Sybil was quiet for a moment. “It’s theoretically possible, but I don’t know of anyone who has survived an infection this severe. Cuts by themselves can be mended, but once the infection enters the blood like it has with you…”
She didn’t finish that sentence either.
“How long?” I asked. “How long do I have?”
Sybil’s face tightened. “I’d guess between three days and a week.”
I caught my breath. So soon? Father would never get here in time. Tears burned behind my eyes, and I blinked hard to hold them back. Father would want to know. He would want to be with me, even if it broke him. He had nearly died of grief when Mother passed away.
“I’d like to be alone,” I whispered.
Peter left immediately but Sybil lingered long enough to bend and wrap me in a careful hug, avoiding my injuries as best she could. “You holler for me any time you need me, day or night. I’ll bring you something for the pain as soon as I can so you don’t have to suffer.” I nodded, though I could not speak, then she left and closed the door behind her.
I was dying.
I stared up at the spider above my head and couldn’t stop the tears from falling down my face. That spider up there would goon living, completely unaware that directly beneath it, a person was slowly and painfully wasting away. It would finish its web and catch flies. It would crawl along the beams and live its small, ordinary life while mine came apart underneath it.
How many breaths did I have left? How many more times would my heart beat before it stopped? I didn’t know what happened after death. Would my consciousness, my soul, go to heaven? Or would I simply cease to exist? If there was a heaven, perhaps Mother would be there.
But far from reassuring me, the thought made my tears fall faster. As much as I wanted to see my mother again, I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want some slow, painful ending in a hut while everyone I loved stood nearby, unable to save me. I wanted to live. I wanted a future. I wanted to know whether Father and King Richard made it safely back to England. I wanted to grow old and tell outrageous stories to grandchildren who would never believe half of them. I wanted to make a difference in the world, not become another sad tale people told around cookfires.
I wanted Baron. The thought broke through everything else. I wanted him beside me.
My heart skipped strangely, and panic tore through me. Was that part of my impending death? Was that how it began? Was death already creeping closer while I lay there crying beneath a spider’s web?
What would happen if I simply refused to die? What if I decided to stubbornly live on and cheat death? I still had too much life in me to give up now. I slowly kicked off my blanket and struggled to sit and managed to roll onto my side. Pain exploded through me, but I staunchly refused to acknowledge it. I would live. I chose life.
With a trembling arm, I raised myself onto my elbow and tried to block out the searing pain flaring across my body. Iwould walk it off. That was all. I just needed to get up and prove I could still move. Sybil would realize she’d been wrong.
With immense effort, I swung my legs over the side of the straw tick. By then, sweat drenched my skin, and I dragged air into my lungs in heavy gasps. I would live. I couldn’t die now.
I was afraid of death.
The admission came with such force that my breath hitched. I was afraid. I clung to the side table and tried to heave myself onto my feet but my legs wouldn’t support me. They buckled at once, and I collapsed to the floor where I lay, shaking. I was useless…useless and dying.
Then I broke down and sobbed.
BARON
Little John and I took a long walk. He tried to give me fatherly advice, but I only half-listened. I was sure it was very good advice too, full of patience, wisdom, and whatever else wiser men like Little John were supposed to say when younger men like me behaved irrationally. Peter was his son, not me.
Peter was the one Little John should have been advising. He should have been telling Peter to allow Laurel to decide who she wanted to be with and to stop intervening where he wasn’t wanted. He should’ve been going on to Peter about letting go of what was and looking toward the future instead of back at the past. Peter was the one he should have told not to dump people into water troughs, no matter how tempting it was.
I stayed for the entire discussion out of respect for Little John, not because I wanted to hear any of it. He spoke of restraint, patience, pride, and the fact that loving a woman didn’t mean I had the right to make her decisions for her.
I already knew that. But most of his words were blocked out by my own thoughts about Laurel. Was she recovering? Had the fever broken? Was Peter touching her again with that smug, proprietary look on his face? I had come to Sherwood to seeLaurel, not to listen to Little John prattle on about how to handle relationships like a man.
Finally, finally, when we returned to the hut, Little John clapped a heavy hand on my shoulder and left me with one last meaningful look that I barely saw as I made a beeline for the door, but the thin healer woman came around the corner and held up a hand to stop me.
“How’s Laurel?” I asked. Sybil’s mouth settled into a firm line. She glanced toward the hut door. It was shut. Something cold clutched its icy fingers around my heart. “Please tell me.”
Her expression softened with pity. “Laurel has blood poisoning.”
“But it can be cured, can’t it?”
Sybil shook her head. “She probably has a few days left,” she said. “It spreads quickly. Once it reaches this point, it only gets worse.”
I stared at her. A few days? That was it? Then what, Laurel was just going to die?
