Chapter Twenty-One

“I’d rather you just kill me,” said Quinlan very matter-of-factly.

Rose glared at him. “For the last time, get out of bed.”

The light streaming through the colored panes above them dappled his covers like a glassy meadow, hues of red and green swaying on a drunken breeze as the clouds shifted, far above and out of his reach. He had no desire to leave the warmth of his little sanctuary, even with the pillows long scantied of their puffiness beneath his neck and the air stale from his breath. Admittedly, he’d already counted the stars speckling the ceiling seven times over, but who wouldn’t want to admire the streams of afternoon sunlight radiating through the stained-glass moons and flood of stars?

“Strange,” Quinlan remarked. “I’m almost certain that Doctor Ilroy ordered me a week of bed rest.” He narrowed his eyes on her with no little amount of suspicion. “You’re usually a stickler for following doctors’ orders. What’s going on?”

Rose shrugged, all nonchalance. “Nothing. I just figured that . . . well, in the unlikely event that we happen to have guests over . . . you wouldn’t want to be seen like this.”

His eyes widened in sinking disbelief. “Rose.”

She threw her hands up in defense. “Don’t you ‘Rose’ me. She’s already on her way. And you and I both know that when the Queen of Axaria wants something, there’s nothing in either realm that can stop her.”

“No, I can’t—just look at me, Rose, I’m a mess!” His chest constricted. A flock of clouds shepherded by the wind darkened the horizon. The meadow faded. “I told you not to send a damn letter.”

Rose’s glare grew hotter. “Yes, after I had already sent it. And you’re usually a mess, anyway, so you needn’t worry about that.”

He grumbled several unsavory comments beneath his breath and rubbed his eyes—funny, he had done nothing but sleep for months and yet the exhaustion still dragged at him no matter how much he rested. He attempted to stare down his cousin, something which by now he should have accepted never actually worked. Defeated, he pushed the covers aside. “Fine. But you don’t have to supervise me. I’ve been bedridden before, mind you.”

She pursed her lips, thoroughly unconvinced. “For a week at most. Not months.”

He flapped a dismissive hand in her direction. “Ah, what’s the difference in a couple of extra weeks?” With a confident smirk, he swung his legs off the bed—and sure, he should have known something was off when the straightforward movement took significant effort, but perhaps his muscles were still . . . asleep. Or something. He cleared his throat to stall for time, suddenly noticing how much thinner his arms and legs looked beneath his robe. Scrawny, almost. “Just, ah, need to stretch a bit, that’s all.”

Rose raised a single, unimpressed eyebrow and crossed her arms over her chest. “Uh-huh.”

“Getting out of bed? Pffft. Running a few miles? No problem for me. I am a strong, able-bodied young man.” He inhaled, inspecting the floorboards at his feet. “Also, was the ground always this far away?”

His cousin exhaled in exasperation. “Let me grab you a cane.”

“No, no! I’m fine!” He vaulted off of the mattress, throwing his hands skyward in triumph when his legs managed to sustain his weight. “See?” Then the ground began to shake. It took him far too long to realize that, in fact, he was shaking. Uncontrollably.

Rose dipped her chin at his legs. “You were saying?”

“They’re just trembling with excitement,” he informed her. “I’m fine. Truly.”

In a heartbeat, her demeanor shifted entirely. “You know, I was so worried,” Rose began, her voice dripping with sugary sweetness, “but thank the Immortals you’ve proven that you’re fully recovered.” Every instinct told Quinlan to flee when the Queen of Eradore took a step closer to him, but his legs refused to obey. Her hand floated to his shoulder. He cowered as it gave him a gentle squeeze. “Truly.”

He finally perceived his doom. “Wait—”

The hand tightened into an inescapable claw and bore down. Quinlan’s foal legs buckled under the crushing weight. He crashed to the floor.

Rose loomed over him with a sympathetic smile. “Sorry, cousin dearest. But you just never learn your lesson.”

There was a commotion from outside the door, and a moment later, the twins scampered in, chortling at Quinlan’s pathetic state. Behind them followed Taeron, looking as genteel and dignified as he always did in a slim navy pinstripe waistcoat and blush-pink tie, the sleeves of his crisp white button-up rolled to his elbows. His horn-rimmed glasses were perched atop his head. As usual, he gripped a book loosely at his side, marked in place by what appeared to be a second, smaller book.

