Midnight in Everwood(55)
‘You must not allow yourself to think in such a manner. I understand well how you feel; Dellara has diverted many of my own punishments onto herself, yet she refuses to be dissuaded. No good shall come of torturing yourself with what might have been.’
Some hours later, a pair of faceless guards crashed through the door. Marietta and Pirlipata rose from their vigil. Dellara was a slumped figure, held between the guards. They threw her down on a chaise longue and marched out. Marietta suffered an overwhelming urge to claw the blank masks from their faces, to force them to confront the cruelties they were complicit in. When it occurred to her that she felt differently towards the captain, who was responsible for waging a secret rebellion yet refused to aid them lest it derail his grander mission at play, her rage swelled. How had she considered that a tolerable excuse? Why had he not saved Dellara? She rushed to Pirlipata’s side. The princess had propped Dellara’s head up on a small cushion and was smoothing the hair back from her pale brow.
‘Where has he hurt her? We must stem the flow at once,’ Marietta said, watching her purple-shaded gown bleed into murderous crimson.
‘That is but her enchantment. Dellara’s gowns always sense when she is feeling particularly wrathful.’ Pirlipata rolled up one of Dellara’s gauzy sleeves, revealing blistered, bloodied marks that carried the imprint of fine chains. Marietta hissed between her teeth.
Dellara’s eyes snapped open. ‘You.’ She extended a midnight-painted nail at Marietta. Her fingers were dipped in the colours she’d painted before the feast; inky violets, deep sapphires and glossy blacks, as if she’d dragged them through the night sky.
‘You should not have interceded on my behalf,’ Marietta whispered, unable to tear her eyes from Dellara’s wounds. ‘There was no need for you to do that.’
‘Couldn’t bear losing another.’ Dellara drifted out of consciousness.
Pirlipata ran into the bathing chamber and emerged with a heap of towels and a basin of fresh water. Marietta rolled up Dellara’s sleeves and they bathed her wounds before administering soothing balms and wrapping them out of sight in clean bandages. Dellara moaned, her eyelids fluttering.
Marietta rested a hand against her forehead. ‘She feels feverish.’ She exchanged a look with Pirlipata, who frowned and soaked a towel in water, wrung it out and pressed it to Dellara’s head.
‘The shock must have tumbled her into an ice fever,’ Pirlipata told her. ‘We must keep her hydrated. In this instance, we are fortunate to remain within the palace with its plentiful supply of water. The ice fever shall prise a deathly toll from Everwood this winter with their deficit of melting charms or imported clean water.’
Marietta nodded, unable to forget the faces of children condemned to a slow death by way of the mineral sickness, families unable to afford the steep price of the ever-dwindling supply of melting charms, overtaxed to allow for King Gelum’s endless balls and feasts even as they thirsted. With each glance at Dellara, guilt stained her.
Pirlipata pressed her hand. ‘Take heart, Dellara is too fierce for a fever to end her. She’d be mortified at the very thought.’ They shared a quiet smile and it occurred to Marietta that these women had become dear to her over the past few months she’d been imprisoned with them. She had never had the pleasure of female friendships. And now their fates were entwined, bound together with blood and pain, and a loyalty that ran deeper than either.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Over the days that followed, Marietta and Pirlipata took turns tending to Dellara, who hadn’t yet regained her lucidity. So accustomed to the woman’s spiked words, it pained Marietta to see her tossing and turning, occasionally crying out, her voice soft and vulnerable. When a summons to the captain’s study materialised, she marched into his cabin, overbrimming with feeling as if she belonged to the ranks of the Erinyes, those ancient Greek goddesses of retribution and vengeance.
‘Dellara requires medicine. An ice fever has taken root after your king was allowed to maul her. With all the wondrous magic residing at your fingertips in this world, there must be something you can do for her.’
The captain stood from his desk. His jacket had been dispatched, his white shirt rumpled. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing sculpted golden forearms. ‘Dellara is not human. She will not succumb to a mere fever.’
‘Does it not bear considering that even if she does not perish, she is suffering?’
Captain Legat hesitated. ‘Leave it with me. I shall see what I can do.’
‘Good.’ Marietta crossed her arms, anger still carousing through her veins. She refused to be derailed by the captain’s less than polished state. ‘Why did you not save her?’
‘I wish that I could have. You know well I harbour nothing but distaste for the king but I am afraid that once he succumbs to that mindset, he cannot be roused from it until his wrath is spent.’
‘Very well,’ Marietta said. ‘I am still awaiting to hear why you summoned me.’
He walked around his desk and pulled a chair out for her. ‘Show me your leg.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
His flicker of amusement only served to rile her further. ‘I saw your injury. I was concerned you might be too consumed with caring for your friend to change your bandage,’ he explained.
‘I assure you, I am capable of executing more than one task,’ Marietta said coolly, ignoring the chair. She had been resting her ankle and both it and her wound were healing fast.