Winter shriveled back. The basket slipped from her hold, crashing to the ground.
Before her, Levana shed the guise of the old woman, a snake shedding its skin.
“My researchers assured me the disease would act quickly,” said the queen, her cold eyes roving over Winter’s skin. Curious. Delighted.
Winter’s thoughts spun, puzzling out the truth from the illusion. Her whole life had been spent puzzling out truths from illusions.
Where was Jacin? Why was Levana here? Was this another nightmare, a hallucination, a trick?
Her stomach kicked. She felt ill.
“The infected microbes are being absorbed into your bloodstream even at this very moment.”
Winter placed a hand over her stomach, feeling the devoured candy roiling inside her. She pictured her heart, her arteries, her platelet-manufacturing plant. Little red soldiers marching down their conveyor belts. “Microbes?”
“Oh, don’t worry. Young and able-bodied thing that you are, it should be an hour or two still before you begin to show symptoms. A rash of blood-filled blisters will erupt on your perfect skin. The tips of your delicate fingers will shrivel and turn blue…” Levana grinned. “I do wish I could be here to witness it.”
Winter peered through the forest, toward her allies. Levana would stop her if she tried to run. She wondered if she could get out a scream before Levana sewed shut her lips.
“Thinking of warning your friends? Don’t worry. I’m going to let you go, little princess. I will let you return to them and infect them yourself. They made a mistake when they chose you over me, and that will be their undoing.”
She faced her stepmother again. “Why do you hate me?”
“Hate you? Oh, child. Is that what you think?” Levana placed her cool fingers on Winter’s cheek, over the scars she’d given her years before. “I don’t hate you. I am merely annoyed at your existence.” Her thumb caressed Winter’s cheek. “From the day you were born, you had everything I ever wanted. Your beauty. Your father’s love. And now, the adoration of the people. My people.” She drew her hand away. “But not for long. Your father is dead. Your beauty will soon be tarnished. And now that you are a carrier of the blue fever, any citizen who comes close to you will soon come to regret it.”
Winter’s stomach dropped. She imagined she could feel the disease being absorbed through the lining of her stomach. Seeping into her veins. Each beat of her heart pushed it further through her system. It was a detached sort of knowledge. Of all the tortures she had seen her stepmother devise for others, there was something merciful about this death. A slow, calm acceptance.
“You could have their adoration too, you know,” she said, watching as Levana’s condescending smile hardened to her face. “If you were kind to them, and fair. If you didn’t trick them into being your slaves. If you didn’t threaten them and their loved ones for every minor crime. If you shared the riches and the comforts we have in Artemisia—”
Her tongue stilled.
“I am queen,” Levana whispered. “I am the queen of Luna and I will decide the best way to rule my people. No one—not you, and not that hideous cyborg—will take this from me.” She lifted her chin, nostrils flaring. “I must go tend to my kingdom. Good-bye, Winter.”
Stumbling back, Winter turned toward the people. If she could see just one person, get off one warning …
But then the forest closed in around her and she collapsed, unconscious, to the ground.
Sixty-Three
“Have you seen Winter?”
Alpha Strom finished demonstrating the upward-stab movement with the staff and handed it back to a young woman, before turning to face Scarlet. “I have not.”
Scarlet scanned the hectic crowd for the thousandth time. “Me either, not for a long time. She has a tendency to wander off…”
Tilting his head back, Strom sniffed a few times at the air, then shook his head. “It seems she hasn’t been around for a while now. Perhaps she’s found somewhere to rest.”
“Or perhaps she’s poking out her own eye with a stick. I’m telling you, it’s not good for her to be left alone.”
Grumbling, Strom gestured at one of the beta members of his pack, then shambled toward a bench. He paused to sniff again, sending his keen eyes into the crowd, before turning and gazing into the forest.
“You’re being creepy,” said Scarlet.
“You asked for my help.”
“Not technically.”
When Strom headed into the shadows of the not-really-a-forest, Scarlet followed, though she couldn’t imagine why Winter would have left everyone behind and wandered off all by her—
Never mind. She could imagine it after all.
“She came this way,” Strom said, running his fingers over a tree’s bark. He turned to the right and increased his speed. “I’ve picked up on her now.”
Scarlet trotted along beside him.
“There.”
She saw her at the same moment, and broke into a run before Strom did.
“Winter!” she screamed, dropping to her knees. Winter’s body was sprawled out in the patchy grass. Scarlet rolled the princess onto her back and checked for a pulse, relieved to find one fluttering at Winter’s neck.
A hand grabbed Scarlet’s hood and dragged her back. She yelped, flailing to get away, but Strom ignored her pummeling fists. “Let me go! What are you doing?”
“She is sick.”
“What?” Unzipping her hoodie, Scarlet scrambled out of the sleeves and fell at Winter’s side again. “What are you talking about?”
“I can smell it on her,” Strom growled. He didn’t come any closer. “Diseased flesh. Vile.”
Scarlet frowned up at him before refocusing on the princess. “Winter, wake up,” she said, smacking the princess’s cheek a few times, but Winter didn’t even flinch. Scarlet pressed a hand to her forehead. She was clammy and hot. She felt the back of her head, wondering if the princess had hit her head again, but there was no blood and the only bump was from the fight at Maha’s house. “Winter!”
Strom kicked something and it skipped through a tuft of grass and hit Scarlet’s knee. Scarlet blinked and picked it up. A sour apple petite, one of the candies Winter had often brought to her in the menagerie, usually laced with painkillers. It had a bite taken out of it. Picking up Winter’s hand, Scarlet found bits of melted candy shell stuck to her fingertips.
“Poison?”
“I don’t know,” said Strom. “She isn’t dead—just dying.”
“With some sort of disease?”
He gave a curt nod. “You should not be so close to her. It smells—” He looked like he might be sick.
“Oh, pull yourself together. All those muscles and teeth and you’re afraid of a little cold?”
His expression darkened, but he didn’t come any closer. In fact, after a second, he stepped back. “There is something wrong with her.”
“Obviously! But what? And how?” She shook her head. “Look, I saw a little med-clinic on the main street. Can you carry her there? We’ll have a doctor check her out. She might need her stomach pumped or—”