The Healer filled a bowl with some sharp-smelling solution. “It would be easier to put him under. I can’t have him moving around while I work.”
Zoya sat down beside Nikolai on the bed, trying not to jostle him.
“You must be still,” she murmured.
“Don’t go.”
He shut his eyes and gripped her hand in his. Zoya knew the Healer had noticed it, knew he would probably gossip about it later. But she could weather the gossip. Saints knew she’d endured worse. And maybe she needed to feel his hand in hers after the shock of what they’d witnessed. She couldn’t stop seeing those women burn.
“You shouldn’t be here for this,” said the Healer. “It’s an ugly process.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
The Healer flinched and Zoya wondered if the dragon had emerged, shining silver in her eyes. Let him gossip about that too.
Nikolai clung to her hand as the Healer stripped the ruined flesh from his arm. Only then could it be replaced with healthy skin. It seemed to take hours, first one arm, then the other. Whenever Zoya left the king’s side—to fetch a cool cloth for his head, to turn up the lanterns so that the Healer had better light—Nikolai would open his eyes and mutter, “Where is my general?”
“I’m here,” she repeated, again and again.
Once the Healer had dealt with the singed flesh of his arms, no hair remained on them, but the scars on his hands—the veins of shadow the Darkling had left—were still visible.
“He’ll need to rest,” said the Healer, rising and stretching when the work was done. “But the damage was fairly superficial.”
“And Princess Ehri?” Zoya asked.
“I don’t know. Her burns were much more severe.”
Once the Healer was gone, Zoya waited for Nikolai’s breathing to turn deep and even. Dusk had fallen. Outside the lanterns in the garden were being lit, a string of stars strewn across the grounds. She had missed this room, who Nikolai became in this room, the man who for a moment might let the mantle of king fall away, who trusted her enough to close his eyes and fall into dreams as she stood watch. She needed to get back to the Little Palace, check on Princess Ehri, talk to Tamar, forge a plan. But this might be the last time she saw him this way.
At last she rose and turned down the lights.
“Don’t go,” he said, still half asleep.
“I have to bathe. I smell like a forest fire.”
“You smell like wildflowers. You always do. What can I say to make you stay?” His words trailed off into a drowsy mumble as he fell back asleep.
Tell me it’s more than war and worry that makes you speak those words. Tell me what they would mean if you weren’t a king and I weren’t a soldier. But she didn’t want to hear any of that, not really. Sweet words and grand declarations were for other people, other lives.
She brushed the hair back from his face, placed a kiss on his forehead. “I would stay forever if I could,” she whispered. He wouldn’t remember anyway.
* * *
Hours later, Zoya’s sitting room was crowded with people. She hadn’t invited anyone; they’d simply gathered there, settling in front of the fire with cups of sweetened tea. Saints, she was glad of it. Usually, she valued her privacy, but tonight she needed company.
Despite the bath she’d taken, she felt like she could smell death clinging to her, in her hair, in her clothes. She had curled up beside Genya on the couch next to the fire. Its cushions were embroidered in pewter silk, and usually she was fussy about people putting their feet up on it, but right now she couldn’t have cared less. She took a long sip from her mug of warmed wine. Tea was not enough for her tonight.
David and Nadia sat at the round table at the room’s center. He’d set out neat little stacks of papers in what was no doubt an important order, and he was buried in a long row of calculations. Occasionally, he would hand a paper to Nadia, who was working on her own set of numbers, her feet resting in Tamar’s lap. Tolya sat on the rug beside the tiled grate, gazing into the fire. It might have been a cozy scene, but the horror of what had happened that morning hung heavy in the air.
Genya studied her designs for the wedding gown, traditional gold and paired with a jeweled kokoshnik. She held up a sketch. “Too much?”
Zoya touched her fingers to the gown’s delicately drawn hem. “For the royal chapel? No. The more sparkle the better.” It was a gloomy place.
“I know,” Genya said. She adjusted the patch over her missing eye. “If only we could hold the ceremony in the gardens.”