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When I raised an eyebrow, she laughed.
“No, I’m not counting His Crabbiness. On that one, you’re entirely fucked in the head. Although...”
“Although?” I prompted.
The healer scowled. “I heard what you two did, with trying to bring peace and all. And that he stood by your side when...don’t look at me like that, Mathias. I am capable of admitting I was very slightly,minusculelywrong.”
“Mat?” asked Ren, his voice wavering into something like fear, and I looked back at him to find Zovisasha holding a chipped clay cup to his lips while Lilia had her hands clamped over his eyes from behind. She gave me a grin filled to the brim with mischief and slid her hands down and around his shoulders, hopping up onto his back and wrapping her legs around his waist. Ren staggered before adjusting to her weight, tucking his hands under her thighs so she didn’t fall.
“What’s the matter, prince?” Zovisasha purred, trying to pry his mouth open with a sharp fingernail so she could feed him the contents of the cup. “Don’t you want to play with us?”
His eyes bore into mine in a silent plea for help, unable to free his hands without dropping Lilia and clearly nervous of what he was about to be made to drink.
But before I could put him out of his misery by assuring him that the herbalist had prepared the tea from the safe jars – it was the tins on the top shelf one had to really watch out for – an unlikely source came to his rescue.
“Let him go,” Starling said, barely able to contain her smirk. I blinked, surprised to hear her speaking Mazekhstani. It was heavily accented and faltering, but impressively clear for someone who had been in the country for less than two months. “These two…como se dice?” She waved her hands as she searched for the word. “Drain.Drain my magic. Always. I do not heal poisoning too, Zov.”
Zov?I’d once heard Zovisasha threaten to slice someone’s tongue off for daring to shorten her name, and that someone had beenme. But my oldest friends didn’t even blink, reluctantly releasing Ren from their devious clutches.
He cleared his throat and grinned, cockiness immediately restored…although I didn’t miss the way he sidled closer to my side. Star hadn’t done anything to ease his suspicions about what was in the tea.
The healer held her hand out to him and the prince eyed it with renewed suspicion.
She rolled her eyes and reverted to their native tongue. “Would His Highness do me the absolute honour of placing his royal fingers in mine, or does he fear that his privileged self may catch infectious peasant diseases likecallouses?”
“You’re as bad as him,” Ren told her, jerking his head in my direction. I snatched his hand and brought it up to meet hers, and Star wrapped her fingers around ours.
“Hmm,” she said after a moment. “You’re both suffering from malnutrition and dehydration, there’s the beginnings of a mild viral infection in you, prince, and a burn on...”
The healer blinked, dragging her eyes to my left wrist despite it being concealed by the sleeve of my coat. Hot fury ran through me at the reminder.
“Campfire,” Ren offered hastily. “Mat got too close when cooking.”
Star visibly swallowed. She knew that was bullshit. She’d told me once that her Touch laid human bodies bare to her, and wood generally didn’t leave marks in the shape of handprints.
But she flattened her expression into one of nonchalant exasperation and didn’t press the matter.
“Careless,” she said instead, her tone casual, and when she let go of us I knew she’d erased that final physical trace of Kolya from my skin. “It’s all healed. Including the unhealthy amount of alcohol in your bloodstream,” she added accusingly when I opened my mouth to thank her.
“Well, there was little else to spend our evenings doing,” drawled Ren, deliberately switching back to Mazekhstani to maximise the number of people capable of understanding him, “when the laws of your bothersome country wouldn’t let me put this one on his back and-”
I clapped a hand over my prince’s mouth, my gratitude at the subject change immediately dispelled. His eyes twinkled with amusement, and I felt his tongue peek out from between his lips to lap at my palm.
“Oh, please,” Lilia said. “Like we don’t already know what you two get up to.”
Zovisasha made overexaggerated kissing noises, which I could endure, but when she offered a teasing wink in my direction and began to demonstrate activities with her hands which went far beyondkissing, I felt my face colour. Ren cackled loudly from behind my cupped fingers.
“Indeed,” said Starling. She raised a judgmental eyebrow as she spat out the Mazekhstani words. “Not smart place to hide out, Stavroyarsk. You both risk much.”
Ren removed my hand from his mouth.
“Is that what you think we’re doing here?” he asked, staring unblinkingly at the healer. The tendons in his neck stood out, tension strumming through his posture.
When Star shrugged, the prince let out a low hum that was almost a growl. “We’re not hiding. I’m taking itback,Estrella,” he told her, and the resolve in his voice surprised me. Not at the plan; we’d talked about that many times, but at how seemingly desperate he was to convince Starling to believe his intent. “I will not let Quareh fester in that prick Welzes’ hands, and I’m here to ask Astrid Panarina to help me.”
Zovisasha snorted. “She’ll have your head.”
“Shewon’t,” I snapped, glaring at her.
