It’s the same female voice that wakes me. Her tone is sharp and demanding, and there’s a male’s voice too.

Gunter.

At least I’m not alone with her.

I know where I am now, but I’d rather not.

So I keep my eyes sealed shut and focus on the crackling of brush in the fireplace. I focus on the warmth radiating in the cozy room that breathes life into my aching limbs. I focus on the warm quilts that fasten me to the bed.

And I pretend that I’m home. That my father is stoking the fire and that mother quilted my bedsheets herself and that it’s Zora’s voice whining and demanding in my ear.

I forget to keep my breathing shallow with sleep, though, and I’m only Fates-blessed with a few fleeting moments before the queen realizes I’m awake.

“Farin? Oh, Farin.”

The name makes the muscles in my shoulders tense, but it’s nothing like how they react when the queen rushes to my side and runs her fingers through my hair, wiping the sweat from my forehead with her palm.

When she buries her head into my chest and presses her ear against my ribcage, as if to feel the steady thrum of my heartbeat, I squeeze my eyes shut to hold back the tears.

My chest starts to heave in short bursts, and though I can feel it rising and falling, it’s as if the air does me no good. As if my body has lost the ability to use it. Something howls, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s me gasping for air.

“Farin? Farin,” the queen says, and as soon as she removes her head from my chest, some of the air slips through to my lungs.

But there’s no time to be relieved because now she’s clutching my face, forcing my eyelids open with her cold, spindly fingers, and I feel as though my ribs might crack.

I’ve never really understood the urge to lash out, not like Zora does, as if the spirit of the wind overtakes her body and she has no say in the matter.

But when the queen pries my eyes open and forces me to look into her cold, dead gaze, I lash.

The queen isn’t ready for it when I claw at her face, digging my fingernails into any bit of flesh I can get my hands on. I barely miss her right eye, and she screams, a horrified, childlike sound that I wouldn’t have expected from her.

“That’s not my name!” I cry, and I find the words are fueled by rage, and rage takes a whole lot of breath, and my body is cooperating again, feeding me with the surrounding air, and when I get a taste of it, I’m not eager to stop lest I suffocate again. “My name is Nox and you will never be my mother and I will never be him!”

The queen jerks away from me, shock and hurt petrified into her whitewashed features.

I find I like the look of it—the queen in pain.

There are three dark lines streaked across her face. They’re already starting to knit back together, so I make sure to memorize them. To etch them into my memory, never to forget it was me who drew the queen’s blood.

“Restrain him,” the queen tells Gunter, her voice utterly devoid of the agony that lingers in her pale eyes, in the way her slender shoulders droop. “The child is clearly still feverish. We wouldn’t want him to harm himself while he remains in this state.”

Gunter does as he’s told, his hands gentle, but the leather restraints he wraps around my arms aren’t necessary, because I’ve managed to hurt the queen, and that’s all I needed to calm me.

I spend the next few days in and out of consciousness. I think Gunter might have added fortuinata leaves to the concoction he gives me to assuage my fever. I try to make myself remember to ask him about it every time I wake, but each time, the thought flees me.

One day, Gunter is called away, and I’m left with a guard to watch over me instead of a physician.

I suppose this either means the queen is confident in my recovery, or she wouldn’t mind if I convulsed and there was no one here to rescue me.

After I clawed her face, I figure the latter is likely.

Gunter is still gone, and his absence gnaws a hole in my stomach—which is empty already because everything the servants bring me in stone bowls keeps coming back up, much to my guard’s chagrin.

I’m contemplating how long I can go without keeping down food, when the creaking door gets my attention.

Relief sags at my shoulders at first, because I think it’s Gunter, finally returned, but it’s not Gunter at all.

It’s the queen, looking regal as always with her shimmering silver dress and her hair pulled tight against her skull.

But I’m not looking at the queen.

I’m looking at what she’s holding in her arms.

There’s nothing in my stomach, so when I retch, nothing comes up this time.

The queen’s nose wrinkles in disgust. “My darling Farin,” she says, her voice silky in a way that only furthers my sickness. “Don’t think this didn’t hurt me more than it hurt you. But you must understand, it’s my responsibility as your mother to ensure you understand that your actions have consequences.”

I can’t hear her. Not really. Only in the muffled sort of way.

Because what the queen is holding in her arms is the body of a girl. The way the queen has her arms does nothing to support the girl’s head, so it hangs back limply, exposing her neck, her golden hair falling, almost scraping the floor.

When I lurch to my feet, they give out on me, needles prickling my skin and making it so I can’t support my weight.

I crawl over to her, dragging the bedsheets with me. I’m hardly aware of the hot tears coating my cheeks. Or perhaps it’s sweat. I can’t really tell.

All I know is that when I reach the queen and force myself to stand, though my legs scream at me not to, the girl’s eyes are closed.

“Zora,” I say, whispering my sister’s name. She doesn’t answer, doesn’t as much as flinch, so I call her name louder.

My throat is dry, and she still doesn’t stir.

“ZORA,” I cry, and now I’m shaking her shoulders, and I’m not being gentle enough, but I don’t really care.

“I need you to understand,” says the queen, “how I would have felt if my guards hadn’t made it to you in time.”

I can barely hear her, because now I’m weeping, chanting the same phrase over and over as if it’s an incantation. “Zora, please wake up. Please wake up.”

She doesn’t.

CHAPTER 22

NOX

When the queen’s guards finally come for me, I’ve hardly the sense to pull my robes on.

I can’t remember when they came off. Sometime during my hallucinations, I suppose.

An impatient knock on my door pulls me out of a fitful slumber I don’t remember consenting to. I don’t even remember crawling back to my rooms.