Chapter 47

Leopold's grasp did not falter.

Not when the axe descended with such a rush we could hear the whir of it, slicing the air before hitting its intended mark, square across the nape of the boy's neck.

Not when Bellatrice let out a strangled scream, the color draining from her face.

Not when the wife's blood spurted forth, spraying my brother's face and anointing him in a baptism most foul.

Not even as the crowd leapt to its feet, rejoicing, dancing, screaming their delight to the heavens. Throughout it all, Leopold's hand was warm and tight around mine.

Loud peals rang out as temples all around the city began their celebrations, cheering the demise of a family who had once threatened so much of Chatellerault's way of life.

Baudouin's head rolled off the edge of the platform, joining those of his family on the stones below. I knew they could no longer see, I knew they were no longer truly there, but in that moment, I swore his wife's eyes met mine, sharp and accusing.

Somehow she knew this was my fault.

I had chosen to save the king, and now all three of them weredead.

I let go of Leopold then.

I shook my hand free, bringing it to cover my mouth as my stomach lurched. I turned from the bloodied stage, turned from Leopold, turned away from the hateful glares of so many bodiless faces, and hurried from the royal box.

I made it down the steps before throwing up into a swag of curtains. The sweat beading at my temples chilled, and despite the heat, I shivered. Footsteps raced after me, and I somehow knew it was Leopold. I curled into a ball, rubbing my arms and bracing against the wave of utter misery that threatened to overtake me.

It didn't matter how small I tried to make myself. Leopold found me almost instantly. "Hazel," he said, his voice breaking through the white noise filling my head, his fingers tracing against my shoulder blades with concern. His touch was as light as a hummingbird and just as restless.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," I repeated as my stomach twisted again. I struggled to swallow the biting bile. It burned as it went back down my throat, but I would not allow myself to be sick in front of the prince. "I'm sorry."

I wasn't sure if I was apologizing to him or his uncle.

"Hazel," Leopold said again, kneeling now. I turned my shoulders, trying to hide the evidence of my weak stomach. "Hazel, it's all right. You don't have to— Are you shaking?"

I shook my head even as I trembled.

He ran his hand across my back, harder now, as if trying to drum up warmth for me, as if the air wasn't already as thick as sludge, sweltering and humid. It was tainted now with the coppery tang of blood.

I felt as if I couldn't draw enough breath. I felt as if the ground had somehow flipped, somersaulting my axis and skewing my sense of equilibrium. How could the king have done this?

Baudouin I could understand. He'd incited a rebellion and waged a bloody civil war in his attempt to unseat the king.

But his wife had not.

Their young son had not.

And King Marnaigne had carried out their murders cheerfully, with all the spectacle of an operatic villain.

The memory of his deathshead washed over me, roiling my belly with more bile hot and foul.

I wanted to ground myself in the earth, wanted to rest my too-heavy, too-muddled head upon Leopold's chest and let the waiting darkness rush up and claim me. I wanted…I wanted…

I caught myself just before I swooned against the crown prince. Flashes of lights danced across my vision, and the only thing I could make out around their blinding brilliance was my brother.

Bertie strode off the stage like a hero coming home from war. He tilted his face back and forth, basking in the golden radiance of his moment, then stooped to snatch up Baudouin's severed head. Ashe held it aloft in triumphant jubilation, the crowd screamed King Marnaigne's name, and my world faded to black.

"There you are," a voice said sometime later.

I assumed it was later.

I assumed it was later and we were elsewhere, but I didn't know for certain because my eyelids were too heavy to open. Too heavy with the last traces of groping, grasping oblivion. Too heavy and far too tender to open and see any more of the world's horrors.

"Drink this," the voice said, and I felt the press of a glass against my mouth.

I parted my lips, swallowing the blessed water in greedy sips. It was cool and had been sweetened with cucumber and mint, and I knew then that I must be at the palace, because where else would anyone sweeten water with cucumber and mint?

The person holding the glass let out a dry husk of a sound that I supposed was meant to be laughter. "Look at me, healing the healer."

Leopold was beside me, gently offering me sips of water.

Leopold.

I felt the touch of his fingers on my forehead. "A fever," he murmured too softly to be speaking to anyone but himself.

