A white cat sat beneath the bench, amethyst eyes glaring out at Lila, as if personally offended by the Antari’s presence. But it shrank back into the shadow of the seat as Lila paused, and brought her hand to the child’s black curls, in a gesture that was almost gentle.
“Hello, Ren,” she said. “Are you guarding the room?”
The little girl looked up, revealing eyes that were a burnished gold. She nodded. “We have to be quiet, though,” she said in a whisper. “The prince is sleeping.”
Pain lanced across Lila’s face, carved a furrow between her eyes.
“But it’s okay,” continued the child. “I brought him Miros, and Sasha said that when he wakes, I can go in and read him a story from my book.”
Lila’s hand fell away from the girl’s head. “That sounds like a very good idea.”
The child’s gold eyes went past her, landing on Tes. Or more specifically, the skeleton bird in Tes’s hand. Her mouth turned down. “Is your owl dead?”
In answer to the question, Vares fluttered his bone wings, and the girl’s face opened in delight. Tes found herself holding out the bird for her to see. “Would you look after him for me? For a little while.”
The child reached out and accepted him carefully, as if he were made of glass instead of bone and spell. She balanced him on the rabbit’s back—the creature didn’t seem to mind—and stroked his beak. “What’s his name?”
“Vares.”
The girl’s gold eyes widened. “Like me!” she said, for a moment forgetting the need to whisper, and Tes startled, eyes widening. The word vares could mean prince—or princess. Which meant this little girl was in fact Tieren Maresh, the heir to the throne.
She flinched from the sound of her own voice, glanced at the doors, then scooted closer, and gestured for Tes lean in. “Are you the one who’s going to wake him up?” she asked.
Tes’s stomach sank. She’d known, somehow, this was the favor. But before she could answer, Lila laid a hand against the doors and said, “She’s going to try.”
The pattern on the doors was the chalice and sun, a massive M carved into the center, the lines filled with gold, and still, Tes was surprised when she followed Lila into the room, and found herself standing in front of the king.
Rhy Maresh slumped forward in a chair, looking twice his age.
His black curls tumbled into his gold eyes, his crown tossed onto a nearby cushion, chin resting on his laced fingers. The king was said to have no magic, but she could see the silver threads that bloomed outward from his chest and wound through the air around him.
There was no sign of the queen, at least. That was a mercy, but another man, one whose magic coursed in three different-colored strands, stood at the king’s side, his hair drawn back, revealing storm-drenched eyes. Tes flinched at the sight of him, a sudden, visceral memory of the nobleman in the house. But this man was slighter, and his knuckles bore no scars, though there were delicate lines along his wrists, and up his throat—but she’d seen those marks before, on those who had survived the plague. When he met Tes’s eyes, she saw the jagged lines that coiled in them, like bolts of lightning, and guessed that he was the one who shared her strange gift of sight.
The king cleared his throat. “I see our surgeon has arrived.” He rose, only to sway a little. He closed his eyes, and steadied himself against the back of the chair.
“Apologies,” he said. “We’ve had to kept him drugged, and I fear, what he feels, so do I.”
That was when Tes rounded the sofa, and saw Kell.
The prince was sedated, but not deeply, the strain still showing in his hands, his jaw, his throat.
“Every time he woke,” said the king, his own voice hoarse, “he started screaming.”
Tes could see why. The threads around Kell Maresh were no longer simply frayed, but shattered, torn in places, in others held by a single brittle filament, and as the magic tried to course, it sparked.
Tes drew closer. Copper hair fell across Kell’s face, interrupted by a streak of silver. His coat was gone, his shirt open at the collar, revealing the edge of a blackened brand over his heart—a spell she didn’t recognize—but threads of silver coiled there, flowing in, instead of out, and Tes realized it was the echo of the magic that circled the king, the other half of the silver pattern that bloomed from Rhy Maresh’s chest. Their lives were somehow tethered.
“Can you heal him?” asked the king.
The same question Lila had asked the day before, and Tes felt the same protests rising to her lips. But this time, she bit them back. She had built a persalis from scratch, her hands shaking with poison. Now they hung steady at her sides. If anyone in the empire could do this, it was Tes.