Chapter 8: Ask Me Again

It took four men to carry the king up the east stair, and Sorrel cleared the chamber behind them.

"Out," she said. "All of you."

"My lady, the prince is asking to..." the steward began.

"Not the prince, not my sister, not the council lord. Captain, stand at the door, and if anybody who isn't me tries to come in, you stop them."

The keep's guard captain, a grim man with a scarred chin, put his back to the door without a word.

She turned the lock.

The king lay on the bed with his shirt cut open, and the grey had climbed to his jaw.

His breath came in short, dry pulls, and a thread of smoke leaked from the corner of his mouth.

Sorrel knelt on the mattress and laid both bare palms on his chest.

The poison hit her all at once.

It was nothing like the old ash.

It was fresh and sharp and green, and it came up into her hands so fast that her vision went white.

She did not let go.

She pulled it into her arms, past the elbows and into her shoulders, and the veins on the insides of her wrists went dark.

Her stomach turned, and she swallowed it.

"Stay with me," she said aloud, to nobody. "Stay, stay."

The first hour was the worst.

In the second, the king's skin began to glow.

It started under her hands, a dull red, and spread across his chest and down his arms.

The linen under him blackened and began to smoke.

His eyes came open, and they were gold from edge to edge, with the pupils slit.

"Get out," he said.

The voice was not entirely his.

It was deep and slow and very old, and the windowpane hummed with it.

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