The queen, with a deftness Nora would not have thought she possessed, unbuttoned Nora’s dress and pressed a clean white cloth to the stab wound. Blood was no longer seeping from it. Her heart was not beating.
Alexandre picked up her bloody wrist and felt for a pulse. “Mother, she’s gone.”
“She can’t be!” Queen Maria insisted, pressing down on the wound on Nora’s stomach. “You don’t understand. King Matteo has broken through our army lines at Nance. He will be at our gates by tomorrow, and what do you think he’ll do when he finds her like this? Tortured and dead! The one thing he demanded was her safe return!”
His face fell. “He threatened to cut off Father’s head.”
“Do you really think a bloodthirsty man like that will be content with only your father’s death?” she spat, spittle running down her chin. “He’ll want the heads of our whole family and probably the entire court! You don’t understand the implications of torturing and murdering a royal princess. None of our allies will stop King Matteo from conquering our country and taking Urka as a bonus.”
“We hide the body,” Alexandre whispered.
Queen Maria shook her head. “That will only buy us hours at most.”
“Then we clean her up and call it an accident,” he said. “Come, take her legs and I’ll carry her shoulders. At least he will not find her in here.”
“It won’t make a difference,” Nora said, but, of course, they couldn’t hear her.
They carried her body out of the cell, through the rest of the dungeon, and up a flight of stairs. Nora floated helplessly behind them in the air.
Neither royal seemed to be used to much physical exertion, for once they reached the top of the stairs, they set her down on the clean marble floor. Queen Maria called for a footman. He was one of the tall men who had guarded her door. He lifted her body up easily and carried it the rest of the way to her room. The madams who had dressed her for her wedding shrieked at the sight of her. Queen Maria hushed them with only a look and directed the footman to lay her body on the bed. He carefully did so. Prince Alexandre looked as if he was going to be sick. The footman assisted him from the room.
“Madam Thomas and Madame Coutour,” Queen Maria said sharply as she left the room, “you will clean and dress her body. Cover any unsightliness.”
They would have to cover Nora’s entire body, then.
Still, the madams rushed around the room with their arms flapping. Madam Thomas carried a pitcher of water over and began to wash Nora’s bloodstained face. The cloth was pink before she even reached Nora’s neck. Madam Coutour carefully removed the bloodstained dress and torn underclothes.
It was odd, seeing her own naked body. Especially hovering above it like some strange sort of voyeur.
She watched the madams clean her entire body. Madam Thomas had to fetch five different pitchers of water. Madam Coutour rubbed a salve on all of her sores before wrapping them with white linen strips. They sewed Nora’s stomach up and then wrapped it tighter than a quilt. Then the two ladies, together, gently put on a chemise, foundation garment, and a black gown. Next, they combed out her violet hair.
For a moment, Nora feared that they would paint her face and create one of their horrendous coiffures in her hair, but they didn’t. Instead, they braided the left side of her hair the way she liked it. They left her face alone. She thought that cosmetics would have only made the swollenness and bruises more marked.
Madam Thomas placed Nora’s arms on her chest and Madam Coutour set a single purple carnation inside of them. They tore off the heads of dozens of dark purple carnations and spread them around her body. Then the two women gathered the headless stems and quietly left the room, leaving Nora alone with her dead body.
She tried to move, but she had no control over her wraithlike soul. All she could do was hover above her inanimate form. Nora wondered how long she would stay. She’d always believed that a person passed to the next life quickly. But her body had to have been dead for over an hour now.
Hours. And yet her soul remained.
Like Orla’s.
Aine’s.
And Eimhir’s.
The three sisters had become the mountains that covered the city of Yakura. The cost for breaking a blood oath. Not alive and not dead. A terrible in-between for all eternity. They could not pass to the Dhachaigh or any of the three realms of the Eternal Kingdom, where Màthair dwelled. Not even to the seven purgatories, the places for those who had not been faithful.
No, their souls were trapped on this earth.
Nora was stuck.
23
MATTEO
His horse and his cavalry soldiers were tired. He had not seen the main part of his army in nearly three days. They were somewhere on the road behind them. Matteo had met little resistance since the siege of Nance Château. If they kept their current pace, by the end of the day they would reach Château de Cruese. The last Kaulish military stronghold before the capital city and Haute-Rhône Palace, where Nora was being held.
Tortured.