The corridor was dark.
Not the honest darkness of midnight, but the kind that gathered in corners.
Two figures stood inside it.
”It went perfectly.” The voice was soft.
Warm, almost.
A quiet laugh followed.
Low and pleased.”Better than I expected, really.”
The second figure said nothing for a moment.
Her silhouette was still against the stone wall, her arms folded, her eyes forward.
“She is not dead yet,” she said flatly.
”No.” The warm voice did not seem troubled by this.
“But she will be. The physicians cannot stop it, only slow it. And without the antidote…” A soft exhale.
Almost gentle.
“She has perhaps five days. Maybe four.”
The second figure turned her head slightly and said.
“And if she survives?”
The first figure smiled.
Even in the dark, one could feel it.
”Patience, Lythia.” The warmth never left the voice.
It never did.
“Everything is already done.”
The darkness settled back into silence.
—
Elyndra’s chamber was too loud for a sickroom.
Three physicians moved through it with the urgency of people who knew the situation was serious and couldn’t say so out loud.
Medicine trays.
Small ceramic bottles lined along the side table.
A basin of water already changed twice.
Candles everywhere.
The air smelled of bitter herbs and boiled water.
The head physician.
Older, grey haired, robes slightly rumpled from being summoned in a hurry.
He stood at the foot of the bed speaking low to the one beside him.
”It’s moving faster than I expect,” he said quietly.
“Whatever it is if we don’t slow it down …”
”How long?” the other physician asked, even lower.
A pause.
”Three days.
Maybe less.”
The door opened.
The crown prince stepped in and the room changed immediately.
The physicians straightened.
The hurrying slowed.
He looked at the bed first.
Then at the head physician.
”How is she?,” he said.
The physician told him.
Carefully, the way people spoke to crown princes when the news was bad, enough truth to be useful, enough softness to survive the conversation.
The poison was unusual.
Not something common.
Introduced slowly, probably hours before the symptoms appeared.
The medicines they had would hold it, slow the spread, buy time.
But they didn’t have the antidote here.
”Where is it?” The Crown Prince said.
”There is a compound.
It grows in the eastern territories.
Mortheval, near the…”
”Send someone.” He turned before the physician finished.
“Kaz.”
His right hand man stepped forward from near the door.
”Take the fastest route to Mortheval tonight,” He said.
“Take whoever you need. Come back with whatever the physicians ask for. Don’t stop.”
Kaz bowed and was gone within the minute.
The Crown Prince turned back to the bed.
Elyndra lay still in the bed.
Eyes barely open.
She was listening.
She always listened, even through the dull ache that moved through her chest and had refused to go away.
She watched the ceiling while they worked around her.
The head physician leaned over her with a small cup of something dark and bitter smelling.
”Drink this, Your Highness. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Slowly.”
She drank it.
Made a face at the taste, the medicine tasted like ash and iron with the sharp bitterness of something crushed and boiled.
The physician straightened and looked at the crown prince.
“It will hold the poison for now. Keep it from spreading further.” He paused meaningfully.
“She needs rest and she needs to stay still.”
He nodded once.
The physicians left the room slowly, talking low to each other, collecting their things.
The room emptied.
Then it was just him, the candles and the sound of her breathing.
After a while, She slept.
Not peacefully, he could see it wasn’t peaceful.
He sat in the chair by the window and didn’t leave.
He wasn’t sure when he’d decided not to leave.
It hadn’t felt like a decision exactly.
—
When she woke the room was dark.
The candles had burn low.
The window showed deep night, no moon and the physicians were gone.
Their hurried footsteps and urgent voices had been replaced by the quiet sound of night settling into stone.
The distant call of a guard at his post, the soft shift of wind against the shuttered window.
Elyndra lay still for a moment, looking at the ceiling.
Checking up herself.
The pain.
Dull but still heavy in her chest and arms, still hurts when she breathed.
The poison was still there but had been pressed down by whatever the physician had given her.
She pushed herself upright.
