Page 49 of The Shattered King

The weather held enough; the return journey to the capital was just as swift as my trip into Fount, and yet it felt eons longer.

Because I had traveled it once already, perhaps, so the novelty had worn off.

Because I didn’t have the excitement of seeing my family and surprising them with gifts.

Yet in truth, while I wished I’d had more time with Lissel and the others, I ached to return to the castle.

My waking and sleeping thoughts were both tangled in Renn, worrying over him, wanting him, and that made every mile stretch to ten.

My heart seemed eager to betray me, however much I pleaded for it not to.

The moment I stepped from the carriage house, death whispered across my skin.

I froze as gooseflesh rose on my arms, despite the heavy drape of my cloak. I turned back for my driver, but as I reentered the carriage house, the sensation faded.

Quickening my step, I hurried into the bailey, holding my breath.

The chill feeling of death did not return straightaway; for a moment I thought I had imagined it.

Surely it had just been my own anxiety and the January chill.

But as I neared the training grounds, the definitive nearness of death tickled my neck and pricked my fingers.

Subtle. Far more subtle than it had been with the servant Torr or the soldier crushed by the gate, but I sensed it.

I searched the bailey, eyes locking on servants and soldiers. I neared them, the sense of death flickering like a drowned candle flame.

A white cincture flashed in the corner of my eye. Turning, I spied Prince Adrinn kicking mud off his boots, and the sensation increased.

I marched to him swiftly enough to blow the hood off my hair. “Let me dowse into you.”

His brows instantly drew together. Given our agreement, I’m sure my initiating conversation confused him. “I’m quite well, healer. Be gone.”

I stepped closer and pulled off my gloves. “Let me dowse into you, now .”

He hesitated. Glanced over me to one of his nearby guards. Shrugged, which was permission enough.

I touched his neck and slipped into his lumis, but ... everything in the prince’s menagerie was as it should be. No noticeable death lines, no creeping gray, no sick animals or broken cages. Confused, I checked everything once more before shifting back to reality.

He lifted a condescending eyebrow. “Satisfied?”

Death whispered against the shell of my ear.

I turned toward his guard. “You, next.”

The man’s mouth twisted in discomfort. “I don’t think so. I’ve heard about you—”

“For Hem’s sake,” Prince Adrinn hissed, “just let her do it.”

The guard grimaced but bent over. I touched his jaw and dowsed. His lumis was like a giant book—I flipped through the pages. Fixed a mild sprain in his ankle, but there were no notable death lines.

Returning to myself, I moved farther into the bailey. Prince Adrinn mumbled something at my back, but I was too focused to make out the words. The touch of death faded ... then rippled back. Faded, returned. What was going on?

I sensed it, surely, near Cook, who was dumping out old water by the kitchens, yet it faltered again as I neared. “Can I dowse into you?” I asked.

She blinked. Freed a lock of hair caught under the cord of her wedding pendant. “Oh, Nym! Didn’t know you were back. Hip’s been killing me all day.”

I took her hand. Her lumis unfolded as a field of wildflowers. I pulled thorny weeds—her hip—and searched for certain marks of death, but she only bore the usual lines all healthy people had. I neared them, inspecting them, but found nothing extraordinary.

“Thank you,” she said when I came to myself.

I nodded, distracted, and went into the castle.

A footman passed me, carrying an empty tray.

Death slinked between his legs like a cat.

A maid scurried by, the mark of death so faint it might as well have been a ring on her finger.

Another footman—nothing on him. One of the heralds .

.. yes, I felt it there, and yet as I turned to ask to see his lumis, the feeling wavered, like an illusion I could only perceive from the corner of my eye.

It vanished as soon as I faced it head-on.

Was the death-touch fading from me, after so many years alive?

I dowsed into myself but saw no lift of the dark colors I’d borne since the carriage accident.

No change. Was I more anxious than I thought?

But this stoked my anxiety more than anything else.

I didn’t understand it. I was misreading something—

I needed to see Renn.

I quickened my pace through the keep, up the stairs. Worry contorted my mind until it had me running down the west wing to his suite. Please be there, please be there—

I threw the door open. Ard leaned against the wall across the room, blinking at my arrival.

The sound of retching flowed from the bathroom.

I shut the door and hurried to the first one on the left.

It opened into a small room with a narrow commode, plus a table with a washbasin.

Renn, on his knees with his back to me, vomited into a bucket on the floor.

He wore only his shirtsleeves and breeches.

Brekk, the healer from Rove who had saved me twice, knelt with a hand on the back of Renn’s neck; the empty stare of dowsing snapped into frustration, not at me, but at the situation.

Sten sat on the commode, using it as a chair, looking miserable, but hope lit his face as I appeared.

“Nym,” he murmured.

Renn spat. “Wh-What?”

Brekk rose to his feet, seeming overly tall in the small space. “I don’t understand this, nor you,” he said simply, and excused himself to the salon.

I let my cloak fall in the doorway and stepped around Renn. He was vomiting only bile, and the smell of it clung to the room. Before he noticed me, I pressed my fingers to the clammy skin of his neck and dowsed.

I could see where Brekk had tried to repair him; discordant pieces tacked together like eggshells and falling apart just as quickly.

The man couldn’t read the baubles, the colors, and the glass as I could; I realized he had not understood what broken pieces were transitory ailments and which connected to Renn’s resistive condition.

His current sickness did not appear to stem from the constant deterioration of his lumis alone, but also an illness.

I went for the illness first, glad it wasn’t the rat plague—he would have perished from that, surely, before I returned.

I banished shadows from whole and broken orbs alike, then refortified those I had already repaired, pulling magic into my palms and pressing it, demanding it, into baubles and ornaments.

