Page 69 of Artemysia

“ I love you is just another way to let the universe know that we have someone else to lose.” - Delphine

“T hey will have a royal funeral for Riev,” Throg says gently two days later. “If you want to see him one last time…”

We sit side-by-side on a log by the East River, taking a break after gathering samples for the Syf to study.

It’s best they stay away from the water as much as possible, so Throg and I volunteered. The Artemysians primarily sourced their water from the West River anyway.

They will continue to work toward a cure.

“Why can’t he heal? Syf don’t die unless you decapitate them.

We’ve always known that.” I stare down my shirt, my fingers twisting the hem.

His blue flannel. A shirt he will never wear again.

Why did it mean so much to him, a hand-me-down from Marije?

His only connection to family? A reminder of a time when he liked who he was?

Before he was a killer. Before he felt unloved…

“The healers tried. He’s only half Syf. His uncle said perhaps his heart is more human than Syf. It isn’t healing from the dagger strike.”

His heart is more human than Syf. And that’s where I stabbed him.

“But Eira said injured Syf can be dormant while they heal, even without breath or heartbeat for a while…”

“Elphie, they said there’s no sign of him healing at all. He’s dead.”

“He can’t be dead!” I holler, out of anger, out of the unfairness that he had to die. Because he dove into the river to save me. Because I held onto the dagger that killed him. “Why does it have to hurt like this?” I sob.

Throg scoots closer, trying his best to catch my eye, but I refuse to look up. “Elphie, I know you don’t want to talk about it, but you allowed yourself to love. That’s why you’re hurting so much.”

“Lot of good that did.” My hands go to my swollen eyes. I swallow back the lump in my throat, but it’s too late.

I’m weeping. That’s all I’ve been doing. The tears flow, endlessly bitter.

He’d said he loved me. I never had a chance to say it back.

But people like me—people like my father—know that I love you is a curse.

Saying I love you is just another way to let the universe know that we have someone else to lose.

My own words come back to haunt me. Love doesn’t last, not with death hunting us down .

Death—victorious and conquering.

“Love isn’t a weakness,” Throg says softly, as if reading my mind. He places his large hand on my shoulder.

“Love is worth shit,” I throw back at him, angrily shaking him off.

His blonde brow arches at my harsh words—words I never use. He doesn’t reply. Perhaps this time, he sees that I am right.

“Nothing I did made a difference. Someone I cared about still died,” I wail out.

Throg doesn’t look away.

He wipes one side of my face with the back of his broad hand. More tears replace the ones he erases.

“You two saved South Kingdom. The Syf will stay away from the river until they figure out how to clean it or cure it. The attacks on humans will stop.”

“In the end, he got his escape.” I can’t say his name out loud without crying again. I’m furious at the world. At the injustice of it all.

“Poor soul,” Throg echoes. “It’s fucking wrong.”

I kick out at the grass in front of me, and a clump of dandelion weeds goes flying.

I glare scornfully at the banks of the river. The river of death. I hate that it rushes by, oblivious to the destruction it brings with it.

Small blue flowers dot the edges of the water where it laps up onto shore.

Delphinium. The small poisonous flower I’m named after. They reminded my mother of her idyllic childhood growing up by the West River.

Prince Toryl said nothing blooms anymore along the river. He’s right. Nothing grows along the banks, not even the green dandelion puffs that are able to sprout between cobblestones.

Nothing—except the light blue delphinium, the color of a robin’s egg.

No other plants survive along the banks.

Delphinium.

I survived.

But I’m poison. I live on, while those around me die. How am I making a difference in the world when I can’t keep those I care about alive?

I push off the log and walk toward the water. The delphiniums aren’t affected by the river water.

Perhaps…because the flowers themselves are poison?

You burn like poison in my veins . Riev’s dark words of desire strike at my heart.

But…

Delphinium. Is it immune then? Unaffected by the runoff? It blooms, while other flowers die.

“Elphie, did you hear me? Let’s head back,” Throg hollers after me. “What are you doing?”

