I looked over his shoulder. It was Mason, and he didn’t look too happy with the situation. It wasn’t a dance that required much touching, a simple country jig that was common in many regions. But Synové was making plenty of missteps, and the Ballenger version had an extra hop or two. Synové playfully jabbed Mason’s ribs as they spun around. He offered a polite strained smile in return, acting like the cordial host, probably on Jase’s orders. She was radiant, her cheeks glowing with heat, her long locks shimmering in the lantern light like golden marmalade, swinging in rhythm with the zitaraes and flutes. I wished I could be her sometimes, jumping into every moment fully, her cheer covering the darkness that still lurked deep inside her.
I spotted Wren too. “I’d worry more about Aram and Samuel,” I answered. I saw them farther away on either side of Wren, one of them trying to maneuver around her ziethe every time she turned.
“They’re not safe with her?” Jase asked.
“Of course not, but they probably think that’s half the fun.”
Jase smiled and nodded in agreement.
“What about us?” he asked. “Should we join them? We haven’t danced yet.”
I had already deflected his question twice. A third time would be obvious. I couldn’t pretend that I hated to dance. I still remembered hooking my hands around his neck one night in the middle of the Jessop plain, dancing with him beneath a moonlit sky, the grass waving at our ankles, crickets accompanying the tune he hummed into my ear. I had told him I didn’t want the night to end.
Now it seemed this night never would. My ankle had grown steadily worse. It was stiff and hot and, I was certain, swollen, but I didn’t dare peek at it beneath my dress. The medicine had worn off and the pain was circling around my leg like a spiked iron, every movement taking a bite out of my flesh. Even my thigh burned now. A thin line of sweat beaded at my hairline. When Jase commented on my damp back, I responded that the evening was warm.
“All right,” I answered. “Let’s join them.” Maybe a short dance would be bearable and the subject would be dropped. No hopping, only swaying.
We had only taken a few steps toward the brightly lit square strung with lanterns when Jase stopped. “What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You’re limping.”
I looked at him and wiped some damp strands of hair from my brow. I forced a smile. “It’s only these slippers. They don’t fit well—”
“Then take them off. Here, let me help you—” He started to bend down.
“No!” I said, far too loudly. Sweat trickled down my back and pain was squeezing my skull now, and it occurred to me that maybe the dogs were diseased. What if—
“Kazi.” Jase’s gaze was sober. He knew.
Pivot, Kazi. He sees your lies.
My foot gave way beneath me, and I stumbled forward but Jase caught my arm before I hit the ground. He muttered under his breath as he scooped me up—then spotted the bandage.
I stared at it in horror. It was bloody.
The wounds were seeping.
“What the hell—”
“Jase, please—”
My face flashed with sickening heat, and Jase called for Tiago and Drake. He carried me down a dark path, away from the guests, ordering Drake to find the healer and Oleez. Doors slammed open against walls and a long hallway bobbed and weaved around me. Jase laid me down on a couch, then found a pillow to prop behind my head.
“What happened?” he demanded. He was already unwrapping my ankle.
I deliberated taking a chance with the truth—at least some version of it. Chills suddenly overtook me and then a violent cramp in my stomach doubled me over. Diseased. The dogs had to be diseased.
Vairlyn, Jalaine, and two other women rushed in on Drake’s heels, and the room became a swirling chaos of questions.
“It was the dogs,” I answered. “I was afraid to tell you. I’m sorry.”
“Which dogs?”
“Lower your voice, Jase!” Vairlyn ordered.
“In the tunnels,” I said. “I—”
“What were you doing in the tunnels?”
Jalaine pushed Jase’s shoulder. “Mother said to stop yelling!”
“This is my fault,” Vairlyn said. “I promised her you’d show her the vault this afternoon.”
“It’s Jase’s fault,” Jalaine snapped. “I told him she wanted a tour.”
