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CHAPTER 4

The first side effect of not taking my medicine is fever.

The second is a blinding headache.

The third is nausea.

The fourth stage is blood.

And the final stage is the hallucinations.

I’ve only gotten to the fifth stage a single time and barely managed to survive it. It was a miracle to recover from that with all of the help of the palace Healers the Seelie Court could supply.

I’m already in the thick of the fever. The first stage, the fever, is unpredictable. There’s no rhyme or reason for why it comes, though overexertion tends to make it come on faster. But for the most part, they have a tendency to sneak up on me like a thief in the night, unseen, unpredictable, taking any of my strength and life out of me.

Right now, the fever heats me from the inside out, burning through my skin, making it impossible to think, to do anything other than lay slumped over myself and shiver. My skin is too hot and too sensitive for the scratchy material of the ballgown I’m wearing.

The cell around me is as silent as a tomb. I don’t know how long I lay on the hard dungeon floor with my skin flushed hot with the fever spreading through my body, but with nothing left but my thoughts and memories to keep me company, I feel like one of the dead laid to rest in a crypt.

It’s impossible to tell time in this dark, windowless cell, but it feels like ages. I’ve mentally prepared myself, so it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest when my stomach begins to cramp. It comes in waves at first.

Still, even knowing that it’s coming, doesn’t make my tension-riddled stomach any less miserable. It’s been a while since I made it to the cramp phase—I’ve been so careful lately about when I take my medicine—that the sharp familiar feeling of my insides twisting themselves into knots leaves me breathless with their intensity. Alone in the quiet, knowing none of the monsters were close enough to hear me, I let a whimper escape through my clenched lips.

It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be fine. Father and Lucia are going to negotiate a way out for you. They’ll do everything they can to get you out. You just have to survive until then.

But as time drags on, a little niggling kernel of doubt manages to wiggle its way through. What if they don’t agree to the terms? What if they decide to leave me here?

I fade in and out of restless sleep, embracing the unconsciousness as a boon. A few blissful moments of reprieve from the pounding cracking in my skull.


I’d heard the whispers all my life— whispers around the palace and among courtiers. That I was unnatural. A sickly shadow of a ghost. That my mother had been cursed before I was born. Not that anyone would ever dare say that aloud. And in this cell, I feel somewhat like that ghost they always claimed I was.

I’ve had the illness since I was born. I was born small and pale, barely able to keep on weight at first, I barely survived past babyhood. And while the fae in both the Seelie and Unseelie courts are usually born with hair and eyes every color in the rainbow, I was born in shades of white.

White hair, colorless skin, silver eyes—like all of the colors had been leeched out of me. Not to mention the fact that while most Fae are born with beautiful wings of differing shapes and varieties ranging in color and shape like butterflies or dragonflies, I’d been born without wings of any kind.

No color, no wings, and no magic.

Seelie Fae draws their energy and life force from the sun and the Unseelie Fae draws their powers from the moon, while I, on the other hand, draw energy from neither. Being out in either for too long does more damage to my health than helps. The palace physicians had taken to calling my sickness Sun Fever because being out in it for too long tended to weaken me and bring on the illness.

And once the illness begins, the only thing that can reel my symptoms back in is the medicine that the physicians had concocted over the years. I don’t know what’s in the medicine they give me—a cocktail of herbs and remedies that they’ve tweaked over the years to bring my body back into alignment. What I do know is that if I don’t take it, the illness gets continually worse and worse until I’m unable to move or function.

In the darkness like this, there’s no telling how long I lay there shivering on the dungeon cell floor. No telling how long it’s been since the King’s left me here. But based on my symptoms I’d guess that I’d that I’ve been in here for a little over a day. Maybe two.


I count the trays coming in and out of the room to keep track of time. When the fifth untouched tray gets pulled back through the door, I hear the pause. The unusual sliver of hesitation of the person on the other side before the latch closes again. A few moments later, there’s another set of footsteps down the hall—louder, more assured than the last set.

This is new.

I don’t have the energy to brace myself as there’s a clink of keys outside the door and the metal gives way with a bone-scraping squeal. The sound is painful enough against my throbbing headache that tears prick the corners of my eyes. I peek through my lashes to see who’s in my cell but quickly close them back up as the dim torch light pierces like knives.

There’s a nudge of a boot against my ribs and my breath escapes in a painful hiss.“Wake up, prisoner,” An unfamiliar female voice demands. Another boot pushes against my ribs and I wince. I want to tell them to keep their feet to themselves, but my teeth are chattering too loudly to even attempt it.

“Well?” A male voice asks from the doorway.

“I think something’s the matter with her.”

A disbelieving scoff from the doorway, “She’s probably faking it.”

“Maybe.” The light glows brighter through my eyelids as the torch comes closer, “Ah, fuck.”

“What now?”

“There’s blood coming out of her nose.”

Had my nose been bleeding? I’d been so focused on the knives twisting through my skull and trying not to throw up that I hadn’t been aware of the warm trickle of blood leaking from my nose.

The third sign. After the nausea always comes the bleeding; Bleeding in my mouth. From my nose. Sometimes my ears and eyes when it’s at their worst—turn the milky uncolored silver in my eyes and give them their only color—blood red.

There’s a shuffling of boots as the second pair of feet come across the floor to stand beside the first, “Fuck me. He’s not going to be happy about this.”

A loud sigh, “I’ll go. Just…don’t get too close to her. And make sure she stays alive until he gets here.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?! I’m not a healer Erik—shit—”

The sound of boots races down the hallway, echoing off the stone walls as the male guard takes off at a sprint away from my cell.

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