The warmth of the wine suffused him. He ached and throbbed with it, and he could find relief only by drowning in the blue water of the river of her eyes. She was in his arms, her soft flesh in his hands and her sweetness on his tongue, and he was tearing off his clothes and her clothes and they were lying on the mattress, panting and heaving and his need was hot and pain-filled and she was willing and yielding . . .

And then he had to stop to scratch his leg. He went back to her, but then his arm itched uncontrollably and he scratched at it and then, suddenly, he was itchy all over. He tried to ignore the itching, but he couldn’t, and he had to stop what he was about to do to scratch at himself. Evelina moaned and nuzzled him, running her hands over his body, and he tried again, but the itching was a terrible distraction.

She opened her eyes and looked at him and suddenly pulled away.

“You . . . you’ve gone all blotchy,” she gasped in dismay.

He scratched at his head and neck and looked down at his naked body and saw that she spoke truly. He was covered in large red blotches, about the size of a coin of the realm, growing larger and spreading rapidly. The blotches burned like fire and itched like the devil and he could do nothing now but scratch at them. He could swear he could feel them on the inside of his mouth.

“It’s not the plague, is it?” Evelina cried. Covering herself with a blanket, she crawled off the bed.

Marcus groaned. “No, I think it must have been the wine. I break out in these blotches sometimes if I eat certain spices or herbs, but it’s never happened with wine.”

“Spices,” murmured Evelina. “Oh, my God. You wretched man. You stupid, wretched man! Why can’t you be normal?”

Suddenly, strangely, Evelina turned into a dragon. The dragon’s eyes stared into his. The dragon seemed nervous, afraid.

“I don’t know how to talk to you.” The dragon’s colors were tenuous and wispy. “I . . . this is so alien. Your mind is too . . . small. I feel squeezed in. Human, can you hear me? I am a friend of Draconas. My name is Lysira. He sent me—”

And then all the colors in Marcus’s mind exploded.

Evelina scrambled backward off the mattress and crouched on the floor, staring in horror at the prince.

Marcus lay on his back. His eyes—gleaming wild in the firelight—rolled and roved, as if he were following the erratic flight of an invisible flock of birds. His eyes darted back and forth, up and down, back and forth. His body began to twitch. His hands curled. She’d seen the effects of wormwood on people before and she’d never seen anything like this.