“Hello, brother,” Quinlan said coolly from the floor.

“How’s the view?” Taeron quipped, placing the book—books—on the bedside table and offering a hand.

Quinlan ignored both the hand and the genuine hurt that flickered in his brother’s eyes as a result. “Fine. It’s fine, I’m fine, everything is just fine.”

The twins squatted beside his head and started poking his face. “Then why are you still lying on the floor like a dead fish, Quinnie?” asked Avon while Avris hid a giggle behind her hands. Her fingers were stained a suspicious neon yellow.

“Because fish are a staple commodity of Eradorian trade, little cub,” Quinlan said, “and if they started flopping around on people’s dinner plates, like so—” He demonstrated, much to the twins’ delight, “—we would go bankrupt.”

“Enough,” Rose admonished. She hauled him upright and glanced at the twins. “Avon? Didn’t you say you were going to bring a present for our smelly, dead, fishy-friend?”

The boy nodded, hopping onto his feet and bouncing on his toes. He produced a vial from his pocket. “It’s supposed to help strengthen and repair your muscles, although it works best together with regular exercise.”

Rose nodded. “Hence the cane. Walking is required.”

Taeron coughed, fixing his stare onto Quinlan’s forehead. “Actually, the cane will impede a smooth recovery, since you would be relying on one side at a time.”

“So . . .” Rose tapped her chin. “Two canes?”

Quinlan glowered at his brother with enough poison to wither a forest. “Thanks, Taeron. You’re the best.”

With the help of Avon’s mysterious concoction and a few hours of healing therapy with Doctor Ilroy twice per day, Quinlan soon managed stairs using only the banister. He could stumble around the palace without his crutches by the end of the week. After that, he allowed himself to tentatively ease back into his old training regiments—lessened in intensity, obviously, and by a frankly embarrassing amount, but progress was progress. Push-ups left him in a cold sweat, and he nearly decapitated himself doing chest presses. He woke up sore and went to bed sore, only to repeat the process again the next morning. It took a shockingly long time to regain his appetite, and every glimpse of his sunken cheeks and defeated gaze in any reflective surface made him cringe.

But nothing could have prepared him for the sight of his wounds—he had been avoiding it, turning away from the mirror every time he changed or bathed, shivering when his fingers accidentally brushed against the bumpy, upraised tissue while washing.

At last, one evening, fed up with his own cowardice, he eviscerated his dread and shucked off his long-sleeved shirt before a bath.

He stared. The blood rushed to his face, making him light-headed as a high-pitched ringing filled his ears.

Doctor Ilroy had predicted that the scar running from Quinlan’s elbow to wrist would heal completely with time, but . . . his stomach was another story entirely. During the Fairfest battle, Rose had cauterized the puncture wound as a last resort to stop him from bleeding out. Ilroy had been forced to reopen the wound in order to siphon out the dark magic she had unintentionally trapped within—along with all of the rotting tissue, which had left a grotesque mass of scar tissue and puckered flesh, still red and tender to the touch.

In a society where any decent healer could mend cuts and bruises and burns without a trace, scars were hard to come by. Shadow magic was also hard to come by, Quinlan supposed, but the only thing that made the scar a little easier to swallow was that it belonged to him and not someone else. Like Asterin.

Asterin.

Quinlan sighed and slid to the floor, the tiles frigid against his flushed skin. He screwed the heels of his palms into his closed eyes. In that moment, back in Axaris, when Priscilla had held the lives of both him and Luna hostage and forced Asterin to choose between them, he hadn’t even been conscious. If Asterin had chosen Luna, he would have never known better.

But she hadn’t.

And he couldn’t understand why.

Why had she chosen him?

Ever since Rose had relayed the tale to him, he couldn’t stop thinking about Asterin’s decision. He spun it in every imaginable way, but part of him still couldn’t believe that Asterin had been willing to sacrifice Luna for him. Luna was Asterin’s best friend, and he . . . he was just some smart-mouthed prince from a faraway land lucky enough to have caught her attention. The Queen of Axaria had crashed into his life like a meteorite—he had seen it all, right from the start, the attraction, the spark. He had expected her. Underestimated her. Braced himself for the collision, never guessing quite how much her impact would irrevocably change his world. It was the little things—the way she held herself, the way she fiddled with her hands when she paced, the way her eyes had sparkled after the first time they had kissed. And of course it was her strength, too. Her fierce loyalty, her bullheaded determination, and that stupid, irrational, unwavering bravery.

