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I gasp in horror as I get my first glimpse of what she has been hiding all this time.
Her face is covered in white feathers, with a strip of black ones from the bridge of a red beak-like nose back to her scalp. They grow from open wounds, some scabbed over and some very fresh. Whatever transformation is happening to her, it is not painless, and it breaks my heart.
Her small round eyes are red-rimmed and unblinking as her pupils contract and expand repeatedly, and the wheezing sound that escapes her mouth has me terrified.
“She’s barely breathing!” I cry out to Einar, who has begun removing her gloves.
Sigrid’s slender fingers cringe and twitch in what appears to be pain as sleek black feathers slowly sprout from her knuckles, drops of blood dribbling from the wounds.
“What is this?” I ask, horror-stricken.
“The illness.” The king’s voice is gentle as he answers without hesitation.
There isn’t any urgency in his movements, just anger and a hint of sad acceptance of this horrible situation.
But she seemed so healthy.
No sooner does the thought cross my mind than I realize that’s not likely true. I think on how she’s been more absent than normal lately. Her touch, softer. Her voice when she entered, I had thought I’d heard sadness, but I realize now that it was frailty.
She wasn’t well and hasn’t been, and I’ve been so caught up in my own selfishness that I didn’t pay her enough attention.
“What do we do? How do we help?” Tears burn in my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall.
Now is a time for action.
“Tell me what to do,” I demand.
Einar looks at me, and there is no wall concealing his emotions this time.
Shock, anger, fear, and even something like hesitation war within his gaze
“You’re not...disgusted?” he asks hesitantly.
I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment and quickly shake my head in disbelief.
“I’m not a monster.” I wonder if the insistence in my tone is more for his benefit or for my own. “She’s been my only friend here, my only friend in a long time. She’s in pain and we have to help her.”
Feathered fingers wrap around my own as Sigrid acknowledges that she can hear us. The gesture nearly undoes me entirely.
“What do we do?” I ask again, more resolutely.
The guards helped move Sigrid to my bed, and the castle physician has come and gone, giving her an elixir to help with her breathing and overall pain.
Einar paces as he waits for the courier he’s summoned. He left the room only once to grab writing materials and scribbled furiously on them, cursing everything under the sun as he glanced back at Sigrid every other sentence.
Despite his knowing that thisillnesshas been here for so long, it pains him to see her suffer. To see them all suffer. That much is clear.
A knock barely sounds at the door before the guards open it and Leif enters.
“The courier is here,” he says with an anxious tone before casting a glance my way, his beaked mask lingering on Sigrid’s helpless form.
Einar doesn’t hesitate or take the time to respond. Instead, he thrusts the sealed envelope into Leif’s gloved hands, and Leif quickly hobbles from the room to deliver it to the waiting messenger.
Einar still refuses to make eye contact with me, and he hasn’t said a word in the past hour.
Not that I am trying very hard to communicate, either. I am more focused on Sigrid, propping her up with several pillows in my bed and trying to get her to drink a bit of tea. She tries to shoo me away, but she can barely even lift her hand for the gesture.
I level her with a stern look.
