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Chapter 50

IRIS

The month after the theatre passed quicker than expected, and my urgency for a breakthrough grew with each passing day.

Aspen returned several days after the performance. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I exited my rooms and found him leaning against the opposite wall—ankles crossed, two mugs in hand. He extended one to me, and I suppressed a moan at the decadent scent.

“Did you steal spiced tea from the apothecary?” I asked incredulously, the heady aroma filling my nostrils.

A sip from his own mug and a quirked eyebrow were the only responses I got.

I bit my lip, trying to maintain a collected facade as he looked me up and down—foam still clinging to his upper lip.

“And I suppose you’re drinking hot chocolate at this ungodsly hour?”

He flicked his tongue up, collecting the cream from his lip. It took everything in me not to shiver.

“With cinnamon.”

I scrunched my nose. “There is no way that tastes good.”

“Don’t be so quick to judge, Virlana.” He smirked.

The next day began the same, and soon, it became a routine. Every morning, Aspen met me outside my door, tea in hand, Mochi by his side. We walked down to the healer’s wing together, grabbing breakfast from the kitchens on the way. He waited in my closet apothecary until we had both finished our morning meal before heading off to fulfill his duties—training, strategy meetings, guard patrol, financial oversight, and whatever else occupied his time.

I worked on the Blight Lotus tonic until my fingers bled, pausing only to spend time with the patients in the Healers' Wing.

I saw Everett Lannish most days, but his decline quickened each time.

I needed him to hold on. Just a bit longer.

Many of the healers had come around to using botanicals in their practice—and not just for Malum patients. Only three days prior, I’d seen High Healer Nora use my salve on a young child with burns on her face.

It was progress I hadn’t dared to hope for.

However, the tonic remained infuriating. Of the five types of reagents, I was now sure that it needed either a stabilizing or binding agent, but there were dozens of different elixirs that fit into those two categories. I worked through the list, but all the binders had failed, forcing me to reformulate again.

Every spare moment went into the work, the journal with the gilded sun still barely touched in a drawer.

Aspen offered, more than once, to join him in training, taunting me with the idea of sparring. I declined. I knew that once Nadya found out I had forgone hand-to-hand lessons, she’d be furious—especially with how rare our sessions had become over the past few years.

There was no time. No waking moment I didn’t try to seize with more research. Even Threading sessions with Theon were few and far between, when my magic bubbled so violently under my skin that I couldn’t think until it was done.

At lunch, I wandered the palace grounds, finding a new corner each day to read in solitude.

Aspen joined me each afternoon for dinner, hunching over my notes, studying the progress we had made. He asked about the patients, ground herbs while I pored over spellbooks—searching for any hint of what direction to take next.

He rinsed pots and cauldrons after each failed attempt. Whispered encouragement on the days we lost someone. Wiped my tears when they fell.

He walked me back every night, bidding me farewell at my door.

But he didn’t touch me—not like he had in the woods.

No more than an encouraging squeeze on my knee, a brush of his pinky, the removal of a tear from my cheek.

In the Tundra, we’d been able to pretend we were different people. With different responsibilities. Different fates.

Maybe it was the break in that facade. Maybe it was the display at the theatre. Either way, he was distant.

It was for the better. To stop now.

Who was I to ask for more from him?

No, it was wiser to end it. Before it became even more convoluted. Before it became ruinous.

It would be so easy to let it be ruinous.

Except on rest days. Rest days were my favorite.

On rest days, he brought breakfast. On rest days, we pulled the pillows from the bed and sat on the floor. Aspen threw open the curtains, and we sprawled across our makeshift fort—so reminiscent of our tent in the woods—soaking in the morning sun, sipping our drinks.

On rest days, Aspen traced lazy shapes over my scars. Circles and hearts and swirls, drawn with the same soft caress he used on a sketchpad. Sometimes along my ankle while he lounged across my outstretched knees. Other times, mindlessly around my wrist while I flipped through a book.

We spent all day in my rooms on rest days.

I read while Aspen lay on his back, creating flurries of snow and wind above his head. Aspen sketched in an armchair, never revealing his art when I begged, while I leaned against his legs and whispered to Mochi about how insufferable he was.

We ate. We laughed.

It was the closest we got to that last week in the woods.

I fucking loved rest days.

Every other day, Aspen was reserved. Stoic. Walls of ice rose so high around him I had to drag my nails along the edges to find any give. For the rest of Kacidon, he was the perfectly crafted portrait of the future leader everyone wanted him to be.

As if he had suddenly realized it was easier to give in.

But never on rest days.

On rest days, he ran his knuckles over my collarbone and his wind along my jawline.

