Page 7

It’s like I blinked and found myself slumped in a saddle. Everything hurts. Tristan’s arm is wrapped around my waist, holding me tight against his chest as he rides. Riding hurts. I want to get down. I want to throw up. I’m so dizz—

Darkness swallows me whole. But even in oblivion there’s pain. It traps me like a nightmare and bites like a snake. Over and over, unrelenting. Time becomes a torture device, refusing to pass, suspending me in a prison of agony.

My parents flash in my head, and I relive the most senseless conversations. Reminders of chores. Reprimands over my books. A rare moment of approval.

“You’re not playing soldiers and generals with Percy, are you?”

Mum asks, concerned.

“I’m his healer,”

my eight-year-old self answers proudly. “Just like you.”

Mum’s stern face cracks into a grin. “That’s good. Only the smartest girls get to be healers.”

I’m yanked from my dream-like state when my body falls from the horse into someone’s arms.

“Take her to my room.”

Tristan.

“I thought you wanted her to see Henshaw.”

It’s the deep voice again. What was his name? Vador?

“Bring him here.”

A heaviness threatens to pull me back down. Then it does.

“Yes, sir.”

It’s a woman. Where did she come from?

Snip.

Cool air kisses my feverish stomach. Someone is cutting away my shirt. My hand flutters to stop them and I find my jacket is already missing. No. Leave it. I’d rather die covered, thank you. The scissors stop moving.

Darkness.

Voices return. They whisper above me.

My eyelids peel back like they’ve been glued shut, and I find a wall. An impossibly white and flat wall. I study the shade. Marvel at its brilliance.

Fingers touch me. Scratchy fingers that are ice against my skin. They probe my arm, my lower back. They dig into my neck roughly, checking my pulse, and tap my stomach. Something bright is brought close to shine on my eyes.

“She’s too far gone. There’s nothing I can do,”

says a new male voice, matter-of-factly.

“How long?”

Tristan asks.

“It’s difficult to say. Minutes. Hours. Maybe a day or two if she’s lucky.”

So they don’t have the antidote. My pain intensifies as reality settles in. This is how I’m going to die.

“Lula, run and get Shepherd Noreen.”

“Why?”

Vador’s baritone voice asks. “You’re not—Tristan, no!”

Vador’s tone turns pleading. “Think about this. What you’re about to do, this isn’t something you can revoke. The ramifications to Kingsland, to you personally, could be devastating. She is the White Rabbit, for Kingdom’s sake. Our enemy.”

“That’s an order, Lula. Go,”

Tristan commands.

A calloused hand shakes me. Light shines through my eyelids.

“Isadora.”

Tristan again. I feel oddly relieved to hear his voice. Considering what I’ve done to him, it makes no sense that he’s still here.

“Isadora, can you hear me?”

A sound leaks from my throat in acknowledgment.

“I can help you. We have . . . something . . . I don’t know how to describe it—a custom? A ritual? No, it’s more than that.”

He grunts. “It doesn’t matter. You need this. It’s your only chance. But you have to become one of us—part of Kingsland—for it to work.”

Become one of them?

No.

If I denounce the clans and survive, I won’t live for long. I might even be killed by my own father for treason.

Pain hijacks my attention and spreads like a grassfire across the nerves of my skin. I gulp air. I’m getting worse. Poison is a wretched way to die. “Just k-kill me,”

I whisper.

His face moves closer until his lips brush my ear. “No.”

He disappears, and midnight swirls behind my eyes. I let it engulf me. The darkness is emptier of pain this time.

Rough hands draw me back to the light. “Wake up!”

I gasp as my eyes flutter open.

“This is a wedding, Isadora, make no mistake about that. But there are worse things than marrying me.”

Like dying by poison. My gaze blurs. An older woman wearing glasses and holding a small book goes in and out of focus as she speaks. My breathing has taken on a terrifying wheeze that drowns out some of her words. I know exactly what it means. I’m close to death.

But I want to live.

“Make it fast,”

Tristan commands.

“Do you—”

“I do,”

Tristan says.

“And do you, Isadora—”

It’s like a barbed wire is being threaded through my body. I whimper. My skin stretches and splits at the seams. It’s the only explanation for what I feel.

Tristan holds my face, his eyes desperate. Wild. “If you want the pain to end, if you want to live, then say yes.”

I don’t understand what marriage has to do with any of this. But I believe him that he has something that will help me.

He waits, his jaw so tight it looks like it could crack. He won’t force my hand.

Something gives in me at being allowed to make this decision for myself. To live or die on my terms. I can surrender to the poison and end this pain or accept his promise of hope. The choice is surprisingly easy.

