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CHAPTER TWO

Corrick

I’ve been listening to my brother’s breathing for hours. There’s a new sound each time he inhales, a faint stuttering in his lungs. In the Wilds, they call it the death rattle, because it means the end is near.

Here in his chambers, I’m unwilling to use the word death at all. I’m unwilling to even think it.

He doesn’t have a fever. There’s no cause to worry.

I can’t even convince myself.

Sunlight blazes through the open window, and birds trill in the trees. Harristan shouldn’t be sleeping this late, but I hate to wake him. To everyone outside the doors to his rooms, we’ve been deliberating over paperwork all morning. I’ve called for food twice, enough to feed a dozen people, but most of it sits untouched. Flies have begun gathering on the sliced fruit, and a bee drones over the pastries.

Harristan coughs faintly, and his breathing eases. Maybe that’s all it was, a tickle in his throat. A tightness in my own chest loosens, and I run a hand across the back of my neck, finding it damp.

A faint breeze nudges at my papers with enough insistence that I tuck most of them under the weight of the lamp before they can scatter across the desk. One of us has to work. I’ve been making notes along the margins of a funding request from one of the eastern cities, looking for omissions and inaccuracies in their statement demonstrating the need for a new bridge. I expected to get through only a few pages before Harristan would wake up, but now I’ve gone through the entire report and it must be nearly midday.

I tug my pocket watch free and glance at the glittering diamonds embedded in its face. It is midday. If he doesn’t appear at the meeting of the sector consuls, there will be talk. I can only silence so much.

As if my thoughts wake him, my brother stirs, blinking in the sunlight. He frowns at me and sits up, shirtless, then runs a hand down his face. “It’s late. Why didn’t you wake me?”

I listen to his voice carefully, but there’s no roughness to his tone, no sign of any difficulty breathing. Maybe I imagined it. “I was just about to.” I move to the sideboard and lift the kettle. “The tea has gone cold.” I pour a cup anyway and carry it to him, along with a thin corked tube of Moonflower elixir that’s darker than usual. The palace apothecary doubled his dosage last week when the coughing started again, so maybe the medicine is beginning to work.

Harristan uncorks the tube, drinks it, and makes a face.

“There, there,” I say without a lick of sympathy.

Hegrins. That’s something he only does when we’re alone. Neither of us smiles outside these rooms very often. “What have you been doing all morning?”

“I went through the request from Artis. I’ve drafted a refusal for you to sign.”

His expression turns serious. “A refusal?”

“They’re asking for twice what a new bridge would cost. They hid it well, but someone got greedy.”

“You hardly need me anymore.”

The words are said lightly, but they hit me like an arrow. Kandala needs its king. I need my brother.

I lock away my worries and fold my arms. “You need to dress—and shave. I’ll call for Geoffrey. I’ve said we were too busy for you to bother earlier. Quint has requested an audience with you twice, but he will need to wait until after the evening meal, unless—”

“Cory.” His voice is soft, and I go still. He only ever calls me Cory when we’re alone, one of the few reminders of childhood we have left. A nickname from when I was small and eager and trailing after him everywhere he went. A name that was once spoken in gentle fondness by our mother or encouraging praise by our father, back when we believed our family was beloved by all. Back before anyone knew about the fever, or the Moonflower, or the way our country would change in ways no one expected.

Back when everyone expected Harristan to have decades before he’d take the throne, that he’d rule with firm kindness and thoughtful care for his people, just as our parents did.

But four years ago, they were assassinated right in front of us. Shot through the throat in the throne room. The arrows pinned them upright, their heads hanging cockeyed, their eyes wide and glassy as they choked on their own blood. The image still haunts my dreams sometimes.

Harristan was nineteen. I was fifteen. He took an arrow in the shoulder when he dove to cover me.

It should have been the other way around.

I stare back into his blue eyes and look for any sign of sickness. There is none. “What?”

“The medicine is working again.” His voice is quiet. “You don’t need to play nursemaid.”

My smile feels a little wicked. “Cruel Cory playing nursemaid? Never.”

He rolls his eyes. “No one calls you Cruel Cory.”