Page 16

H ellebore left her lab right before sunset. She’d made no progress with Taiyo’s slow death haunting her every step.

She had her maids help her change into a nightgown early so she could dismiss them, not paying any attention to their selection as she was focused wholly on the strange turning of her stomach and tightening of her chest when she wondered how long Taiyo had left.

She then went through the door connecting their rooms, but Taiyo wasn’t back yet, so she settled for pacing while she ruminated.

He wanted to get onto her for going behind his back, not trusting him, not valuing her position?

She was ready for a fight when his door finally opened and he stepped into his room, face pallid, looking like he’d been run over by a carriage, and the fight in her eased. It didn’t vanish completely, but it softened, not that she could ever let him know that.

What on earth was happening to her?

He looked up after shutting the door, startling to see her. His eyes widened as they travelled over her standing in front of the window. A brilliant sunset was behind her, painting her in its light. But he wasn’t looking at the sky. She looked down to take note of what she had on.

It was a silk nightgown that fell to her ankles and dipped lower in the neckline than her usual attire. Mostly because exposed skin was a hazard as an alchemist. However, the nightgown had a soft, sheer capelet falling around her shoulders and chest, the hem of it hovering below her bust, trimmed with a lace that shimmered in the light of the sunset coming in through the windows. The colors were different than her usual attire, certainly. The silk started at the neckline as a soft pink before it faded into a gold which faded into orange traveling down to her ankles. The capelet had a gold tint to the sheer fabric. She hadn’t worn Sun Elf colors since her own clothes had arrived after the wedding.

She looked up to see Taiyo was staring at her. He took a deep breath, lips twitching up in a smile before starting to cross the distance between them. His voice was low and husky as he said, “Hellebore—”

The intense, heavy look he was giving her, along with the speed with which he was approaching, sent a jolt through her, causing her heart to race. She quickly stepped back, crossing her arms and saying, “I’m here for that explanation you owe me.”

His step faltered, and he came to a stop beside the bed. His gaze darted over her again before slowly pulling back up to her face, and Taiyo’s voice still sounded off as he said, “That’s all you’re here for? Nothing else?”

“I broke a beaker today. I haven’t done that since I was thirteen.”

At her abrupt non sequitur, he leaned back against the post, the look in his eyes fading as it was replaced with something softer. “Is it the paralytic? The healer said it was all gone and there were no side effects.”

“No. It wasn’t that.” Hellebore huffed, rolling her eyes. “You don’t get it. You don’t understand why I dropped it. I got nowhere today. I haven’t been able to focus on anything, and it’s all your fault.” Now that he wasn’t looking at her so strangely, she regained her confidence and took a few steps toward him.

“How is it my fault?”

“Because all day there has been one thing and one thing only on my mind, driving me to distraction.” Hellebore dropped her hands to her hips, voice rising as the frustration of the day caught up to her again.

Taiyo still stared at her dumbly.

She scoffed and pointed both hands at him. “You! All day, the only thoughts in my head are of you, and it is maddening. Because of you, I cannot focus. I cannot think of anything but you!”

But instead of being insulted at her fury-laced words, the look from before returned and he quickly pushed off the post, crossing the distance between them. A smirk spread across his lips and he laughed softly. “I don’t see the problem here.”

She didn’t see what exactly these mood swings meant. Or maybe she just didn’t want to deal with them. For an elf, he had so much emotion, it was overwhelming. Why couldn’t he focus?

She put her hand out between them and stopped him in his tracks, pressing her palm to his chest where his sluggish heartbeat pressed against her fingertips. She narrowed her eyes. “This isn’t amusing! You’re dying, and all day I have been unable to escape that fact. I have been climbing up the walls, tormented by the image of you bleeding out, trying to understand what it is that’s killing you. You promised to tell me, so tell me.”

He stilled at her hand pressed against his chest, but he didn’t pull back, just let her rest her hand over his heart. The intensity faded from his eyes once more. “You want to know what’s killing me, sunshine? It’s the same thing that’s killing the irises.”

“What?”