“Get out, Jalaine!” Jase shouted. “We have enough in here without you—”
“I’m not going—”
“Move aside. Give me some room.” A tall, thin woman elbowed her way in and pulled my dress higher, looking at my leg. “Yes, she’s definitely been bit by the ashti. Look at the spidering moving up her thigh. A servant is bringing my bag.”
Jase’s attention jumped from the healer back to me. “The ashti are stationed well past the vault entrance. What made you go way out there?”
“I was turned around. I—”
“There aren’t signs that say vault, Jase!” Jalaine interrupted. “How would she know?”
Another spasm gripped my abdomen and Jase was yelling again, this time at the healer, it seemed. At least I think he was. I couldn’t be sure. His lips moved out of sync with the sound I was hearing, echoing in long garbled ribbons.
I writhed in pain, my fingers digging into my stomach. And then I saw Death squeeze into the crowded room, grinning, waiting in the corner, his bony finger pointing at me. You, you are next.
“No,” I cried. “Not yet! Not today!”
The spasm finally passed and I saw a hand swipe the air, hitting the side of Jase’s head. His mother. “You heard her! Move aside! Give the healer room to work.”
The healer lifted a glass to my lips, encouraging me to sip a bitter blue liquid. I gagged as I choked it down.
“This will help. There now, keep it down. Another sip. That’s right.”
She used more of the blue powder to make a paste and applied it to the wounds on my leg. I heard her groan. “This one will have to be stitched. Eh, here’s another one. What were you thinking, girl? Here, take a sip of this now. It will put you out while I sew these up. The antidote should take effect soon. You’ll be fine by morning.”
“Antidote?”
“The dogs that bit you are poisonous,” Jase said. “Without the antidote, you would have been dead by week’s end. It’s a long and agonizing death.”
Poisonous dogs?
The thought became lost in a cloud of others, my lids growing heavy. The last thing I saw was a thin glint of steel and a thread being pushed through its eye.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
JASE
Kazi’s head rested against my chest, deep in sleep as I carried her back to her room, but troubled words tumbled from her lips, Don’t hurt me … I have nothing … Please … don’t. She had mumbled similar words in the drawing room as the healer sewed her up. Please don’t hurt me. Her words had brought a crashing hush to the room.
“Shhh,” I whispered as we turned down the last hallway, “no one’s going to hurt you.” By the time we reached her room, her expression had relaxed and she was silent, drawn into a deep, oblivious sleep. I still didn’t know how she hid the wounds from me for half the night. The bites alone had to be unbearable, but the poison—
My mother walked ahead of me and threw open the bedroom door. I carried Kazi inside and laid her on the bed. She didn’t stir an eyelash. I looked for a pulse at her neck. It was the only thing that told me she was alive at all.
“It’s the sleep elixir,” my mother said, as if she could read my mind.
We both stood there for long, quiet minutes, staring at her.
I knew what my mother was thinking too. Sylvey.
Their coloring wasn’t the same, but in sleep, Kazi still looked like her in many ways. Small, vulnerable, swallowed up in a sea of rumpled bedclothes. Sylvey was eleven when she died. I was the one who carried her from the ice bath back to her bed. She died in my arms.
Hold my hand, Jase. Promise me you won’t let go, she had cried with the last of her strength. Don’t let them put me in the tomb. I’m afraid. I had thought it was only delirious words brought on by her fever.
Stop talking like that, sister. You’re going to be fine.
Promise me, Jase, don’t put me there. Not the tomb. Please, promise me.
But I didn’t promise her. Her lips were peeling and pale, her eyes sunken, her skin clammy, her voice already a ghost, all signs that she was leaving this world. But I had refused to see. I wouldn’t accept that a Ballenger could die. Especially not Sylvey.
Go to sleep, sister. Sleep. You’ll be fine in the morning.
She had relaxed in my arms then. I thought she was sleeping. My mother had stepped out of the room for only a few minutes to check on my brothers and sister who were sick too. When she came back, Sylvey was dead in my arms.
My mother wiped Kazi’s brow with a cloth. “You were harsh with her,” she said.