“No,” Nikolai said, his eyes fluttering open. “I hate that feeling.”

Zoya knew why. When he’d been fighting the demon, she’d used a powerful sleeping tonic to knock him out every night for months. He’d said it felt like dying.

The Healer filled a bowl with some sharp-smelling solution. “It would be easier to put him under. I can’t have him moving around while I work.”

Zoya sat down beside Nikolai on the bed, trying not to jostle him.

“You must be still,” she murmured.

“Don’t go.”

He shut his eyes and gripped her hand in his. Zoya knew the Healer had noticed it, knew he would probably gossip about it later. But she could weather the gossip. Saints knew she’d endured worse. And maybe she needed to feel his hand in hers after the shock of what they’d witnessed. She couldn’t stop seeing those women burn.

“You shouldn’t be here for this,” said the Healer. “It’s an ugly process.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

The Healer flinched and Zoya wondered if the dragon had emerged, shining silver in her eyes. Let him gossip about that too.

Nikolai clung to her hand as the Healer stripped the ruined flesh from his arm. Only then could it be replaced with healthy skin. It seemed to take hours, first one arm, then the other. Whenever Zoya left the king’s side—to fetch a cool cloth for his head, to turn up the lanterns so that the Healer had better light—Nikolai would open his eyes and mutter, “Where is my general?”

“I’m here,” she repeated, again and again.

Once the Healer had dealt with the singed flesh of his arms, no hair remained on them, but the scars on his hands—the veins of shadow the Darkling had left—were still visible.

“He’ll need to rest,” said the Healer, rising and stretching when the work was done. “But the damage was fairly superficial.”

“And Princess Ehri?” Zoya asked.

“I don’t know. Her burns were much more severe.”

Once the Healer was gone, Zoya waited for Nikolai’s breathing to turn deep and even. Dusk had fallen. Outside the lanterns in the garden were being lit, a string of stars strewn across the grounds. She had missed this room, who Nikolai became in this room, the man who for a moment might let the mantle of king fall away, who trusted her enough to close his eyes and fall into dreams as she stood watch. She needed to get back to the Little Palace, check on Princess Ehri, talk to Tamar, forge a plan. But this might be the last time she saw him this way.

At last she rose and turned down the lights.

“Don’t go,” he said, still half asleep.

“I have to bathe. I smell like a forest fire.”