When everything appeared steady, I returned to reality and helped Renn sit up.

He still looked awful. Pale and drawn. He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. “Nym.” His voice wavered, weak. “Y-You’re back ... Not exactly ... how I wanted you to see me.”

My heart clenched. “I’ve seen you far worse.”

Sten filled me in: “He hasn’t slept for three days.”

That explained it. Healing with the craft could work miracles, but even it could only do so much to balm natural fatigue and exhaustion. I touched the side of Renn’s face. Not to dowse, but because I could, and all of me hurt at the sight of him, like I’d swallowed glass.

I realized I did not feel death in this room, and I exhaled at the relief of it.

Sten left to dump the bucket. Renn’s head dropped onto my shoulder. His skin was warming, but perspiration matted his hair. I held him, relishing the weight of him, until Sten returned. “I dismissed Brekk,” I said. “Let’s get him to bed. I can only do so much. But after some rest, he’ll be fine.”

“Thank you, Nym,” Renn whispered as Sten pulled him to his feet. Kept one of the prince’s arms over his neck as he guided him to the bedroom. I picked up my cloak and set it on the sofa. Ard waved his thanks to me.

Anxiety, then, before. I’d just been anxious. Tired from so much travel, surely.

I waited by the door until Renn was situated, then came over. The chair was already at his bedside; Brekk had likely been keeping vigil during his illness, despite being unable to make sense of my piecemeal tinkering.

I poured Renn some water from a pitcher. “Drink this.”

He did, then fell back onto his pillows. “My mouth tastes like I’ve been eating rats.”

A smile tempted me at that. “You need to sleep.”

He closed his eyes, but his hand snaked to mine, his warm touch enveloping my fingers. “You’re back,” he whispered.

My throat thickened. I cleared it. “Did you think I was going to run away?”

“I feared it.”

My heart ached. Sinuses burned. He seemed half asleep already. With my free hand, I smoothed hair from his face. “Thank you, for letting me go home.”

He made a small hum in the back of his throat.

“But I had to come back.” The volume of my words shrunk, like they were too heavy to speak. “I will always come back, Renn.”

Dan’s voice echoed in my thoughts. “ I know you love him, Nym.”

I did, didn’t I? Despite my best efforts, I’d fallen in love with one of the country’s most exclusive bachelors. I didn’t need to wait for him to break my heart. I seemed quite capable of ruining it all by myself.

Gods help me, I loved him.

His thumb drew across my knuckles. So softly, half in dream, he said, “I would give up my legs for you.”

Tears pricked my eyes. I squeezed his hand and cleared my throat again, for what good it would do. “Nonsense,” I managed weakly. Rose from my chair and pressed my lips to his forehead. “Sleep, Renn. Just sleep for me.”

How easily he slipped into unconsciousness spoke volumes about how exhausted he was. Three days. He would sleep a long time.

I stared at our still conjoined hands. Traced his fingers, his calluses, the bones in his palm, and a little spark of hope bloomed deep in my gut.

What if ... what if it could happen? What if somehow ... I could have him?

I blinked rapidly as I tried to imagine a life where I gave myself to Renn, perhaps rewarded for my unending services to him, or after Prince Adrinn sired an heir. Imagined Renn courting me in earnest, our two rooms becoming one. My heart fluttered with desire and grief.

Renn Noblewight had been a ghost in this castle for so long. Society had so few claims on him. What if ... what if that could somehow leave space for me to claim him?

I shivered at the thought of it. Breathed deeply, trying to expand my chest, for it seemed to have shrunken on me.

Carefully I folded that hope, fragile as honeycomb, into myself, tucking it away where no one would see, where I could cherish it and nurture it.

Bards and poets told stories of love usurping all; why might not we have a happy ending, too?

Gods knew we had suffered enough for it. Gods knew what I would give for it.

I gently pulled my hand from his and stepped back from the bed, watching him sleep for a moment. Absorbing the beauty of him. The possibility of him. Rolling my lips together, I ducked from the room.

Ard must have moved into the hall; only Sten stood guard outside the prince’s bedchamber. I was just passing him to collect my cloak when he said, “Nym.”

I turned back to him. “Yes?”

He folded his arms. Didn’t quite look at me. “The king has been talking with Antsan.”

Antsan was a country across Salm’s Rest, to the east. I held my breath, the proverbial honeycomb so alive with bees I felt them hum in my chest.

“They’re considering an alliance.” He spoke softly so his voice wouldn’t carry. “Given King Nicosia’s threat. But King Grejor doesn’t want Antsan ruling from Cansere’s throne, and their king has only daughters.”

No control of the throne meant Prince Adrinn was not an option. Only daughters meant Princess Eden wasn’t, either.

The news raked through that delicate honeycomb like a badger’s claws. A cold, sinking feeling dripped from my chest into my belly.

What an utter fool I was.

I swallowed hard. “Renn is aware?”

Sten searched my face, and I detected regret in his own. He nodded.

I forced a smile. “Thank you, for telling me. And for your discretion.”

Another nod.

I took up my cloak. Folded it over my arms. Slipped into the hallway. Passed Ard and entered my own chambers. The fire hadn’t been lit in over a week, so the room bore a stark chill. I didn’t light it.

I crossed into the bedchamber. Set the cloak on the mattress, then pressed myself against the stone wall farthest from the prince’s suite, where I wouldn’t be heard. You’ve survived worse, Nym, I thought.

But the mantra felt wooden. No, I amended. I only survived ... differently.

Biting down on a knuckle, I let myself cry, to mourn a dream so briefly lived. I wept quietly, my whole body tensing to hold back sobs. They broke up into tiny shudders instead, quaking across my body in uneven patterns.

I loved him. I loved him. I loved him.

And I would never have him.