Page 95 of Prince of the Sun

“Well, scan harder!” I yell, voice pitching toward hysteria.

“Quinn.” Cara’s voice is low, a warning. I hadn’t even heard her climb down from the tree, but she now stands just behind me.

I flush. “I’m sorry. I just…” I look down at Daerios’s shuttered eyes.

“I know,” Cara says quietly. “Look, stay with Daer. We’ll go look for the berries.”

“Okay.” I nod. “Okay. I can do that.”

“Don’t leave,” Berendir says. “Just in case the urrath have any friends wandering around.”

“I won’t. Trust me.”

Berendir nods. He sheathes his weapons, then reaches for Cara’s hand. She takes it.

Just as they’re about to vanish into the trees, I say, “Ber?”

He looks over his shoulder. “Yes?”

“How long does he have?”

Berendir’s eyes flick down to Daerios’s crumpled form, then quickly back up to me.

“The honest answer,” I say.

Berendir’s mouth opens and closes once. Then, quietly, he says, “A half hour at most.”

I sit in the midnight grass at the prince’s side and cross my legs beneath me. I cannot yell for help. I cannot give Daerios CPR. At this point, I can do nothing but sit here and await Cara and Berendir’s return.

After they left, I turned Daerios onto his back and laid him across my legs. His head is in my lap, eyes shut. Sweat still beads his forehead. I pushed the collar of his tunic aside so I could monitor the progress of the poison in his system. The veins of darkness have just crested his left shoulder, creeping slowly down toward his collarbone.

I stare directly at them, willing them to go no further.

Eventually, the quiet becomes too much. I’m sitting here, in an empty clearing, silently watching one of my best friends die. Because that’s the truth. Somehow, at some point, he’s become one of my best friends. And this might be my last chance to tell him.

I clear my throat, pulling a chunk of grass from the soil. “Do you remember when we danced?” I glance at his eyes, which remain shut, face blank. “That’s a stupid question. Of course,you do. It was barely a month ago.” I pull out another handful of grass, laughing hoarsely. “It feels like a lifetime, though, doesn’t it?”

This is stupid,I think.I might as well be speaking to a cement wall.

Yet I can’t stop. It’s as if the sentences inside me are a tower of rocks, one that has grown taller with every unspoken word, every silent promise, every emotion not acknowledged between Daerios and me. The tower has grown to an intolerable height. It’s wobbling within me. It’s about to come tumbling down.

“That night at Endicott, when we danced…” I exhale, unwanted emotion starting to clog my throat. “It changed me. Made me forget who I was. Forget the obsessive plotting, the cold numbness, the hatred that had consumed me for so long. Even the impulse to starve myself. When we danced, all of that just sort of faded to nothing. I was able, for the first time since Michael was taken, to just be agirl. A girl dancing with a boy who made the entire world fall away.” I glance again at his face. I feel the urge to press my fingers to his damp forehead, to run them along the place where his skin meets his dark hair, but I resist. “It only lasted a moment, but a moment was enough. Enough to make me realize that my life could be different. Could be filled with so much more than it was.”

I glance back down at his shoulder. Despite all of my silent demands, the rot has continued to spread. Its tendrils now reach just past this collarbone. The sight sends a wave of panic through me. How much time has passed since Cara and Berendir left? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? Whatever the number, it’s far too high. If they don’t return with the skyberries soon…

The panic swells higher. I rush on with my monologue, as if words could chase away the venom. “That really does feel like ages ago, doesn’t it? I mean, how much has happened between then and now? How many meals have we eaten together? Howmany stupid linguistics homework assignments have we done?” I’m not trying to comfort anymore. I’m babbling. “How many times have I decided I hated you and then decided I don’t? How many times have I fallen in and out of-of…”

I trail off, breathing heavy, chest rising and falling. I cannot think about where that sentence was going. I cannot think about anything but Daerios surviving the next five minutes. I clutch his sweaty palm between my two shaking hands. “Don’t die,” I whisper to his closed eyes. “Please don’t die.”

His eyelids flutter open.

“Daerios?” I squeeze his hand too tightly. “D-Daerios? Can you hear me?”

His eyes are unfocused, darting about as he looks up at the sky. With painful slowness, his head flops to the side to look at me. His lips smack open and closed, as if trying to rid themselves of a nasty taste. After a moment, he croaks, “Quinn?”

“Yes,” I say, fighting to hold back tears. “Yes, it’s me. It’s me, baby.”

“Baby.” Daerios smiles. “I call you that.”