“Oh, yes. Everywhere you turn, there’s a beach. The sand is almost white, but in some places it’s gold. There are islands around underwater volcanoes that have red and black sand, brought in by the ocean in lazy waves. The beaches there look striped. Red. Black. Red. Black. And then the jungle rises, green and filled with all kinds of interesting creatures.”

“I would love to go there someday,” he replied, seconds away from falling asleep.

“Maybe you will. I’ll be more than happy to show you around,” I said, though I knew it was a lie. If we didn’t find a cure within a fortnight, I doubted he’d survive. The disease had a rapid and vicious progression after its incubation period, from what I could tell.

If I couldn’t save him, I could at least try to save the millions of other Aeternae who were also at risk. It took me another twenty minutes and a little bit of chitchat with the patients during their brief moments of consciousness, but I managed to collect blood samples from all five.

The nurses returned with the blood they’d gathered from the Rimians and the Naloreans who shared workspaces with these Aeternae, neatly tucked into a small wooden tray, with a soft layer of linen underneath. I slipped my vials into my bag, along with the catheter, and discarded the needles in a trash box in the corner.

I followed Petra out of the infirmary and into another room of the quarantine, where she’d had some of the medical equipment brought in from upstairs. “You can test the samples here,” she said, pointing at a microscope. “Our servants found another one of these in the fifth study room, so I thought you could use it.”

“You want me to study the blood down here, and not in my lab?” I asked, slightly surprised, feeling as though she was keen to keep me in the quarantine area, for some reason.

“Is that a problem?” Petra replied, one eyebrow arched.

Shaking my head, I put the bag on the edge of the table, along with the servant samples, and took the Aeternae vials out again. I wasn’t sure why, but there was something about this room that made me feel uneasy. Maybe it had something to do with the absence of natural light, since we were way deep in the basement.

“No,” I said. “I just thought I’d be allowed to go back up and do my tests there.”

“You told me what equipment you needed, so I had it delivered to you in this room,” Petra insisted. “The thing is… Amal, if you identify someone as the carrier, I need the gold guards to act as discreetly as possible to bring them down here. The fewer people who see you doing your work on this, the better.”

It made sense, but it didn’t soothe my bubbling anxiety. I doubted anything could, at least until my sister came here. She was already preparing her own kits and equipment, and I wanted to have as much data for her as possible upon her arrival. I missed Amane, now more than ever. We’d been here for less than a week, but our sibling synergy had always given me a healthier state of mind.

I didn’t like the fact that Ridan wasn’t allowed to join her. I would’ve felt a lot more comfortable knowing we had a dragon handy, but hey… their planet, their rules. Besides, what was there for me to worry about so much as to need a dragon? Ridan’s fire could do nothing to heal the Black Fever. As for the Darklings, our crew was more than capable of taking them out, once they learned more about them… once they identified the ringleader.

“Do you need any help?” Petra asked, watching as I dripped a bit of blood on several glass squares, marking them with specific numbers so I wouldn’t lose track of whom they belonged to.

“No, thank you. Perhaps just the company. This room feels so empty and cold.”

I slipped the first glass under the microscope lens, my notebook and pen ready for conclusions. My hand moved quickly, jotting down first impressions, as the molecules struggled in blackness before my very eyes. On a microscopic level, the Aeternae blood looked even worse. No wonder their brains were so poorly oxygenated. It was as thick and as cluttered as black oil pumped straight out of the bowels of the earth.

“It has always been imbued with death,” Petra replied, settling into a chair close to me. “This whole place has seen so much suffering. So many lives lost… I suppose the trauma remains, long after the trouble is gone. Maybe that’s what you’re feeling.”

“Don’t you feel it?” I asked, checking several Rimian and Nalorean blood samples next.

She sighed deeply. “I suppose. But I’ve experienced this dreadfulness so many times, I’m beginning to think I’ve developed some sort of immunity to it. It doesn’t hurt as much. Or maybe I’ve just gotten used to it.”

“Oh, snap,” I whispered, noticing a cluster of small black dots attached to the edge of a Rimian molecule. Making a note of it, along with the servant’s name and assigned location, it began to make sense.

“What is it?” Petra replied, visibly alarmed.

“I think I’ve found a carrier: Leila Baridis. Do you know her?”

