Page 18 of The Royal Curse

Chapter Seven

Something startled me out of a shallow slumber, and I sat bolt upright in the chair with a grunt of surprise. Riddled with nerves or not, it seemed I hadn’t been a match for my exhaustion. The fire had burned down to embers. I glanced to the window, a faint gray square in the gloom, the edges all patterned with frost.

Dawn, or close. Ironic, maybe—or very sensible and understandable, take your pick—but I hated the early morning.

A soft tap sounded on the door. Or another one, probably.

I sprang up, or tried to, but my stiff knees made it more of a stagger. The latch stuck, because nothing ever worked in the morning, but after a moment of cursing I pulled the door open.

Andreas, as I’d expected, and he looked very much the worse for wear: pale, with grooves around his mouth and purple shadows under his eyes, his auburn hair a damp and spiky mess and the shoulders of his coat dusted with snow.

“Come in, come on, I’ll stir the fire,” I rasped, cleared my throat—gods, I hated waking up so early, and I felt like I hadn’t slept at all—and stood aside to let him in.

It was a testament to how tired he was that he didn’t argue or thank me or demur, but simply nodded and went to the fireplace, propping an elbow on the mantel and slumping there.

But of course, he hadn’t gone so far as to sit down. I rolled my eyes at his back. “Andreas, sit down before you fall down.”

“There’s only one chair, Your Highness,” he mumbled into his arm.

“Sit down and tell me what you found, if anything. That’s a royal command.”

Because he pushed off the mantel and collapsed into the chair as bidden, I chose to ignore his muttered, “Gods forbid I disobey one of those.”

I took up the poker and a few sticks from the basket and started to revive the fire. Andreas sighed, shifted in the chair, and then sighed again.

“This poker’s going through your forehead if you don’t tell me how you spent the night.” Fuck, that sounded— “What you found, overnight,” I said in a rush. “Did you find an apothecary or not?”

He hesitated so long that I’d gotten the blaze going again and turned around, the poker clutched in my fist, before he spoke.

Andreas looked up at me, expression bleak. “Yes and no, but considering we have a deadline, mostly no,” he said heavily. “There is a physician in town who’s made the potion before and is perfectly willing to do so again. I rousted him out of bed and listened to a half-hour tirade on inconsiderate assholes with no sense of decency before I could even get him to get to the point, though. Fuck, I’m sorry, Your Highness.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “He’s missing some of the herbs he needs. Long story short, there’s an herbalist who lives out in the woods, and she’ll have it all, but it’ll take a day to get it. And then another day at least for him to brew it. We’re looking at tomorrow night at the earliest.”

Gods, I wished we’d had a second chair after all, because my knees didn’t want to hold me up.

That was better news than I’d expected, honestly.

But it wasn’t good enough, and my brain buzzed with calculations that it was far too tired to perform adequately. That would be…a full day and night between when my symptoms started and when the physician could deliver the potion. Twenty-four hours of being in unbearable agony, racked with fever and shooting pains in every muscle, my bones feeling like they were melting and shattering all at once.

I hadn’t endured it in a long time, but I’d spent years suffering from the pains on and off as my cycle changed and settled, as Gennaro and my team of physicians found the right dosage and the right schedule through unavoidable but torturous experimentation.

There were other combinations of herbs that would put me in a state of such deep unconsciousness that I wouldn’t have to bear it; I could simply wait it out and be awoken when the potion was ready for me.

Except that my body would still be suffering the effects of the gods’ curse, and I’d be lucky to wake up at all. That apoplexy I’d mentioned to Andreas would be likelier than not.

On the other hand, a theoretical middle ground existed. My research into my condition had encompassed some herbs and medicines, though they weren’t my greatest area of expertise, and I knew of mixtures that would slow the heart, cool the body, thin the blood. Perhaps it wouldn’t be enough to spare me all of the pain, but that physician might be able to concoct something, while we waited for the components for my potion, to keep me alive and somewhat sane in the meantime.

“Your Highness? Your Highness!” I snapped my gaze back to Andreas—back to the real world in front of me, and away from the horrid visions in my mind. “Are you—please tell me it’s not starting now.”

“No,” I said, and choked on a bubble of hysterical laughter. “No, I took what was left in the last bottle to buy some time. And believe me, you’ll know.” I dropped the poker to the hearth with a clatter, too exhausted to bend over and put it down quietly, and made myself jump. Fucking hell. “I don’t think you understand what’s going to happen to me in about twelve hours. What you’ll be dealing with when it does, if you mean to watch over me.”

“Of course I mean to watch over you, you don’t have a chance in hell of getting rid of me, and you need to explain it to me. And will you—I can’t sit down while you stand there looking like you’re about to fall over.”

Andreas stood up so abruptly I didn’t have time to move, and since I’d pulled the chair near to the fireplace, he was suddenlyright there, so close we were nearly touching. The strong column of his throat filled my vision. I blinked, swayed, and put a hand up to steady myself without thinking. It landed on his chest, my fingers digging into the body-warm, snow-damp wool of his tunic.

“Your Highness,” he said softly, very close to my ear. As if he’d bent down a little to speak to me. His breath ruffled my hair. “Please. Tell me how to help you.”

“You’ve already done as much as anyone could do. More. You need to—”Put your arms around me, pat me on the back, and tell me it’ll be all right. Pour me more wine until I pass out. “—go and get some sleep. I’m going to—to catch a few hours too. And then we’ll go and see that physhin, I mean, doctor, because I want to ask him for something to help me through the next day. All right?”

Every word had started to feel thick and heavy on my tongue, harder and harder to push out of my mouth. My eyelids drooped. From the knees down, my legs were useless lumps.

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