“I’m rotting from the inside out. That’s why my blood is black.” Taiyo reached up and wrapped his hand around her wrist, pressing her palm closer against his chest. “The rot hasn’t been plaguing us for the last five years, or even the last ten. I’ve been taking on the rot threatening my country and people for years, using myself to slow the damage and decay and buy time to try to find a way to save the irises.”

The sludge his blood had become… The pain he was clearly in every day… All to buy a little bit of time. She looked up from their hands and whispered, “How long do you have left?”

“The eclipse.” His thumb brushed over her pulse, smooth and steady compared to his. He nodded toward the last few rays of the sun. “My magic is the only thing that has kept the rot from killing me already. When the eclipse occurs, all the Sun Elves will be without any connection to our magic, even me. If the Moon Elves attack, even without their magic, my people will all be fine afterwards as long as our defenses hold and you stop the rot from spreading further and save the irises for the future. Without my magic, I will be dead.”

“That’s why you came to us. You’re out of time,” Hellebore whispered.

Taiyo gave her a pained, bitter grin. “My apologies again, for how we got here, taking you even when I thought you were running away and forcing this on you, but now you see, I knew this would always be temporary for you. I wasn’t condemning you to me for the rest of your life. Just the rest of mine.”

“Wait, hold on,” Hellebore said, mind spinning. “No matter what I do, you still die?”

He nodded, a strange peace in his eyes. “My blood is too far gone. My heart will be unable to handle pumping my blood in a few years even if the eclipse wasn’t coming. My healers have already tried to use the healthy ones, when we still had them, and all it did was just infect them and destroy their magic. All I ask is for you to finish your work, and ensure the land is cleansed of the rot even if I die before you finish. I know I have no right to ask of you anything, but do you see now all I’ve done was out of desperation and a desire to do the least amount of damage?”

“Four months. I have a little under four months.”

Hellebore ripped her hand off his chest and out of his hand as she started pacing, running a hand through her hair. “You couldn’t have told me from the beginning? Now I only have four months!”

“I didn’t know if I could trust you.”

“Ugh. Right. Alchemist. Palladia’s niece—whatever she did to make you think so poorly of her. Still, even with my head start on the rot affecting the plants, it would have been far better if I could have had more time to get started on this too. There’s a massive difference between an elf’s biological makeup and plants, so there’s the strong possibility the cure for your blood is going to be different than the one for the plants—”

Hands grabbed her shoulders and turned her to face Taiyo again as he gaped at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Was I not clear?” Hellebore tilted her head. “There’s nothing to be done for the loss of time now. So first thing in the morning I expect you to march yourself down to my lab so I can collect my first round of samples so that I can make up for the lost time. I’ve only got four months to save your life in addition to your whole country.”

“You—You—Hellebore, I didn’t marry you for you to save my life. The only reason I married you was because I knew that upon my death, you would be free.” He was leaning down, much closer to her eye level than normal as his voice lowered. “I’m not asking you to save me.”

“That’s part of your problem. You didn’t bother asking, which means I’m on a tight timeframe.”

“No. You don’t understand. Frankly—I don’t understand. You’re acting like you have to save my life. That couldn’t be further from the truth. You have no obligation to me to do so. You should be relieved to hear that in a little under four months I’ll be gone. You should want me to die. When I die, you get to go home, back to your people, your life.”

The echo of what she’d accused him of was now haunting her.

And if she was being honest…

“I don’t think of saving you as an obligation. The thought not to never occurred to me. Saving you was my instinct.”

Taiyo straightened back up, taking a slow step backward, stumbling and falling to sit on the bed. His hands slid from her shoulders to her hands, accidentally pulling her a few steps with him as he landed on the mattress, now looking up at her.

The intensity in his eyes was so much stronger than what she’d seen at the start. This was so much fuller, so devastatingly full of emotion and something she couldn’t name. And this frightened her even more than before. Emotions usually did.

But she didn’t pull away. She just needed to be clear what this was about.

“Why?” Taiyo’s whisper cracked on the word, hands clutching hers.

Why indeed?

She wondered what his answer would have been if she had managed to ask him the same the night before. But the moment was long gone, and that was for the best. His answer to such a question could only bring more agony to his already failing heart.

