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“Go in and see. I would warn you this is not an encounter for the faint of heart, but your hearts are right where they need to be.”
“Thank you, Annassa.” Lio gave her the heart bow.
She blessed him with a kiss on the forehead before she disappeared.
Lio pulled back the curtain for Cassia to go first. As soon as they set foot inside Alkaios’s room, moans of agony and the smell of blood washed over them. Cassia froze in her tracks, and Lio pulled her close, ready to take her right back out the way they had come if she needed him to.
Despite the wonders Annassa Soteira had worked upon Alkaios, a long, guttural cry of pain worked its way out of him, as if he did battle with every breath. But he did not suffer alone. Rudhira sat on the bed with both arms around him.
Alkaios had skin again. The stub of a finger was regrowing on his hand. Someone had cleaned his Grace’s long, blond braid and the remaining lock of his own shoulder-length, light brown hair, and he wore a fresh Sanctuary robe. Even so, he shivered hard amid the twisted bedclothes. As each shudder came over Alkaios, Rudhira braced him. The Hesperine errant clung to his prince, his face turned against Rudhira’s shoulder.
Cassia seemed unable to look away. “Why does he still suffer so? Annassa Soteira healed his burns. Did the mages leave some malign spell on him?”
“We should let Rudhira continue tending to him,” Lio cut in.
He knew the answer to Cassia’s question. He should have realized it the moment he had first felt Alkaios’s pain through the Union earlier that night. Alkaios suffered no curse but the one Lio himself had felt as ice and fire in his own blood, a force rending him from inside out.
“We have done all we can.” Grief edged the prince’s voice. “His malady is simple. He has been starving for months.”
“What?” Cassia asked. “How could he be so deprived? There were many ways for him to procure the Drink in Tenebra, surely.”
Rudhira glanced at Lio. “Based on my experience as a healer, I would say he has been without his Grace since sometime this spring.”
Lio tightened his arm around Cassia. Spring, when he had parted from her. So he saw before him what his own fate might have been, if she were not in Orthros now.
BOND OF GRATITUDE
Cassia tried to seeher childhood rescuer in the Hesperine before her. Alkaios’s body was emaciated and contorted with anguish, his newly grown skin still glossy and ruddy. He bore no resemblance to the strong, gentle protector who had braved the field below the ramparts of Castra Roborra so Cassia did not have to.
“Is it all right for us to be here?” Cassia asked.
“You are welcome to remain,” Rudhira answered, “although you need not.”
“I will stay.” She would not abandon Alkaios to his pain. She would not flee this room. He was the one who had rescued the ivy pendant from Solia’s remains and put her sister’s last gift to her in her hands.
Cassia stepped forward. A shiver moved through her, as through the Hesperine on the bed, as through a cold and frightened child in the woods in the Tenebran winter. Tonight she had not her father’s camp behind her, but Lio’s warmth. Not an enemy fortress ahead of her, but the prince and his promise of support. Tonight it was Alkaios who needed her.
“Will it hurt him if I touch him?” she asked Rudhira.
“Just be gentle,” the prince advised.
Cassia reached out a hand and caressed Alkaios’s forehead. Hollows under his eyes. Gaunt cheeks. Furrows of strain on his brow made him look like a careworn man, not a Hesperine who should be eternally in his prime. As she turned his head gently toward her, he uttered a low moan.
Shadows cast by moonlight and spell light. Furrows of regret on his brow. A confident, kind voice, promising her Solia was in a better place.
“Alkaios?” she queried softly.
His eyelids, no longer melted shut, flew open. His gaze darted about. Then his brown eyes focused on her. When she touched his wounded hand, he slowly released his iron grip on the blankets. She turned his hand over and placed the ivy pendant on his palm, then held his hand in both of hers.
“Do you know me?” she asked.
His gaze fixed on the pendant. His jaw moved. At last his voice emerged in a hoarse murmur. “Solia.”
She heard Lio and the prince let out a breath.
Cassia nodded. She would not cry. “My sister.”
Alkaios’s eyes lifted to meet hers again.“Cassia?”