I recall Ivy’s reason for killing her commander.

We saw a Syf child feeding on flowers by the East River. She fell in when she saw us, and I fished her out .

Ivy never said the child was rabid. She’d been consuming flowers by the river.

I’m wading into the water, gathering all the blossoms I can find.

“Throg, pick as many flowers as you can.” I collect them, cradling them in Riev’s shirt.

Throg joins me, no questions asked, though I explain my theory as we harvest all we can carry.

We race back to Artemysia, through the eastern gateway, running the entire way back to King Foss’ palace.

An antidote.

The counter to the poison, the remedy to the sickness—is poison.

The flower is immune. It has to be the key to a cure for the Syf.

It has to work.

The Syf king’s potion masters brew an elixir. It’s not as simple as mashing the flowers; the healers mix both science and their collective healing energy. They tell me that it was Syf healers who secretly passed on to humans the recipe for brewing the green antibacterial tonic we use on cuts.

It’s why both North and South Kingdom use it.

I don’t pretend to understand their knowledge of chemistry and whatever “sorcery” or magical energy they have. Either way, I insist they dose Riev with the delphinium elixir immediately.

The healers surmise that if the elixir can cure his Syf side, his heart may be able to heal.

Syf are known to recover from most injuries, except for decapitation.

They remain in a dormant state while they heal.

Normally, when Syf are in statis, their bodies show slow signs of repair.

But not Riev. This begs the question—is he dormant, or is he dead?

I refuse to give up.

The elixir is tested on rabid Syf they’ve rounded up, including children. It takes a week of doses, three times a day, but it reverses the infection.

They return to normal.

Many have trouble remembering their time as rabid Syf. Some have complete amnesia, even forgetting their lives before they turned. But they are cured and are no longer a threat to man or Syf.

At the end of the week, I diligently pour another dosage of the potion into Riev’s mouth, avoiding his long, sharp fangs.

His heart still refuses to beat.

The macabre thought occurs to me that I will never let go, that I am feeding a corpse.

He’s not dormant—he’s dead. As morbid as it seems, his body isn’t decomposing. Syf bodies don’t rot; that’s why they are burned to ashes and scattered, returned to the forest grounds.

I will not allow them to burn him.

He rests on a bed down the hall from where Ivy, Throg, and I reside.

We were given an entire wing in the Syf palace.

Our quarters are bright, and the sun scatters rainbow prisms through the gemstone skylight.

I haven’t figured out if the palace is magical or not, but my living space and doorways seemed to have grown larger to accommodate the Lindwyrm when it insisted on sleeping in my bedroom.

As a mythical creature revered in Syf culture, it is left to do as it pleases—even after it bites several of the guards. It reminds me of Riev.

I tell Riev all of this, even though he cannot hear me. I brush back the hair from his forehead.

He would want it to be neat.

I choke back the tightness in my throat when I hear footsteps on the gold-streaked marble behind me.

King Foss glides into the room, his silky sea-green robes and rose-gold wings rippling behind him.

We’ve talked since I returned, and he’s answered all my questions. I’d passed some sort of test in his eyes, and he offered all the information I wanted about his world. His world , not mine, because I do not know how to belong to this world anymore .

A human in a Syf domain. A broken human in a shattered world.

Shattered, because I do not recognize any of it anymore.

King Foss generously allowed Throg, Ivy, and I to dine with him on several occasions, patiently answering our inquiries as if we were children.

In his eyes, humans must be childlike— wards to be guarded against themselves.

Ivy was finally able to ruffle him when she asked why he didn’t have a spouse and heir of his own.

At that point, he stood up and announced dinner was over and politely excused himself.

And now, on the eve of my return to Stargazer, I meet with King Foss one last time.

“Will Syf continue to hold back human expansion and knowledge of the Syf?”

“That is up for debate,” the king answers, his voice coming from above. He stands beside me, arms crossed with his hands thrust into his robe sleeves, while I sit next to Riev on the bed. “As you know, there were once other human civilizations across the world…”

He pauses, the very definition of solemn and stately. “But they destroyed each other. We’ve seen you advance in science and technology, only to use it against other humans. We’ve tried to prevent it here, in the last pocket of mankind—the North and South Kingdoms.”

