand across a small table holding a tray of drinking glasses, seemingly for no other reason than to watch them shatter on the tile floor.
Simeon doesn’t even flinch, but I have to admit, the sound is oddly satisfying.
Abandoning the chair, I knock over the tall ceramic water pitcher resting beside the now-empty spot where the tray of glasses was.
Water soaks the fancy slippers I forgot to remove earlier, so I rip them off, standing carelessly among the pieces of shattered glass and clay.
Jax grabs the vase beside the entryway and hurls it at the closed doors behind which we can only guess at how our friends are faring.
I put my fist through a painting of a rose garden.
Jax puts his fist through the wall.
I rip the curtains off the room’s only window and shred them with my bare hands, tearing my fingernails in the process until they’re bloody.
Jax snaps the legs off the table that held the drinking glasses and uses those to make more holes in the wall, showering us in chunks of plaster and wood that make me cough as I breathe in some tiny pieces.
I kick over a potted plant, grabbing heaping fistfuls of dirt from the shattered vase and throwing them everywhere.
Jax shreds the plant itself, the dark juice in its stems running thickly down his hands.
A healer emerges from behind the white doors, poking her head out to see what all the commotion is. She quickly retreats, gasping at something. Maybe it’s the sight of my bloody hands, or the bloody footprints all over the tile where I’ve stepped in glass, or the crimson knuckle-prints all over the walls from Jax’s fists.
Whichever the reason for her startled look, it only fuels our rage as Simeon continues to read without glancing up once. I wish he’d join us.
It feels good, breaking things. Destroying a little bit of the world that seems bent on destroying us.
* * *
* * *
The next day, with guards stationed outside every occupied bedroom in the palace, we pretend to sleep. With guards watching closely over our breakfast, we chew tasteless food that’s been tested for poison first by some poor soul.
With guards breathing down our necks, we mourn.
Still reeling from the previous night’s tragedy, Valoria returns to the throne room to ponder how to prepare her unhappy people for an invasion that now seems inevitable. At least she has Devran to communicate some of her subjects’ wants and needs and pass messages between the palace and the city. Just yesterday, before the wedding ceremony, he came back around to having citizens join her council and agreed at last that the subject of the Dead could wait for now.
Simeon won’t leave Danial’s side, and Jax won’t leave Valoria’s even when she’s in meetings, which means it’s up to the guards to search
the palace for the poisoner and interrogate the arsonists in the dungeon to see how much they know about lady’s lace. I wander the palace halls alone in a daze, looking for the escaped spirit around every darkened corner, and only visit Meredy’s bedside once before she’s back on her feet. She’s so determined to find the culprit behind the poisoning and stick them full of arrows like a giant pincushion that she comes to my room to talk through potential suspects just five days after the wedding that broke so many hearts.
“Is it possible Devran could have done something like this, and his cozying up to Valoria, compromise-is-the-way routine was all an act?” Meredy asks as she sits on the rug covering part of my floor. Already, there’s hardly any scratchiness left in her voice thanks to Danial’s quick actions a few nights ago. “Who do we know who would have access to a plant like lady’s lace? It’s not in season right now.”
Lysander, guarding the door along with Nipper, growls at the distress in her tone.
“Too hard to say,” I sigh. “For all we know, it could be an Ezoran assassin who managed to sneak into the palace somehow. But more than likely, it’s a friend of those scumbags in the dungeon, someone with a background in smuggling, perhaps.” Or another faction that wants to see someone other than Valoria in power. It’s certainly not the loose spirit—how would they be able to find and pick up that plant if they aren’t back in their body? And yet, the possibility lingers in the back of my mind.
I know Jax and Simeon didn’t want to trouble Valoria with the fact that we went to the spirits’ world recently, or what we found there, but I’m sick of keeping a secret from her and it’s only been a few days. I need to get it off my chest.
Excusing myself from Meredy, I head for the throne room—the most likely place to find Valoria these days. Nipper’s claws skitter across the palace’s tiled hallways as she follows at my heels, startling a few people along our path by swatting them with her long, pointed tail.
Song of the Dead Page 29