A sip. A cough. Death.
And then everything changed—and not in the way he intended. If only Amarande had been more amenable to his offer. If only she’d done what he’d asked. His anger flared once more, the remorse snuffed out. He may have started it all, butshewas at fault. For his death—for this path.
Renard swallowed. “And how long am I expected to… survive like this?”
“In perpetuity, I suppose.”
“Am I immortal?”
“Oh no, you can die, all right. All of us lose our spark one way or another. It is just a matter of when it is fully snuffed. If I had not addressed the life within you, you surely would have been to the stars by now—dehydrated, starved, infected—pick your poison, as it were.” The old woman chuckled, her feelings for Sendoa tucked back down deep in that withered body of hers. Renard did not laugh. “Though, as you may deduce from my earlier tale, it would be best if you stayed away from any poison. There is no coming back from that.”
Renard’s mind blipped upon Taillefer’s empty workshop. Once filled with hundreds of vials of poison, now not a single drop.
The king swallowed and asked a question that needed to be answered.
“Am I able to produce an heir?” It was the least of his personal concerns, but an important one for Pyrenee.
The old woman raised an ornery eyebrow. “I’ve never had the occasion to run a trial, but I don’t see why not. If you were a woman, it would not be so likely. But given a man’s role in the production of an heir, it is possible for you to do so, yes.”
Renard tented his fingers.
“What else must I know?”
“I believe you know the rest.” The medikua leaned forward and touched his temple. He should’ve swatted her away—she had no right, he was a king—and yet Renard could not make himself move, frozen to the spot under her dry fingertips. “Your memory is not as clear as before. Your will is driven by the purest distillation of the reason that kept your life spark burning.”
Her gnarled fingers dropped to his chest, patting his fine doublet, right above his still-beating heart. Renard could barely breathe.
“What is it for you? True love? Pure hate? Intense fury? Kingly ambition? Unfinished business? Revenge?” As the woman ticked off all the reasons she had clearly witnessed in her lifetime, she pulled away. Once the medikua was at a great enough distance, she cocked a thin gray brow. “All of it?”
Finally, Renard churned into motion. He shot to his feet, his chair nearly tipping as it scraped back in haste. “I do not need to answer you. Do not touch me without permission.”
The medikua’s face told him she’d seen this reaction before—and that was why she’d backed away—which only served to annoy him further. “Do not run from the truth or deny it, Your Highness. There is no shame in the emotion that has kept you alive.”
Renard didn’t answer the medikua. Instead, at a distance where she could see but not touch, he shrugged aside his doublet and untucked his tunic from his breeches, hauling up the fabric to expose his wound to the light. The skin around the sutures bloomed black, worse than before.
“And what of this?” Renard asked. “It has appeared in the past few days. Surely, if you have done this as many times as you would like me to believe, you have come across this”—he did not know the correct word—“infection.”
“Oh, that is no infection, Your Highness.” The medikua pointed a crooked finger at his flesh but did not advance to touch it—a sign that she could follow instruction after all. “That is necrosis. Your skin is dying, and the organs underneath it as well.”
Necrosis.
“Can you repair it?”
“I cannot heal it, per se, but, with the same tincture that brought you back from the brink, I can prevent it from spreading with daily application.”
The black skin was currently the size of a fist, sitting in the hollow below his sternum. “And without it, it will spread? Until my entire skin is covered?”
“Oh no, you’ll be dead long before that.”
The medikua did not cackle, but her cavalier delivery was quite the same thing.
Fury flared deep and Renard had to squeeze his eyes closed for a moment to keep from laying hands upon her. When he was calmenough, the king opened his eyes, inhaled thinly, and asked her for clarification. It was necessary that he did not assume anything and only gained real, true facts from the medikua. “Managing the necrosis is the only way to keep living?”
“Yes. The spark of life stayed with you so that you may achieve your final goal.” Again, she shrugged as if this was just the way of it. “Most men complete it right away and their souls die happy.”
Renard swallowed, a tear of sadness dropping in his gut. “But I do not want to die. I just got what I most wanted in life. I want to enjoy it. If I have daily treatments, it won’t spread and I can rule as I please, yes?”
In answer, the medikua pointedly stood, shuffled to her basket of tinctures, and pulled out a small glass bottle. She held it up to the light, so that Renard could see the serum sloshing within. The vial was the height of the woman’s small palm, and only a tenth full, if that. “Yes, until we run out, daily treatments will allow you to function without further damage from the necrosis.”
