Page 144

The knowledge should provoke resistance. Authority has been mine for so long that I guard it as instinctively as chaos. I have measured every alliance, signed every order, and decided which hand may touch each instrument of Morwen’thir power.

Now I cannot lift my head.

I cannot close my fingers around the house ring resting on the table.

I cannot draw enough breath to speak Fiona’s name.

Yet the gates have closed because she understood an image I forced through poison and pain. Joran obeyed her because she stood where the house required its Lady to stand.

Relief reaches me before pride can oppose it.

Fiona returns to the chaise. Her pale eyes move over my face, throat, and chest. Two fingers settle against my pulse. Her touch gives me the only clear measure of time left in the chamber.

“The clause gave us a narrow chance,” she says. “Show me how to use it.”

I try to blink.

My eyelids answer slowly. The effort feels absurdly large.

The numiscu has advanced. My skin still registers pressure and cold, but the boundary of my body seems distant. Every command I send into my limbs disappears. My lungs work in shallow increments without waiting for my will.

Fiona pulls the chaise farther from the hearth. The colder air helps, though I cannot explain why in words. She closes the brazier screen and strips the warm cover from my legs.

Good.

She understands part of the danger already.

Not enough.

The salve entered through the cut. Rirzed and numiscu resemble one another, but their actions oppose. Rirzed cools strained muscle and eases inflammation. Numiscu arrests the body, turning warmth and motion against it. Fylvek can support the muscles and slow the collapse if prepared without heat.

I know warmth accelerates numiscu and cold slows its spread, but that principle is not a complete remedy.

Fiona may know more.

She may also choose the ordinary response to poison: warmth to protect a failing body, steam to open the lungs, hot infusion to force sweating.

Warmth will accelerate the numiscu.

I need to warn her.

The connection between us remains a faint path beneath the paralysis. I sense Fiona as pressure against the border of thought. Her fear moves through it in controlled waves. Beneath the fear lies calculation. She is sorting remedies, symptoms, and time.

I reach for that presence.

Nothing happens.

Frustration crashes against the numiscu’s barrier. My chaos magic stirs, but the poison blocks its passage through flesh. The bond is not chaos alone. Marriage and intimacy shaped it, and trust strengthened what began as an accidental exchange. Still, magic provides its force. Without access to that force, I have only a narrow thread.

I pull at it.

The cursed scar burns along my side. Black motes gather above my wrist, fewer than before. Fiona notices.

“Do not waste strength fighting the poison,” she says.

I am not fighting the poison.

I am attempting to keep you from heating it.