He ends with a heavy sigh. “To preserve humanity.”

“But is it right to isolate us?”

King Foss fiddles with the sleeves of his embroidered sea-green robes, picking off lint that doesn’t exist. “Need I remind you that it is the Syf who shared medicine and technology for the sake of your longevity, health, and comfort?”

I decide for the sake of never losing hot water plumbing that I shouldn’t argue that they also blocked us from crossing the mountains and sailing the seas, penning us in like sheep.

“Why did Syf stop trading with humans two hundred years ago?”

“That’s complicated. Our trade helped you advance.

In North Kingdom, they advanced more rapidly with what we gave them and began to outgrow their lands.

Their population needed more room, and they wanted to explore the seas and expand.

We couldn’t let this happen. In the past, other human cultures clashed with Syf as they advanced. Fought for our lands and resources.”

“What did you trade with South Kingdom?”

“In those days, sugar and medicine for your ore from the southern mountains and wool from your sheep. Opals, too. They aren’t affected by our energies, and don’t grow like other gemstones.”

I glance up at him. “Do you think the kingdoms will go to war eventually? Over the metals in the southern mountains? If North Kingdom wishes to arm themselves against the Syf world, they will come for our resources.”

Foss’ nostrils flare as he winces. “It’s difficult to tell. We stayed hidden for two hundred years. But we needed your help and I needed Riev, so we revealed ourselves. It is for you to decide what to relay to your king.”

For me to decide. I fall deep into thought, wrestling with what might happen if I tell King Galke and the colonels.

My duty to Stargazer requires me to report back. Who am I to prevent my people from knowing what I’ve learned?

I swirl the flask in my hands and measure another dose of the blue liquid.

“Why do you keep trying?” the Syf king asks quietly, inclining his nose at Riev. “I would like my nephew and heir back too, but it seems your efforts are in vain.”

I shrug. “It’s what I do. I try.”

“The healers have done their best. Even they have never seen any Syf come back after this long.”

Never seen any Syf come back after this long . The truth slams into me. I ignore the trembling of my chin, but a shuddering breath tears from my chest.

Foss notices the effect of his words on my ragged heart.

“I am sorry, Delphine,” he offers gravely.

But he only speaks the truth of the situation. Reality strikes at my wounds, tearing me apart.

I loathe it, so I raise my chin and change the subject. “What will you do if there’s no other heir?”

“I will continue the search. It’s not a matter of appointing someone. The kingdom is tied to bloodlines that control the magic of the forest, as you saw with the entryway to Artemysia.”

“All Syf have magic?”

“Not individually. Our collective energy is harnessed to build such things as the gateways. Only certain Syf can direct our energies to create a gateway, but it takes a large group of us to build and maintain it.”

When I lift another dropper of elixir to Riev’s lips, I know I am in denial. My efforts at this point border on the pathetic. The sudden weight of outrage at the futility of it all crushes my chest as I fix my stare on Riev’s serene profile.

His chin is stubbly as I shut his lips after retracting the dropper. I graze my knuckles against the coarse hairs of his jawline.

Hold on. His hair has grown ? I pry open his mouth, trying to keep my hands from shaking. My heart rattles in my chest. His fangs are smaller than yesterday. They are still sharp, but not as long.

I lift out his hand from under the blankets, feeling for his fingertips.

The claws are gone.

A quick wrench of Riev’s wrist in Foss’ direction captures his full attention.

His pale eyes flick from Riev’s clawless hand to me. He bows inward, examining the transformation.

While I don’t allow myself hope yet, I press my ear against Riev’s chest.

I almost shout out. No, I do shout out. “Heartbeat! King Foss, his heart…”

The slowest, faintest of a pulse barely exists—but a weak heartbeat moves through him, nevertheless.

King Foss, efficient as ever, rushes out, ordering his entire team of healers to attend to Riev.