Chapter 41

The workroom was hot, the air thick with steam and humidity.

I pushed aside a loose lock of hair, feeling as wilted as the leaves I fed into the boiling pots.

My back ached. My arms ached. My head throbbed.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd gotten a full night's rest.

Since moving over to the family's wing of the palace, I'd been given an arsenal of supplies, the finest that Marnaigne's money could buy. My workroom was lined with medical texts and treatises. Brand-new pots and pans, vials and stoppers, mortars and pestles. A whole articulated skeleton stood in the corner, its bones having been forcibly donated by some poor soul who'd met their end on the executioner's block.

It had been a month since I'd saved the king.

A month since he'd appointed me court healer and promised the country I'd soon be saving them all.

An entire month had gone by, and I still hadn't come up with the cure.

The Shivers had spread through Chatellerault with devastating momentum. Whole households fell ill overnight. Servants woke to find their lords and ladies fallen into contorted messes of golden, twitching limbs. Marquises came down for breakfast only to discover their entire staff had died, leaving behind pools of blackened fluids no one dared touch.

I suddenly had my pick of patients to examine, but every time I brought my hands to their faces and cupped their cheeks, I saw nothing. No cure, no sparkling beacon showing me the way toward salvation, nothing.

My gift was gone.

Merrick had done as he'd promised and taken care of my ghosts. I no longer had to worry about coming across their staggering forms in unguarded moments. I no longer heard their scratching pleas for admittance. I no longer had to worry about my memories being stolen.

But something inside me had changed with their removal.

Merrick had taken my ghosts, but also, it seemed, my gift.

I tried everything I could think of to summon my godfather but was only met with stony silence. I understood: he was mad; he needed time to cool off.

But time was something I didn't have.

Every day for nearly a month, the king asked for updates on my progress, asked when I expected to have the cure ready to send out.

And every day I lied to him.

There were dozens of excuses: we'd stripped the greenhouse bare to make his cure, the new seeds hadn't sprouted as quickly as they should have, the wrong oil had been delivered and my batch had been contaminated. I used every pretense I could muster, buying myself time as I scrambled for the true cure.

I could feel the king growing impatient with me, hear his sentences turn terse and sharp. But—for now—his attention was divided, because while Chatellerault writhed and shuddered, Baudouin and his army continued their march toward the capitol.

Upon resuming his daily duties, Marnaigne had quickly instituted a draft, calling every healthy young man into service. Tented campsites began to bloom outside the capitol walls as squadrons were formed and the king's armies began to take shape.

The recruits trained at all hours of the day, running drills and exercises in splendid black-and-gold uniforms. They made such a sweeping, heroic picture, young women would often line the parapets to watch them, setting up chairs and blankets on which to picnic and gawk.

But even the threat of war couldn't completely overshadow the Shivers.

One afternoon, a cluster of spectators began to twitch, setting off a terrible reaction. Many present tried to herd them back to their houses. One girl refused to go, saying she wasn't sick, saying it was a joke, but the frightened crowd surged around them, throwing the most ardent protesters from the wall before guards could intervene.

Mobs began to form, set on barricading the sick in their homes. Some bolder members outright killed anyone they suspected of being ill, claiming it was the only way to keep the disease from spreading.

I felt the horror of every story in the marrow of my bones.

These deaths were because of me, because I'd not found thecure.

Each day I woke before the sun and worked well past midnight, until my muscles screamed and wanted to give out, quivering so badly that a footman once thought I'd contracted the Shivers myself. He'd raced down the halls, shouting the terrible news to all who could hear.

Still, my effort wasn't enough.

I tried countless combinations of medicines and herbs, testing the tonics on samples of the Brilliance secretly delivered to the palace. Glass plates lined nearly every inch of flat surface in my workspace. I'd filled half a dozen notebooks with observations of eachtrial.

One day I was studying a round of samples, trying to will at least one of them into responding to a new tonic, when Bellatrice's laughter rang out brightly, catching my attention. I rubbed my pained eyes, my concentration shot, and peeked out into the corridor.

A group of courtiers and the princess, all bedecked in gowns and garments so dazzling it hurt my eyes to look upon them, were coming down the hall. I couldn't tell if they were on their way out or in. Several of the young men wobbled as they walked, and every one of the girls was in a fit of giggles or tears. They smelled of pomanders—citrus, clove, and other spices—the only indication that a plague had besieged the country and that the streets were overflowing with the bodies of the dead.