“I have no desire to go back to Chymes. I can’t.” She took a deep breath and stepped closer. “And they don’t want me back. Even if the threat of treason wasn’t over my head, returning after your death… If my brother truly wanted me to act as his King’s Alchemist, he would never have agreed to the betrothal. If my father thought I was capable, he wouldn’t have used me as a pawn to bargain with. They didn’t know what you wanted with me, even if you were asking for their best. But they wanted an alliance and were happy to get rid of me.”

“Hellebore. I didn’t ask for their best. I demanded it.” His grip on her hands tightened as his voice darkened. “I threatened your father with war if he would not give me your hand. They didn’t want to send you away. I made them. Don’t hold my actions against them. Your family—your brother, I’m certain he would give anything to have you back in his court and away from the Sun Elves who stole you away.”

Hellebore’s tightening throat was proving to be a problem, threatening to choke any word she might form. She took a deep breath. “I don’t—You don’t know that, and neither do I. My family’s actions can speak for themselves, and the last thing you should be doing is arguing their case when doing so means letting you die!”

“That doesn’t answer my question. If you don’t want to go back after my death, no one can make you. Why do you want to save my life when it means giving up your chance at freedom?”

“I thought you were the one who was insistent about the fact that I’m your wife. I’m not a prisoner here.”

“Answer the question. Why do you want to save my life when your success will mean that you stay married to me for the rest of our lives?”

She didn’t know. She didn’t have an answer that made any sense. All she knew was that the thought of any life after his death wasn’t one she wanted.

“I’m your alchemist. You’re my king. One of the most important things I do is keep you alive.”

Taiyo narrowed his eyes and tugged on her hands, forcing her to step even closer. He shifted until he was on the very edge of the bed, her standing between his legs as he stared up at her. “Don’t lie to me. You just said this has nothing to do with obligation. Why don’t you want a chance to go back and marry someone else? Someone you love? The chance I took away from you. Why choose to save my life and choose me?”

What did he think he was getting at? Did he know nothing of her?

“Why would I want something I never had any intention of achieving? You didn’t take a chance away from me when you married me. You can’t take something away from me that was never going to happen. I was never going to fall in love with anyone. Any marriage I might have had would have been very much similar to ours, a practical, political arrangement with a clear purpose and no emotions or affection attached to it.”

Speaking of, they were far too close for the bounds of a purely practical arrangement with no affection attached to it. She started to step back, but then his hands settled on her hips, curling into the silk and holding her directly in front of him. Her breath caught in her throat.

His eyes searched hers as he whispered, “Where have you hidden your heart?”

The heat of his hands even through the silk was distracting. Her mouth felt dry, which simply had to be because of how long they’d been talking. She swallowed, her own voice just as low. “The heart is just an organ.”

“And yet… you still won’t answer me. What are you afraid of?”

“Nothing.” She narrowed her gaze at him, ignoring the way his fingers softly shifted. His thumb brushing back and forth had to be because he was trying to distract her, although why was beyond her. What bothered her more was the fact that it was working. She said, “All that matters to you is this: I am promising you now that in four months when the eclipse comes, you will survive it. I will save your kingdom. I will save your life. And I wouldn’t tell you this if I wasn’t certain. You can be certain of that. I don’t give away hope lightly.”

He stared at her for a moment, and she could still see him, searching and searching for the answer to why.

And then his hands on her hips were pulling her closer until she was in his lap and his head was pressed to her chest, the sheer capelet and nightgown the only thing between them, his arms wrapping around her. His ear was pressed over her heart and one of his palms rested in the same spot on her back. His other arm was locked around her waist so she was flush against him.

Heat flooded her cheeks, but Taiyo breathed out, causing the fabric to rustle. Her breath stuttered, and her admonishment never came out as he smiled. “There it is. Oh, and it is racing .”

Hellebore could easily push him away. It would be no trouble. But she was certain her cheeks were a vivid red, and since there was still a little bit of the sunset left, she might as well wait until it was darker and his energy went with it. So she stayed where she was, reaching up and running her fingers through Taiyo’s hair, twirling the orange and gold ends with her fingers and listening to his breathing.

She didn’t care what it would take. In four months, she would not be seeing him into a grave. She’d sooner go in herself.

Why?

Hellebore never liked why. She avoided why. She preferred how. So why would have to wait.