Against my better judgment, I opened my eyes and squinted at him in the chamber's dim light. I was in my room, in my bed, and my curtains had been drawn. Leopold perched on the side of my bed, a look of grave concern darkening his face.

I blinked at the unlikely scene, certain I was hallucinating. "You can't actually feel a fever using your fingers. Not accurately." I struggled to arrange the pillows behind me so that I could sit up without feeling as if I were about to keel over once more.

"No?"

His irises were wide and dark, reminding me of the first time we'd met. He'd caught me sleeping then too.

"You were just holding the water. I could feel how it cooled your fingers when you touched me. Anything would feel hot to you," I said, nodding to the pitcher at the bedside table. "Could I have some more, please?" My limbs felt like weighted clay, incapable of movement.

Leopold obliged, even bringing it to my lips for me.

"Thank you," I said, falling back into the nest of pillows.

"So what is the best way to check for a fever?" he asked, keeping hold of the glass, waiting for me to need it again. "In case my skills in the medical arts should ever be called into service. I think I may have a promising career before me."

I studied him, unable to reconcile my initial memories of Leopold with the prince who sat before me now. He was a puzzle piece worn too out of shape to ever slide back into his intended position. "The best way for you, " I teased, "would be to call in a healer and have them take it for you."

He smiled but waited.

"The inside of your wrist," I finally said, relenting. "Its own temperature is more stable, letting you actually feel the changes in others."

Wordlessly, he reached out and laid his wrist over my forehead. His touch was far more tender than I would have ever given him credit for. "You still feel warm to me," he said after a long and charged moment had passed.

"Heatstroke," I diagnosed. "I can't believe I fainted."

"It was quite a shock. The executions," he said, gently. "It's not surprising you swooned."

I shook my head and instantly regretted it. "I'm made of far tougher stuff than that."

"You don't have to be," he pointed out. "I've no doubt you've seen more than your fair share of things, terrible things. But"—he gestured around my suite of rooms—"there's no one else here now. No one else ever need know."

I shifted uneasily, glad to realize I was still in my formal gown and hadn't been undressed in my unconscious state. Even so, I pulled the coverlet up over my chest, feeling far too exposed.

"Thank you for taking care of me in my…absence," I said before adding, "and for your discretion."

"It's a very hard thing to see."

"Watching someone die?"

"Watching lives be taken against their will," he corrected me.

The memory of my father's face flickered through my mind, and all I could see was his expression of shocked horror as the end came rushing over him. His was the first life I'd ever taken. He had not gone down easily.

"When I first saw it happen on the front—a soldier right beside me was struck across the throat with shrapnel—I couldn't stop screaming." Leopold licked his lips, and his voice was strained and drawn too thin. "Sometimes I think I'm screaming still."

"I'm sorry," I heard myself murmur, but was too caught up in a haze of remembrance. Mama had asked to be released, had smiled as she drank the potion I'd mixed, but the others…

Yes, those had been very hard things to see.

"You apologize too much," Leopold noted. "You didn't dress me in a uniform. You didn't send me into battle."

"I'm sorry all the same," I said, realizing that he was wrong and that my actions inadvertently had done exactly that. If I'd not saved Marnaigne, if I'd let Baudouin storm his way to the throne…how many lives would still be here?

But how many lives did your actions save?

There was no good answer to either question.

"Did today really happen?" I asked, feeling impossibly small. "Did the king actually…?"

Leopold nodded.

"He'd told me he was going to offer clemency. Yesterday. He said he wanted to show mercy. To offer forgiveness. When I left him with Margaux, he was ready to…" I paused.

Margaux had come in after our talk.

Margaux had kept him behind closed doors, discussing something so late into the afternoon that the king had nearly missed the grand dinner he'd arranged for Leopold's return. I'd thought it odd at the time but had chalked up his tardiness to all the many dignitaries visiting, the many things I'm sure he was busy with.

What if…

"Margaux. She said she'd had a vision from the Holy First. Do you think she said something to your father to make him change his mind?"

"My father is a mercurial man," Leopold said carefully. "He's easily swayed by those around him. Those who whisper loudest. And everyone is whispering at him."

"But to execute that little boy? His own nephew? Why would the Holy First want that?"

Leopold winced, remembering. "I don't think she would. But Margaux might."

