Jacin paused to take in the sight, thinking maybe Levana wasn’t paranoid after all. Maybe the people really did love Winter enough that she was a threat to her stepmother’s crown, despite not having royal blood.
The vial grew warm in his palm. All the voices muffled in his ears, replaced with the tinny ring of the tank’s machinery, the constant hum of the life support, a beep from the screen that displayed her vitals.
Jacin swiped his arm across the top, scattering the flowers. Beneath the glass, Winter looked like she was sleeping, except the preservation liquid gave her skin a bluish tinge, making her appear sickly and drawing attention to the scars on her face.
Then there was the rash. Raised rings of darkened flesh scattered across her hands and up her arms and neck. A few had appeared on her chin and around her ears. Jacin focused again on her hands, and though it was difficult to tell with her brown skin and the tinted liquid, he could see a shadow around her fingernails. The last fatal mark of the blue fever.
Despite everything, she still looked like perfection, at least to him. Her curly hair was buoyant in the tank’s gel and her full lips were turned upward. It was like she was going to open her eyes and smile at him, any minute now. That teasing, taunting, irresistible smile.
“The tank has slowed down her biological systems, including the progression of the disease.”
Jacin started. An elderly man stood on the other side of the tank with a mask over his mouth and nose. At first Jacin assumed the mask was to keep him from catching the disease, but then he saw the bruises creeping out from beneath the man’s sleeves and realized it was to keep himself from contributing to its spread.
“But it hasn’t stopped the disease entirely,” the man added.
“Are you a doctor?”
He nodded. “If we open the tank, and your antidote doesn’t work, she will die, probably within the hour.”
“How long will she live if we leave her in there?”
The doctor’s eyes fell down to the princess’s face, then darted to the screen embedded at the foot of the tank. “A week, optimistically.”
“Pessimistically?”
“A day or two.”
Clenching his teeth, Jacin held up the vial. “This is the antidote from Her Majesty’s own labs. It will work.”
The man’s eyes crinkled and he glanced past Jacin. Turning, Jacin saw that Cinder and Scarlet had followed him, though they were standing a respectful distance back.
“Winter would trust him with her life,” said Scarlet. “I say we open it.”
The doctor hesitated a moment longer before moving to the foot of the tank and tapping some commands into the screen.
Jacin tensed.
It took a moment to notice any difference, but then he saw a bubble of air form against the glass encasement as the liquid drained out through the bottom, complete with the quiet sound of it being sucked through some invisible tubing. Winter’s profile emerged above the blue-tinted liquid. The difference was striking, to see the lingering redness in her lips and the occasional flutter beneath her eyelids.
She was not a corpse.
She was not dead.
He was going to save her.
Once the liquid had drained, the doctor tapped at the screen again and the lid opened, sliding off the base on skinny rails, leaving a shallow bed where Winter lay.
Her hair, damp from the gel, had settled in limp clumps around her face, and her skin glistened where the light struck her. Jacin reached for her hands, unlacing her fingers so he could slip his own palm beneath hers. Her skin was slick and the blue tinge around her fingernails was obvious now.
The doctor started to remove the needles and tubes from her body, the life forces that had kept her blood oxygenated without breath, that had kept her brain and heart functioning while she slept in peaceful stasis. Jacin’s gaze followed his deft, wrinkled hands, ready to knock the old man away if he thought he was doing something wrong. But his hands were steady and practiced.
Slowly, Winter’s body began to recognize that it was no longer being assisted. Her chest started to rise and fall. Her cold fingers twitched. Jacin set the vial beside her body and lowered himself to his knees amid the scattered branches and flowers. He placed two fingers against her wrist. The pulse was there, growing stronger.
His gaze returned to her face, waiting for the moment when her eyelids would open. When she would be awake and alive and, once again, completely unattainable.
He flinched. It was all too surreal, and he’d almost forgotten. Winter, crowned with flowers and resting upon a bower of tree branches. She was still a princess, and he was still nothing.
The reminder haunted him as he waited. Memorizing her sleeping face, the feel of her hand in his, the fantasy of what it would be like to witness her still, sleeping form each day.
A footstep padded behind him and he remembered that they had an audience. The crowd was pushing in, not so close as to be suffocating, but closer than he would have liked, given that he’d forgotten they were there at all.
And here he’d been thinking of bedrooms and daybreaks.
Scrambling to his feet, Jacin waved his hand at the crowd. “Don’t you have an uprising to plan or something?”
“We just want to know she’s all right,” said Scarlet. She was holding an empty vial in one hand.
“She’s waking up,” said the doctor.
Jacin swiveled back around in time to see her eyelashes twitch.
The doctor had one hand on Winter’s shoulder, the other holding a portscreen over her body to monitor her systems. “Organs are reacting normally to the reanimation process. Her throat and lungs will be sore for a while, but I suggest we go ahead and give her the antidote now.”
Winter’s eyes opened, her pupils dilated. Jacin gripped the edge of the tank. “Princess?”
She blinked rapidly a few times, as if trying to shake the remnants of oil from her lashes. She focused on Jacin.
Though he tried to stifle it, Jacin grinned, overwhelmed with relief. There had been so many moments when he’d been sure he would never see her again.
“Hey, Trouble,” he whispered.
Her lips stretched into a tired smile. Her hand bumped into the walls of the tank as if she wanted to reach for him, and Jacin scooped it up and squeezed. With his other hand, he lifted the vial of antidote. His thumb unscrewed the top.
“I need you to drink this.”
Seventy-Four
Winter vaguely recalled Jacin helping her sit up and tipping a vial against her mouth and a tasteless liquid spilling in. It was difficult to swallow, but she squeezed Jacin’s hand and forced her throat muscles to cooperate. The world smelled like chemicals and her skin felt oily and she was sitting on a bed of some sort of slimy gel.
Where was she? She remembered the regolith caves and the wolf soldiers, the thaumaturges and Scarlet. She remembered the people and the trees. She remembered a crooked old woman and a box of candies.
“Princess? How do you feel?”
She slumped against Jacin’s arm. “Hungry.”
“Right. We’ll get you some food.” It was strange to see him showing so much concern. Usually his emotions were written in a code she couldn’t break. But now he looked past her and asked, “What does it say?”
Following the look, Winter saw an old man wearing a face mask and holding a portscreen. “Her vitals are returning to normal, but it’s too early to tell if this is a result of being awoken from stasis or because of the antidote.”