Faking a dangerous ailment to get out of training wasn’t my proudest moment, but the opportunity dropped into my lap, and I couldn’t let it pass me by.
I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling, trying not to feel guilty. I was exhausted and bruised, and my mind had started trying to convince me that maybe I had a fatal illness after all. Back home, I would have been googling my body’s normal functions like they were symptoms, self-diagnosing with four different diseases and deciding that I had mere hours left to live—my go-to hobby.
Touch grass,I told myself.
An image of Courtney smiling as she placed a daisy chain on a little village girl’s head floated into my mind’s eye. It destroyed me when she was nice, wrecked all of my carefully crafted convictions that she was The Worst. Slipping a hand into my pocket, I found the pebble she gave me and pressed it hard into my palm.
My bedroom door flew open, and Courtney marched in. She stood over my bed and crossed her arms, eyes half-lidded. I’d changed out of my clothes into fresh pants, but she still wore thepink dress from earlier, now dirtied and torn. “You are being so dramatic. I’ve faked plenty of illnesses to get out of work in my day, but convincing everyone you haveedematakes the cake.”
“I’m dying,” I rasped, letting out a feeble cough. “Show some compassion.”
“So this is it, then. You’re giving up.” She pressed her lips together, giving me a weird look. All morning she’d been looking at me like that, eyes boring into me like she wanted to eat me alive. Likely, she was actually planning to eat me, maybe chopped up in a stew or something.
“No.” I moaned, throwing an arm over my eyes. “I’m sick. There’s a difference. I’m unfit for fighting dragons and overthrowing darkness and competing to be a Chosen One and whatever the hell else we’re supposed to be doing.”
Unexpectedly, her voice softened. “You put up a good fight, soldier.”
“Yeah?” I lowered my elbow and peeked over my arm.
“Ohyeah,” she said in an extremely patronizing way.
“I don’t love your tone.”
A smile tugged at her mouth. God, she was acting weirder than normal. I side-eyed her, my paranoia kicking into overdrive. I wanted to demand she tell me what she wanted from me—why she could never let me go.
Courtney walked over to the washbasin and wet the rag hanging there. Returning, she sat at my side, bending over me to dab at a cut above my eyebrow. “What tone would you prefer?Oh yeah.” The way she said those two words was borderline indecent, and now I really didn’t love her tone for the way it made a hard thrum of desire pound against the inside of my skin.
I swatted her hand away. “You are the worst caretaker. You’re, like, a caretaker. You take all the caring away.”
“Au contraire.” Her smile dripped with venom. “I’ve arranged for the best physician in the land to see to your affliction.” She snapped her fingers, and a gaunt-faced man wearing a slouchyred hat and carrying a bowl entered. “Gird your loins, Bryce,” she said.
The physician walked closer, closer, closer.
I shrank against the headboard. “Why are my loins in need of girding, Courtney? Are my loins in danger?Courtney?”
“It is time for your bloodletting,” the physician intoned. He reached into the bowl and plucked out a slimy black leech. With a crazed expression somewhere between reverence and fascination, the physician lowered the leech toward my naked chest.
A strangled sound left my mouth. I leaped out from under my blankets and hid behind Courtney. “You absolutetonsil stone,” I snarled into her ear.
“Look at that,” she said. “He’s healed. A Christmas miracle.”
Looking disappointed, the physician let the leech plop back into the bowl.
“We won’t be needing you anymore.” Courtney waved the physician out of the room before turning to face me. “This was the saddest cry for help I’ve ever seen.” Scooting closer, she knelt beside me and went back to dabbing at the scrapes that covered my body.
I caught her wrist. She was so close that, when she looked up, I could feel the air move past my mouth as she inhaled. When I told Courtney to have some compassion, I didn’t expect she would listen. Yet she’d helped me in her own twisted way by getting me out of bed when I felt bad. I couldn’t bear it. Her caring about me made me feel happy, and all my happiest memories were drowned by the hurricane of misery that followed.
“You and I are gonna save the fucking world, Bryce,” she said, a grit to her voice I’d never heard before.
I didn’t know what had brought about her new determination, but in that moment, I believed anything was possible, so long as it was proceeded by the wordsyou and Iin that resolute tone of hers.
My bedroom door opened for a third time, and Amy hobbledin. “Lady Courtney, you are going to miss the council meeting.” He looked between us. “Bryce, glad to see you are feeling better. You can join us. I imagine we will talk long into the night!”
Long, boring council meetings were a favorite hobby of the castle’s inhabitants. You could make a comment on the weather, and they’d call a council meeting to order to discuss what implications the day’s forecast might have for the next seventeen harvest seasons.
“What’s the meeting about?” I asked.
“Our general, Theodora Thimblepop, has gone missing,” said Amy, and Courtney’s spine went rigid. “She was apparently swiped right off the streets last night as she was doing her rounds.”
