LITMIR.BIZ

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courtyard surrounded by houses. She looked back, and now a man approached, in dark clothes, a knife at his hip, wearing insignia that marked him as one of Duke Viris’s men; Finnal’s men.

      Lenore should have breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of her husband’s man there, since at least it wasn’t some ruffian there to rob her. Instead, Lenore felt the tension balling up inside her.

      “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “Who are you?”

      “My name is Higgis, your highness,” the man said, sweeping a bow. “I am a servant, sent with instructions from your husband.”

      “What instructions?” Lenore asked.

      The man came up from his bow with his knife already in his hand, stepping close to the guard Lenore had brought with her and thrusting once, then again. Lenore gasped, pressing herself back against the nearest of the buildings, but with the man between her and the exit to the courtyard, there was no escape.

      “I was sent to save you from ruffians who set upon you,” the man said. He wiped off his knife and put it away. “They killed your guard and beat you before stealing from you. All because you did not heed your husband’s instructions to stay where he set you. As a result, he will be forced to take you away from the city to convalesce.”

      The servant stepped forward, cracking his knuckles.

      “You’re really going to strike a princess?” Lenore demanded. “I’ll have your head.”

      “No, your highness,” the man said. “You will not, while your husband will reward me, as he has before. Now, I would say that this will go easier on you if you hold still, but that would be a lie.”

      He drew back a fist, and for a moment, Lenore was sure that there would be nothing but pain in her future. Then a second, smaller, figure rushed past the man into the courtyard, stepping in between Lenore and her would-be attacker.

      “Erin?” Lenore said.

      Her sister stood there, staff in her hands before her, spinning it casually as she waited. Finnal’s servant didn’t hesitate, but rushed toward her. Erin waited until the very last moment, then stepped aside, staff lashing out into the man’s midriff, his knee, his skull. The weapon seemed to be everywhere at once in that moment, moving in a blur that was punctuated only by the crack of wood against flesh.

      The servant stepped back, drawing his knife again. Erin lashed out with her staff, striking at his wrist, the crack of bone audible to Lenore as the weapon connected. The man cried out, stumbled back, and then turned and ran. For a moment, Lenore thought her sister might set after him in chase, but then she stopped, turning back to Lenore.

      “Are you all right?” she asked. “Did he hurt you?”

      Lenore shook her head. “Not me, but my guard…” She looked down at the dead eyes of the guardsman, staring out in shock. It was far too similar to those she’d seen before. “What are you doing here, Erin?”

      “I thought I’d follow you down into town. I had a break from training with Odd. But then I saw this one following you, and I wanted to know what was going on.” She fixed Lenore with a level look. “What is going on, sister?”

      “It…” Lenore forced her voice to stay level. She would not be weak, would not be trembling and hysterical, would not be any of the things Finnal probably thought she was. “It’s my new husband.”

      “Finnal?” Erin said.

      “He’s every bit as bad as they say, Erin,” Lenore said. “He only cares about what he can get from our marriage, not about me. And this… he’s sent a man to beat me just because I’ve left the castle without his say.”

      Erin’s face was hard. “I’ll kill him. I’ll gut him and stick his head on a pike.”

      “No,” Lenore said. “You can’t. Kill Duke Viris’s son? It would be civil war.”

      “You think I care?” Erin demanded.

      “I think I have to care,” Lenore said. “No, we have to be smarter than that.”

      “We?” Erin said.

      “My maid, Orianne, knows what Finnal is like. She will help. So will others, like Devin.”

      Lenore didn’t know why it was his name that came to mind, but it was.

      “That’s it?” Erin asked. She shook her head. “Well, it’s a start. We could go to Vars.”

      “He wouldn’t care,” Lenore pointed out. “I’d find a way to divorce Finnal if I thought Vars would listen.”

      “Then we’ll find something even he’ll listen to,” Erin insisted.

      Lenore shook her head. “That won’t be easy.”

      Erin sighed. “I know. But I swear to you, Lenore, that Finnal won’t hurt you more than he has. No one will. From now on, I go where you do, and if anyone attacks you… I’ll stand by your side and cut their hearts out if they try.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      Nerra knelt by the waters of the temple fountain, among the bones of those dead who had tried it before. Above her, the slopes of the volcano seemed to look down angrily, forbidding her to try what she was about to try. Looking at her arms, she could see the patches of scale sickness there, the lines of it dark on her arms.

      She would not die like Lina. Even if these waters meant death, it was better than waiting for the sickness to claim her out here on the island her dragon had brought her to. Seeing her friend die had been the fuel to propel her all this way to the temple, to the fountain she had promised the island’s keeper, Kleos, she would not seek.

      She drank its waters now. She took in the water in a single long swallow that drained her cupped hands. There seemed to be no point in just sipping when any touch of the water was supposed to mean death.

      She did not dare to hope for what else it might mean.

      “They wouldn’t call it a healing fountain just as a lie,” Nerra said aloud, as if doing so would make it true. “They wouldn’t build all this.”

      Why build an open air temple if the only goal was to kill those who came? Why bother with a fountain at all, or the strange pressure that had seemed to push her back from the place as she had walked the volcano’s slopes? Kleos, the keeper of the sick, had told her that to drink was death, that it was all just a way to let those with the dragon sickness kill themselves, but Nerra had to hope that he was wrong, or lying, or both.

      It would work. It had to.

      Nerra stood and looked out over the island around her, so close to the continent of Sarras and yet not quite a part of it. She looked out over the fiery volcanic landscape she had crossed, and over the jungle of the rest. From here, she couldn’t see the small village that sought to contain the sick and the dying, those slowly transforming from the sickness into monstrous things that knew only hunger and death. Wasn’t it better to try this than to sit there, waiting for the bitter mercy of Kleos’s knife when she became too twisted?

      Nerra stood there, waiting, trying to imagine the water working inside her. Should she have felt something by now? She knew herbs well enough to know that the effects were rarely instant, but somehow, she’d expected healing waters to be—

      Nerra screamed as the pain hit her, so sharp and so all-consuming that it drove her to her knees once more. She clutched at her stomach as her body writhed with agony, her cries coming so quickly that she didn’t even have the breath for it.

      Kleos hadn’t lied; the fountain was poison to those who drank from it. Nerra could feel the water within her now, twisting through her like some kind of barbed serpent, burning through her as if she had swallowed the volcano’s lava rather than mere water. She tried to throw it up, but it wouldn’t come; she didn’t even have enough control over herself for that.

      “Please…” Nerra cried out.

      She felt as if her whole body were tearing itself apart, muscle by muscle,

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