By the third rest day, I’d stopped hoping he wouldn’t leave after sunset.

But he was there, unwavering, on the first Dark Day.

He listened as I explained—no matter how much work I had done to combat it in the past eighteen years—there were days I woke up drowning. Days I couldn’t breathe.

That no matter how happy I was, or how much good existed in my life—some mornings, I woke up and wished the darkness would claim me instead.

There wasn’t always a reason.

Some Dark Days, I felt nothing.

Others, the pain was so unbearable I wanted to scream into the abyss.

He told me he had them too.

* * *

High Healer Nora ran a third diagnostic over Everett Lannish, but it looked identical to the first two.

His entire body lit up red.

“Don’t look so dire, you two,” he coughed out. “Red’s my color, like the hellscat here.” His arm shook as he pushed an elbow into my side. The grin that twitched at his lips was heavy, like it took the last bit of energy he had left to muster. “I’ve never looked better.”

I handed him another revitalizing tonic. Scooping the other empty bottles from his bedside, I stuffed them into my pocket to clean for later. Five was the limit anyone should take in one day. This was his sixth.

“No more,” I said as he tipped the swirling contents back, tossing me the last jar. “Your body can’t handle any more of it.”

I collapsed into the chair at his side, rubbing my eyes as High Healer Nora moved to another patient.

“My body can’t handle much more of anything, I’m afraid.”

“I know.” I cleared my throat, swallowing the despair threatening to rise. “I know. I’m close, I promise. I have the ingredients, I just need...”

“Time.”

I nodded, laying my hand over his as his head sank against the soft pillow.

“If you sign the papers, we can start administering it as soon as its ready.”

He cracked one eye open. “Hellscat, am I your test subject?”

“If you’d like to be,” I whispered.

“The wife will be here tomorrow,” he murmured, his breath slowing. “We’ll look at your fancy papers.”

His shivers shook the entire bed. I pulled a blanket, tucking it beneath each shoulder.

Turning my back to hide the downfall of tears, I swung past the white partition, extinguishing the sunflare.

“Don’t break, don’t break....” His low whisper followed me out of the infirmary.

Then, the screaming began.

Don’t break. Don’t break. Don’t break, I repeated until I collapsed at the foot of my bed in a choked sob.

His hallucinations were unmanageable that night.

By the time his wife arrived the following morning, Everett Lannish was unconscious.

* * *

I clawed at the earth, desperate for reprieve from the dark.

The soil caked under my nails, dragged down my throat, filled my lungs.

Get. Me. Out.

I was buried.

My body trembled violently. Cold, numb fingers bled.

I screamed, but the words evaporated from my tongue.

Help me… help me… HELP ME!

The sound of a door bursting open.

My body being shaken.

A vice grip around my chest.

Two ice eyes.

He was here.

My gaze darted around, assessing the room.

Today wasn’t one of our days.

Why was he here?

“Sunbeam…” he whispered, hands still cradling my jaw.

“What are you doing here?” I slurred, shaking my head. Sleep clung to the corners of my mind, the nightmare mixing with his white hair in flashes of light and dark.

“I was climbing the stairs to see if you’d like to join me for dinner…”

The events of the day swam back, books reshuffling to their proper places in my mind. I’d felt exceptionally tired after a session with Theon, and helpless in the infirmary with an unconscious Everett Lannish. I’d left a note for Aspen in the healer’s wing.

Things to do. I’ll see you in the morning.

I’d only planned to read until dinner. At some point, I must have fallen asleep.

“You were screaming, Iris.”

Had I been that loud?

The staircase to this wing was six doors down.

He sat in front of me, the bed shifting under his weight. His eyes betrayed the distress he tried to contain.

“How long?” he asked.

I looked away.

“How long have they been back?”

I swallowed. “Since the second night we returned.”

I wasn’t sure why I’d withheld it from him. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I could admit I didn’t want to be another responsibility. Didn’t want him to offer things—things I didn’t dare let myself want—simply because he pitied me.

His fingers brushed my chin—softly, tenderly, bringing my gaze to meet his.

“Stay with me.”

I shook my head. “You are not responsible for my nightmares. Or saving me from my own head.”

He just repeated his statement, placing his hands firmly over where I had dropped mine down on the sheets.

“Stay with me.”

I set my lips in a firm line, “I don’t need your pity.”

He didn’t flinch, eyes flashing grey for a fleeting moment.

“Stay with me.”

His voice didn’t lilt at the end. No questioning air to his statement. But he was asking, I knew he was asking.

I took a deep breath.

Aside from a cure for the Malum, I hadn’t wanted anything more in a long, long time.

“Yes.”