It was harder than it should have been.
Her arms shook once before they steadied.
She pushed the blanket back and swung her legs over the edge of the bed.
The floor was cold under her feet.
She took one step, then another; slow, careful, one hand holding the bedpost, her vision dimmed and blurred.
She waited for it to stop then took one careful step forward.
She was halfway to the water basin when she heard him.
”What are you doing?”
She stopped.
The Crown Prince.
He was in the chair by the window.
She hadn’t even seen him there, which irritated her more than she would admit.
In just few steps, he crossed the room.
Before she could speak, his arm had wrapped around her, lifted her carefully and carried her back to the bed.
”You should be in bed,” he said.
”I needed water,” she said.
He looked at her for a moment.
Then he walked to the water basin, poured water into a cup and carried it back to the bed.
He held it out.
She took it.
Hesitated.
Then she drank.
”The palace is under confinement,” he said.
“No one enters or leaves until I find who did this.”
She looked up from the cup.
”I’ve declared a full search.
Every servant, every…”
She laughed.
Small.
Not unkind.
But real.
He stopped.
She set the cup down and stood again carefully, then looked at him.
”You shouldn’t have done that,” she said.
He stared at her.
“Someone poisoned you.”
”I wasn’t poisoned,” she said simply.
Silence.
”The physicians…”
”I have an illness,” she said.
“I’ve had it since I was young. It comes back sometimes. The symptoms look like poisoning, I know. It frightens people who don’t know what it is.” She kept her voice even.
“The cure is only found in Velmora. I should have brought some with me. I didn’t think it would come on this quickly here.”
He looked at her skeptically.
”The physicians said…” he started again.
”Your Highness.” She cut in gently. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
“I know how it looks. But I know my own body.” A small pause.
Then quietly.
“Thank you. For worrying. It means more than I can say.”
He looked at her for a long moment.
She could see him working through it, could see the doubt moving behind his eyes.
He exhaled slowly.
”I’ll send someone to Velmora,” he said.
”You don’t have to…”
”I’ll send someone to Velmora.” Final.
”But I need you to lift the confinement.” She kept her voice even, unhurried.
“I will give you the name of the physician who prepares it.”
He looked at her for a long time.
She did not look away.
He exhaled slowly through his nose.
Crossed to the door.
Called a guard in with two short words, spoke quietly, and the guard disappeared.
The confinement, she understood, was lifted.
He turned back to her.
“The name of the physician.”
She told him.
He memorised it without writing it down.
She noticed that.
He opened the door and spoke briefly to the guard outside about Velmora and the cure.
Then he came back and looked at her.
She met his eyes.
Something in her chest pulled in a direction she didn’t want.
”Please excuse me, Your Highness,” she said quietly.
“I need to change.”
He nodded and moved toward the door.
Midway he paused with his back still to her.
”Rest,” he said.
“That’s all I ask.”
”I will,” she said.
The door closed quietly behind him.
Elyndra stood in the silence for a moment.
Then she exhaled, long and slow.
She crossed to the drawer near the window, the one she had packed herself, the one no maidservant had been permitted to touch — she crouched beside it and pulled out the worn leather notebook she had carried from home.
Small, dark, its pages soft from years of use.
She brought it to the desk and sat.
The candle was nearly gone.
She lit a new one and opened the book to the first page.
Then the next.
Her own handwriting, small and precise, filling every margin.
Poisons organised by symptom, by origin, by antidote, by time.
Years of notes.
Things she had been taught.
Things she had learned herself.
She turned every pages carefully.
Matching what she had felt; the numbness first, the cold spreading slowly, the quiet bloom before the sharp pain then the blood.
Her finger stopped on a page.
She leaned closer.
There.
The candle flame bent sideways.
Barely,
The air shifted and the skin at the back of her neck went cold.
She felt it before she heard anything.
She turned.
Her eyes went wide and for one unguarded moment.
The notebook slipped from her hands and hit the floor.
—
Chapter Ten!!!
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