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“She is trouble,” Ziven mutters, but we both hear him. Ruelle smiles.

“Carry on,” she urges.

“Sometimes I need healers, not all of the time. Thankfully, my monthlies only come once every six months, not regularly like most fae. It’s caused by this affliction I have.” The light fades from her markings, and I notice her magic drop from the air, from my body. She is good. I don’t think any healer has ever made the pain turn from terrible to a simple ache.

Ruelle clamps her hands together. “I’ve never heard of this illness or treated it.” She looks over her shoulder at Ziven. Whatever he sees in her face makes a tic appear in his jaw. “I’ve been a healer for a long time, girl, and I feel sorry for you. When you need me, you better call. I will come to you, in the Sun or Moon Dynasty. It does not matter.” She shakes her head. “And if I hear of you pretending to be fine and going to training, I will personally be very offended.”

“Offending Ruelle is a deadly mistake,” Ziven murmurs. A joke from the king of grumpy?

Ruelle smiles and touches my hand. “Rest. I’ll be back later, but for now, you seem well enough to get some sleep. When you were passed out, I changed your clothes. I wanted you to know it was only me.”

I gulp. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do any⁠—”

“Once a healer, always a healer. I took a vow to help people once, so many years ago, before I became a rider. It stays with you,” she answers, picking up her walking stick.

I don’t know why it shocks me. “You’re a rider?”

Ruelle places both her hands on the stick, her wrinkled face smiling at me. “Of course, I am. Do I look like the type of woman to not attempt the Decidere and win myself a dragon?” I can’t help but laugh. She does look like a wild woman, and Ruelle doesn’t need my answer. She glances at Ziven when she gets to the door. “I will leave you, my king. Be nice to her.”

I glance at my enemy in the corner, watching him as he watches me right back. I gulp again. “Let me guess, you’re here to laugh and gloat that I’m so weak and pathetic. Don’t bother. I already know I am all those things and worse.”

“Eat.” He points at the plate of food at the bottom of the bed. “You need your strength.” My stomach rumbles as I follow his gaze. There is a tray with plates of pasta, freshly cooked lemon herb chicken, and two glasses of water. The pasta and chicken have been a firm favourite of mine. I always pick it for dinner with Daegan, and it’s the only food I eat from the food left in my room. How did he know? Was he watching? Two books are next to the tray, one I got yesterday from Mazzis and the other I haven’t seen before.

He walks to the door, and I should be happy he is leaving, but I’m not. “Really? That’s all you’re going to say. You just found out the woman you hate has an illness that makes her weak and pathetic. You just won. Why aren’t you gloating?”

He says nothing, but he tightens his grip on the door handle so much it sounds like the metal is bending. “Storm, your body may decide to betray you occasionally, but it does not mean you’re weak. It does not mean you’re pathetic. Do not call yourself that shit again, or I will make your training ten times fucking harder. Only I get to insult you, no one else. Not even you.” He looks back at me, and the pure fury in his eyes makes my heart leap. “We will train when you’re healed. Next time, you will inform me that you’re not well.”

“You’re acting like you actually care about your enemy,” I whisper. “Someone you think is a spy, here to destroy you all. A traitor.”

“You will always be a traitor and enemy to me, Storm,” he snarls, pulling the door open. “But there are some fates I don’t wish on even my enemy. Get well.”

He walks out, shutting the door behind him, leaving me as confused as ever. Does he hate me still? Likely. Either way, I’m going to rest because I do need it, and then I can get back to training by tomorrow. I eat the dinner before picking up the new book, pulling it open to the first page. A silver note with sprawling black ink is taped to the first page.

Storm,

As you like books so much,

maybe they can teach you alongside me.

Read this.

Ziven.

I blink, turning the page and seeing it is a book full of drawings and descriptions on fighting. The first page is how to effectively block a hit to the face. I’m surprised enough that a small laugh bubbles out of my throat. I read for a few minutes before the bricks move in the frame on the wall and Hettie is climbing through, two cupcakes in her hands as usual. “I heard you weren’t well. They told me I couldn’t come anywhere near you just in case it was a sickness that was contagious, but Ruelle just told me it’s not.” She kicks her legs. “Are you okay? Can I come in?”