"You've said similar things before, questioning her motives. Why would she want…why would she want any of what happened today to play out?"

Leopold shrugged. "I don't know. You'd have to ask her. But Papa…Papa always wants to look strong. And he'd want word of such strength to reach far and wide, to stop anyone who might think of taking up my uncle's cause. It's an effective strategy."

"You agree with him?" I asked, horrified.

He shook his head with vehemence. "No! Not at all. Not ever. But…" He swallowed. "He is the king. And the one man who tried to stand against him just wound up with his head in a basket. So…" He drifted off, and I knew that the sentence would never be finished.

"Could I have some more water?" The words tumbled out perfunctorily. I felt too numb to think. The deaths that afternoon had been the worst I'd ever witnessed, and I couldn't stop seeing them. The executions played on an endless loop in my mind. I watched over and over again as Bertie slaughtered Baudouin's family.

Bertie.

My Bertie.

I tried to remember him as he'd been before, when we were young, before he'd been conscripted into a god's service, before he'd sliced up his body in the name of his newfound faith, but I couldn't do it. All I saw was the man who'd stood before the executioner's block, carrying out the orders of a vengeful king gone mad.

Marnaigne was mad. Of that I had no doubt.

The deathshead had been right.

He was volatile, dangerous. The Shivers had changed something in him, breaking parts of his mind, altering him in ways no one could have foreseen.

And I could have prevented it all. Today's deaths were on my hands. Whether their rotting spirits followed me or not, those ghosts would haunt me for the rest of my too-long life.

"How are you feeling now?" Leopold asked. He shifted his weight on the bed, as if making a move to rise and leave me, but stayed instead.

There was no way to truthfully answer that. Not at this court. Not with King Marnaigne as he was now, so jumbled in his emotions and paranoia that it was as though he was at war with himself.

No. The only way to make it out intact was to go along with him, appease his better side, then run at the first chance. There was nothing for me here any longer, and I already felt I was on borrowed time. Marnaigne would think up some sickness to worry over and demand that I fix him, but without my gift, without being able to see the cure, I'd fail time and time again. There would be no sympathy from this new version of the king.

I now feared his disappointment more than I worried about pleasing my godfather.

I reached for the silver compact mirror on my nightstand and studied my reflection. My face was pale and my eyes dark with worry. "At least tonight's ball is a masquerade."

Leopold looked horrified. "You're not going to that, are you?"

I drew my legs out of the bedsheets before swinging them to the ground. "Your father expects it."

"There will be hundreds of courtiers packing the hall. He couldn't possibly notice your absence. And as you said, it's a masquerade."

"He'll expect me there," I said. "And the last thing I want is for him to find offense with me."

"I suppose all of us are dancing to the music of someone else's making here," he murmured. I'd never heard him sound so bitter. "Do you always do what's expected of you?"

Leopold's words were spoken in a voice so low I strained to make them out and then spent too long wondering if I'd actually heard them at all.

With a sigh, he put his hands down to push himself from the bed, and our fingers brushed against one another. It was just a light touch, a whisper of skin against skin, but it sent a shiver down myspine.

"I don't," I admitted, daring to look up and meet his gaze. "I used to. Always. But then…" I trailed off, unable to continue.

But then I gave up one of my lives for your father.

But then I sentenced your uncle and his family to death.

But then I broke my godfather's heart.

"Why are you here?" It wasn't what I meant to say, but it fell out and I couldn't take it back.

"What do you mean?"

"There are any number of people who could be here right now, who could have brought me back and watched over me. But…you're here. And they're not."

"They're not," he agreed. "I was worried. About you, yes," he added before I could pry for clarification. "And no, I don't know why. I don't know why I notice the way you eat or the colors of the ribbons in your hair. I don't know why my eyes search for you at every function and why my heart feels lighter once you're found. But they do and I do and, Hazel, I…it was frightening to watch you faint this afternoon, to see you so vulnerable and helpless. Especially when I know that you help everyone around you. And so…so I wanted to be the one to help you." He let out a rushed breath. "And it felt good to do that. And I want to go on feeling good.Especially today. Especially after Papa…" He swallowed. "There's so much of my life I haven't felt good about, that I don't feel good about. But none of that seems important when I'm helping you."

