Maybe she left early, I thought, not believing myself.
I found her in her bedroom, perched at the edge of the bed, her eyes glassy and glazed over, her joints locked and muscles tight. She didn’t see me even when I stood right in front of her—not until I shook her, hard, and she blinked and finally looked up at me.
“Oh. You’re home!”
She hid her fear beneath her smile and a dismissive wave, and even though a knot formed in my throat that made it hard to speak, I didn’t question her.
But I still saw her trembling. Still saw the way she paused in the mirror when she rose, shakily, from the bed, looking at herself the way I had the first day I was old enough to feel death following me.
So much of her skin covered the floor that it took me half an hour to sweep it all away.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Three weeks of relentless work passed.
I threw everything that I had into it. I stopped sleeping, save for brief naps taken out of sheer exhaustion, and only when my body threatened to betray me. I stopped eating, save for hurried bites of whatever was easiest to shove into my mouth over my books. I stopped leaving the study, save to go cultivate my roses, making sure they remained perfect enough to pass Vale’s exacting standards.
“Why are you working so hard?” Mina would ask me sadly, with lips tinted black from the answer to her own question.
I couldn’t waste time. Time was precious.
My own condition deteriorated, too, old symptoms that I’d grown used to now creeping up on me with renewed verve. But those were nothing compared to those that nibbled away at my sister’s life, bit by bit.
When I closed my eyes, I saw Vale’s blood. I stared at it twelve, fifteen, eighteen hours a day, always in small bursts to avoid rejection from the magic of my instruments. It happened anyway, eventually, the glass cracking with bursts of acrid smoke. I had to run into the city to buy another lens for far too much money that I did not have. Not that I cared—who could care about money in times like this?
I began distilling Vale’s blood into potions. My early attempts were clumsy, one even erupting into eerie white flames. But after countless trials, my concoctions were no longer smoking or giving off rancid, rotting smells. Eventually, they started to resemble something like actual medicine.
One day, I produced something that responded well to all my tests. It didn’t combust, or smoke, or burn. It didn’t harm plants or skin. It had all the markers of a potential candidate—and it didn’t even resemble blood anymore.
Finally, after much internal debate, I gave it to one of my ailing test rats.
Animals didn’t respond to the plague the same way humans did, which made it difficult to test medicine on them. This rat was ill—it had days left, if not less—but it wouldn’t wither to dust the same way humans affected by the plague did.
Still… information was information.
I watched that poor rat day and night. Hours passed, then two days. I half expected the creature to die a slow, miserable death.
It didn’t happen.
In fact, the rat didn’t die at all. Not even when the illness should have stolen its final breaths.
No, it was still lethargic and slow, still obviously unwell, but it did not die.
It was such a tiny, tiny victory—not even a true positive outcome, but the absence of a negative one. Still, that was enough to have me grinning giddily all day. I felt, deep in my bones, that I was getting closer.
I gave up on even trying to sleep that night. It was midnight and very stormy, violent drafts through my office window blowing my candles out every few minutes. But I had work to do.
After only an hour, though, I reached into my pack to find that, in my exhaustion, I’d miscounted—I was out of blood.
I cursed.
I stared at the empty vials over my desk. Then at my dozens of failed experiments and the single—almost—successful one.
I looked to the window, and the ferocious night beyond the glass.
It wasn’t even a decision, really.
I rose, gathered my things, and walked down the hall. I peered into Mina’s room on my way out. Her sleep was restless, and she left dusty marks on the bedspread.
The sight was far more frightening than that of the storm outside.
Vale wasn’t expecting me yet. It hadn’t yet been a month. Maybe he’d turn me away. But I couldn’t afford to wait.
I tucked a rose into my pack and went out into the night.
It was dangerous to travel in this weather. Rationally, I knew this, but it didn’t feel like much of a danger until I was actually stumbling through the soaked, pitch-black forest paths. I spent so much time thinking about death at the hands of my illness that it had become easy to forget that there were countless other ways it could take me, and a night like this was full of them.
It took me twice as long that night to make it half as far. I had to focus absolutely on the road in front of me, trying not to slip on soaked rocks or sink too deep in the muddy dirt. The rain let up a little bit, eventually, but I was so exhausted by then that I wasn’t alert.
I didn’t see the men surrounding me until it was too late.
One minute, I was dragging myself along the road, and the next, pain burst through my back as a force slammed me against a tree.
Crack! The back of my head smacked wood.
Everything went dull and fuzzy for a moment—even though I refused to acknowledge it, I had already been on the precipice of losing consciousness from sheer exhaustion. That one hit was nearly enough to push me over the edge of it.
I clawed back to awareness, blinking through the haze at the men around me. A young man held me to the tree, hands to my shoulders. Behind him, several others circled like prowling wolves.
One look at them and I knew they were starving. So many people were, these days.
The boy holding me was tall and broad, but he was barely more than a child. It was hard to read his age because of the gaunt angles of his face. Sixteen, eighteen at most.
His expression changed a little when I met his eyes, quickly averting them. Behind him, one of the men approached. Older, bearded. A hard, angry face.
Five of them. One of me. I’d never thrown a punch or wielded a weapon in my life.
I didn’t need to be a renowned mathematician to solve that equation. I didn’t try to fight back.
“I don’t have anything of value,” I said.
“Bullshit,” the older man scoffed. Then, to the others, “Take her bag.”
My heart dropped.
I’d been in such a rush to leave that I hadn’t been picky about what I took with me. I had just thrown everything into my pack. My instruments. Useless to these men—they wouldn’t even know where to sell them—but everything to me.
“There’s nothing you can eat or sell in there,” I said.
But they snatched the bag away anyway, rummaging through it. I cringed at the sound of carelessly clinking glass, punctuated by a few cracking shatters.
My heartbeat throbbed in my ears.
“Please,” I said. “Please. It’s worthless to you. I’ll give you—”
Gods, what could I offer them? I had nothing of value to give them in exchange. I had no money on me. Little at home, either. I didn’t even think to pack food, not that I thought these men would be satisfied with a single woman’s scraps of bread.