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“You’re looking better than the last time I saw you,” I say when she turns to face me.
I don’t want to confuse her or invite too many questions by speaking Jokithan, not when this is the last time I’ll see her.
“Am I?” Sigrid follows suit, speaking the common tongue as well.
She chokes on a laugh, examining the feathers that now cover her all of the skin on her arms and hands.
“Yes. You’re talking and even laughing.” I push away images of her collapsing on my floor and gasping for air.
Einar’s smile fades, and Sigrid wraps a loving hand around his.
“That is the gift and curse of this poison. Some days, we are have pain and others we are better.” She coughs, and the sound is raspy.
I grab the glass of water on her bedside and offer it gently to her dry, cracked lips.
She takes small sips and thanks me before continuing.
“But I have know it will be over soon.” She looks at the king, and they have a brief, unspoken conversation between the two of them.
Whether she is assuming he will find a cure soon or that she will be gone, hardly makes a difference. Either way, the look on Einar’s face tells me he is still desperately clinging to hope.
Chapter Fifty-Three
“Ishould get you two some lunch.” Einar stands up.
His excuse is feeble. There are plenty of people who could help with that, but I don’t fault him for needing a moment to collect himself. When he’s gone, Sigrid stares at the doorway and sighs.
“He is have too much pain for someone so young.” She squeezes my hand that still rests within hers. “When his family passed, he was still just a boy. I sit with him every night while he grieved them, while he wish he passed, too. I sing his móðir’s lullabies to him, so he could find sleep.”
I hate the part of me that asks her for the rest of the story. I don’t deserve to know something so personal about him, but I can’t help myself when the question bubbles from my lips.
“What happened to them?”
“Einar was very sick. He had the rashes and fevers and he need isolation. His family went for ride to visit mountain villages. There was avalanche.” She pauses to cough. “They never come home. The dogs find them buried in snow weeks later.”
Again, my heart fractures and breaks apart in this very room. The fear he had when he found me alive after falling down the mountain. The way he is so reverent of the peaks, his caution. It isn’t just respect for nature that made him that way. It is also that he has seen firsthand what the mountains can claim for themselves at any moment.
And I had selfishly followed him, triggering one of his worst fears.
“What are you think, child?” Sigrid pulls me from my thoughts, her face carefully examining everything she sees on mine.
I’m too tired to hide my feelings at the moment, too tired of death and loss and pain. So, I give her a truth.
“I was thinking about how sad I am for him. For all of you. I know what it is like to lose family...” I hesitate about how much I want to give away before settling on the loss I feel most keenly. “My sister died very young.” It is a struggle to keep the emotion from my voice. “I used to sing to her, too.”
Sigrid’s head tilts to the side, her eyes softening. But when she opens her mouth, what she asks isn’t at all what I was expecting.
“Would you give this song to me?”
I startle and feel the heat rise to my cheeks.
“I haven’t sung in ages.” I attempt to dodge her request, not sure if I am capable of singing Rose’s lullaby after so long.
“Please?” she asks again, and I freeze.
I deserve to relive the pain of losing my sister. I deserve to now associate it with the pain I have suffered and inflicted here.
So, I take a steadying breath and close my eyes and listen to the melody in my head from so long ago. My father holds a sitar, his fingers strumming and plucking my mother’s, mytruemother’s, favorite song. And it’s her voice I hear when I open my mouth to echo the words.
