Garrick opened the door. ‘Forgive me, it’s time.’
Demelza and Faina left reluctantly, squeezing his hands regardless of the shackles. Osian had left him the key, but if someone knocked, it was better to appear suppressed.
He drifted between the windows and the books, wishing he could return to his desk downstairs: the makeshift apothecary station, with samples of three dozen or more plants from the gardens laid out, waiting.
Henbane.He had been so focused upon the trees, but perhaps he should continue with smaller plants. Though it felt insubstantial beside everything that had happened. He had wanted to weave himself with as much of the gardens as possible, one plant at a time. He had no hope of stopping the gwehydd himself, but perhaps if he could recognise the specific plant they next used, he could find a way to trace them. Identify them.
Rowan. Alder. Henbane.
Why does it keep changing?Aldreda had asked. A very good question he kept asking himself, terrified of the answer. Rowan, for Lord Leighton. Alder, for Kenelm Radnor. Henbane, for a member of the crownsworn under secret investigation.
Something stirred at the edge of his vision, a shifting in the undergrowth of his mind.
There was a knock in the afternoon that he hoped was Osian but was Deryn with lunch. His heart sank at her shuttered expression, the torrent of feelings she tried desperately to hide.
She must suspect him. Who could blame her.
‘Highness.’ She unloaded the tray without meeting his gaze, the whole thing rattling with how much she was shaking.
He stared, unseeing, at a plate of tiny cakes. ‘Thank you, Deryn.’
He expected her to escape swiftly, but as she set down the final plate, she firmed from indecision to decision so violently he drew back. She sniffed, once – the only warning before she dropped to her knees at his feet and grasped his hands.
‘H-Highness, I need your help. Please, no one else can…’ Her pain snapped like a branch bent too far: hesitantly, then all at once. Tears swept down her cheeks, and she covered her mouth to stifle a sob. ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed in muffled Cyngaleg.
‘Deryn.’ He grasped her hand as her pain ricocheted into his. Desolated, reverberating grief and hopelessness. For one terrible moment, he could hear his mother crying that night she was certain he had gone to sleep, that night Meilyr had tried to make things better and had only damned them all.
‘What happened?’ he whispered in Cyngaleg, unable to take another instant of imagining instead of knowing.
Deryn’s ailing father had grown sicker, suddenly. It was why she hadrequested leave.
‘She went to the apothecary,’ Meilyr told Osian, moments after the prince returned that evening. ‘Heulwen visited him but said there was nothing she could do but make him more comfortable. She told Deryn to find me, to see if I could help.’
Osian had been troubled when he had entered. His frown only deepened now. ‘You are afraid there is little you can do without seeing him.’
‘Yes.’ Meilyr moved to stand before him, tethered on the edge of touch. Aware of it only because of how easy it would be to close the distance. ‘I am afraid he is going to die, whilst I am locked up here.’
The prince’s jaw worked in conflicted strain. ‘If it is discovered you are not here…’
‘I know.’ He truly did. ‘But I cannot just let him die, not when there is a chance I could do something. Osian—’
He caught the slip as the prince moved past him to retrieve the small key Meilyr had ignored all day. With it, the prince softly unlatched his shackles, pressingcareinto his skin.
Meilyr could barely breathe when Osian finally met his gaze. ‘I cannot risk you,’ the prince told him, let him go in that devastation and moved deeper into the parlour, dropping the cuffs on the armchair. They slid loudly against the cushion, and he poured himself a drink.
Deryn’s agony still echoed through Meilyr’s blood, mirroring his own enough to have dredged the ache in his chest into sharpness and guilt. Always guilt. ‘My Prince.’ He went to him, bared and honest. ‘Please. Please, let me try.’
It cost Osian something to repeat the words: ‘I cannot.’
Meilyr touched his wrist before he could raise the drink to his mouth, making him look at him again. ‘Then come with me.’
THIRTY-TWO
For the Fox’s tears slipped into the soil,
and with that blood did
the earth sprout both healing and hurting,