“Well, now is as good a time as any to catch you up.”
15
AFTER DECLARING THAT his four patients are now stable and infused with enough healing aether to fully recover, William orders Sarah and Russ to watch over the room while he and I step out. Russ starts to complain, but William silences him with a single raised brow.
At the door, he beckons me to follow. I tell myself that I need to go because learning more about the Order is part of my mission, but a small voice inside whispers that the only reason I agree is the touch of rosy color finally returning to Nick’s cheeks.
We step out into the long fluorescent-lit basement hallway and head toward the elevator. Staring at it brings back a brief, hazy memory of talking to Russ as he brought me down to the infirmary. “You have an elevator?” I’d asked.
He’d smiled wryly and replied with, “We’ve got a lot of things.”
Once we’re inside, William opens a panel in the wall that Russ hadn’t used. He enters a code into a numeric keypad, then presses a square button that turns from black to orange. When the elevator lurches into motion, my stomach threatens to upend itself.
William regards me with unreadable gray eyes. “How’re my arms?”
I blink, confused. “Your arms?”
He nods down at my forearms where I’ve wrapped them around my chest. “I usually like to follow up with my patients, but you were taken away before I got a chance to.”
Fear washes through me. Rule One means I can’t tell him what I remember. “I… I’m not sure…”
He smirks. “No need for subterfuge. I’m a healer by inheritance and by nature. I genuinely want to know how your wounds are doing.”
At a loss for words, I thrust both forearms out. He takes my wrists and traces one forefinger up the inner skin of one arm, then the other. “Good. You took aether well.”
The elevator comes to a jerking stop. When I swallow down bile, William’s shrewd eyes narrow minutely. The doors open onto an even lower level and a similar long hallway, but he punches the button to keep them open.
“May I?” He gestures at the sticky, aching spot on my right cheek. I nod. But instead of touching me again, he sticks one hand out into the hallway, then chuckles at the look on my face. “Aether is everywhere, but it’s a bit like a cell signal. Hard to find in a metal box.” He glances up at the elevator by way of explanation. I watch as mage flame swirls and gathers in his palm. It solidifies into a thick, silver sauce that bleeds out over his hand, coating his fingers and the green leather cuff around his wrist. He steps closer, making eye contact first, and hovers three shining fingers over my cheek. The bright citrus smell of his casting flows between us, filling my nose.
The aether is cold—and it reminds me a bit of the slop of the uchel on my skin. I flinch, and William hums. “Deep breaths.” The cold spreads, soothing where it touches. There’s an itchy sensation, a quiet hiss, and the ache disappears. “Done.” A flick of his wrist, and the aether dissolves. “How do you feel? Dizzy?”
I take stock of my head, tilt it back and forth. “No. Not like last time.”
“Acclimating fast for a Onceborn,” he says thoughtfully.
“Thank you?”
He inclines his head in response and gestures to the hall. “Shall we?”
I step through, gnawing on my lower lip. He knows I was at the Lodge last night, but what else does he know?
William indicates a door at the far end of the hall. After a few seconds he speaks up, his voice casual. It feels like he’s read my mind. “I know there’s more to you than what you’re sharing, Page Matthews.” I begin to interject, but he holds up a hand, a soft smile on his lips. “I’m not Sel, so don’t worry. I didn’t bring you here to corner you. I don’t know what you’re hiding, and frankly, I don’t need or want to.”
I stop, completely stunned. “But—but aren’t you worried that—”
“That you’re an uchel?” He stops, too, and rolls his eyes. “Hardly. Sel is an incredible detective, the most powerful Merlin in a generation, but he’s also…”
“An asshole?”
He suppresses a smile. “I was going to say volatile. I think he’s wrong to antagonize you.”
I shake my head, unable to believe even this tiny bit of generosity. “But—”
“I trust Nicholas. He is our king and, more than that, he is my friend. Whatever you two have decided is none of my business. And”—his eyes soften—“you brought him back to us. Something tells me he wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”
My breath catches. Nick wouldn’t have been here tonight if it weren’t for me.
The world spins. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Sel was casting a mesmer, but this isn’t him. He didn’t do this.
Tonight was my choice, and it’s too much. Everything. All of it. Too much. I’d chosen a ruse to find the truth about my mother’s death. To find out the truth for myself. For my father. Maybe even to prove to Alice that I was right and she was wrong.
I didn’t choose the smell of decay still clinging to the back of my tongue, to the inside of my mouth. I didn’t choose the sound of Nick’s father’s spine shattering against an oak tree. The dull crack of Nick’s skull splitting open on stone.
My stomach turns again—and an arm wraps around my shoulders. “This way.” I stumble, and William pulls me tighter to his side as he pushes a door open. “Here we go.”
A stall door, a toilet. Then I’m on my knees heaving, retching, heaving again until it feels like everything I’ve ever eaten has exited my body.
When I’m done, I lean back on my heels. His hand rubs soothing circles around my back. A cool palm rests against my forehead. We sit in the quiet until my breath slows.
After a while, William hands me a lime-colored cloth handkerchief. I stare down at it, puzzled at the alarmingly bright fabric. I hear the smile in his voice. “It was my father’s. The Line of Gawain is what discerning people call ‘ostentatious.’ ” I hold the cloth, hesitant to use it, but he counters before I can say a word. “Please. I have an embarrassingly large amount in an embarrassingly green chest somewhere.”
I give a weak smile as I wipe my nose and mouth. When I’m done, he leads me to a cushioned bench near the bathroom’s sinks.
“Thank you.”
“No more of that.” He pats my knee and watches my face with attentive eyes. “Our world is… a lot.”
I inhale shakily. “Yes.”
He tilts his head. “And you’re sure you want to be in it?”
William’s question takes me by surprise. Am I sure? After tonight, am I truly sure? I think of my father and our conversation on the library steps. I can hear his voice even now. “… This thing that’s happening to us… I feel it too. I know it feels real bad.” He feels this pain, and yet he goes to work every day. Lives in our house with the echo of my mother every day, when I could barely stand it. I think of my mother and the stubbornness—no, the weakness—that kept me from speaking to her after a foolish fight.