Of Thorns and Beauty by Elle Madison

Chapter Thirty-Three

Khijha makes a pitiful sound as she follows my pacing through the room. I want to scream. To cry. To allow myself the emotions that everyone else has a right to, but me.

“I’ve messed it all up,” I say to the empty air around us. “I’ve ruined everything.”

“Ruined what, dear?” Sigrid’s voice is startling, though it is softer, sadder than normal. Much different from her usually plucky tone.

I see red as unbridled flames of fury fill me. Fury that I hadn’t heard her, hadn’t noticed another person’s presence or heard the door open or close. Fury that I had let my guard down and that every time I turn around, I make mistakes that I cannot afford.

“Do you never knock? Am I not allowed a sands-damned moment of privacy or peace in this place? Do you all think you have a right to me, that you own my time and attention?” I am yelling, something I never do, and it’s almost a relief to finally vent an emotion until Sigrid clutches her heart.

I close my eyes, instantly regretting that I have hurt her. She doesn’t deserve my ire. Whether anyone else does is a different story, but she certainly doesn’t.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean --”

The sight of her crashing to the floor stops the words in my mouth. Her head cracks loudly against the stone floors, echoing through the room.

“Sigrid?”

She is limp and unmoving, aside from a small twitching in her gloved hand.

“Sigrid!”

I rush to her side, unsure of where to touch her, of what hurts aside from her head. Pained breaths come from beneath her thick black veil, and I don’t even consider what I’m doing until my hands are on the gauzy material.

Einar flies through the panel in the wall. His lips are still swollen from our encounter, and worry is etched deep into each line on his face as he takes in the sight of Sigrid lying motionless on the floor.

My fingers are still grasping her veil, and I continue to pull it up when he shouts for me to stop and runs toward us.

But his words are too late.

I gasp in horror as I get my first glimpse of what she has been hiding all this time.

Her face is covered in white feathers, with a strip of black ones from the bridge of a red beak-like nose back to her scalp. They grow from open wounds, some scabbed over and some very fresh. Whatever transformation is happening to her, it is not painless, and it breaks my heart.

Her small round eyes are red-rimmed and unblinking as her pupils contract and expand repeatedly, and the wheezing sound that escapes her mouth has me terrified.

“She’s barely breathing!” I cry out to Einar, who has begun removing her gloves.

Sigrid’s slender fingers cringe and twitch in what appears to be pain as sleek black feathers slowly sprout from her knuckles, drops of blood dribbling from the wounds.

“What is this?” I ask, horror-stricken.

“The illness.” The king’s voice is gentle as he answers without hesitation.

There isn’t any urgency in his movements, just anger and a hint of sad acceptance of this horrible situation.

But she seemed so healthy.

No sooner does the thought cross my mind than I realize that’s not likely true. I think on how she’s been more absent than normal lately. Her touch, softer. Her voice when she entered, I had thought I’d heard sadness, but I realize now that it was frailty.

She wasn’t well and hasn’t been, and I’ve been so caught up in my own selfishness that I didn’t pay her enough attention.

“What do we do? How do we help?” Tears burn in my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall.

Now is a time for action.

“Tell me what to do,” I demand.

Einar looks at me, and there is no wall concealing his emotions this time.

Shock, anger, fear, and even something like hesitation war within his gaze

“You’re not...disgusted?” he asks hesitantly.

I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment and quickly shake my head in disbelief.

“I’m not a monster.” I wonder if the insistence in my tone is more for his benefit or for my own. “She’s been my only friend here, my only friend in a long time. She’s in pain and we have to help her.”

Feathered fingers wrap around my own as Sigrid acknowledges that she can hear us. The gesture nearly undoes me entirely.

“What do we do?” I ask again, more resolutely.

The guards helped move Sigrid to my bed, and the castle physician has come and gone, giving her an elixir to help with her breathing and overall pain.

Einar paces as he waits for the courier he’s summoned. He left the room only once to grab writing materials and scribbled furiously on them, cursing everything under the sun as he glanced back at Sigrid every other sentence.

Despite his knowing that this illness has been here for so long, it pains him to see her suffer. To see them all suffer. That much is clear.

A knock barely sounds at the door before the guards open it and Leif enters.

“The courier is here,” he says with an anxious tone before casting a glance my way, his beaked mask lingering on Sigrid’s helpless form.

Einar doesn’t hesitate or take the time to respond. Instead, he thrusts the sealed envelope into Leif’s gloved hands, and Leif quickly hobbles from the room to deliver it to the waiting messenger.

Einar still refuses to make eye contact with me, and he hasn’t said a word in the past hour.

Not that I am trying very hard to communicate, either. I am more focused on Sigrid, propping her up with several pillows in my bed and trying to get her to drink a bit of tea. She tries to shoo me away, but she can barely even lift her hand for the gesture.

I level her with a stern look.

"None of that,” I say, insisting on her taking another sip. “You have spent weeks waiting on and being kind to a perfect stranger, all while your own health deteriorated. You will let me do this now."

I push away the images of what Madame would have done to me and any servant she found me acting so familiarly toward. Though her reach seems to have no end, she is not in this room, and she has already left me so little room for kindness in my life that she will not rob me of this as well.

I feel Einar's gaze on me now, but he doesn't comment.

He speaks only to Sigrid.

"Is there anything else you need?" He stokes the fire with a poker, as though she will get better if only he can make her warm. "Anything at all?"

"No, Ùlfur." It's the second time she has called him little wolf, and it almost makes me smile. But one look at the state she is in effectively rids me of that notion.

Then she thinks again and asks the king to have someone bring her to her bed.

"No," I break in without thinking, ignoring the disbelieving look Einar sends my way.

I am sure he provides well for his servants, but I doubt even Sigrid has a bed as nice as mine, and I’m not certain I trust that anyone would be capable of carrying her so far. This thing they have could attack them, too, and they could wind up hurting her if they fell.

"You can recover here for the time being." I squeeze her feathered hand gently. "Just rest, please."

Leif returns, this time without knocking, and he moves a chair to Sigrid’s bedside, grasping her other hand in his.

She nods at me weakly, and I stand up, pulling the thick covers a little closer around her shoulders before finally lifting my eyes to the king's.

He stares at me with an expression I don't have the energy to try to decipher.

I gesture my head toward the panel, and he follows my gaze before letting loose a sigh, his shoulders falling slightly with the movement. He nods.

I know the feeling. Truthfully, I would rather stay in this room with Sigrid if it was not for the fact that I'm certain it would only be to watch her die. Something I am not willing to let happen if there is another way.

Besides, I am no fool, and the king has been doing more than keeping secrets. Once again, he has been lying.