17
Fortuna; seven days
before the Kalends of Saturnalis
Delphine was stuck being the good demme again, because Macready was falling apart. He never said as much, did his best never to show her any weakness at all, but she could tell. She was an expert on falling apart.
He stayed over less frequently, and when he did come around, he smelled like a brewery. Sometimes he’d be gone already in the morning. It wasn’t the job exactly — he shrugged it off when she asked about it, like it didn’t matter what he was doing. The point was, he wasn’t being a sentinel.
She couldn’t help wondering if he wouldn’t come back to her at all if she didn’t share a house with Velody; that somehow he could still pretend he was here to protect her if he was sharing a bed with Delphine.
They were hardly making love now, except sometimes when he fumbled for her in the middle of the nox, and then she had to bite her lip not to complain when he buried his face in her breasts, stomach, like he was trying to dig his way inside her and never let go.
When he wasn’t here, she still felt smothered. She’d done a cack-handed job of looking after people her whole life, and this wasn’t what she had signed up for. The memory of how Macready had believed in her when she was so empty tightened around her throat like a rope. Obligation. Duty.
This nox she sat up waiting for him. It was stupidly late, and she needed to go out early in the morning to buy the right linen to braid into Serenalia wreaths, but it had to be done. They had to talk. Had to end this.
She heard the back gate creak, and stood at the window to watch him cross the yard. He had his own latchkey now. When had that happened?
She waited, but he didn’t come up to her room. Eventually she padded downstairs herself, her bare feet making no sound on the stairs. She could see him sitting at the kitchen table, and at first she thought his companion was Velody, and the old jealousy rose up inside her, that even this, even trying to break up with him, had Velody smack bang in the middle of it. Then the woman moved her head and held a hand out to him, and it was Rhian.
Macready let his head drop to the table, utterly despondent, and Rhian put her arms around him. Rhian, who couldn’t bear to be touched. Macready’s shoulders were shaking. Was he crying?
Delphine held her breath, wanting nothing more than to go back upstairs and forget she’d seen them. But then she felt the unmistakeable presence of the Creature Court close by. One of the many joys of being a sentinel. Sometimes she’d been able to feel their presence with perfect accuracy, and other times they’d sneaked up on her without a whiff of animor. Now there was one of them out there, not Velody, dangerously close. From Macready’s and Rhian’s reaction, they could feel it, too.
Delphine stepped into the kitchen and took some grim satisfaction in the guilt and embarrassment that crossed Macready’s face as he and Rhian broke apart. He dashed one hand quickly over his eyes.
‘Who is it?’ Delphine said in a low voice, keeping this strictly business. ‘Can you tell?’
‘Garnet,’ said Macready. He made for the door. ‘You two stay here.’
‘You’re just as vulnerable as we are,’ Delphine said sharply, and then wished she’d bitten off the words when she saw the look on his face. ‘I’m not porcelain, you know,’ she added, which was slightly better.
‘Stay here,’ Macready repeated, sounding more like his old self than he had in ages. He darted out into the nox.
Delphine waited, not looking at Rhian, and when she heard Macready’s cry her heart almost burst into pieces.
‘Mac!’ she yelled.
It was raining. The kind of cold, bleak rain that told you there was snow in the mountains nearby. The wetness soaked through Delphine’s skimpy robe as she ran out into the yard, to the alley, with Rhian behind her.
‘Macready!’ she screamed again.
For one horrible moment she couldn’t see him, and then he lurched through the rain and the darkness with a body in his arms. Kelpie, it was Kelpie. Was she dead?
They got her inside and laid her out on the kitchen table.
‘What happened to her face?’ Delphine said in alarm.
Kelpie was barely breathing, and her face was like puckered grey silk. Her body went into a seizure, jerking wildly on the table.
‘Get Velody,’ Macready ordered.
Delphine practically flew upstairs, dragging Velody’s quilts off the bed. ‘Get up, we need you!’ she cried.
Velody came without asking questions, and, as soon as she saw the state of Kelpie, went for the cupboard under the stairs to fetch Delphine’s steel dagger from the blade collection.
‘The Creature Court don’t have an immunity to poison, do they?’ said Rhian. She paused in a really creepy way, as if listening to something inside her head. ‘They don’t.’
‘Velody’s blood will still make her stronger,’ Macready said frantically. ‘She’s more likely to survive this.’
Velody nodded. ‘We have to try.’ She sliced open her wrist, letting the blood well over the blade.
It was wrong. They were all wrong.
Delphine’s hand lashed out, knocking Velody aside. ‘Don’t.’
‘We don’t have much time!’ Macready protested. ‘Look at her.’
‘Yes, look at her,’ Delphine said, sure now that her guess was correct. ‘Look at her skin, Mac. She’s practically glowing.’
The greyness of Kelpie’s skin had a metallic tinge to it. Her eyes, staring unseeing at the ceiling, gleamed in a familiar way.
‘Oh, saints,’ said Velody, holding her slashed wrist to her chest as if afraid the blood would leap into Kelpie’s veins. ‘It’s skysilver. Someone fed her skysilver.’
Macready blew out a shaky breath. ‘That’s why she’s still alive. It would have killed a King … or someone with King’s blood in them. Feck, if you’d given her your blood …’
‘You’re welcome,’ Delphine said, more snarkily than she intended.
‘So what do we do?’ Macready demanded.
Rhian sighed. ‘We wait. She’s just going to have to sweat it out. There’s nothing we can do except hope.’
The rest of the nox and the day that followed were utterly miserable. They took turns sitting by Kelpie, mopping her brow and arms with wet cloths, trying to stop her hurting herself when she went into seizure. Her fits grew less intense as the day went on, but perhaps that was just because she was getting weaker.
They moved her to Velody’s bed, and her skin felt warmer, more mortal, though she still shook wildly from time to time and cried out in her sleep.
Days passed. One morning, Delphine went in to take Macready’s place and found him slumped exhausted in a chair.
‘You need more rest than this,’ she said impatiently.
‘I’ll be all right,’ he muttered.
She thought disloyally that he preferred this — that Kelpie being sick was an emergency that made him feel alive again, made him feel useful and complete. However tired he was, he had seemed more himself these last few days than for the whole of Fortuna.
‘We’re done, aren’t we,’ she said softly.
‘She’s getting better.’
‘No. I mean, yes, of course she’s getting better. She’s going to be fine. But I don’t think we are.’
Macready let out a very long sigh. ‘Aye,’ he said, meeting her eyes just for a moment. ‘We’re done.’
Delphine leaned over and kissed him swiftly on the top of his head, and left the room before she could change her mind.