Spindle Fire (Spindle Fire #1)(73)

“How he even got this far from the palace is a wonder,” William comments, echoing her own thoughts. How could he have gotten this far before succumbing, like the others who’ve gone to the Delucian castle and never returned?

“Perhaps he knew something—some way of avoiding the disease. But then it caught up to him.” Isbe ponders. “I am worried, William. I know we must advance, but are we walking straight into our doom?”

She feels the tension in his hand, still on her arm.

Her throat gets tight. It isn’t just the fear of the disease that gives her pause. If she’s honest with herself, it’s the conversation they had while in the steam room, deep in the cellars of Almandine’s estate. Or, better put, the conversation they haven’t had since. She still doesn’t know what he’s thinking—if he regrets his proposal. More importantly, she doesn’t know how she feels. Thoughts of that awkward moment have been torturing her nonstop since they fled the mansion.

“Should we keep going?” William asks, his voice soft. “The decision is yours. I will respect whatever you choose to do.”

Whatever she chooses. But what are her options? They could still back away. They could find their way to Roul’s in the hope that Gilbert has returned there safely. She could hide out among the peasants as they await Malfleur’s invasion. And then what? Watch as he and his children are strung up to die or conscripted into the faerie queen’s army? Sit back while her kingdom is taken?

No. If she’s going to die, she’ll die having done the right thing. She’ll die next to her sister.

“I used to sneak off with a mare called Freckles,” Isbe says carefully. “No one likes to ride her because she’s unruly. Impossible. She never listens. But the way she runs. Gil—my best friend Gilbert—” She pauses. This is the first time she’s even mentioned Gil’s existence to the prince, and saying his name aloud rattles her. “He calls the mare a bad mover,” she goes on, “but it’s not true. She just has her own rhythm, and William, she can go so fast.” The memory rushes through her. “When we were tearing through woods and fields together, not far from this very spot—I felt like I was really alive. I felt like nothing we’d left behind mattered anymore. I didn’t have to know where we were headed. What was important was that we were flying headfirst, like an arrow. Nothing could stop us. I never let go until she threw me.”

“And has she thrown you now?” William asks quietly.

“No,” she answers, hard and resolute. “No, she has not.”

“All right, then,” he says calmly. “Let’s go.”

He heads forward down the road. “Careful of that wheel—it came loose. Here you go.” He helps her past the wreckage of the spice merchant’s cart, and as he does, he lets out a huge sputtering sneeze. It’s a ridiculous sound, coming from so commanding and serious a person.

Despite everything, she laughs.

In a sharp inhale, all the pepper and ginger in the air rises up her nostrils, and she begins coughing and sneezing too.

“No wonder he needed a mask,” the prince says, catching his breath.

“Yes, no wonder.”

“If only a mask could protect us from the sleeping sickness,” William muses.

“Hmm,” Isbe replies. “A mask . . . yes. A mask. A mask!” She stops walking and smacks him in the arm. “William, you’re brilliant!”

“Are you mocking me?”

“No!” The sincerity of his question—the hurt in it—sends a shock through her. He’s still upset over the proposal . . . over her rejection. Because that’s what it was, she realizes. “Despite what you might think of me now, I’m not callous. I think I have a theory on the sickness. What if the spice merchant made it this far from the castle because of his mask? It protected him somehow, but when he removed it, he died.”

“So you think the disease is airborne, then,” William says. “Like the scent of his spices.”

“Right. Perhaps.”

“Maybe carried by the breath of the birds? That could explain the crow’s purple tongue, I suppose.”

“The purple tongue . . . no, I have a better theory. It’s—”

“The vines,” they say simultaneously.

“Smelling them,” he says.

“Or eating them, in the case of the birds,” Isbe adds. And then, after a pause, “It’s faerie magic. Either the work of Malfleur or, more likely, her not-actually-dead sister, Belcoeur. The vines carry a pestilence—like Almandine said. Some sort of poison that puts all creatures who come into contact with their scent to sleep. It explains the presence of the vines, all those flowers you described, and it explains the merchant, and the birds falling asleep midflight. William, it really is brilliant!”

“I didn’t come up with it, Isabelle. You did. You’re the brilliant one.”

“Why does it feel like you’re mocking me now?”

His voice is somber, and a little quiet, when he replies. “I’m not.”

She shivers. No one has ever told her she was brilliant. But there’s something about the way William talks . . . he makes her feel that everything she says and does matters. That he is always listening, always aware of her. That he cares, on some fundamental level, about her thoughts and her feelings and her actions and . . . about her.