“Well that makes all the difference.” James stared at his cousin, expression hard. He must have been terrified; he wasn’t usually mean. “Can you help?”
“I’m not sure.” Connor closed his eyes and seemed to search; whatever he saw made him shudder. “He’s really bad.”
“Try anyway.” My voice sounded hoarse.
“I’ll do what I can.” He rested his hands on the bandages. “This will take a while.”
“Another of the infamous Ospreys.” James pulled away from the bed as Connor grew as still as the prince. “And another flasher.”
“We aren’t all flashers. Connor’s the only other one.” As far as I knew. And it was only an accident I knew about Connor. Even among friends, we had to be careful.
“A healer and an animator. Powerful duo.” At my sharp look, James smiled a little. “Tobiah told me about a girl he’d met during the One-Night War. When your identity was made public, I figured it out. Besides, I already knew you’re a flasher.”
“I see.” I motioned at a chair near the bed, a basket of yarn and needles beside it. “Does the prince knit?”
James shook his head. “The queen regent has been in and out. Lady Meredith visited briefly.”
“And his uncles?”
“They were here long enough to see Tobiah’s condition and begin memorial preparations.”
Disgust turned my stomach. “He’s not dead.”
“There’s no reason to expect him to live.”
“But he will. He must.” I glanced at Connor and Tobiah, neither boy moving. “No one can know about this.”
“Count on silence from all quarters.” James excused himself to speak with the stone-faced soldiers in the parlor, and through the closed door I heard orders for discretion, an oath, and someone ask what was happening.
Which meant the only thing they knew was that the foreign flasher princess had brought in a boy in the middle of the night, and they were being sworn to never speak of it again.
As though that wouldn’t evoke more curiosity.
I paced the room, weary but restless as I listened to footsteps thudding in the other rooms of Tobiah’s apartments. Guards and maids and physicians. Connor muttered to himself, something about arteries and ligaments and organs. Sweat formed and dripped down his face.
This was taking so long. True, I’d seen Connor use his magic only once, and that was to heal a rabbit’s broken leg—nothing nearly like this—but shouldn’t he be finished by now?
I moved toward the oak bookcases. Gilt-lettered spines shone behind small curios: a golden spyglass, an aged wooden box with intricate carvings on the lid, and a framed paper behind glass. The paper was yellowed, and the writing so exact and regular it couldn’t have been made by hand.
“Pre-wraith artifacts,” James said, returning to the room. “Tobiah is fascinated by the things people created with magic a hundred years ago. Common things, like paper and clothes and trinkets. There were bigger things, too, of course: trains, faster methods of communication, and ways of clearing the land for farming. But it’s the smaller items that really intrigue him. Everyday conveniences we’ve abandoned.”
“I didn’t know that about him.”
“It’s not exactly material for polite discussion these days.” James checked the bed, but there was no change. “Tobiah hides a lot of who he is. You can understand, I’m sure.”
“You’re very perceptive, Captain.”
He indicated a stack of framed ink drawings leaning against the bookcase, waiting to be hung. They must have been delivered this morning. “I finally got to see some of your artwork.” He pulled out a drawing of Black Knife, sword in hand.
My heart thumped as my eyes followed the lines of ink, remembering the way my pen had slid across the paper without instruction from my head. I’d hated Black Knife when I’d started that, but he’d recently saved Connor from a glowman, and our following encounters had been . . . not bad.
“You’re talented.” James put the drawing into the stack again, hiding it between flowers and landscapes—other things that were more appropriate for a young lady to have spent her time creating. “Which I knew, having inspected your forged residency documents.”
Connor gasped and stepped away from the prince. “That’s it.” He blinked a few times, as though to clear his vision from whatever he’d been seeing. “That’s all I can do.”
“Thank you, Connor.” I stuffed down my disappointment; there was no change in the prince’s appearance. “James, is there somewhere for Connor and the other three to stay? I left them in the front hall under guard, but who knows what they’ve done by now.”
He heaved a sigh. “For the sake of my security teams, are they all like you?”
Able to sneak in and out of guarded buildings, fight opponents twice their size, and pocket valuables without anyone noticing? “I helped train them.”
“I was afraid of that.”