“Here you are, my lady,” murmured one of the bustling attendants. She handed Navi a basket of clean white cloths. “The Wolf told us you would need these. We are trained as healers, my lady. Shall we help you?”
“Oh, that would be lovely. Eliana?” Navi frowned when she saw Eliana inching toward the door. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t want to change my bandages.” Eliana’s panic was so complete that she could think of nothing else to say. “They’re fine.”
Navi’s smile was bewildered. “They’ll get infected if we don’t. It’s been hours. Come here.”
One of the attendants moved toward Eliana, bowed, then reached out to guide her down the steps toward the pool.
Eliana slapped her away. “Get away from me!”
Navi stared at her. “What in God’s name is wrong with you?”
“Don’t come any closer.”
“Tell me what’s wrong. Maybe I can help.”
Eliana let out a burst of incredulous laughter. “I need help from no one.”
“You’re delirious. Your fever has returned.”
“Just leave her alone!” Remy cried out.
Before Eliana could move, still frozen with fear, Navi had lunged, spun her around, and pinned her, front first, against one of the room’s smooth marble columns. A familiar blade pressed into Eliana’s side.
Arabeth, she thought faintly, you traitor. She wanted to twist away, but remembered her supposed wounds.
“You’re hurting me,” she gasped out. “Please, my burns—”
“This knife of yours is my favorite,” Navi said tightly. “I couldn’t resist swiping it when I had the chance. I’ll give it back, perhaps. If you don’t make me angry. You’re hiding something from me. Tell me what it is.”
“Navi, please!” Remy’s voice was near tears. “Let her go!”
“Sweet Navi,” said Eliana, Navi’s cheek so close to her own she could smell the girl’s stale breath. “And I thought you wanted us to be friends.”
“I do.” Navi sounded genuinely sorry. “But if you don’t answer me, I’ll knock you out and fetch Simon, and he will change your bandages, and you won’t be able to stop him.”
Eliana let out a desperate growl. “Would you like to wager on that?”
“You’ve been acting strangely for days now. It’s not the fever nor your wounds. You’re planning something. Another escape? Will you bring death down upon Rinthos like you nearly did on Crown’s Hollow?”
“I’m planning nothing.”
“Then what is it?”
Eliana realized too late that her eyes were filling with sudden, exhausted tears.
Navi’s expression softened. “What are you afraid of?”
“El, don’t,” Remy warned.
Eliana glanced past Navi at her brother, and then at the attendants waiting frozen nearby. And she realized, with a sick twist deep in her gut, that she wanted this. She wanted to tell someone who could help her sift through her questions—Lord Morbrae’s throat, the vision of the Emperor, her own impossible body—and find an answer.
And if she was going to tell someone…better Navi than Simon.
She took a shuddering breath. “Leave us,” she said quietly.
Silence. Navi turned to the two attendants. “Do as she commands. Say nothing of this.”
They bowed their heads and glided out of the room. Once the doors had closed behind them, Eliana closed her eyes. “All right.” She let out a long, slow exhale. “All right.”
Remy’s tearful voice came out choked. “El, don’t. Please.”
“I want to.”
Navi stepped away and lowered Arabeth, her expression grave. “What is it, Eliana?”
Eliana hesitated, then, still facing the column, shrugged off her jacket. She pulled off her bloodstained tunic to reveal the dirty bandages beneath. Dressed only in her boots and trousers, she whispered, “Take them off, and you’ll see.”
Navi gently began removing the bandages wrapped around Eliana’s torso. When the first bandage gave way, Navi gasped.
Shivering, Eliana leaned her forehead against the wall, crossed her arms over her chest, and waited for Navi to finish. She had never felt more vulnerable in her life.
“Eliana…” Navi traced her fingers over the muscles of Eliana’s bare back. “They’re gone. Your burns… It’s like they were never there. I don’t understand.”
“You won’t tell anyone.” She steeled herself and glanced over her shoulder. “Will you?”
After a moment of tense silence, Navi muttered, “Of course I won’t tell anyone,” and walked away.
Dizzy with relief, Eliana retrieved her tunic and slipped it back on. “If you did tell someone—”
“Then both Red Crown and the Empire would scramble to make you a great weapon, with no regard for your own safety, and that is not a fate I would wish on anyone.” Navi’s voice hardened. “This war has claimed the lives and bodies of too many women.”
Then she turned, thoughtful. “Tell me how it started. Not just this one time, I assume?”
Eliana took a steadying breath. “It’s always been like this. When I was small, I thought nothing of it. I’d fall, scrape my leg, and it would heal almost instantly. I figured, ah, well, that’s lucky, and moved on. But as I grew older, I realized it was…an unusual thing.”
“To put it mildly,” Navi said with a troubled smile.
“I told Remy, eventually.” Eliana found Remy huddled miserably on one of the cushioned benches beside the pool. She sat beside him, pulled him close. He turned gratefully into her side. “He helped me keep it a secret from our parents, even from Harkan. My friend. My partner.” It was the first time she had said Harkan’s name since saying goodbye to him on that awful day in Orline. Saying it felt like plucking a physical thing from her heart, leaving a hollow place behind. “I’m sure Harkan noticed—we were too close for him not to—but he never said anything. I don’t know why. To respect my decision not to confide in him about it, I suppose.” She shook her head. “I did not deserve a friend such as he was.”
Navi paced quietly. Then she stopped, staring down at the rippling water.
“You’re worried because you saw the same thing happen to Lord Morbrae as has happened to you all your life.” Navi looked up, pity on her face. “You’re worried that you’re one of them.”
“But she isn’t!” Remy’s face flushed angrily. “Their eyes are black. Hers aren’t. They’re evil, and she isn’t.”
“I agree, Remy,” said Navi, “as someone who has spent too much time among their kind. You are not one of them, Eliana. Your face doesn’t hold that same hunger. The air doesn’t shift wrongly around your body, as if you don’t quite fit in this world.”
“What are they, then?” Eliana asked quietly. “What did you see when you lived in the maidensfold?”
Navi sat on a cushioned bench with her shoulders high and tense. “I saw men who glutted themselves and still hungered. Who took lover after lover to their beds and never felt sated. I lay with generals who begged me to carve up their bodies and who threatened to carve up my own if I wouldn’t obey—and then, as they writhed beneath me, their flesh healed, and they howled in despair.”
Navi drew in a long, slow breath. “Lord Arkelion took quite a liking to me and often summoned me to his rooms. Sometimes, when looking into those black eyes of his, I would see things.”
“Like I saw the Emperor,” Eliana murmured. “I looked into Lord Morbrae’s eyes, and suddenly there he was. And there was Celdaria.”
“Yes.” Navi looked up, her expression haunted. “Very much like that. When with His Lordship, I saw things I would not understand. Visions. Images. And all of them were of wrath and revenge. Blood-darkened hills. A void that spun me farther and farther away from the light. I would feel these images in my blood after leaving him, like he had infected me with an echo of whatever sickness plagues him. I would return to the maidensfold and keep myself away from the others until the feeling had passed. I was afraid of myself. I feared I would lash out, hurt them.”
Navi shook her head. “These men, they are made of a violence I could never have imagined.”
“They’re not men,” Remy said firmly into the silence that followed. “They’re angels.”
27