“Yes,”

I whisper. I will marry you to save my life.

Tristan’s eyes flick to the people standing to the side as if confirming something before coming back to me. “Louder.”

His urgency adds to mine. “Yes! I do.”

The room bursts into a flurry of noise. Voices. Footsteps. “Is it done?”

Tristan asks.

“It is, but sir—”

“Later. Go. Everyone. You, too, Vador. I’m not arguing about this now.”

My eyes are slits as the door shuts. Then Tristan appears beside the bed. With a grunt of pain, he rips off the bandage that I wrapped around his shoulder. His jacket and blood-soaked shirt go next. Then the mattress dips under his weight as he crawls beside me, his head above my face.

What is he doing?

His eyes close. His face tightens with concentration, and then, of all things, he starts to sing.

None of this is real.

Only, the longer I feel his breath and listen to his voice, the more I’m unsure.

The words of a foreign language drift over me as he continues to sing. They’re stilted and quiet, like an unfamiliar lullaby. After a minute, he adjusts his weight on his elbow, then starts again.

I try to lie still beside him, but the pain won’t allow it.

“I’m sorry. I’m messing this up. This isn’t working.”

He averts his gaze and lowers his head a little, as if he can’t bear to look me in the eyes. His face is strained. “Isadora, you have to find a way to open up to me. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Open up to him? My brows furrow.

“I need you to find a connection between us. Usually it’s emotional or physical—so you could think about how close we are right now. Or maybe . . . maybe think about the weight of my hand.”

His hand seems to shake as it floats down to take my fingers. “What do I feel like to you?”

He has to be joking. I can barely breathe.

But he stares into my eyes, waiting for me to answer.

So I try to focus. To do what he’s asking. His skin is cool and dry and such a relief from the burning fire inside me. There’s a measure of comfort in that simple touch.

Something sharp stabs my middle, a flicker of terror so potent I almost cry out. It disappears immediately, leaving a painful residue in its wake. What was that? Although I’m intimately familiar with fear by now, this didn’t feel like my own.

Tristan’s eyes go big, amazed. “That’s it. Go back to that, but go further.”

His lips tighten when I don’t understand. “I know this sounds like madness, but you connected to me for a moment. I need you to do it again, but stay there. Go deeper if you can.”

It’s like he’s speaking another language.

“Let’s try this.”

His hand moves from simply gripping mine to weaving our fingers together. He squeezes.

His question hovers between us. What do I feel like to you?

I turn my focus to his strong fingers. His cool skin. But also the lifeline it represents. I don’t want him to let go.

Again, I’m hit with a disturbance, a wild rapid of crashing emotions. Only this time, it isn’t all fear. There’s a fragment of hope as well.

“There you are,”

he whispers. His singing starts up again.

Instantly, I feel a change on the inside. The rope constricting my chest unknots an inch.

Give me more.

Tristan’s voice grows more urgent, and I focus on it. Absorb it. If being present while he sings over me will ease my pain, I want it.

My throat opens.

I roll slightly into Tristan, drawing our hands tighter to my chest, clinging to him like a drowning person desperate to stay afloat. The less my lungs have to fight for air, the more I give him. Welcome him. Drink in the relief.

“That’s right.”

He inhales deeply, but when he sings again, it’s quieter.

There’s a series of pops inside my chest, and for the first time in an eternity, my lungs quench their thirst for air. My relief is so drastic, I bask in it. Bathe in the euphoria of it.

Mum was right about one thing: the Kingsland does have magic, and I don’t understand it at all, but it’s magnificent.

Tristan’s hand trembles in mine. A second later, his head falls to the crook of my neck. He slumps over.

“Tristan?”

He doesn’t answer.

Lifting his head with my hands, my heart trips at what I see. The skin beneath his eyes has gone dark. His lips are a deathly shade of blue.

With a grunt, I roll him awkwardly onto his back and stare in horror. I pull my hand out from under him and find it covered in blood. A wound has opened up on his lower back, just above his hip. Another on his elbow—where I was shot in the arm.

What the ever-loving fates is going on?

Tristan’s eyes roll up as air wheezes in and out of his throat. He is going to die.

Why would he do this?

Scrambling off the bed, I yank open the door, prepared to yell for help.

“What is it?”

Vador pushes off from the wall in front of me. He takes one look at my face and strides past me into the room.

I follow him back to the massive white bed. “He—he—he somehow took my—”

Vador stares down at Tristan. “He went too far.”

With what? How is this possible? “He somehow took the poison from me, I think. Do you have the antidote? Or a healer?”

