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I tried to wave him off, lifting my hands and shaking my head. The truth was that I felt awful, but that hadn’t seemed like any surprise. I was deliriously tired and felt shaky all over.

“It’s nothing. It’s just been a terrible day.”

The doctor seemed unconvinced. “May I?” he asked, reaching out for my wrist.

Caught off guard by this sudden attention, I nodded and allowed him to take my pulse. His fingertips on my wrist felt surprisingly cold against my skin. His concerned expression grew even more so as he removed his stopwatch from his pocket. Releasing my wrist, he looked carefully into my eyes, gently pulling down my lower lids with the pad of his thumb.

Finally, he placed the back of his palm to my forehead. His eyes flashed with concern, though he did a valiant job trying to hide it.

“When was the last time you ate or drank anything?”

I had no idea. Before my father was mortally wounded, before I lost the love of my life. Before, before, before.

“I can’t remember,” I said.

“Hmmm. It’s probably nothing, but best to be safe.” The doctor glanced away from me at my mother’s handmaid. “Could you please make sure she eats something?” he said to the maid. “Anything at all. And water. She needs plenty of water. I’ll be along as soon as I’ve finished here and I’ll run some more tests. If her condition turns, please come find me immediately.”

My mother’s attendant nodded curtly, and looped her arm through mine. I returned the gesture, feeling grateful for her solid, confident presence.

“Please, Your Highness. Leave your father and mother to me. They are in good hands. And you go rest. I’ll come check on you shortly.”

The thought of leaving that room made me freeze. Would this be the last time I ever saw my father again? Would he survive the night? And my mother? Could she bear that loss without me by her side?

“I don’t want to leave them,” I told the doctor.

“I know,” he said, gripping my hand warmly. “But please. I promise I will do all I can for them both.”

I inhaled deeply and then hesitantly let myself be led away. My mother’s nurse led me to my room, taking me all the way to my bed and helping me to sit down. From the pitcher at my bedside, she poured me a glass of water and watched me drink it down. The water tasted strange, metallic and salty on my tongue, but I realized my throat was indeed parched as I lay down on my pillows. Every bone in my body ached with exhaustion.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” she said. “I’ll bring a tray for you to eat a little something.”

As she departed, she left me alone in my room. It was the first time since everything had fallen apart that I had been completely alone.

When the door latched shut, I sat there, stunned, almost frozen. In the stillness and quiet, all the emotions that I had kept at bay seized me. Grief and terror, and heartbreak seized me, pulling me in every direction.

My heart ached and burned, as if Petre’s knife had stabbed me there. If only it had been me that had taken that blade; if only I had been able to protect my dad. If only everything had been different. But it wasn’t. And so, burying my face in my pillows, I finally let my emotions spill out in wracking, painful sobs.

CHAPTER 30

Valeria

I didn’t want him in my dreams, but I couldn’t escape him. Everywhere I turned, Vasile was there. His voice, his eyes, his caresses. But I was always losing him, always. I slid over a rocky mountain cliff, my hand slipping from his. I fell overboard from a skiff in a storm, reaching helplessly out for him as I drowned.

I felt myself sobbing even as I slept, but I was powerless to wake up. Inconsolable in that desolate dusk-dawn dream place, where nothing was right and everything kept going wrong.

Even as I slept, I knew I wasn’t well. Morning light broke through my dreams long enough for me to see the new doctor standing over me. His name was lost to me, his face melting like wax. I tried to blink myself into awareness, but it was useless, and I kept slipping back down into sleep. His words sounded heavy; they felt like blocks of granite. Nothing made sense and yet it all made sense.

I worried about Natasha, about what had happened to her. She’d been so different the last time I saw her. Was she sick as well? Where is she now? I wondered, the thought slipping through my head barely noticed as it flitted by the baseboards, like a field mouse or garter snake.

The word poison floated in the air, and I could see it there, hovering in my half-consciousness, the calligraphic letters floating over me in bed. As if someone had painted a portrait of me, laying there, and written the word above me.

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