Six Scorched Roses (Crowns of Nyaxia)

Three weeks of relentless work passed.

I threw everything that I had into it. I stopped sleeping, save for brief naps taken out of sheer exhaustion, and only when my body threatened to betray me. I stopped eating, save for hurried bites of whatever was easiest to shove into my mouth over my books. I stopped leaving the study, save to go cultivate my roses, making sure they remained perfect enough to pass Vale’s exacting standards.

“Why are you working so hard?” Mina would ask me sadly, with lips tinted black from the answer to her own question.

I couldn’t waste time. Time was precious.

My own condition deteriorated, too, old symptoms that I’d grown used to now creeping up on me with renewed verve. But those were nothing compared to those that nibbled away at my sister’s life, bit by bit.

When I closed my eyes, I saw Vale’s blood. I stared at it twelve, fifteen, eighteen hours a day, always in small bursts to avoid rejection from the magic of my instruments. It happened anyway, eventually, the glass cracking with bursts of acrid smoke. I had to run into the city to buy another lens for far too much money that I did not have. Not that I cared—who could care about money in times like this?

I began distilling Vale’s blood into potions. My early attempts were clumsy, one even erupting into eerie white flames. But after countless trials, my concoctions were no longer smoking or giving off rancid, rotting smells. Eventually, they started to resemble something like actual medicine.

One day, I produced something that responded well to all my tests. It didn’t combust, or smoke, or burn. It didn’t harm plants or skin. It had all the markers of a potential candidate—and it didn’t even resemble blood anymore.

Finally, after much internal debate, I gave it to one of my ailing test rats.

Animals didn’t respond to the plague the same way humans did, which made it difficult to test medicine on them. This rat was ill—it had days left, if not less—but it wouldn’t wither to dust the same way humans affected by the plague did.

Still… information was information.

I watched that poor rat day and night. Hours passed, then two days. I half expected the creature to die a slow, miserable death.

It didn’t happen.

In fact, the rat didn’t die at all. Not even when the illness should have stolen its final breaths.

No, it was still lethargic and slow, still obviously unwell, but it did not die.

It was such a tiny, tiny victory—not even a true positive outcome, but the absence of a negative one. Still, that was enough to have me grinning giddily all day. I felt, deep in my bones, that I was getting closer.

I gave up on even trying to sleep that night. It was midnight and very stormy, violent drafts through my office window blowing my candles out every few minutes. But I had work to do.

After only an hour, though, I reached into my pack to find that, in my exhaustion, I’d miscounted—I was out of blood.

I cursed.

I stared at the empty vials over my desk. Then at my dozens of failed experiments and the single—almost—successful one.

I looked to the window, and the ferocious night beyond the glass.

It wasn’t even a decision, really.

I rose, gathered my things, and walked down the hall. I peered into Mina’s room on my way out. Her sleep was restless, and she left dusty marks on the bedspread.

The sight was far more frightening than that of the storm outside.

Vale wasn’t expecting me yet. It hadn’t yet been a month. Maybe he’d turn me away. But I couldn’t afford to wait.

I tucked a rose into my pack and went out into the night.

It was dangerous to travel in this weather. Rationally, I knew this, but it didn’t feel like much of a danger until I was actually stumbling through the soaked, pitch-black forest paths. I spent so much time thinking about death at the hands of my illness that it had become easy to forget that there were countless other ways it could take me, and a night like this was full of them.

It took me twice as long that night to make it half as far. I had to focus absolutely on the road in front of me, trying not to slip on soaked rocks or sink too deep in the muddy dirt. The rain let up a little bit, eventually, but I was so exhausted by then that I wasn’t alert.

I didn’t see the men surrounding me until it was too late.

One minute, I was dragging myself along the road, and the next, pain burst through my back as a force slammed me against a tree.

Crack! The back of my head smacked wood.

Everything went dull and fuzzy for a moment—even though I refused to acknowledge it, I had already been on the precipice of losing consciousness from sheer exhaustion. That one hit was nearly enough to push me over the edge of it.

I clawed back to awareness, blinking through the haze at the men around me. A young man held me to the tree, hands to my shoulders. Behind him, several others circled like prowling wolves.

One look at them and I knew they were starving. So many people were, these days.

The boy holding me was tall and broad, but he was barely more than a child. It was hard to read his age because of the gaunt angles of his face. Sixteen, eighteen at most.

His expression changed a little when I met his eyes, quickly averting them. Behind him, one of the men approached. Older, bearded. A hard, angry face.

Five of them. One of me. I’d never thrown a punch or wielded a weapon in my life.

I didn’t need to be a renowned mathematician to solve that equation. I didn’t try to fight back.

“I don’t have anything of value,” I said.

“Bullshit,” the older man scoffed. Then, to the others, “Take her bag.”

My heart dropped.

I’d been in such a rush to leave that I hadn’t been picky about what I took with me. I had just thrown everything into my pack. My instruments. Useless to these men—they wouldn’t even know where to sell them—but everything to me.

“There’s nothing you can eat or sell in there,” I said.

But they snatched the bag away anyway, rummaging through it. I cringed at the sound of carelessly clinking glass, punctuated by a few cracking shatters.

My heartbeat throbbed in my ears.

