My friends did.
I turned my back on the prisoner and crossed to Anna’s bedside. A Harvester crouched there, fingers pressed to her wrist, counting.
“What happened?” My voice came low, careful not to disturb her despite the clamor in the halls being loud enough to wake the dead.
“Lady Anna was struck through while opening the gate for King Kallias.” His tone held no inflection. “The blade missed her vital organs. She lost a great deal of blood. Her size works against her.”
It felt as if a dragon settled on my chest—a crushing weight restricting my lungs. She risked her life for us. Without her, those gates would have remained closed. Without her courage, we would still be outside the walls.
“Is she going to survive?”
“If the gods will it.”
“I will it.” The words left me before doubt could catch them.
His eyes lifted to mine. Dark. Assessing. He studied me as if measuring bone and marrow, searching for blasphemy or command. He would decide which he heard.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
His gaze dropped, and he peeled the sheet from Anna’s side.
Bleached linen wrapped her torso, stark against skin drained of color. Crimson seeped through the bandages, blooming slow and stubborn. Her face tightened, a faint groan slipping free.
The Harvester uncorked a vial from his belt. The sharp scent of herbs cut through the room as he tilted it to her lips. Liquid slid into her mouth, and she swallowed on instinct. Almost at once, her body slackened, surrendering to deeper sleep.
I brushed my fingers over her hand before stepping away.
Gayle was next.
I drew back the sheet.
Air left my lungs.
She had been stripped bare. Age-thinned skin had become a canvas of lacerations. Cuts and scrapes crossed her torso and arms in jagged lines, some shallow, others cruel. Bandages covered the worst of it, yet red still bled through the white cloth.
Her body looked like a corpse.
Rage pooled low and hot in my belly.
I let the sheet fall back into place and tucked it close beneath Gayle’s arms, smoothing the linen as though warmth alone could knit her torn flesh. She’d given me clarity and comfort when I floundered in my own skin, when desire and duty warred until I couldn’t tell one from the other. She believed in Kallias. In us. She spoke as if our love would somehow endure and overpower any obstacle in our path.
Now it was my turn to care for her.
Wisps of white hair clung to her damp cheeks, and I brushed them away. I swore her mouth softened at the corner in the tiniest of smiles. The change was slight, almost imagined, yet I chose to believe that she sensed me there and knew she was safe now.
The chains of my mantle draped against the bedding as I bent and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Cool skin met my lips. A vow settled in my chest. No more harm would reach her. Without Gayle, I would never have become Queen of Radaan. I would’ve been stuck with a monstrous brat of a boy.
Claydon lay beyond her, his condition far worse.
“Sea beneath,” Ronan muttered, hissing out a curse.
A Harvester worked with needle and thread, methodical in his movements, trying to make sense of the massacre etched across his collarbone. The sheet was pulled down only far enough to reveal his painstaking work, and my brother moved past me, tugging it lower.
My throat burned. Bile surged, clawing upward in a desperate search for escape, yet I couldn’t tear my gaze away. Sick horror glued my eyes to his dark, bruised skin.
He looked as if he had been flung into a school of eels, crescent-moon-shaped bites littering his flesh like a grotesque constellation. Punctures from hundreds of teeth dotted his body, forming a monstrous tapestry of suffering.
No limb remained unmarred. They bit him everywhere.
