Page 57 of Seaborn and the Seven Seas

“I know.” Her hand found mine. “Stay with me. Don’t go somewhere I can’t follow.”

That almost made me laugh. “I’m… not… going… anywhere.”

“You’d better not. I didn’t survive this place just to lose you to a boarox scratch.”

I attempted at a laugh but failed.

Somewhere down the passage, a door opened and closed. Then footsteps, lighter than the guard’s, moving with purpose. Minha was on her feet before I registered the sound, putting herself between me and whatever was coming.

The torchlight shifted. Figures appeared at the bars. Soldiers and a woman—small, older, carrying a worn leather satchel over one shoulder. I knew those kind eyes.

“Nira.” The word came out barely above a breath.

She looked at me the way she had in that room before the arena, and offered that same sad smile. Then her gaze moved to my arm, to the blue stain spreading through the suit, and her expression shifted with urgency.

“Please, my sister is sick.”

Nira jerked her chin. A guard turned the key in the lock. The cell door swung open.

“Take her to the infirmary. Now.”

What servant used a commanding tone with guards?

I tried to think back to the arena, when my sword had nicked the boarox. Had it bled blue? Or had that been my own blood already dripping by then? I couldn’t piece it together. The fog in my head made everything slippery, the memories shifting every time I reached for them.

I wanted to tell Minha the oclego had bled blue in the water off Russo’s ship. And the boarox, I thought it had too. Or maybe I was wrong. Maybe the fever was inventing things. I couldn’t be sure of anything anymore.

Arms lifted me and darkness took me whole.

Chapter Eighteen

Heat radiated through my skin and my eyes weighed too heavy to open. My muscles didn’t feel like my own. I tried to move even my fingers. Nothing.

Voices moved in and out like the tide. I couldn’t hold on to any of the words, wavering under unconsciousness, the scent of herbs filling my nose.

A cool cloth pressed against my forehead, then lifted, and pressed again. I tried to turn toward the voice but my body refused.

The last thing I recalled, Nira at the bars of the cell. Her kind eyes. That worn leather satchel. Take her to the infirmary. Now.

But that couldn’t be right. Nira dressed me for the arena, braided my hair, and whispered warnings about the boarox. She didn’t come to dungeons. She didn’t command guards.

I must have dreamt her there.

And Minha. Had I dreamt about her too? The arena, the two of us fighting the boarox, her voice cutting across the sand. Sis. The cell, the hay, her hand finding mine.

Stay with me. Don’t go somewhere I can’t follow.

Had any of it been real?

A man’s voice said my name. Not Sis. Not girl. But Star. I stopped fighting to move my muscles.

“Why isn’t she healing?” he asked.

Theron?

“There was poison on the boarox’s horns.” Nira’s voice, somewhere close to my left.

“With what?” Footfalls moved back and forth across the floor. He was pacing.