His honesty undid me, erasing any breezy comment I might make to defuse the rising tension. It felt as though every molecule of air was stacked around us, building an impenetrable wall, trapping us in too tight a space, in too close a confine.

"I don't…I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable," he continued. "I just…you're the only one in the world I feel like I can share my honest thoughts with. But perhaps I was too brash in speaking them all."

Before I could think better of it, before reason could dissuade me, I leaned forward and kissed him.

My daring caught us both by surprise. A startled noise choked deep in Leopold's throat, but I couldn't retreat and apologize—again—because his hands were suddenly tangled in my hair, bringing me closer. He held me with remarkable tenderness, cupping the curve of my face like a long-treasured prize, a thing hoped for and happily gained. I let out a sigh as his lips left mine, pressing themselves to my forehead and eyelids, my temples, even the tip of my nose.

"You've no idea how much I adore these freckles," he murmured, whispering his words across their scattered dots, his voice warm and low and so full of desire.

There are so many temptations to lure a young man off his path, don't you agree?

Marnaigne's voice echoed through my mind, but I pushed it back into the dark recesses with a reckless shove, longing to forget both the king and whatever plan he had for the boy I was kissing.

With brazen fingers, I ran my hands up Leopold's chest, feeling his heart race beneath the fine wool uniform, under the medals and insignia, and then grabbed hold of his collar and pulled him back to me.

With a dark chuckle, he moved his mouth over mine. I answered with unchecked hunger, opening my lips so that I could taste him.

"Hazel," he whispered around kisses.

I didn't respond but shifted positions, tracing my lips along the sharp curve of his jaw, pressing a reverent kiss on the small scar just below his earlobe, before working my way down the length of his throat. I smiled as I felt him swallow.

Kissing Kieron had never felt like this.

Kieron had been sweet and light. His kisses promised we'd have a lifetime together. They were fervent but gentle. Respectful.

I didn't want Leopold's respect. I didn't want him promising our lives entwined.

That was impossible.

But I also wanted more of his mouth against mine. More of those little strangled noises rising from deep in his chest. I wanted to push him back onto the bed and crawl on top of him until he somehow stopped this aching need blossoming in my middle.

I couldn't have a lifetime, but I could have this moment.

I wanted his now.

"Hazel," he repeated once more, firmly this time, cupping my jaw and holding me back so that our eyes met. "I'm delighted by this turn of events, truly I am."

"But?" I asked, and the flames flickering in me dampened, leaving me cored and hollow.

"You've had a hard day. You need rest," he added quickly, talking over the protest rising in me. "Especially if…"

"If?"

"If you obstinately plan on attending the masquerade tonight. I don't want my dance partner swooning in the middle of the farandole." Leopold leaned in, touching his forehead to mine as he whispered, "Of course, if she did, I'd have to carry her back to her rooms to make sure she got a proper night's sleep."

His lips roamed over mine once more, with a maddening softness that made my toes curl.

"Is anything with you ever proper?" I asked.

"You tell me," he murmured, deepening the kiss.

I felt lightheaded and giddy, close to another swoon as my words fell into his mouth. "Is this really happening?"

His finger grazed my cheek, setting my blood to sizzle. "I truly hope so."

As much as I wanted to push away worries of King Marnaigne and the instructions he'd explicitly bid me follow, they wouldn't retreat. "But your father…" I gasped as Leopold pressed his lips to my throat. "He won't like this. He won't—"

With a sigh, Leopold sat back, creating an expanse of air between us that felt as wide as a canyon. "After everything we saw today, I can honestly say I don't give a damn what my father likes. I want you on my arm tonight. I want you on my arm every night. Will you save me your first dance?"

I knew I shouldn't say yes. I knew I shouldn't do anything to encourage this heated yearning building between us. Ignoring Marnaigne was playing with fire, a dangerous one that could blaze out of control, scorching the earth and everything it touched until there was nothing left but ash.

Still, I could not find it within myself to tell Leopold no.

"I wouldn't share it with anyone but you," I promised, smiling at the twinkle in his eye, feeling suddenly shy. "My mask and dress are in the armoire. If you need help finding me tonight."

"Oh, Hazel." He grinned, pressing a trio of kisses across my cheek and then crossing to the door. "I'll always know it's you."