“What’s going on out here?”
A familiar face emerged from the crowd, her cheeks dirty and her red curls limp with grease. There were dark circles beneath her eyes and an unhealthy pallor to her skin.
Scarlet froze. “Cinder!” But as soon as she started to smile, suspicion crept in and she held up a finger. “Where did you and I first meet?”
Cinder hesitated, but only for a moment. “In Paris, outside the opera house. I tranquilized Wolf because I thought he was attacking you.”
Scarlet’s grin was back before Cinder had finished speaking. She pulled her into a hug, then cursed and stepped back. Half a dozen wolf soldiers had followed in her wake and were crowding around her like overeager security guards. They looked tame, for the moment, but also like they could tear apart every person in this crowd in all of ten seconds if they chose to.
“Sorry—you shouldn’t be here. Levana—” Scarlet started to cough into her elbow, nearly doubling over with the cough’s unexpected force. When she caught her breath, there were dark spots of blood on her sleeve. “It’s not safe here,” she finished, as if it wasn’t obvious.
“Is Winter alive?” Jacin said.
Scarlet crossed her arms, but not in a defiant way. More that she wanted to hide the evidence of the disease. “She’s alive,” said Scarlet, “but sick. A lot of us are sick. Levana poisoned her with letumosis and it spread fast. We have Winter in a suspended—”
“We know,” said Cinder. “We brought the antidote.”
Jacin held up the vial he’d grabbed from the speeder.
Scarlet’s eyes widened, and those cl.u.s.tered around them stirred. Many weapons had lowered once Scarlet and Cinder had embraced, but not all.
Jacin jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Get some of your muscle to help empty the speeder.”
“And take one for yourself,” added Cinder. “There should be enough for every person who’s showing symptoms, and we’ll make sure to ration extras for anyone who might still become ill.”
Squeezing the vial, Jacin neared Scarlet and lowered his voice. “Where is she?”
Scarlet turned to the soldiers surrounding her. “Let him see the princess. He won’t hurt her. Strom, let’s organize a team to distribute the antidote.”
Jacin had stopped listening. As the crowd parted he could see the daylight glinting off the gla.s.s of the suspended-animation tank, and he was already forcing his way toward it.
Here, in the dirt pathway that separated the nondescript medical clinic from the shadowed forest, they had created a shrine around her. Crisscrossed twigs and branches formed a lattice around the metal base of the tank, hiding the chamber that contained all the life-giving fluids and chemicals that were being recycled in and out of her system. Daisies and b.u.t.tercups were strewn over the gla.s.s top, though many had slid off and now littered the ground around her.
Jacin paused to take in the sight, thinking maybe Levana wasn’t paranoid after all. Maybe the people really did love Winter enough that she was a threat to her stepmother’s crown, despite not having royal blood.
The vial grew warm in his palm. All the voices m.u.f.fled in his ears, replaced with the tinny ring of the tank’s machinery, the constant hum of the life support, a beep from the screen that displayed her vitals.
Jacin swiped his arm across the top, scattering the flowers. Beneath the gla.s.s, Winter looked like she was sleeping, except the preservation liquid gave her skin a bluish tinge, making her appear sickly and drawing attention to the scars on her face.
Then there was the rash. Raised rings of darkened flesh scattered across her hands and up her arms and neck. A few had appeared on her chin and around her ears. Jacin focused again on her hands, and though it was difficult to tell with her brown skin and the tinted liquid, he could see a shadow around her fingernails. The last fatal mark of the blue fever.
Despite everything, she still looked like perfection, at least to him. Her curly hair was buoyant in the tank’s gel and her full lips were turned upward. It was like she was going to open her eyes and smile at him, any minute now. That teasing, taunting, irresistible smile.
“The tank has slowed down her biological systems, including the progression of the disease.”
Jacin started. An elderly man stood on the other side of the tank with a mask over his mouth and nose. At first Jacin a.s.sumed the mask was to keep him from catching the disease, but then he saw the bruises creeping out from beneath the man’s sleeves and realized it was to keep himself from contributing to its spread.
“But it hasn’t stopped the disease entirely,” the man added.
“Are you a doctor?”
He nodded. “If we open the tank, and your antidote doesn’t work, she will die, probably within the hour.”
“How long will she live if we leave her in there?”
The doctor’s eyes fell down to the princess’s face, then darted to the screen embedded at the foot of the tank. “A week, optimistically.”
“Pessimistically?”
“A day or two.”
Clenching his teeth, Jacin held up the vial. “This is the antidote from Her Majesty’s own labs. It will work.”
The man’s eyes crinkled and he glanced past Jacin. Turning, Jacin saw that Cinder and Scarlet had followed him, though they were standing a respectful distance back.
“Winter would trust him with her life,” said Scarlet. “I say we open it.”