I watched in disbelief as they tottered by, laughing uproariously and waltzing past me without a single glance. I rolled my eyes and began to turn back to the workroom but stopped short.

This was all so pointless. Without my gift I felt as though I was stumbling in the dark, slamming my head over and over again into a wall I could not see. Nothing I'd done had worked. Nothing I'd done had given even a hint at the cure. There was nothing I'd do tonight that couldn't be done tomorrow. I'd strip out of my damp dress, pat my poor, neglected dog on the head, and then get whatever sleep I could before waking with a panic attack and starting it all over again.

I closed the door, feeling impossibly low. I hated this time of night. Of morning. Of whatever liminal hell this was.

"Is that you, healer?"

Leopold's voice stopped me in my tracks, and before I turned around to face him, I took a deep, centering breath.

"Your Royal Highness."

He was neatly camouflaged against a marble column, all black velvet and gold buttons. His cravat was left casually untied, giving him a careless air I didn't doubt he'd spent half an hour mastering.

Since our carriage ride back from the Rift, I'd not seen much of Leopold, and while I wanted to remember that moment of intimacy—his confession to liking my freckles, to admiring my whole authentic self—his public behavior didn't do much to assist in that memory.

"What in the name of the gods are you wearing?"

I glanced down. I'd been covered up in a linen apron all day, but my shirt was still stained with streaks of green, and the starch of its collar had steamed away hours before. My skirt was a serviceable gabardine, thick enough to keep any wayward fluids from my skin. Compared to the shimmering nymphs who had just passed by with lithe, exposed limbs and painted lips, I felt impossibly dowdy. Their cheeks had been flushed with high spirits and anticipation, not a roaring hearth and the weight of an entire country's expectations.

I wondered what it would be like to be so careless and carefree, to dance past the dead and the dying and not feel compelled to do a single thing to stop it.

"One might ask the same of you," I threw back.

I was frustrated; I was so frustrated. With the painted courtiers, with the king who'd trapped me in this nightmare, with my godfather and his untouchable silence, but mostly with myself. I'd been the one to stumble into this mess. I was the one who couldn't forge her way out of it.

I could tell by the dilation of Leopold's pupils that I could say whatever I wanted to him tonight, say it in whatever tone I wished, and he wouldn't recall a bit of it come dawn, and I lashed out with an angry spitefulness I didn't know I was capable of unleashing.

"You are aware there's a war going on? And a plague? I know you spend most of your days in a drunken stupor, but you have heard whispers of these rather important events, yes?"

Leopold tilted his head, receiving my scorn with an infuriatingly placid smile. "You're upset with me."

His tone was as warm and inviting as the bath I so desperately wanted to get to, and I balled my hands, grinding my teeth. He peeled himself from the column, crossing to me for a closer examination. The prince dipped his head, trying to catch my eye as his smile grew to a grin.

"You are! I've angered the healer!" He raised his voice in triumph, as if calling out to his companions, but they'd left him behind, doubtlessly unaware their prince was gone. His gaze flickered back to me when he realized it was just the two of us. "You don't like me very much, do you, Just Hazel?"

I started to deny it, but he went on, rolling over my words, and any desire I felt to assuage him withered.

"I can't understand it. They like me," he said, pointing down the hall where his friends had vanished. He patted at his jacket, searching for something. Finding his gold case, he slipped one of his mother's cigarettes between his lips. "They adore me. Everyone does. Everyone except for you." His match lit, flaring too high before catching the paper wrap. He inhaled deeply. "It bothers me that you don't. I know it shouldn't, but it does."

"There are many things about you that bother me too. We'reeven."

He brightened. "Do I really take up so much space in your thoughts, then, healer?" His words came out in a rush of crimson smoke.

"That's not what I said."

He looked delighted. "But it's what you meant. Isn't it?"

"I thought you were going to quit smoking those."

He held up the cigarette, studying it thoughtfully. "I had. Mostly. Did you know today would have been my mother's birthday?"

I hadn't.

"I suppose this is my way of celebrating. Birthdays are important times, don't you think?" he went on, musing.

"I've never thought so."

Leopold made a face. "They are, and anyone who says otherwise had something terribly traumatizing happen to them as a child."