“Get it together, Quinlan,” he whispered to himself. His reflection only gazed back disdainfully, like his face was privy to something his brain had failed to catch. “She still likes you. Why else would she rush over to visit?” He prodded at his stomach wound, nose scrunched in disgust. “Maybe she’ll fall in love with some sea captain on the way to Eradore and forget about you.” As absurd as it was, he suddenly found himself hating this faceless, imaginary sea captain, his stomach clenching so violently that he almost vomited all over the floor. He blamed it on Avon’s potions.

Perhaps it was time for a nap.

“Up you get,” he muttered to himself. His reflection’s features twisted in discomfort. Twice more he attempted to rise, to push himself up onto his knees at the very least. With a grunt of frustration, he called upon his magic to help hoist himself onto his feet, a practice so natural and deeply ingrained in him that a swift gust of wind came to his aid without a second thought.

His magic had lain dormant during his coma for so long, restless, waiting—and now it sang through him, released like a pent-up sigh. Ilroy had advised him to devote all of his energy toward a full physical recovery before he even attempted any magic.

But I’m stronger now, he thought to himself. And Immortals, did it feel incredible to let go.

Like a giddy child, he rubbed his palms together. Red-gold embers sparked between his skin and jumped across the tile. He let them trail fire behind him, growing, spreading, fusing into a swelling inferno that devoured everything but burned nothing. The blaze seared down his throat as he breathed it in, deep, and extinguished with a snap of his fingers. He exhaled smoke through pursed lips and watched it drift to the ceiling, savoring the sudden sense of calm. His fire was as much a part of him as anything else could ever be, and it would never harm him, never hurt him.

Still high off the endorphins, Quinlan made his way out of his bathing chambers, shooting his reflection a mile-wide grin. Then, something registered in the back of his mind and he stuttered to a halt. He blinked a few times, reversing his steps, certain his eyes were fooling him, but then reality set in, and he gingerly approached the mirror.

He splayed his fingers across his abdomen in perplexity. No, there was no denying the stain marking the upper corner of the wound, an inky-black splotch crawling along his ribcage. Quinlan narrowed his eyes, desperately trying to recall its presence mere minutes before and coming up short.

That was when the pain hit.

It struck him like a dulled knife tearing clean through his body, only sharpening as he doubled over. He clutched at his abdomen helplessly, gasping for breath. Tears sprung forth, blurring his vision. Cursing, he staggered over to the side of the bathtub and slumped against it, heart hammering, blood roaring in his ears. He forced himself to breathe, just breathe, gulps of air, not enough, not enough, inhale, exhale—

Just when he thought the pain would never end, it finally subsided, swiftly dwindling to a throbbing ache. He raised his eyes to the mirror, expecting the blight, the infection, the poison, whatever in hell it was, to have spread—but, whether to his relief or disbelief, he couldn’t decide, it remained unchanged.

He didn’t bother wondering if using his magic had caused it. The only question was whether the amount of magic he used would affect how much or how quickly the poison spread, or how bad the pain would get. Because if a few measly fires resulted in this . . .

Something inside of him cracked.

Cruel.

He had no other word for it, for this newest horror. He was mere days into being awake for the first time in months, his eyes open at last and set firmly on the future. And yet his healing had led to something much worse. A bitter bark of laughter escaped his lips, and then another. Before he knew it, his whole body shook. Drunkenly, deliriously, he fell onto all fours, smacking his fist into the ground in time with his howls.

Life is such a bitch, Quinlan thought as his mirth bounced back at him from the tiles, cresting in a wave and finally crashing down upon him—drowning him, wrecking him, ripping him apart until his throat was raw and his body numb.

Eventually, sleep found him sprawled in a broken heap on the floor. It eddied around him, a lover’s croon, a lulling wave pulling a shipless sea captain stranded on sirens’ waters into its dark, merciful embrace.