Chapter 7: Fever

I carried her out of the hall before anyone could ask about the candles.

Torin fell in beside me and put his shoulder to the nearest knot of staring lords, and they parted.

"Draught from the doors," he said loudly. "Winter does that."

Nobody believed him, and nobody said so.

The east gallery was a long cold room with one bed, one lamp, and a nurse who took one look at my face and fled.

I laid the girl down on the blankets.

She was so light.

Her skin burned through my sleeves, and I felt the fever running in her.

It was not ashfever.

It was something I had never touched in a patient before.

It was my own fire, wild and untaught, turning on her body from the inside.

"What's your name, sweetheart?" I asked.

"Wynne."

"I'm Lark."

"That's a bird."

"It is."

"I like birds."

"Papa says birds are the only things that can leave a cage."

I swallowed that and kept my hands steady.

Her eyelids drooped.

"Stay awake a little while for me," I said. "I'm going to make your head cool. It might feel strange."

"Will it hurt?"

"No."

I put both hands on her small chest and opened my palms.

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