Page 32 of Beyond Those Gilded Walls

“Do you think there’s something more to them?” She paused. “Do you think Sonya is trying to send you a message?”

“The goddess of wisdom would surely be kinder. If it’s anyone, it is Kalyx telling me my brother’s fate.”

She bit her lip. I’d long given up on the gods, but Zaharya, it seemed, came from a place where they were still revered rather than reviled. “Do you truly believe that? That the gods would be so cruel?”

“I don’t know what to think anymore. But if they are real, if they are still with us, I have a very hard time believing they give a damn about us right now. If they cared, surely they would have intervened, no?” I sighed when she did not reply. “I came to this castle to try to feed my family. To try to find out if there really was a treatment or if it was just city gossip. And now it has all been for nothing, yet I cannot leave.”

“The treatment does exist.”

“I know,” I said, looking up from my lap to meet her gaze. “I overheard it being discussed at the party. That was why I stopped to listen.”

Head tilted back against the wall, she closed her eyes for a moment before lowering her chin and standing. She held out her hand to pull me from the floor, grasping my forearm tightly as I stumbled with the dizziness that accompanied the sudden move. “We need to clean your wounds. Do you do that often? Hurt yourself in your dreams?”

Despite the many truths I’d spilled tonight, I held back on this. She may have believed me about the Soulshades before or the hallucinations now, but if I told her that I’d been injured in my dream, by my little brother, and then woke to those same injuries… I did not need to be gifted with sight to know what would be whispered about me. “Never before.”

She hummed, reaching into the cabinet beside us to pull out a wooden box I hadn’t known was there. Opening it, she pulled out bandages and various bottles. Her eyes tracked my stare. “That’s how we knew you were lying about the wine cellar.”

I snapped my head up to look at her. “What?”

She nodded down at the box. “You said you went to the infirmary after you cut your hand. But the castle doesn’t have an infirmary. Or at least not one that would tend to us. We have these kits in our rooms, and anything that cannot be treated with them…well, then it cannot be treated.” She poured clear liquid from one of the bottles onto a wad of cotton and pressed it to my shoulder.

The gasp I let out shuddered through my entire body, and I yanked away from her, panting for breath as the sensation of fire burned through the wound and deep into the muscle. Before I could recover, she was affixing a bandage over top.

“I won’t ask who stitched your hand. I have a feeling I already know.” Bottles rattled as she packed everything back into the box. “So I will just remind you once more: you have no friends here, Odyssa. You should trust no one, but especially none who enter the ballroom willingly and not as part of a job.”

I chewed on my lip. “Do you know where the treatment is kept?”

The sigh she released was long-suffering. “I knew you were going to ask.”

“I do not know your story, Zaharya, but if you were in my place, what would you do?”

“I may not be in your place exactly, but I have seen the fate of those who have been, and you are following the same path.” She bent to return the box to the cabinet, slamming the door closed. “And they have all been killed for it.”

“Please.”

She stared at me for a moment after she stood, her eyes looking deep into my soul. I did not flinch or falter and kept her gaze. Another sigh, and her shoulders slumped. “The prince demands a price for the treatment. And very few have been willing or able to pay it.” Her long finger reached out, tapping my breastbone. “And that is all I will say about it.”

My hand darted out to grab her wrist as she went to leave. “I need to get it, Zaharya. I will pay whatever cost.”

She smiled sadly at me. “They always say that, and yet somehow, no one ever returns with the treatment.” Extricating herself from my grasp, she patted my cheek. “All you can do is hope, Odyssa. Hope that since you survived, your family will too. You cannot let your grief distract you, not here. This castle, these people, they will turn your grief into a weapon and gladly wield it against you. Don’t give them the chance.”

I followed her silently to the door, trying and failing to grasp at the words flying through my mind.

“Try to get some more rest,” she said. “I’ll wake you when it’s time to prepare for the ball.”

The door closed softly behind her and I was left reeling, stuck inside this room, inside this castle, inside my nightmares. My shoulder smarted and I looked longingly back at the bed, but I knew if I closed my eyes again, all I would see was Rhyon’s face, covered in blood. And that, I could not bear to endure again.

Yanking open the wardrobe, I pulled off my nightgown and changed into a plain black, floor-length, long-sleeved dress.

No, sleep would not come again for me tonight. And if it did, I would send it away screaming as I had before.

ChapterSeventeen

Despite knowing that sleep would not come easily or peacefully, I tried to rest. But every time I closed my eyes and began to drift off, I was brought back with echoes of screams and howling wind.

My stomach churned, the pain and the anguish inside stirring up nausea. I never wanted to see my brother, my baby brother, in that place. And yet he’d seemed so comfortable, so at ease there. If I ever saw him again, I feared I would only see that version of him. Bile burned my throat and my skin felt too tight. I wanted to claw my way out from inside my own chest.

The balcony looked inviting, and perhaps the fresh air would help. But when I pulled back the curtains and opened the door, I was met with red-tinged sky and the wind carrying up the faint cries of someone who’d been just a different kind of victim to the plague.

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