Page 67 of The Oracle of Dusk

Theron squeezed through the window of his childhood bedroom in the early hours of the morning. A night of carousing with the local sons of the nobility had kept him out late. It would probably be the last time he would ever manage to get through such a tight space. At sixteen, he was finally about to experience his second growth spurt. After he’d shot up half a head over the last few months, the nobles had decided to take him out for a taste of adulthood. He’d drunk more than was perhaps advisable and had been introduced to the most beautiful woman in Trisia, to whom he had given his first kiss. Riding high, he tumbled into his room, smashing a vase full of flowers on his way to his bed.

Who put vases in front of beds?

“Your Highness!”

One of the servants ripped open his door, their face pale and drawn.

“How insolent. Where are your manners? This is my room.”

“Your Highness, please, you must come. Your brother is ill!”

Tisander, his older brother the crown prince, was always ill. He’d been sick Theron’s whole life. Ever since he’d awakened healing magic, Theron had been working tirelessly to keep his brother’s chronic illnesses at bay. A man fully grown with the dark red hair and deep brown skin of the royal family, he was lithe where everyone else was solid, never able to put on muscle due to his frailty. But his brother was never one to fuss, nor trouble others unduly. No, Tisander was a stoic man a decade his senior full of wisdom and compassion. Someone Theron looked up to and admired. Convinced this was just his mother being especially cautious, Theron sighed and followed the servant to Tisander’s room.

Only to be met with a scene from a nightmare.

Servants wept. His mother, a statuesque beauty with black hair, was crumpled on the bed wailing, her arms around Tisander. His father, a true giant who was as stocky and fierce as a bull, who’d never so much as smiled as long as Theron had been alive, was slumped at Tisander’s bedside, devastation written plain as day across his face.

Theron stumbled to his brother’s bedside and reached out a shaking hand. Tisander was still, his face unnaturally pale, his neck and jaw slack, dark red hair limp and slick with sweat, an angry red rash climbing up from his chest. Numb, Theron reached out with his magic, only to feel it recoil in the face of death.

Tisander’s death.

“Where were you?!” his mother screamed, her amber eyes filled with hatred. “Where were you when your brother needed you?! He died of fever! You killed your brother! He would be alive if you’d been here!” she raged, her face crumpling as her heartbroken sobs echoed in the room. She buried her face in Tisander’s bony chest. “Where were you?”

“Worthless,” his father hissed, his face transforming from devastation to wrath in an instant. “You’re no son of mine!”

Overcome, Theron ran. He ran until he was swallowed by an endless abyss. He ran across a plain of utter darkness until he couldn’t run, until he was drowned by unending nothing. As he was swallowed whole, he opened his eyes to carnage, his brother wearing Viridian armour and staring up at him in terror, Theron’s spear lodged in his heart.

“Save me,” Tisander whispered, blood pooling at the corners of his mouth.

Theron woke with a gasp, sweating and disoriented. His magic seethed inside him, responding to the horrors of memories blended with nightmares. Closing his eyes, he focused on his breathing, willing his magic and heartbeat to settle, but there was nothing for it. Theron was awake. If experience were anything to go by, he would not sleep again tonight. Frustrated, he ripped the covers off and dressed in the first tunic he found.

There was precious little to do in the guest palace at night, but the view of the sky from the atrium was nice enough. He sat on the bench and watched the stars wink in the night sky.

As a cloud passed over the moon above, Aurora entered the atrium. Had she come to see him at this hour? It was a welcome distraction. And if she’d come to him at this hour, there could be no mistaking her intentions. His blood heated.

Yet as his greeting left his lips, he could tell that something was deeply wrong. Theron rushed to Aurora’s side, his magic wrapping around her, seeking the cause of her collapse. But the moment he touched her burning hot skin and turned her over to see an angry red rash climbing up her neck, he knew. Dread galvanised him to action. He cradled her in arms, marched to the entrance and kicked open the door to the palace, startling the guard on duty.

“Get me a tub full of cold water and ice! And bring me more ice every hour. Now!”

“What? I’m not your damn servant,” the guard growled. “Get back inside the palace!”

“What’s the problem here?” another guard asked, this one with a red scarf around his neck. Good, one of the Aurean spies planted in Boreas.

“This woman has torchlight fever. Get me what I need to save her and tell your queen she has an outbreak in her capital.”

“I’ll get what he needs. You tell the palace guard,” his inside man said, racing off to do Theron’s bidding, the other guard following shortly after.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

It would take everything he had to save her. Normally, he healed people by using his magic to guide their body’s natural healing process whenever possible. But this was torchlight fever. He would need to flood her with his magic, using his own energy to prevent her fever from cooking her internal organs. The worst of the fever came and went in the time it took for a torch to burn to ashes, often carrying its victims with it in that short span of time. If he could keep her alive during the worst of the fever, she had better odds of surviving.

Theron took her to his room and flooded her with his magic, healing her organs as her body fought to boil them. He kept a hand on her forehead, using the better portion of his magic to prevent the destruction of her mind.

But he was going to lose the battle if someone didn’t arrive with the tub full of cold water. There was only so much he could do to heal her body if he didn’t have some way to cool it down. He was about to take her to the baths and contaminate every drop inside when a group of servants came hauling a large copper tub and pails of water.

“Place it there! Fill it halfway and put in as much ice as it’ll hold.”

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