when I started keeping to myself around the Whispers’ stronghold.
There was the burn on my right thigh.
The slash on my neck from Esmeraldas.
The poison after that.
Watching Dez die.
“I should’ve died a long time ago,” I say as a guard carries me into the medic’s chamber.
“You’re not dying, do you hear me?” Leo trots alongside us to keep up. His green eyes never leave my face. There’s worry there, and I know that I don’t care if he’s the spy or just a very good actor or a fabrication of the unraveling threads in my head. He’s the only friend I’ve got within these walls and he’s here.
“Was the blade poisoned?” Justice Méndez asks, pushing something off a bed.
They lay me on it. I don’t look down because there’s blood everywhere. There’s always blood everywhere.
A decrepit old medic peers at me, but he doesn’t touch my skin. Doesn’t get within an arm’s distance of me. I can smell the fear bubbling through his pores, and it smells like—aguadulce.
“Move aside,” Leo says, frustration overpowering his usual pleasant demeanor. “She had three glasses of cava and she’s lost a lot of blood.” He holds my arm and sniffs. “If there’s poison, it’s odorless.”
“Bring me the girl!” Méndez shouts at someone.
Leo lowers himself to my face. His warm fingers brush my hair back. “This is going to hurt.”
It’ll hurt, I told him. I know, he said.
Perhaps it was the drink, but when Leo grabs the end of the hairpin dagger, it doesn’t hurt. There’s a deep numbness stretching from my shoulder to my fingertips. But when I feel hands hold my feet down, my waist, something within me snaps.
“Don’t touch me!” I snarl at the guard—Hector—but he doesn’t let go.
White-hot pain sizzles inside my flesh, the pain of my latest wound making itself known with a vengeance as Leo makes cuts around the dagger. His beautiful soft words apologize over and over again. Someone holds a weak poultice over my nose to help calm me. Manzanilla and other herbs. But all it does is give me whiplash memories of Esmeraldas. Was it just over two weeks when my life was shaken by the root? Unearthed and splintered. Then the numbness returns, slick wet warmth coating my skin.
I know I’ve blacked out when I wake to silence.
The splash of cold water.
The rustle of fabric.
Leo is re-dressing my bandage, his shoulders shaking with silent tears.
“Leo,” I say.
“Thank the Six Heavens,” he says, lowering his forehead to mine. “I’m so sorry, Ren. I’m so sorry we had to do it this way.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. But if the blade had been poisoned. If they left it in and it got infected. He acted as quickly as he could even if it hurt.
I want to thank him for tending to me when the cowardly medic would not, but Méndez rushes back in.
“How are you feeling?” Méndez asks, his voice hard despite the tightness of his lips. Is he rattled because I’m alive or because he should’ve seen the attack?
“I’m well, my justice,” I lie.
“You have a hole through one of your extremities,” Leo mutters, returning to the bandage. “I do not believe that qualifies as well.”
Méndez frowns and snaps, “Now is not the time for your tone, Leonardo.”
Leo mutters an apology.
My mind is racing. Margo is somewhere in the dungeons, and if she’s here, then that means that the others are, too. I’d wager my life on it. The only question is, how many others are there? Did they see me save the king? Would any of them understand? That I was losing a battle in order to win the war? Sayida flashes through my mind. I knew I saw her earlier. I knew it, but I blamed it on my traitorous memories. Traitorous. Traitor. Is there anyone who believes me to be anything but?
There’s something sour on my tongue that forces me to remain silent.
“Drink this,” Leo says, offering a brown glass bottle whose bitter contents remind me of rotting fish. “It’s a sedative to numb the pain.”
I have to get up. That’s the only reason I nod and let him tip the wretched liquid down my throat. Almost instantly, some of the pain subsides.
Méndez turns to the medic who is pressed against the walls. “Did you test for poison, Arsenál?”
“No traces. She’s no worse for the wear,” Arsenál proclaims. “I am given to understand her kind have a high threshold for pain.”
I sneer at him. “Do you want me to show you how