More people rush into the room. Two of the soldiers who surrounded me in the forest. A young man whose face vaguely reminds me of Tristan. And the one who shot me with the poisoned arrow—Samuel. I lunge back from him, giving him a wide berth.

“She’s killed him, hasn’t she?”

The young soldier rests his hands on top of his shorn head.

My mouth falls open. “No, I—”

Samuel releases a curse, then snatches my arm and drags me from the room. We’ve barely made it past the door when he throws me against the wall in the hallway, cracking my head. Belatedly, I realize there’s a knife at my throat. “You’re going to save him. Take it back.”

My body strains to inch away from his blade. How?

The young soldier appears over Samuel’s shoulder. “This is bad, Sammy. They’re married now. Do you know what this means if he dies? She’s the White Rabbit. She’s the bloody White Rabbit!”

A bolt of panic strikes my chest at hearing them speak it out loud. Tristan and I are married.

“He’s not going to die,”

Samuel says with menace, eyes locked on mine over his very crooked nose. “Because she’s going to fix him.”

“How?”

I throw my hands up. “I don’t know the song or . . . anything. Why don’t you fix him?”

Samuel’s thick brows slam down. “Impossible. To use the connection, you have to be married.”

Oh.

My cheeks heat under his stare. “What about a healer? Or the antidote? It was your arrow; don’t you know how to make this right?”

“There is no antidote,”

Samuel says.

“Of course there is,”

I yell. “What poison was it?”

He hesitates before answering, clearly suspicious of where I’m going with this. “Dasher’s nettle.”

I swallow hard as fear lashes my insides. I don’t know the name, but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s not like the clans ever discussed what to name things with the Kingsland. “Show it to me, the leaf, the plant. Whatever it is.”

Irritation flashes in Samuel’s eyes, but he releases my neck and steps back. “She doesn’t leave, Ryland.”

He hands the young soldier his knife.

Ryland watches Samuel stalk down the hallway before whirling on me. “We don’t have time to be going around picking flowers. You have to fix him. Now.”

He lowers the knife to his side as his lip quivers—a lip that looks very much like Tristan’s. Could they be brothers?

“I don’t know how,”

I whisper.

“Try.”

It’s like he’s asked me to fly. To simply spread my arms and take off. Impossible. Absurd.

Still, I nod and stride back into the room. Tristan looks horrible. A vision of death. Blue swollen lips. He’s so pale, I can see his veins. But it’s the sound spilling from his lungs that scares me the most. There’s a deep crackle and moan with each breath. Even if we could get him to drink a gallon of the antidote, we’re too late. The damage is too much. He’s going to die.

And then I will, too. At Samuel’s hand.

Tristan’s eyes open a fraction and dart around like he’s searching for something. I remember far too vividly the agony he’s going through and move closer for him to hear me. “How do I take some of the poison back?”

“You would do that?”

Vador asks, sounding startled.

Samuel stomps back into the room and pushes a glass bowl into my hands. “There!”

he says, a sheen of sweat covering his skin. Inside is a leaf and two berries with black spots.

“Lollo sage,”

I mutter. “We use it to kill the rats back in Hanook.”

Thank the sweeping skies. “It’s not an anticoagulant. But it causes cell death, which explains the breathing issues. And pain. Worse, his liver and kidneys will be affected too.”

My mind races. “Fesber—that’s the antidote and will help the kidneys. Use the leaves, too. They assist with circulation and oxygenating the blood. Let’s start with that: fesber tea made with the whole plant, even the root.”

Why aren’t they moving?

“Don’t you know what it is?”

I ask. “Small purple flower with fuzzy leaves. It grows in the rocky, higher ground. You must have some of that around here. Get me some paper, I’ll draw it for you. And crushed white thistle! He’ll need that, too, to support the liver . . .”

So many other plants come to mind, but there isn’t time.

Samuel shares a skeptical look with Ryland. They know what I know: it’s too late. These remedies could’ve helped Tristan if he didn’t have a lethal dose of poison in his body. Now, he’s too far gone.

Which is why I need them to go and search for this flower. After I fail to take back the poison, I’m going to have to make my escape.

“Make it concentrated,”

I continue, my voice turning desperate. “A handful of each plant and cover just enough with water and simmer. It will need to be given for days. Maybe weeks. He’ll have to drink buckets of it. But it will help.”

I straighten my shoulders, doing my best to look confident that this is still a viable option.

“Go,”

Vador commands without taking his eyes off Tristan. “You, too, Ryland. Help him. We don’t have much time.”

Samuel flexes his fists like he’s about to punch a hole in the wall. “Fine. But if he’s dead when I return, I’m the one who gets to kill her.”