Page 82 of The King's Man 4

I stare at my foggy breath bouncing off the deck as I wait for permission to rise.

Laughter. “Do you prefer conversations staring at feet?”

I hurriedly stand and let out a most undignified splutter. “It’s you!”

To be fair, he looks equally taken aback, seeing me up close—but he holds his response in better check. “Ah. The one who dared to speak up in Hinsard’s famous Thinking Hall.”

In Hinsard, he’d tried to fit in, wearing our fabrics and taking off his adornments. Here, he wears a cloak lined with fur, three studs of gold pierce his right ear, and an intricate golden chain extends around his head like a crown.

“You were trying to find healers to fight this supposed outbreak?” I say, rapidly putting things together.

“Vitalians are too proud, too vain. There’s no working with them.”

“Dangerous, to go yourself. You might’ve been captured; taken hostage.”

“Risks must be taken.”

“Others could have gone in your stead.”

“We are unlike you. We lead our men; we don’t hide behind them.” He pauses, analyses me with a long scrolling look from face to feet and back again. “Lindrhalda’s touch? You, too, have quite some nerve.”

I’m quiet.

He folds his arms. “What do you mean, ‘supposed’ outbreak?”

I tell him the truth of the poxies, and why we pretended our way through it.

Prins Lief barely bats an eye. “Your captain is right. This must be kept quiet. But rest assured, I’ll have the weed eradicated. We shouldn’t protect anything that masks itself.”

His words sit uncomfortably. I frown. “It only mimics the look of common strawberry so that it doesn’t get destroyed.”

“That might be a good thing for the plant, but what about anyone coming in contact with it?”

“If prepared properly, the roots can save lives.”

“What are you saying?”

“The answer isn’t simply to burn them all to the ground. Those coming close to it need to sharpen their eyes and understand what’s beneath the surface.”

“Are we still talking about the plant?”

“Don’t burn them. Educate. Have the thistle prove its worth.”

He grimaces, but lets this lie. “You’ll have to bear the role of the one with Lindrhalda’s touch.”

I stiffen. The ruse had been necessary in the moment, but it’s not a role I wish to live.

Dread is a terrible clawed fist in my belly. “Expectations from you will soar. You might have saved your life for now, but every procedure hereafter will be a throw of the dice of fate. Should you fail...”

If I’m discovered a fraud, they’d make a public show of it to warn anyone off trying anything like it again.

I drop to my knees on the deck. “Please. Take me to Ragn and let me disappear.”

“I’m rather curious how far you’ll go as a healer.”

“I have much to learn. I came here to find my mother’s systra and further my healing knowledge.”

“Who is your mother’s systra?”

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