Page 28 of The Shattered King

I woke up slowly, oddly recognizing Renn’s bedroom from the lighting before anything else—the gap in the curtains, the blue morning light from his west-facing window.

I was on a pallet on the floor, made from folded blankets and a cushion from a salon chair.

I barely remembered coming in here, I was so tired—the exhaustion I’d felt my first weeks in the castle was nothing compared to how tired I’d been last night, how utterly wasted the magic had made me.

Even now, fatigue sang in my bones. But it had allowed me to wield it in so desperate a time, and I only hoped it continued to heed me.

I sat up, a headache rolling through my skull, and let out a soft groan as I touched it.

Slipped into my lumis. I was a healthy woman, but my lumis had shadows for walls: the gray casting of a person nearing death.

Nearing, but not yet there. Ursa had driven it away, but it loomed over me, an ever-present reminder of her sacrifice.

A block in my crenellated puzzle sat askew, and I gently aligned it.

Any craftlock healer would easily see where Ursa resided; her pieces glimmered green against my own, which were cast in grayscale shades.

They had been brighter once, like sand and wood, before the accident.

Ursa’s lumis had been a lovely pond, so vivid that healing her felt like visiting a grove in the wood.

Upon it had been a variation of lily pads, varying in color and shape.

Here, they were condensed and molded like the puzzle pieces the heavy pounding of horse hooves had broken away.

Pieces Ursa had crafted with one hand as she held on to my spirit with the other, forbidding Death from taking me .

.. all while making her too weak to survive the day.

Eight years had passed since that time, and oh, how I missed her.

That her sacrifice somehow connected us still, reaching through the veil between life and death, was a true gift, and yet sometimes in the depth of night, when I could not sleep, I wondered if I was somehow holding her back from something beyond me.

Something better for her, where our parents had already gone.

I slipped back to the present with an exhale, my headache abating.

“Nym.”

He might have startled me were his voice not so soft. I rose from my pallet and approached the prince’s bed, relief at his wellness washing over me like cold water. “I did not mean to wake you.”

“I’ve been awake for a while. But I wanted you to rest.” He pushed himself upright and reclined on four stacked pillows.

An open book titled The Hay Wars lay upside down beside him.

His lungs clicked again. Unease laced his voice; I could only just see his face in the dim light. “What ... happened?”

I sighed. “I was hoping you could tell me. You’ve been doing so well, Renn.

So remarkably well. Even now, you look healthy—you haven’t lost weight or muscle.

It’s ... it’s as though the foundation of your lumis can’t support itself.

Were you feeling ill, before?” While I was blathering about my dead sister?

He shook his head. “No, only ... concerned.”

I forced the smallest smile to my lips. “You need not be.”

“Nym.” I thought he reached for me, but the shadow of his hand retracted halfway to mine. “I wanted you to know ... you’re safe to tell me these things. I will guard your secrets with my life.”

A single chuckle escaped me, and I winced at it. I did not yet want one of the guards to check on us. “With your life, Renn? I should hope not. I’ve put far too much effort into it for you to barter it on a secret.”

I thought he smirked at me, and I realized I’d forgotten to say his title with his name, and a little pit of dread opened behind my navel as I tried to recall if I’d done it before, because now I was sure I had, but he had not corrected me.

Still, I ought to be more careful. I had known the prince three months, but given all the time we spent together, it felt far longer than that.

“Should I barter another secret then? So I’ll be as damned as you?”

I rolled my eyes. “What secrets could you possibly carry that could be so devastating?”

He did not answer immediately, and I wondered if I’d offended him, or if there were indeed secrets in his keeping, and he was filtering through them, trying to find one he could bear sharing.

I softened. “You do not have to—”

“I tried to kill myself. Twice,” he admitted, very softly. So softly it would not have stirred a babe. “Once when I was, ironically, sixteen”—the same age I had perished—“and again two years ago.”

Frost expanded sharp crystals beneath my skin. Only two years ago. To think, had I been conscripted just a little earlier, I might have prevented ...

The thought to end it all had crossed my mind before. Twice. But never seriously. I would never waste Ursa’s sacrifice or leave the burden of our family to Brien and Lissel. Even then, I lacked the courage.

