“I can smell it on her,” Strom growled. He didn’t come any closer. “Diseased flesh. Vile.”
Scarlet frowned up at him before refocusing on the princess. “Winter, wake up,” she said, smacking the princess’s cheek a few times, but Winter didn’t even flinch. Scarlet pressed a hand to her forehead. She was clammy and hot. She felt the back of her head, wondering if the princess had hit her head again, but there was no blood and the only bump was from the fight at Maha’s house. “Winter!”
Strom kicked something and it skipped through a tuft of grass and hit Scarlet’s knee. Scarlet blinked and picked it up. A sour apple petite, one of the candies Winter had often brought to her in the menagerie, usually laced with painkillers. It had a bite taken out of it. Picking up Winter’s hand, Scarlet found bits of melted candy shell stuck to her fingertips.
“Poison?”
“I don’t know,” said Strom. “She isn’t dead—just dying.”
“With some sort of disease?”
He gave a curt nod. “You should not be so close to her. It smells—” He looked like he might be sick.
“Oh, pull yourself together. All those muscles and teeth and you’re afraid of a little cold?”
His expression darkened, but he didn’t come any closer. In fact, after a second, he stepped back. “There is something wrong with her.”
“Obviously! But what? And how?” She shook her head. “Look, I saw a little med-clinic on the main street. Can you carry her there? We’ll have a doctor check her out. She might need her stomach pumped or—”
Scarlet’s gaze landed on Winter’s arm and she gasped. She skittered away from the princess’s unconscious form, every instinct telling her to hold her breath. To clean the skin that had come in contact with the princess. To run.
“Now she listens.”
Ignoring him, Scarlet cursed, loudly. “When you said she had a disease, I didn’t think you meant she had the plague!”
“I do not know what this is,” said Strom. “I have never smelled this before.”
Scarlet hesitated a moment more, then let out a painful, frustrated sound, and forced herself to crawl back to Winter again. She grimaced as she lifted Winter’s arm to inspect the dark spots scattered across her elbow. The red-tinged rings around the bruises had swollen above the skin, puffed and glossy like blisters.
For as long as she could remember, the plague had worked in predictable stages, though how long they took to manifest varied by victim. Once the rash of bruise-colored rings marred a person’s skin, they may have three days or three weeks still to live. But given that Winter hadn’t been gone for more than an hour, the disease seemed to be working especially fast.
She scrutinized Winter’s fingertips, relieved to see them pink and healthy—no tinge of blue. Blood loss to the extremities was the final symptom of the disease before death.
She scowled. Hadn’t Cinder once told her that Lunars were immune to letumosis? This disease shouldn’t even be here.
“It’s called letumosis,” she said. “It’s a pandemic on Earth. It acts fast and no one survives. But … Levana has an antidote. It’s half the reason Emperor Kai is marrying her in the first place. We just … we need to keep Winter alive long enough to get it. We have to keep her alive until the revolution is over. All right?”
She dragged a hand through her hair, but it got caught in a tangle of curls and she gave up before she’d reached the ends.
“That could be days, even weeks,” said Strom. “She does not smell as though she has that much time.”
“Stop talking about how she smells!” she screamed. “Yes, the disease is bad. It’s—horrible. But we can’t just leave her here. We have to do something.”
Strom rocked back on his heels, eyeing the princess with disgust. Which was still better than the ravenous glint his eyes had had before. “She needs a suspension tank.”
“A what?”
“We use them for healing after surgeries or severe injuries.” He shrugged. “It may slow the progression of the disease.”
“Where do we get one?”
“I expect they’ll have one here. Dangerous work in this sector.”
“Great. Let’s go.” Pushing herself to her feet, Scarlet dusted off her hands. Strom stared at her, then down at Winter. He didn’t come any closer.
“Ugh. Fine.” Crouching again, Scarlet grabbed Winter’s arms and was about to haul her over one shoulder when Strom lumbered forward and lifted the princess into his arms.
“Well, aren’t you a perfect gentleman,” Scarlet muttered, grabbing her hoodie instead.
“Just hurry,” he said, his face already strained in an effort to take shallow breaths.
They practically ran back toward the residences.