The Chosen One (The First Book)

Chapter 25

I put the glass down and Eliza kept talking about her sisters.

The middle one had written to her. The letter had taken eleven days to arrive and most of it was about a goat.

"Eleven days," she said. "For a goat."

"Was it a good goat?"

"It bit the neighbor."

I laughed, and the laugh came out normally, and I went back to my soup.

The warmth at the back of my throat did not fade the way warmth from wine faded. It went down instead. It settled somewhere under my ribs and stayed there, low and patient, like something that had been let into the house and had no intention of leaving.

I ate two more spoonfuls to see whether that would put it out.

It didn't.

I set my spoon down and put my hands in my lap.

That was when I noticed my heart.

Not racing. Faster. The kind of faster you got walking uphill with something heavy, except I was sitting down at a table with a napkin across my knees.

I found the pulse in my own wrist without meaning to and counted it against nothing.

Forty. Fifty.

I lost the count and started again.

My palms were warm. Not damp. Warm, in a way that made me want to press them flat against the cold underside of the table.

I did.

It helped for as long as I thought about it.

The back of my neck was warmer than the rest of me.

When I turned my head to look down at the table, the room came with it a half second late.

I looked at the table and realized I had been staring at the same knife for several seconds.

I decided I was ill.

It was a reasonable decision. Two winters ago, half of Northmarch had gone down over a barrel of fish that came up from the coast in a warm week, and my mother had spent four days going between houses with a bucket and a very low opinion of the coast.

This did not feel like that.

But I was ill, or I had eaten something, and either way it would pass.

So I ate a few bites of something I did not want.

"Miss Vale."

Cassian's voice was quiet, from further down the table.

I looked at him.

His plate had been pushed back. I did not know how long it had been sitting like that. He was listening to someone beside him, but his eyes had come to me.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

His gaze stayed on me for another moment.

"You don't look fine."

"I think I just need some water."

Water arrived at my right hand. The footman set it down without any ceremony at all, which is how a thing gets put in front of you when somebody further up the table has already said four words about it.

"You look pale," Eliza said.

"I'm fine."

"You are not."

She had turned toward me properly now.

Her fingers touched my cheek, light and familiar.

"You're burning."

"It's the room."

Eliza glanced toward the windows.

"The room is freezing."

I drank the water. All of it. It was cold going down, and it changed nothing at all. Somewhere in the middle of drinking it, I became aware of the seam of my sleeve against the inside of my arm, and of the fact that I was aware of it.

I put my hands back in my lap.

The heat had stopped being warmth. It had become a pressure, low and steady and spreading through my legs straight to my core.

I swallowed.

I needed to leave.

"I need to be excused."

Eliza started to rise with me.

"Sit down."

"Aurelia."

"Please."

She hesitated, then sat.

I turned toward the head of the table.

"May I be excused?"

The Queen inclined her head.

I thanked her, though I was not sure if she heard me.

Then I walked.

I counted the steps to the door because counting was the only thing left that would hold still.

Eleven to the end of the table.

Six across the open floor.

I did not look at anyone.

The footman opened the door.

I went through it.

The door closed behind me.

I put my back against the corridor wall and stayed there.

The stone was cold through my dress.

It was not enough.

A throbbing sensation made me shift uncomfortably. It was impossible to ignore, getting stronger and spreading through my body like wildfire. My breathing got heavier. I could feel every beat of my racing heart.

I held onto a column next to me, trying to steady myself. My mind was foggy, my thoughts scattered.

I wasn't able to think straight, I wasn't able to focus on anything but the overwhelming sensations coursing through me.

I pushed myself away from the wall, my legs trembling slightly.

I made it to the corner before I pressed myself against a wall.

I've never felt this way, this desperate and needy. It was terrifying and exhilarating all at once.

The heat between my legs became almost unbearable, a throbbing ache that made me want to cry out.

I bit my lip, suppressing any sound that might escape.

There was a door at the end of the west passage that opened onto the garden stairs.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to will the feeling away. But it only got stronger, spreading through my veins like poison.

I forced myself with everything I had left in me and made my way through the door.

The latch took two tries.

Then the night came in.

Cold air struck my face.

My breath came out white.

I stood there for a moment, waiting for the cold to do something.

Anything.

It did not.

I pulled off my shawl and let it fall behind me.

I loosened the collar of my dress.

Then I put both hands around the iron rail at the top of the stairs.

The metal was freezing.

It should have hurt.

It didn't.

It was the best thing I had felt all night.

I leaned against it and closed my eyes.

Six steps below me was the garden.

I had not managed to take even one.

I tightened my grip on the rail and tried to move my body.

Nothing happened.

I tried again.

My leg would not move.

I stayed there, breathing against the cold, waiting for my body to remember what it was supposed to do.

Then I felt someone behind me.

Before I could turn, I was pulled back from the stairs.