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The harvest festival was ruined for me. I stormed through back corridors, finding a staircase that took me down, and glowered my way through the palace, looking for a way out. I hoped to find Leander and Darius at least, and hopefully Mara too, either to let them know I was going back to the college or to convince them to come with me.
But it didn’t take long for me to realize I was lost. And not just a little bit. The section of the palace I’d found myself in was all indoors, and after so many turns as the woman led me through wickedness that I hadn’t even thought was possible, I didn’t even know which direction I was traveling in. There were few windows in that section of the palace, and the few rooms I came across that did have windows were occupied. I wanted to get out without seeing another soul.
A few more turns brought something else to my attention. The rooms in this part of the palacewereoccupied, but not with people fucking. More of the voices than not were discussing thing in low, serious tones. I recognized the timbre of the voices. They were the same as when Dushka had been meeting with Magnus and the other rulers of the Wolf River Kingdom.
I had an eerie feeling that I’d wandered into a part of the palace where serious business was taking place. And if serious business was taking place, I definitely wasn’t supposed to be there.
I picked up my pace, the feeling that I was in danger tightening my chest. I should never have followed the red-haired woman. I should never have lost sight of my friends. A part of me was panicked enough to feel that I never should have left the frontier. I could have learned healing from Galina, or someone else who had skills. What had possessed me to apply for a program all the way in the Old Realm?
Pride, that was what, I thought as I turned another corner and found myself in a wider corridor that was festively decorated. That part of me that still identified as the son of a nobleman from Yacovissi hadn’t been satisfied with what the Wolf River Kingdom could offer me. That part had kept the idea in the back of my head that the cities were superior to what the wolves were building.
I was ashamed of myself as I slowed my steps and walked along the decorated corridor, hearing music from somewhere nearby and smelling roasted meat and spices. The Wolf River Kingdom was my home. Dushka was my love. The Sons of the Cities were my brothers. I’d spit in all of their faces by thinking I was too good for where I was, and by flying off to this den of iniquity without so much as—
“Healer!” someone shouted so close to me that I jumped, then dropped into a fighting stance, my heart racing.
When I whipped around, an older man in bright robes dashed out into the hall, skidding to a stop as he searched up and down the corridor. He looked as panicked as I felt.
“I need a healer!” he shouted on.
I didn’t hesitate. “I’m a healer,” I said, turning back and striding up to the man.
It was arguably a lie. I was a student healer at Royersford College. But if someone needed help, it was my sworn duty to help.
The old man didn’t seem to care if I was a student or if I was outright lying. He nodded to me, then gestured for me to hurry into the room he’d just come from.
The room turned out to be a large parlor decorated with an ornate settee near the center of the room, dozens of large, square pillows thrown about, huge vases of flowers standing between tall windows at the far end of the room, and more than one table laden with food and drink. There were half a dozen naked young people lounging on the pillows, four women and two men. I assumed at a glance that they were drunk or drugged by the way they giggled and slid themselves over each other, and because of how they completely ignored the man on the settee, who was bleeding.
“Dammit,” the man shouted at two male attendants just a few years older than me, who seemed to be hovering around him like hens. “Someone fetch a healer!”
The man held his hand, which bled all over his fine clothes. I guessed from the way he bled and the shattered wine glass on the floor that he’d somehow cut himself on the glass.
“I’m here,” I said, doubling my pace and striding right up to the man. I crouched once I reached him and grasped his hand gently so that I could assess the cut. “How was this done?” I asked.
“The fucking glass shattered in my hand,” the man growled. I thought that he might have been slightly inebriated.
“Someone fetch clean water,” I said, using a napkin that had been discarded on the settee to dab at the cut. “Bring bandages if you can as well, and a needle and thread, just in case.” I could already tell that the cut was deep. I glanced up and around the room to see what was on hand. “Do you have anything alcoholic other than wine? Spirits of some sort?”
“Just here,” a middle-aged man who looked like a soldier and had been hovering in the background said. He grabbed a crystal decanter of clear liquid and brought it to me.
“I’ll not have you drinking while seeing to my wound,” the wounded man snapped as I set the napkin aside to pick a thin piece of glass from his hand.
“It’s not for me,” I said as I turned to take the decanter from the middle-aged man. “It’s to clean and disinfect your cut.”
I glanced up at the man as I tipped the decanter over his hand…then nearly dropped the decanter and choked on my tongue.
For a moment, I thought I was looking up at Magnus. The resemblance was so uncanny that it stole my breath.
I blinked, and I knew it wasn’t him. The wounded man’s nose was slightly longer, and he didn’t have the same lines around his eyes from smiling. His hair was darker too, without the grey at the temples. But there was no doubt in my mind whose bleeding hand I held in mine.
“Your majesty,” another man said, dashing into the room, a smaller figure following behind. “I’ve found a healer.”
My eyes went even wider as Mara stumbled to a stop in the doorway, staring at me holding King Julius’s hand.
The moment Mara saw me holding her uncle’s hand, her eyes popped wide too. In fear. For my sake.
Her reaction had my pulse pounding even harder than it had been, but I had a job to do. Besides which, something told me that the less I gave away about myself the better my chances of leaving that room alive would be.
“I already have a healer,” King Julius barked, his face set in a scowl. “Though he seems to be as useless at healing as you lot are at commanding an army.”
