Elly looked at Judah. Who, for all of her grand intentions, found that she could not say the words, now that Elly was waiting to hear them, and who had to watch as Elly’s lips pressed together, as her eyes grew hard.
“You let me deliver him to them,” she said softly. “Both of you.” Then she leaned down, kissed Theron’s forehead and stood up.
Gavin stood up, too. “Where are you going?” He sounded alarmed.
“We,” Elly said, in a cold, furious tone Judah had never heard before, “all of us, are going to put Theron to bed, and not leave him lying on the floor like garbage nobody cares about. Then we are going to close the door, and we are going to come back out into this room, and the two of you will tell me absolutely everything.” She looked at Judah. “Grab his legs.”
* * *
They didn’t tell her absolutely everything—Gavin did not mention Amie of Porterfield—but they told her enough. Elly didn’t speak for hours afterward. She sat by the bed where Theron lay—Gavin’s bed, not the hard little cot in the alcove—and watched his thin chest rise and fall. The light outside dwindled and died, and still she sat. When Judah or Gavin tried to speak to her, she only nodded or shook her head. Even those movements were remote.
A kitchen boy brought dinner. Nobody ate much. The boy came back for the trays. The House grew quiet.
Judah expected Arkady or the Seneschal to come to see what they’d wrought, but neither did. Gavin stretched out on the sofa. Judah tried to get Elly to sleep, too, but her efforts only produced the faraway shake of the head, so she herself lay down on Theron’s cold, dusty bed. She wanted to be close if anything happened.
She didn’t expect to sleep, but eventually she did.
In the morning, she awoke to see cobwebs in the corners of Theron’s alcove. She sat up, rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and went into Gavin’s room. Elly sat where Judah had left her the night before. “No change,” she said.
Theron lay exactly as Judah had last seen him. Even his head rested at the same angle. Grief filled Judah. “I gave it to him too late,” she said. “I waited too long.”
“Don’t.”
“I was afraid it was a trick. I was afraid he’d given me the poison instead of the cure. Because, why me? Why would he give it to me?”
“Because nobody ever notices you,” Elly said. The words stung, but they were true. Elly stood up and shook out her skirt. “I heard breakfast come. We should eat.”
Bread and greens and grapefruit and spun honey, but Judah couldn’t eat, couldn’t wrench herself out of those precious seconds she’d wasted, standing idle while the poison worked its way through Theron’s body. If he died because of her, she’d never forgive herself. Elban’s grip over Gavin would die with him and that thought was even more shameful; once she’d had it, Judah knew she didn’t deserve to forgive herself, not ever. Elly, spreading honey on bread, seemed so serene. Even sleepless and wan, even furious, Elly’s essential goodness shone through. Judah knew that shameful thought would never occur to her.
She cursed herself. She wished it were her life at stake, so she could end it.
Fingers laced through hers. Gavin’s. He’d sat beside her and she’d been so trapped in her guilt that she hadn’t noticed. He squeezed her hand and she felt the thorny tangle of his mind, as gnarled as her own. Elly was so good at wearing the face she needed to wear, and Judah no longer knew what was true. She knew she loved Theron. She knew she didn’t want him to die.
Toward evening he began to stir. Small movements at first, like watching a room being lit one tiny candle at a time. Gavin pulled the cot into the main bedroom and they took turns sleeping there. When Theron opened his eyes in the early hours of the morning, Elly was asleep on the cot, Gavin on the sofa out in the parlor. Judah was the one sitting next to Theron’s bed and his eyelids had been fluttering for almost an hour, so she was watching when they opened. For a few frightening moments, as his gaze wandered the room aimlessly, she was afraid he was blind. But then their roaming stopped, and he seemed to see her.