“Please,” I said. “Please. It’s worthless to you. I’ll give you—”

Gods, what could I offer them? I had nothing of value to give them in exchange. I had no money on me. Little at home, either. I didn’t even think to pack food, not that I thought these men would be satisfied with a single woman’s scraps of bread.

The boy, the one who held the knife to my throat, winced again. Guilt? Was that guilt? I so wished I was better at reading people.

“Keep that knife to her fucking throat, Filip,” the man snapped, then smiled at me—a horrible expression, like a snarling wolf. “What? What will you give us instead?”

“I—”

My mind wouldn’t work. The gears were sticky and slow with exhaustion. He reached for the bag again, and I said, “No. Please. I’ll give you double what it’s worth once I’m home.”

“Once you’re home?” the man scoffed. “Oh, I trust you.”

The other men laughed. Filip looked pained. My gaze flicked to his, though he avoided looking at me.

Mina would try to connect with him. She’d know what to say to make him let me go.

“Filip?”

His eyes reluctantly lifted to mine.

I should have had some moving plea, some emotional words for him. But emotions and sentimentality had never been my strong suit. Instead, I told him the truth.

“I’m not lying to you,” I said. “I will double what that bag is worth. I promise you.”

And I did, I really did, mean it.

But the older man’s smile curdled to a sneer. “Do you think we’re stupid, girl?”

I bit back a surge of frustration.

Why were humans so illogical? I was offering them a good deal. A good trade. More money. And yet, I couldn’t make them believe me.

“We’ll take your dress instead,” the man said.

Filip’s grip on the knife loosened again. His head whipped to the man, like he was going to say something and then stopped himself.

I was confused. I looked down at myself. My dress might have been worth something a decade ago. Now it was old and stained, the hem tattered from my journey.

“The dress is worth nothing,” I said, annoyed. “I’m offering you a better deal.”

“I’ll take something I can have now over your empty promises.”

“But it’s—”

The man snatched the knife away from Filip, thrusting it against my throat. A shock of pain that seemed distant slithered over my skin. Something warm and wet ran down my throat. “I don’t need your fucking arguments,” the man hissed. “Take it off or I cut it off you.”

I was grateful for my irritation, because it dimmed my fear.

“I can’t take it off if you don’t give me room,” I said, attempting to move my hands to my buttons to demonstrate—he was in the way.

The man stepped back reluctantly, pulling Filip along with him.

I looked at the newly opened space between us, a pang of desperate longing in my chest. There it was. Four feet of space between me and my assailants, and endless possibility I couldn’t seize.

I had always been quite comfortable with who I was. I was never the athlete, the warrior, the runner, the magic wielder. I had plenty of other skills. But now, I longed to be someone else. Someone who could take advantage of this moment, cut these men down, and free myself.

Instead, I was helpless, just as I had been helpless against the illness that took bite after bite of everything I loved.

I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t run.

So I started unbuttoning my dress.

I made it three buttons down when I heard a strange sound behind me, like a great unnatural rustling of air. A shadow fell over the streak of moonlight that illuminated Filip’s face.

His eyes went wide.

I started to turn around, but before I could, a blur of movement swept from behind me. Something warm spattered over my face.

Before me, a sword impaled Filip’s chest. I took in the image of him standing there—eyes wide, like he hadn’t yet realized what had happened to him—for only a split second, before chaos erupted.

I stumbled backwards. I couldn’t see anything—in the darkness, I just saw limbs and movement and chaos. I tried to seize the chance to get away, but the bearded man grabbed me.

“Back off!” he called out, into the night. “I’ll kill her!”

His voice shook.

The figure, who until now had been a smear of shadow, turned.

Vale.

At first, I thought I was hallucinating—from exhaustion, or the blow to my head, or both.

But no. Unmistakable. It was him.

And gods, he was a monster. I now understood why people whispered of him the way they did. This was what I had been expecting to see that first time I met him—a shepherd of death itself. He looked like he had come very quickly, his clothing thrown on hurriedly, his hair messy and unbound and now whipping about his face.

And his wings… they were incredible.

They were fair, which I hadn’t been expecting—silvery-white, ghostlike in the night. Even in this moment, I wished I could examine them, appreciate them for the marvel of engineering that they were.

Vale took in my captor, face cold.

My eyes fell to Filip’s body, bleeding out on the ground. His hand twitched, reaching up—reaching for his friend.

I felt ill.

Vale lunged.

Pain erupted through my shoulder. I hit the ground so hard I heard something crunch.

I couldn’t move. I tried to push myself up and couldn’t.

A heavy weight fell to the ground beside me. My attacker’s bloody, vacant face stared into mine. Behind him, I could make out only blurry shapes—the white of Vale’s wings, the red of blood, and the shadowy silhouettes of body after body hitting the ground.

Wait, I tried to say. Stop.

But I couldn’t speak.

I couldn’t move.

The screams of pain faded into a distant din.

I fought hard for my consciousness, fought just as hard as I had been fighting for answers my entire life, but it slipped away from me anyway.

The last thing I felt were strong arms around me, and the strange, weightless sensation of being lifted up… and gods, I must have been hallucinating after all, because I could have sworn I even turned my head once to see the trees so far below me they looked like stalks of broccoli.

What a strange dream, I thought to myself, as it all faded away.