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The most confusing part of waking up was the smell. It was all floral, like I’d walked past a flower cart in spring. But spring wasn’t for a few more weeks yet.
Unless I’d been asleep for that long? I was groggy enough to believe I’d slept for weeks.
Someone helped me sit up and tilted a cup of water down my throat. It was saltier than I expected, and I almost coughed it up.
“Easy now,” a man said. “It’s just medicine.”
Medicine? I couldn’t afford medicine. Where the hell was I?
All I saw were white paneled walls and the man sitting next to me, holding me up. I remembered him. I’d stolen his top hat. “What...”
“I’ll explain later, when you’ll actually remember it.” He tilted the not-water down my throat again, and then gave me actual water. After, he set me back down and lifted a heavy quilt up to my chin. I buried myself in the warmth and turned my head into a pillow.
He ran a hand over my hair and said “Sleep now,” and I didn’t put up a fight.
I lost count of how many times I woke up like that, to him giving me medicine and sending me right back to sleep. Sometimes there was soup, nothing more than broth, but food was food and I wasn’t picky.
Eventually, I woke up to a dark room with the doctor nowhere in sight. It was the first time in a long time that it didn’t feel like my body wanted to kill me. It was also the first time I felt like I had any amount of energy. With all that energy came the demanding urge to find a water closet.
I pushed aside the quilt and swung my legs over the side of the bed. The edge dipped under my weight and I flailed, jumping up to my feet. At least, that was the goal when I launched myself off the bed. Instead, I collapsed on the floor with my head pounding.
The doctor that had been caring for me appeared within moments, toggling the light switch next to the door. A light on the bedside table glowed warm amber.
I sat up and leaned back against the bed while he crouched down. “Are you alright? What happened?”
“Stood up too fast,” I said. My gaze drifted down to my wrist, where clean bandages were wrapped around an actual splint.
“Why were you trying to stand up?” He helped me up to the edge of the bed.
“Because I need the water closet,” I stated, glaring at him. Maybe he was some kind of doctor, but if he didn’t recognize me as the kid who’d stolen his hat, he was an idiot.
A really rich idiot, judging by the silk pajamas and electric lights.
“You...right, of course. Let’s go.” He helped me to the water closet, an actual room in his house, and the next five minutes were the most awkward of my life. I had no strength in my legs, and my sense of balance had gone out the window.
“This is a good sign though,” he said, helping me back into bed. I hated how I sank in it. Give me blankets on solid floor any day. “Your fever has been sweating out any extra fluid you had, so the fact you’re not sweating it all out now means you’re on the mend.”
“On the mend from what, exactly?” I asked. I dragged my good hand over my face. I was in desperate need of a bath, but I doubted this doctor was about to let me stand out in the rain. “And who are you?”
He smiled at me. “You can call me Dr. Carl. Your friends happened to run into me while looking for help for you, and I agreed to take care of you. You had a nasty case of Angrilia, but nothing I couldn’t heal.”
My energy was fading again, but I still had so many questions. “Why would you help us? We can’t pay you. I already sold your hat.” I fought off a yawn and lost.
“I don’t need money,” he said. “And I forgive you for stealing my hat. But we can talk about this later. You need more rest.”
He pulled the quilt up and tucked me in, running his hand over my hair once before leaving and turning the light off.
If I hadn’t been completely exhausted, I would have spent hours trying to figure out what he could possibly want from a bunch of street rats. Instead, I worried about it for two minutes before falling asleep.
It was the first thing on my mind when I woke up, though. Light drifted in around the edges of a curtain, still the dim gray color of early dawn. What day was it? How many had I slept through? How long had Dr. Carl been taking care of me? And why? Why would he agree to take care of someone who couldn’t pay him back?
The whole thing was fishy. Stupid sickness. I shouldn’t even be in this mess, but no, I just had to catch some really bad cold.
At least I finally reached a point where I could stay awake for more than ten minutes. I was able to worry about every horrible scenario that could possibly happen until the gray light turned into a calm yellow and floorboards creaked. They passed by the door to my room and kept going, fading.
The only way to get answers was to ask questions, so I pushed aside the quilt again and attempted to stand up on my own. I didn’t feel as dizzy and unsteady as I had before, but I still leaned on the bedside table more than I liked. There was a chair next to the bed, and I used that to make my way to the door, shuffling it along the carpet. It was a thick carpet, soft around my bare feet and muffling my steps. Not completely, I was sure, not the way Dr. Carl’s steps had creaked before.
The hallway I stepped out into was lined with plants. They hung in baskets from the ceiling and sat in planters on fancy columns. Most were leafy clumps, but some had flowers in all sorts of colors.
That explained the floral scent and creeped me out more at the same time.
Dr. Carl rose into view at the top of the stairs. “I thought I heard you. Would you like breakfast?”
As creepy as this guy was, I was not able to turn down free food. “That’d be great.”
He helped me down the stairs and led me into a dining room, sitting me down in a chair with a carved wooden back. It matched the dark wood table. A gold chandelier hung from the ceiling, wax dripping down the arms. More plants were in each corner of the room, but their scent wasn’t as strong down here.
This was probably the fanciest place I’d ever been in my life. It was the kind of place I felt I could ruin simply by existing near it.
Dr. Carl brought out scrambled eggs and pieces of bread. “We’ll start off easy.”
Hot meals were a treat in and of themselves, and I devoured the eggs almost as soon as they were in front of me. He took a seat across from me, setting his plate down and ignoring it, folding his hands in front of his face while he watched me.
“You’ve spent your entire life on the streets, haven’t you?” he asked. There was no hint of pity in his voice. It sounded more like disgust.
“What of it?” I asked back. I tore off a hunk of bread. It was soft and practically melted in my mouth, nowhere near as stale as what I could usually steal.
“That means you never learned how to properly eat.” He glanced down at the fork my hand was wrapped around.
“What’s to know?” I asked. “It goes in your mouth, you chew, and swallow.”
He lifted his gaze from the fork to my face. “If you’re a barbarian, I suppose that’s enough. Observe.” He unfolded his hands and picked up his fork, scooped up some eggs, and brought it to his mouth.
There was a grace to his movements I could never hope to copy. I didn’t even know there was a way to make eating look delicate and graceful.
It was one more thing separating me from the wealthy of the world.
“You saying if I want to eat, I have to do it like you?” I asked.
“I’m saying if you don’t want to be a street rat until you die, it’s time you started acting like it.”
I raised a brow. “What?”
“You want off the streets eventually, don’t you?”
I shifted in my seat. “Yeah, I guess.” This was where he promised me incredible things, as long as I gave up everything I knew, right? And then he led me into some kind of pleasure house or something?
“Well, you can’t expect anyone to treat you like more than a street rat if you don’t act like more than one. That starts with manners and etiquette.”
Oh hell. I needed to get out of here.
“Why do you care?”
He grinned and looked me up and down. “I believe you can help me with something. But I need to teach you some things first. Plus, you’re still recovering and will be useless until you’re healthy again. While you recover, you can learn.”
And there were the thorns to go with this pretty flower. I knew him helping was too good to be real.
“What do you want my help with? And who says I’ll agree to help you?”
“You will,” he said. He reached for his glass of orange juice and brought it to his lips. “I hand-make the medicine I’ve been giving you. I can also make any number of other tonics and poisons.”
And he would, if I didn’t do what he wanted. He could kill me and get away with it. Jade and Malik probably had no idea where this house was. Dr. Carl could bury me in his garden and no one would ever know.
He smiled again. “I think you and I are going to get along swimmingly.”