He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Easy there,” he says. “You just lost a lot of time. You could pass out or worse if you overexert yourself.”
The sudden movement has made me dizzy, the close walls momentarily melting in my vision. But I have to go. “I’m fine,” I manage, my voice coming out a little slurred. “I’ll be fine.” I shrug his hand off and stand to go, realizing as I do that he may be right, that the distance to the door seems like a mile. But I can’t sit and recover. I have to go. For Caro.
Dimly, I feel a rough pallet of lumber under my back and a gentle, steady swaying, up and down, up and down. For a moment, I think I’m at sea, and reach my arm out to skim the water with my fingers—but then, the blurred smear of a face appears above me, and a pair of arms props me upright. I realize it’s only a merchant’s cart dropping me at the gates of Everless.
I blink against the gray light, remembering I’ve never seen the sea. With the time drained out of me—just ten years now, but thirty more to come—I most likely never will.
I walk, as fast as my unsteady legs will let me, to Caro’s room.
Having ten years drained from one’s blood is a little like being drunk, but without the pleasant warmth of madel. When I stumble and reach out to the wall for support, I’m racked with shivers. The servants’ quarters feel strange and threatening, twisting and claustrophobic. I can sense people passing me, fellow servants going about their day, but I can’t make out their faces. They give me a wide berth, maybe thinking me drunk. Against the torchlight illuminating the corridor, their shadows rear like monsters, warped limbs and sharp teeth, all reaching out to me.
I fall, and someone catches me. A hope blooms in my throat; I give it voice. “Roan?”
“No, love.” The voice is soft, gentle, laced with sugar. Bea. I slump against her. “You’re too good for that snake,” she says, her voice distant. Snake. I’m overtaken by the feeling of falling backward through time, just like in the hedge witch’s shop. The rotten smell of sulfur fills my nose, and I’m somewhere else, somewhere dark and cramped. Cold. The smell of sulfur again, sending a wave of nausea over me. But it’s mixed with the scent of lavender—Bea’s hair, Bea’s hair, I tell myself, trying to remember where I am. I reach for her, my mind and sense scrambling for purchase. “Now tell me what you’ve done . . .”
Whose voice is that? Bea’s, I tell myself, it’s Bea calling me.
What have you done? Underneath Bea’s high, panicked voice is a different one—deeper, angry, like someone is speaking over her shoulder to me.
I feel fingers turn my wrist. A sharp intake of breath. “Jules, you haven’t—you’ve done this for Caro, haven’t you? Jules!”
Caro. The name brings Bea and Everless into focus. I straighten up, still gripping Bea’s forearms. She stares at me, her eyes wide with concern. “Jules, you need rest. Come to the dormitories—”
“No.” The harshness of it makes Bea’s mouth a thin line. She steps back from me. “I have to get to Caro,” I say, instead of sorry.
Bea begins to speak, but I turn in the direction of the Queen’s suites. She doesn’t follow.
Somehow I get to the corridor that runs behind the suites of the Gerlings and their guests. By now I know which of the heavy oak doors leads to Caro’s chamber. I wipe the sweat from my face and do my best to stand up straight as I approach, holding my head high and clutching the bag of blood-irons tightly below my cloak. I press the door with my palms. Pain shoots through me, but the door swings open.
The mood in Caro’s bedroom is somber. The curtains are drawn, shutting out the afternoon light and turning Caro’s cozy room into a place of strange shadows, which dance thanks to the small fire crackling in the hearth. Briefly, I wonder who would have arranged this for the scorned handmaiden—but then I see Caro in her bed, asleep and shivering with each breath, an empty chair at her side. I collapse into it. Caro shifts in her sleep but doesn’t wake.
I’d wondered whether they’d taken her time so soon, immediately after she was sentenced, but looking at her drawn features, the answer is plain. Part of me hoped that there would be more time—that Caro, with her prized place at Lady Gold’s side, would have a trial, a chance to prove her innocence. Or the Queen would have intervened on her behalf. But I should have known that that was not how Captain Ivan’s justice worked.
She’s young, I tell myself, trying to stay calm. Had she ever said how many years she had left? She must have had far more than forty years before they took this time. Of course, Ivan wouldn’t have checked how much time was in her blood, as Wick did with me. Nor would Ivan have cared that no one can afford forty years, as Wick advised me. My head spins with the thought; Caro could be in mortal danger even now. It’s not unheard of for young people to withdraw time, thinking they surely have plenty left, only to drop dead a year or a month or a day later.
I take the pouch of blood-iron and put it on Caro’s nightstand. “This is for you,” I tell her, as if she can hear my gratitude and guilt for caring so much about me. “Ten years.”
Caro, of course, doesn’t move or react. She’s scarcely breathing, and my skin prickles. What if she is dying?
I’ve never consumed time before, but I know well enough how the process is supposed to work. So I cross the room to Caro’s shelves, and return with a small bottle of wine. I pour the wine into a kettle and heat it over the fire. After a few minutes, when a heady, aromatic steam is rising from the kettle, I remove it from the flame and bring it to the nightstand. I take the simple wooden cup that waits there and stack three of my fresh-minted year-coins from my purse inside the cup, then watch in fascination as I pour a measure of steaming wine over them.
There’s a hiss where hot liquid and metal meet, and smoke rises from the cup, smelling like sugar and ash. I stir the mixture with a spoon and then set it aside and gently shake Caro’s shoulder.
She comes awake gradually, blinking and shivering despite the room being both dark and warm. Her eyes focus slowly on me. “Jules,” she says, sounding more exhausted than surprised as she lifts herself up to a sitting position. “You’re here.”
“I’m sorry, Caro,” I say miserably. I take up the steaming cup of wine and blood-iron and offer it to her. “Drink.”