He wasn't wrong.

"You should come out with us tonight. Come out with me, I suppose," he corrected himself. "If they want to go on without me, damn the lot of them. We'll find somewhere else and have a far grander time."

"I think I'd rather go to bed," I admitted.

His eyebrows shot up. "So forward, Just Hazel, but I wholeheartedly approve. Why should the men always be the ones doing the chasing? Women have every bit as much right to go out and take what they want, when they want." He stamped out the cigarette, then held up his arms. "Go on, then. Take me."

I sighed and took a step to the right, ducking past him, then paused.

He'd put so much effort into preparing for his evening, pomading his hair into perfectly disheveled waves and dousing himself with cologne. It wafted from him, an intriguing blend of musk and greenery designed to entice and enchant.

I knew that smell.

"What are you wearing?" I asked, whirling to him.

He tilted his head, grinning. "Are you mimicking me, healer?"

"Not your clothes, your cologne. What is that?"

He shrugged. "Just a little spritz of something."

"But what? What's it called? Where did you get it?" I dared to step closer to him, pressing my nose near the hollow of his throat and inhaling deeply. The cologne was obviously not the same as Bellatrice's perfume, but there was a note in the blend that seemed a perfect match.

"Hazel!" Leopold stepped back with surprise, dropping his rakish fa?ade just a sliver, alarmed by my advance.

"Hold still." I grabbed his shoulders and pulled him to me. We were close enough that I could feel his breath at my temple, and I was sure he felt mine as I sniffed again. "This isn't what you normally wear," I observed.

He raised an eyebrow. "You've noted what I smell like?"

"No!" I protested, jerking my hands back. "Only…I've been trying to track down that scent for a month. I would have recognized it on you before now."

"I don't wear it often anymore."

"Why not?"

He ran his fingers over his jacket, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles. "Mother gave it to me," he admitted. "I'm not certain where she got it from, and…" He glanced over my shoulder as if looking for his entourage to come back and save him. He sighed. "I don't want to use it up too quickly, you know? She always gave us bottles for our birthdays, saying that all one needed to make an impression on this world was a great deal of confidence and a signature scent."

It was an absurd sentiment, but I was willing to overlook that if it helped me. "And what's yours?"

"Black agar."

"That's a tree resin, isn't it?" I mused.

Leopold shrugged helplessly. "Mother liked it for me becauseit's what they burn at some of the temples, for incense. She said she wanted everyone who came across me to remember"—he let out a pained noise of chagrin—"that I was like a god on earth."

A thought occurred to me even as I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. "Do you remember when you came to get me, in the Rift?" He nodded. "Were they burning black agar that day?"

"I wouldn't be surprised. The Divided Ones were always Mother's favorites of the gods."

"I need to go," I decided, switching directions and heading for the greenhouse. Sleep could wait until this mystery was solved.

I was nearly to the end of the corridor when he called after me. "Why don't you like me, healer?"

There was something in his tone that made me turn around.

He made such a forlorn, solitary figure standing there. It was a rare thing, catching the prince alone, without his cluster of courtiers and the pretty girls that always seemed to trail them.

"I never said I didn't," I stalled, hoping it would appease him enough to let him trot after his friends and leave me to my work. If I could find a sample of the agar, my night was not coming to an end; it was just beginning.

He laughed. "I may spend my days in a drunken stupor," he began, using my words against me, "but even through all that haze, I can tell you don't think well of me."

"In truth…" I frowned, torn between the desires to placate him and to lay out each and every one of his many shortcomings. He blinked, waiting. "…you give me very little to think upon at all."

He clutched one hand to his heart. "Healer! Do you slice all your patients with such savage skill?"

My shoulder blades tightened, a fight bristling within me. "I find myself thinking with far greater frequency of the young men marching up and down the battlements outside, preparing to risk their lives to protect your family. I find myself thinking on the dozens, the hundreds, the thousands of people across the capitol, across the province, across the whole country, who are depending on me to show up and do my job. That is where my thoughts lie, Your Royal Highness, not with you and your revelries."

We stared at each other in silence, only a dozen paces apart, but the distance felt far greater.

Leopold opened his mouth but couldn't seem to find the words he wanted to say. He frowned, his dark brows lowered.

My feet itched to inch forward, to make sure he was all right. Had I actually hurt him? Wounded his feelings?