The blood drained from her cheeks. “She’s one of the kitchen girls, I think. You mean to tell me the carrier is in the kitchen? The kitchen. The perfect breeding ground for the Black Fever?!”

“Hold on, it’s not her fault. She probably doesn’t even know she has it,” I said.

Petra shot to her feet and called out to the nurses. “Take a couple of gold guards with you and bring Leila Baridis from the kitchen down here!” she shouted. “Have her quarantined in one of the white cells, and make sure it’s all done with as little noise as possible.”

“Yes, High Priestess,” one of the Aeternae nurses replied, and I could hear their footsteps shuffling across the floor. I couldn’t see them from where I sat, but I didn’t have to in order to understand the urgency of the situation.

“What will happen to her?” I asked, throwing the glass plates into a clear bag for later cleaning. Petra looked at me and offered a dry half-smile.

“Relax, we’re not going to hurt her. Like you said, she’s an innocent carrier. But I must keep her away from the others,” she replied. “Have you checked other servants? Is anyone else like Leila?”

I shook my head. “She is the only one.”

“Then hopefully it will not spread far.”

“You’ll have to run another palace-wide test. Blood samples from every single Aeternae. All the shifts, all the personnel… even the Lord and Lady Supreme and anyone else who has set foot in this place over the past couple of weeks. If Leila has been working in the kitchen, then chances are there might be others infected, who are not yet aware of it.”

A sense of urgency washed over me, sending liquid fire flowing through my veins. Petra seemed equally concerned, though she did the best she could to stay calm. Her hands were shaking.

“That’s a lot of people,” she mumbled, almost staring through me.

“It must be done, to stop it before it spreads,” I said.

“Take your things. Let’s get you back into the study room upstairs, in the meantime. I suppose you still have work on your desired day-walking protein,” Petra replied after a long pause.

“Are you sure?” I asked. After wanting me down here for a while longer, she was now in a rush to send me back up into the palace. The levels of hot and cold with this woman were intriguing.

She’d gotten what she’d wanted from me, so she didn’t feel like babysitting me in the basement infirmary anymore. “Let’s go,” she said. “Pack your things. Come on.”

“What about Leila?”

“She’s going into quarantine. I told you that already!”

Slipping the tagged vials into my kit bag, I realized that I wasn’t satisfied with that answer. “But will she be safe? Can the nurses be trusted? Or the gold guards? Especially considering what happened last night… and what happened to Nethissis…” My voice faded, the grief rushing back with a vengeance.

Petra’s gaze darkened to a navy blue. “What happened to your friend was most likely an unfortunate accident. She wouldn’t be the first to die because of those foxes. As for Leila, she’s under my protection. No one would dare to hurt the girl. As long as she is quarantined, she will be left alone.”

I had to make do with this rationalization. I didn’t have to like it, but I had to accept it, at least for the time being. Collecting the rest of my things and zipping my bag up, I followed Petra back out into the main infirmary hall.

Minutes later, we were already on the ground floor. Passing by the kitchen, I caught a glimpse of two guards waiting in the wide doorway, while the nurses talked to a Rimian girl—I assumed that was Leila. They spoke in hushed tones, but her expression told me everything I needed to know.

Leila was terrified but compliant. I worried about her, now more than ever.

Petra might’ve gotten me out of the infirmary, but I was already determined to go back there tonight, ideally under an invisibility spell, so I could see for myself exactly what Leila’s conditions would be.

Again, I found myself thinking that something didn’t feel right, but my instinct was not a precise tool, especially not without Amane by my side. I’d figure it out, sooner or later… this missing puzzle piece that made everything feel so disconnected and muted, yet dangerous.

Esme

When Kalon came to, he was partially submerged in the cold-water tub on the first floor of the Nalorean woman’s house. Her name, I’d learned, was Fifelle. The Rimian faction member was also awake but tied up and unable to move or speak—only groaning and moaning in protest, as he squirmed and repeatedly failed to free himself.

Kalon sucked in a loud breath, sitting up from the ice-water shock. Having been so deeply asleep until now, he hadn’t realized the sort of frozen hell he was coming back to. Fifteen minutes had passed since he’d fallen, and I needed us out of here as quickly as possible.

Fifelle had brought all the ice she’d been able to scrape off the box in her kitchen, and I’d used towels soaked in cold water to rub Kalon’s face, hoping to wake him up quickly.