“Better now you’re here to keep me company.” My answer makes her entire face light up.

She comes over and hands me a cupcake before climbing into the bed at my side, pulling the blanket over her legs. “When you’re not well, cupcakes always help. My grandmother told me that chocolate is the best fix for the broken soul.”

I think I like Ruelle more and more. “I like that. Thanks for coming. I needed a friend.” I take one of the cupcakes from her and notice she seems hesitant. “Are you alright?”

“Can I ask you something? You don’t have to say yes.”

After a bite of the cupcake, I tilt my head to the side. “Ask away.”

I don’t know what I expected her to ask, but she slightly surprises me. “Can you tell me what it’s like outside?” Her eyes are so full of hope that I pause. How do you tell a child that the world she has dreamt of is awful and being in here means she was lucky? I don’t need to ask why she wants to know. I couldn’t imagine my entire life beginning and ending in this place. It’s great in here on the surface, but it’s still a trap she cannot leave. “Have you been to the sea?”

“I’ve not been to it, but I’ve seen it, though, in the distance,” I explain, and she patiently waits. “Where I was brought up, it was in thick forests. The trees are so tall they look like they kiss the skies. They’re not as tall as the trees in this forest, and they’re different colours. The ones I grew up with are the darkest burning green in the hot summer, and when it gets cold, they turn black. Not a horrid black, but like a shiny black stone. When the leaves finally fall from the tree, usually a few weeks before snow begins to fall, they turn this beautiful, almost silver colour. I used to run through the silver leaves in the wind, pretending I was flying with birds in the sky.”

I smile to myself, remembering the days that were so simple, so easy. My mother protected me from everything so I could have an innocent childhood. It was good and I owe her for the years I can remember. They are memories I can cling to now, looking back. “The community I lived in was by a massive river, which had an enormous beach bed next to it full of sand and pebbles. As a kid, my mother used to take me with other kids to collect all the pebbles, bring them back and dry them in the sun. Some of the fae women would mix paints for us, and we’d have little competitions about who made the most beautiful or unique rock. I was never very artistic, so I drew a smiley face on mine and kept it as a pet for about two years before I accidentally dropped it in the river, and it was gone. I cried for two weeks.”

She giggles. “A rock as a pet?”

I tickle her, making her laugh with me. “Well, Miss Hettie, pets weren’t allowed where I was from. They don’t… They tend to be known to breed disease by the vampyres, so they don’t allow you to have them. I desperately wanted a pet when I was a kid, and the rock was my best bet. It was called Rocky. I was also not very creative when I was seven.”

She laughs with me, laughing so much that tears leave her eyes. “I want a dragon,” she tells me when she has calmed. “I can’t believe there are no dragons outside. I thought there was and they were waiting for us or something. There’s so many here. I hear them calling to me in my dreams. I haven’t told Ziven yet. Like you, I feel the calling. Maybe we will ride together when I’m older.”

I almost frown at her before I hide my reaction. How do I tell her I never heard a calling? I don’t even know what it means, or what if she is suggesting I need to hear a calling to find a dragon? She leans back on the bed, and I follow her, wanting to lie down myself. “Tell me more, Story. Please!”

For a long time, I tell her about the cities that are beautiful and the castles, filling her mind with them without telling her the truth about what those places are really like. We talk for ages until I feel so exhausted my eyes start to drift shut. She curls up next to me and falls asleep at my side right before I follow her. A rustle wakes me, and my eyes widen. I look up to find Ziven standing over me, leaning down and picking Hettie up. I pretend to be asleep as he kisses her head and carries her to the door, looking back at me once. I can feel his eyes on me for a long time, even if I don’t dare open my own. I wonder if he’s furious that she’s been in here when she isn’t allowed. He doesn’t say anything before he steps out the door and it shuts softly behind him. The moon breaks through the thick clouds, beams shining through the window onto my face and lulling me straight back to sleep.

Chapter Fourteen