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He turns an apologetic look to me. “I am only viewing it.”

“For what purpose?” I whisper the words with a faint hiss. “To leave at the close of the Sacrament and come home?” One doesn’t view property if they are to leave in a month. I twist in the chair to face him. “Why would you need a flat above a tavern if you’re to come home, Eamon?”

The look he gives me is tight. “Home is…” He pauses to swallow, then loosens a curt sigh. “Home to you mightn’t be what home is to me.”

“What?” I hiss, lips curling to bare my teeth. I inch closer, like I’m about ready to chomp into him. “What are you saying?”

“If your nuptials to Taroh come to be… your home will be across Licht. When will I be able to see you, if ever?”

“You will move.” The answer comes too quickly from me. “You will move to be close to me.”

His mouth flattens into a thin line. “And what will my life be beyond that?”

I shrug, harsh. “What it is now.”

Eamon reaches for my hand. “I like Kithe, Nari. It all depends on the Sacrament, of what’s to come, of what occurs in your path, but I do wish to stay here.”

He takes my fingers into his grip, as though it will somehow enchant his words, make them easier for me to hear. It doesn’t.

I wrench my hand out of his grip and push up from the chair. It skids back with an awful screech.

“Nari.” He lifts a pleading look to me. “We cannot be sure Taroh will even allow our friendship once you are wed. How can I pin my future on uncertainties?”

I look down at him with a slack face but a gaze that burns. “And so you will abandon me, too.”

Eamon parts his lips around words that don’t come, because before he can utter a word, I turn my back on him and stalk out of the dining hall.

I make it up one level before the sobs wash over me.

Aleana might understand my tears, and so I look for her.

I search every level, every hall in Hemlock House, because I have no one else I can talk to. No one else within these walls cares to hear my woes.

Aleana will listen. Her patience won’t grate in the presence of my tears.

But this does not come to be. Instead, I learn that I am utterly selfish and a tad disgusting because, when I find her bedchamber, the door is ajar, and I peek through the gap—

A ghost of ashen skin and coarse hair, Aleana lies flat on the bed. So melted into it, she and the mattress seem to become one. Such a skinny, frail female, but there is something weightedabout her as I inch closer to the crack in the doorway, something in the exhaustion that droops her lashes and glistens her brow with an early fever sweat.

She isn’t alone.

The healer leans over her; his spidery fingers spindle a white twig around her ear.

Aleana’s voice is a rasp. “How long?”

“A week, maybe two.” The healer’s answer is crisp, unfeeling. “The white powder is eating you from the inside out.”

“I’ve been more energised,” she breathes the words without any conviction. “Healthier.”

“Miss Aleana, I told you this would happen.” The healer sighs, as though heckled, and draws back, taking what I suspect to be a temperature twig with him. “All these tonics you pour down your throat, they feed you with bursts of vitality, but your body is weakened by power it cannot sustain.”

“I need…” Her breath chokes as she struggles to sit up against the sagging pillows. “I need time.”

The reality of it strikes me like a slap to the face.

She gives up and sinks into the mattress. “Just another month, that’s all I ask for.”

Another month…