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My bodyguards each take a step forward.
Like a finger punching through pastry crust, my glossy surface crumples. I feel it happening—the bright, encouraging smile fading from my lips, the frantically cheerful veneer melting from my eyes.
“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” croaks the warrior.
“It’s my fault,” I say tightly. “This was a stupid idea. Here, you should rest.” I knock the pastry off the bed, pull back the blanket, and arrange the pillows so he can recline against them. “That’s an order from your princess.”
The soldier leans back against the pillows and swings his feet up into the bed. I can’t help noticing how filthy his feet are. “Norril, bring me that wash basin.”
My bodyguard obeys immediately, setting the basin beside the warrior’s bed. My gaze latches on the thick cloth lining the basket of pastries. Just what I need. I pull it free, tumbling the sweets into chaos. After dampening the cloth in the basin, I begin wiping dirt from the warrior’s feet.
“The sweets were my mother’s idea,” I tell him quietly as I work. “I’m a decent cook, and she thought it would be good for morale if I pranced through the soldiers’ hospital in my finest dress. A pretty face and some baked goods. I should have known better.”
“Not a bad idea,” he wheezes. “Many of the wounded will be glad of the sweets… and the pretty face.”
“But you’re hurt worse than the physician realized, aren’t you?” I turn to my bodyguards again. “Norril, get a doctor immediately—or better yet, a healer.”
“I can try, Princess,” Norril answers. “But my cousin says healers are in short supply these days. Most of them are needed in the burn wards.”
His tone chills my heart. I haven’t walked through the burn wards, but I’ve seen the men and women who emerge from them, permanently scarred despite the medicine of doctors or the magic of healers. The scars aren’t just from fire, either. There are frost burns from ice dragons, acid burns from dragons who spit venom, void burns from dragons who vomit dark energy. And those with void burns are the lucky ones. They say that if someone is struck full-on with an orb of void magic, they are sucked into its center and disappear for good.
The dragons joined the fight just six weeks ago, and they are the reason we’re losing the war with Vohrain. The moment the Vohrainian king made an alliance with those beasts, we were defeated. My mother was just too stubborn to admit it. She and the Supreme Sorcerer claim they’re working on a secret weapon, a way to turn the tide of the war in Elekstan’s favor. But we just keep dying instead.
I say we keep dying, but it’s they. Our strongest citizens, fed to the machine of war, crushed between its gears like this warrior on the bed, whose breath rattles in his chest as if Death is tapping cold fingers along his rib bones.
“Both of you go look for a doctor, a healer—whoever you can find,” I command my guards. “Don’t come back unless you bring one with you. Hurry!”
“But, Your Highness, our duty is protecting you,” Norril protests. “One of the nurses can—”
“Look around, Norril. There are two nurses in this ward, both occupied with other patients. I’ll be fine. I won’t move from this spot, I promise. Now go!”
My bodyguards hurry away, driven to greater speed by a spasm of coughing from the injured warrior. I rinse the filthy cloth, squeeze it out, and hand it to him so he can wipe his bloody palm.
Throughout the seventeen months of this wretched war, I’ve felt helpless a number of times, but never so much as now.
I glance over my shoulder at my maid, Parma. She’s salt-white and looks as if she might pass out any second.
“Parma, go and hand out the pastries to anyone who might want one,” I tell her. “I’ll stay with him.”
She nods and hurries off down the aisle between the beds of the wounded.
I turn back to the warrior just as he begins coughing again. Instinctively I reach for his hand, and he grips mine with grateful desperation.
“I wish I knew what to do,” I whisper. “How to help you.”
He doesn’t answer. He’s struggling to breathe.
Hurry, Norril. Hurry, please hurry.
If only I had magic. If only I could touch this man’s chest and spread healing energy through his body, calm his blood vessels, relax his muscles, staunch the inner wounds, ease his spasming lungs.
“Hold on,” I tell him. “Hold on. Help is coming.”
But he’s stiff, his eyes wide, his body arched and straining for air. His fingers crush mine with frenzied strength.
“Help!” I shout. “We need a nurse here!”
But the two nurses I saw in this ward moments ago must have left to fetch something. There’s no one but me and Parma and the injured soldiers. The woman in the nearest bed seems to be unconscious, and none of the others respond to my call. Perhaps death has become commonplace to them, or perhaps they are too weary and anguished to help anyone else.
