Page 51 of Heart’s Rescue

I look up and see that Arryn is blinking rapidly. Her lips are pressed together into a tight, thin line.

“You said there was a t-treatment?” she asks.

I nod, then look away as she wipes at her eyes. It’s true. There is a treatment. Voids, she’s from the Worlds Above, where plants just grow. Where they don’t need magic to beat back the void and force life into the world.

“It’s a flower,” I say, and I find I’m still not quite able to look at her. “You probably have them all over the place in the Worlds Above.”

She pulls in a deep breath. “A flower. How does it work?”

I shrug, even though I know the answer. They’d tried it on Memodyan, although by then even I could tell it was too late.

“You mash them up and apply the paste to the injury,” I tell her. “Keep it on until the void-touch is gone. Simple.”

I glance up, and she’s nodding thoughtfully at the tiny black streaks bleeding across her skin.

“It doesn’t seem to be spreading very quickly,” she says.

“No,” I agree. “You’ve got time.”

Memodyan had been gone for months. The voids only knew how long he’d carried his infection.

“What does the flower look like?” Arryn asks.

She sounds more like herself now, more like the confident reply she’d given me last night when I’d woken from a nightmare and found her sleeping pad empty. Getting wood, she’d said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a high-born woman from the Worlds Above to leave the shelter in absolute darkness and forage for firewood.

“Well, it’s hard to miss,” I answer. “It’s a big purple flower about the size of a dinner plate, white center, lots of stringy little yellow things coming out of the middle. And they smell, uh, not good exactly. Strong.”

She’s looking at me like maybe she thinks I’m messing with her. Not so much. I’ve seen piles of those flowers spread across a table at the World’s End pub, their colors so bright they almost felt like a slap in the face, their sickly sweet fragrance creeping out the open window.

“They grow on vines,” I say. “Vines with big, splashy leaves. So dark green they’re almost purple too.”

“They grow here?” she asks. One eyebrow is raised; clearly, she thinks I’m full of shit.

“Not here,” I answer, glancing toward the shelter door as if to confirm that we’re still in a frozen wasteland. “Nothing grows here anymore. All our food and stuff comes from the Inner Circle, where there’s still enough magic to keep the ground thawed.”

“Oh.” She glances down at her hands, which are folded neatly in her lap. She’s pulled her hair back, and my eyes catch on the long curve of her exposed neck. “I don’t know if we have that kind of flower,” she says. “I haven’t seen anything like it.”

Shit. It’s cold in here. Really, really cold.

“But… things don’t grow like they used to,” she continues. “The dust storms from the plateau are getting worse and worse.”

Her voice trails off; her eyes look distant and unfocused as if she’s picturing whatever a dust storm might be.

“Maybe they grow somewhere else?” I offer, knowing it’s a stupid thing to say and saying it anyway.

She nods. Her lips curl into a sad little smile.

“Yes. Maybe.” She laughs, and it sounds like ice breaking under her feet. “At least I won’t have to marry Hesling if I’m dead.”

I feel like someone just punched me in the gut. I cough to cover it, then stare carefully at the flickering embers of the fire Arryn brought back to life this morning.

“That’s his name, huh?” I ask.

“Who?”

Arryn sounds so genuinely puzzled that I glance up at her. She’s frowning.

“The mon—” I stop myself, remembering the word she’d used. “The prince,” I say. “Your prince.”