His truth chilled me. I imagined walking into his room to find him dead. Just the thought made my lungs too heavy to fill. “Renn—”

“They all tried so hard to fix me,” he went on, voice low.

“Tried and failed, over and over. So many healers and doctors, I couldn’t possibly count them all.

On good days ... on good days I tried to work with it.

Tried to focus on what I could do, though the list was painfully short.

Even my mother saw only what I lacked. I thought, if there’s so little to me, what difference does it make if I’m here or not? ”

I considered how callously I had once thought it’d be a blessing for Cansere if Renn Noblewight simply passed away.

How I planned to intentionally fail my testing with him.

How many other healers had come here with the same mindset, eager to get back to their families, their occupations, their lives?

Could one of them have spared Renn this suffering?

My eyes and nose burned. “I’m ... so sorry. I don’t know what to say, other than I’m glad you were apparently terrible at it.”

A dry chuckle worked up his throat. “I was. Maybe, deep down, I didn’t want to die.

Deep down, I wanted that sliver of life, even though it hurt.

” He inhaled slowly and let the breath out all at once.

“Does mine look ... like that?” he asked, blue eyes piercing the shadows.

“Macabre, dark, however you would describe ... yours?”

Pressing my lips together, I shook my head. Desperate for some light, I crossed to the window and opened one of its curtains, illuminating the room. “No. Yours is very bright. Light, colorful. Only broken. Broken and stubborn and truly maddening.”

He pressed his knuckle to his chin, considering. “I wish I could see it.”

“I wish I could show you.”

“Could you draw it?”

“It would be a poor likeness, believe me.” I came back around to his side of the bed.

“And my time is better spent elsewhere.” I extended my hands, a silent inquiry, and he nodded, allowing me to dowse into him, to feel the morning’s stubble on his jaw and the beat of his pulse.

He remained well—I soothed only a few minor things before pulling free.

Still, he’d had the semblance of wellness before.

The appearance of health was no longer a guarantee.

I could only hope that since some time had passed between his relapses, we would have some time before the next.

Then, looking him in the eyes, I said, “If you try to kill yourself again, I will murder you, understand?”

Mirth gleamed in his eyes. “That seems incongruous, does it not?”

“I will find a way.”

His lip ticked up, and I realized I was still touching his face.

A discomfiting something surged up my arms, like cold skin submerged in a hot bath.

Dropping my hands, I stepped back and looked around the room.

For what, I wasn’t sure. A pair of eyes watching too closely or an excuse to leave.

Clearing my throat, I managed, “I’ll make sure the sofa’s ready,” and hurried into the salon.

Both Ard and Sten lingered there, looking tired.

Ard leaned against the wall, head dropped, and Sten sat on the sofa.

When I entered, they jumped to their feet.

“He’s fine,” I answered before they could ask, folding my arms to warm myself, shield myself.

I suddenly felt very much like a honeybee, craving a small, enclosed space all my own.

“I don’t understand why his illness behaves the way it does, but he’s perfectly fine now.

” His legs never seemed to give out—once those were repaired, they were easy to maintain.

It was the rest of him that broke the laws of craftlock, at least as I understood them.

The illness that had come to him as a babe, not the accident that had befallen him as a child.

After Renn dressed, he came into the salon. “You will tell no one about last night.”

Ard shrunk. “But, Your Highness—”

“Or you will be dismissed from my service.” He sighed. “And I would be distraught to do it, but you know the queen. She will find a way to lock me up in here if she thinks I’m regressing.”

“You aren’t regressing,” I offered. “Only relapsing.”

“I see no difference.” He straightened his shirt cuffs. He hadn’t dressed his usual way today. He still looked like a noble, but neither black nor red denoted him as a Noblewight. More notably, he’d taken off his white cincture. “I intend to go into the city.”

My heart jumped. I hadn’t been outside the castle walls since I entered them.

“Is that ... wise, Your Highness?” Sten asked.

“Are you up for it?” Renn countered. “I imagine you are tired. You can switch out with Bay and Sall, if you need.”