At last he closed his mouth, swallowing. "Well."

"Leopold—"

He held up his hand, stopping me with a shake of his head. "Don't go back on all your noble convictions now." He paused."I'd imagine with such heavy thoughts you must be quite tired. I hope…I'll leave you to your slumbers."

"Leo." It fell from me before I could stop it, short and familiar and achingly intimate. But I didn't know how to go on, what to say to ease the sting of the truth. "I…I hope you enjoy your evening."

His smile was small and lopsided and sad. "Sweet dreams, healer."

Sunlight streamed in through my curtains. It was amber and golden, the light of late afternoon. I groaned and flopped over, hiding beneath a mountain of pillows, before remembering the night before and sitting up with an excited cry.

After a month of trying, after a thousand attempts gone wrong, I had found the cure.

It was black agar, a resin found in certain trees infected by a specific strain of fungus. It was used in holy ceremonies, in cleansing rituals, in perfumes and colognes, and now…now it would be used to save Martissienes from the Shivers.

On the first floor of the palace was a series of niches, each a small shrine to the gods. I'd raided the Divided Ones', stealing their smudge of incense and bringing it back to my workroom. I'd mixed it into a paste, into an oil, and into salve, and every version of it had an immediate effect on my samples. The Brilliance writhed and swirled, ultimately shrinking until there was nothing left on any of the glass plates.

Overjoyed at the breakthrough, I'd collapsed into bed just after sunrise and fallen into the best sleep I'd had in a month.

But now there was more work to be done.

I stood, stretching, before I spotted a dark square of marbled black on the floor of my parlor. It looked like an envelope, pushed beneath my door sometime while I'd slept.

Someone had left me a note.

The exterior of the envelope had been left bare, and its paper was thick and impossibly fine, the nicest I'd ever felt. I broke the wax seal at its back and slid out three sheets of black parchment. Swirls of golden ink popped out in surprising relief from the dark background, shimmering across the pages.

Just Hazel, it began.

Leopold had written me a note.

A novella, I amended, scanning the long missive. His words filled nearly every inch of each page.

I brought the letter with me to my favorite armchair and settled in for its reading.

Just Hazel,

I've begun this letter half a dozen times so far, but couldn't quite find the proper opening or nail the exact tone I wished to convey. My primary goal was to rant at you and take you to task for ruining what should have been a most enjoyable evening. Vincent-Eduard Gothchaigne's soiree was full of all the very best things—beautiful women, good food, and even better drink—but I spent an hour in the most uncomfortable misery before deciding to quit it entirely.

Your words, healer, have burned their way into my skin, sinking in deep, deeper than you surely believe possible.

I know you think me nothing more than a shallow, entitled little waste of a human, but I am human all the same, and your assessment of me was most grievous.

I want you to know that.

And I want to respond in equal measure with some scathing and witty retort that would absolutely eviscerate you and make you rue your callous and hurtful words.

But I can't.

I can't, because I find myself agreeing with you.

This is the first letter tonight that I've been able to admit that, to put pen to page and write it out.

I agree with you.

I'm not surprised to find I take up so little space in your thoughts. There truly is little about me to think upon. Nothing I do makes me particularly memorable. Nor words I say. Certainly no actions. I am a prince without purpose. A handsome figurehead.

I can hear your sigh, reading those last lines, but—for the first time in perhaps the whole of my life—I'm being exceptionally honest with you…and myself.

If I didn't have my looks or charms, I would be wholly unremarkable, completely and miserably forgettable.

It's true.

You know it.

I now know it too.

And…

I find myself questioning whether that's what I want my legacy to be.

…It's not, if you were wondering.

It's not. It's not. It's not.

I thought that by writing out the truth so many times, inspiration would come to me and I'd suddenly know what to do, what course of action to take to change everything. But there is no one right answer, I suppose. There are only many, many small choices that will (hopefully) make up the whole of one good, long life. A life worth remembering, Ihope.

If all that life boils down to is our choices, obviously I need to start making better ones.

And so…I'm leaving, healer. You've been right on so many fronts tonight. There is a war brewing, and—apart from my debonair looks and standing at court—I am no different from any of the other young men who have come to the capitol to train, to protect, to do something good with their lives. Perhaps they will rub off on me.

Until we meet again, Just Hazel.

(I pray we meet again.)

—Leopold