The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(50)

“Exponents.”

“Yeah.”

“Exponents as in . . . math.”

Taye picked up the pen and twirled it between his fingers, completely unfazed by the flabbergasted look on Noam’s face. “Yeah, like math. If you think about cells and atoms and shit as numbers and then just raise them to whatever power, it’s easy.”

Easy if you were a goddamn math prodigy.

Still, Bea found Taye’s tricks delightful—so they spent the next five or ten minutes showing some of the more interesting applications of both their powers until at last Halsing swept down to demand they go and see to other patients.

Bea seems to be doing well, Noam thought as he sponged down an older man who was hours into the coma stage. She was alert, even if she wasn’t strong, and she was reading. Maybe she would be like them. Maybe she’d be a witching, and one day she’d be showing off magic tricks of her very own.

The idea stuck with him, a warm kernel of hope he returned to later when one of the other patients died and he and Dara carried the body out wrapped in a sheet—they ran out of body bags ages ago—and tossed it onto a pile with the others to be burned. Dara’s cheeks were pink, a few curls stuck to his forehead; with all those feverish bodies crammed inside, the tent was sweltering.

“Do you remember this?” he asked Noam before they went back in, the pair of them sharing a bottle of water near the entrance. “Being sick.”

“Not really. I was unconscious most of the time.”

“So you had it bad, then. You didn’t know you were going to survive.” He passed Noam the bottle, and Noam took a sip; the water was lukewarm.

“They left me there, actually. In the red ward. I woke up alone.”

Dara stared. “They left you there?”

“They probably assumed I was going to die either way. When you can’t afford to pay for all those fancy experimental drugs, survival odds kinda go down a bit. There were cameras, though. When they realized I survived, they had people there in minutes. Even Lehrer came.”

Noam gave Dara back the water, but Dara just stood there, holding it in one hand without drinking. At last Dara shook his head and said, “Fine. Fine, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Right. Because Dara had the luxury of finding such things surprising.

Some of that must have shown on Noam’s face, because Dara sighed. “I know.” He dragged his fingers back through his hair. “All right, come on. Let’s go back inside.”

The cadets were housed in barracks, unused now that most of the soldiers were down south “reconstructing” Atlantia. The barracks faced the sea; when the wind rolled in off the ocean, it whistled through the cracks in the walls and tasted like salt. All their clothes smelled like death, sinking into fibers and bruising itself on skin.

Noam didn’t sleep well that night.

The next day was worse. Four patients died, but six more were brought in to take their place, spreading the ranks of doctors and cadets even thinner.

Bea, at least, still lived. She woke up for a little while around noon and managed to drink some soup, spooned into her mouth by Taye, but she vomited it up an hour later. Noam tried doing more magic tricks, but she couldn’t stay awake for them. Noam’s stomach cramped; she’d smiled the day before, if weakly. Yesterday’s hope had dried up overnight, leaving a crawling feeling in its wake.

Noam touched Bea’s forehead with the back of his hand, and Taye said, “She’s really hot, isn’t she? I think her fever’s getting worse.”

Her skin burned. Noam drew his hand away and sat down in one of the empty chairs.

His entire body felt heavy.

This was how his father died. In a red ward, leaking blood and magic from every orifice. He’d read that the symptoms of magic were what they were because it wasn’t like a regular virus at all. People’s bodies just weren’t meant to host magic. And if his mother hadn’t hanged herself, she would’ve died this way too.

Only maybe not. Maybe, just maybe, Rivka Mendel would have survived. And she’d never been as antigovernment as Brennan or his father—she might have stayed by Noam’s side the way no one else had.

“Is she okay?” Taye said abruptly.

Noam turned to look. Bea’s whole body had gone rigid, spine arced off the bed. Her eyes were open but rolled back, exposing glazed whites. “Shit,” Noam whispered, just as Bea’s body relaxed, then seized again, rhythmic contractions that rocked the cot back against the canvas and threatened to spill her thin body onto the floor.

“Wait—” Taye started, but Noam was already on his feet, dragging the IV stand out of the way so Bea wouldn’t hit it as she flailed.

“Bethany!” Noam shouted, casting his gaze out, hoping it would land on Bethany but unable to spare more than a second looking. On the bed, Bea shook violently, her jaw clenched and hands clawlike.

“Should I hold her down?” Taye asked.

“No. I mean, I don’t know, maybe . . . no, no, actually, that won’t help. Um. Make sure she doesn’t hurt herself on anything?”

And then Bethany was there, kneeling on the floor next to Bea’s bed, face bloodless. Her hands didn’t shake, though, as she pushed a syringe of clear fluid into Bea’s IV line.

“I sent someone for Halsing. It’ll be a while. She’s outside the air lock,” Bethany said. Her free hand twisted around a fistful of bedsheets. “But. I don’t think . . . It doesn’t look good.”