Eirhan was frowning at me. “Is Your Grace all right?” He took my elbow. “You don’t need to see this. My guard will escort you back to your rooms and cancel the morning order.”
“What’s the point?” I said, too weary to try to pretend. Too weary to try to cross him.
“You still have to prepare for the trial Below. It’s unlikely your father will be better by then, and—what?”
He spoke so naturally. As though my life hadn’t changed forever half an hour ago. “You don’t know?”
Eirhan’s face drained of color, and the sinking feeling in my stomach was back. Your life just got a lot more complicated, said the detached part of me. Or maybe Eirhan was a better actor than I’d believed. “Know what, Your Grace?”
The smell hit us like a wall as we entered Father’s antechamber. I pressed my hand over my nose and kept moving, though I heard Aino cough in the doorway. The chamber was strewn with my siblings, all lying motionless. “Are they…?” I said through my fingers.
“Alive, Your Grace,” said Munna.
I passed them and went into my father’s bedchamber. There the smell was worse, and my empty stomach flipped. I focused on the table at the side of the room, overfilled with Farhod’s herbs. Wormwood, lobelia, mountain poppy, seathorn root. Herbs to purge, to clear airways, to reduce swelling. If I looked at the herbs, I didn’t have to look at my father.
Eirhan walked past me to the bed. Mother’s chest rose and fell shallowly. Next to her, Father was terribly still. “What’s going on? What exactly happened?”
“It began around three,” Munna said. “Everything was as it had been, then… his lungs filled faster than we could drain them. It was as though he drowned.”
I didn’t look at my father’s pale hands, at the gray cast to his skin. I didn’t look at his soaking clothes, at the fluid that still dripped from his chin, from the side of his ear.
“We tried what we could. But… it was difficult when the alchemist fell, too,” Munna said.
“What?” My hand flew away from my mouth, and I nearly dry-heaved as I gasped in the full acrid stench.
“Interesting,” Eirhan said.
Interesting? I would kill him. I would obliterate everything that had ever been his.
Not Farhod. Not one of the only people who believed in me.
“No one else has fallen to the curse since it took hold. Why him?” Eirhan said.
“Where is Farhod?” I interrupted. Munna nodded to a corner, darker than the rest. I’d been so fixated on my father I hadn’t stopped to count the number of shapes sleeping on the floor.
Farhod’s brown skin had grayed. When I touched a finger to his neck, I could barely find a pulse. A catheter dangled from his nose.
“Why was I not immediately informed?” Eirhan demanded of the guard in a low voice.
“We sent out messengers to alert Her Grace and the council—”
“That’s not how things work around here. I am told first. You don’t determine whether to interrupt Her Grace’s sleep or what the council needs to know. You tell me when there’s a development.”
“Her Grace would have wanted to know,” Aino said.
“Her Grace is under too much pressure as it is,” snapped Eirhan. “Look at her.”
I lifted the blanket and tugged it gently under Farhod’s chin. Then I drew in a breath to sob, and my stomach revolted. I leaned over the bedpan next to Farhod and noisily threw up.
Aino and Inkar installed me in the family library and gave me a cup of coffee to warm my hands. Breakfast sat untouched on a silver tray. Snow fell, turning the world to a gray palette. Fitting, really. Gray was the color of mourning.
Messengers had been sent out to cry the news among the people. On the horizon, a bright dot burned—a bonfire set by Sigis’s army to celebrate the dead duke or the living king, or to proclaim that they were still there. I imagined Sigis and Eirhan together, wearing identical smirks, watching their plans come to fruition. My blood fizzed.
The winter roses twined in the corners of the room, reaching out with blue-tinted petals. They seemed to crowd me. I pulled my knees up to my chest.
The door clicked, and Eirhan came in. “My condolences, Your Grace.”
“Thank you,” I replied without much attempt at sincerity.
He took a breath, as though he wanted to say something. Then another. I should have felt victorious for making Eirhan uneasy. But I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything. Finally, he spoke in Kylmian. “I realize it’s a difficult time, but we need to plan your next move.”
I shrugged. I looked at the messenger bowl, silent in its corner. Did Below know? Did the faintly rippling water provide them with something more than a portal for notes and lost earrings and other useless things? “What’s the point? I only wanted to stay until Father woke up. And now—” Now he was dead. And one of my only allies might as well be.
“Stop whining.” Eirhan’s voice was full of venom. I looked up, too surprised to say anything. Eirhan began to pace, tapping his pale fist against the air as if he held a conductor’s baton. “The trial Below is tomorrow. Your father’s death means that no one will trust Lyosha to wake. If Sigis wins the trial, your ministry won’t think twice about making him duke instead of you. And what do you think will happen then? Will Sigis send you off to live in exile? Will he let you study at the university or make you stay in the palace? Right now, you have three choices: win the trials, marry Sigis, or die. And if you lose the trials…”
Grand dukes got grand weddings. Or grand deaths.
“You can’t speak to her like that,” Aino said coldly.
“When Her Grace starts acting like an adult, I’ll start speaking to her like one,” Eirhan replied. “You’ve had five days to impress the court, and what have you done? Insisted you should find the cure for the uncurable, failed to broker relations with any of the delegates, and married the worst possible bride.”
Inkar followed the exchange with a wrinkled brow. “I do not understand what he says. But I do not like it,” she said to me in Drysian.
“I never wanted to be grand duke—” I began.
“Well, you are,” Eirhan snarled. “Are you willing to do what it takes to survive? Are you willing to do what it takes to keep the people around you alive?”
The air was as thick as water. Was he threatening Aino? Inkar? Would he kill them to keep me in line? Should I let Eirhan act as grand duke for me if it meant he’d leave them alone?
Eirhan took my silence for compliance. “Good. I’ll have someone answer your letters of condolence; they’re already piling up. Now: the plan. We’ll make Below a counteroffer on their trade agreement. If they like it, they’ll help you win.”
I tried to clear my mind of its fog, to focus on what Eirhan said, and not on how much I hated him right now. “I have to win by cheating?”
“Don’t act so noble. Your throne is on the line, and Sigis will do whatever he can to take it. But if you win the trial Below, you’ll look stronger in the eyes of the court. You’ll have demonstrated strength and spine. That’s when you send Inkar home.”