Sunrise casts rose-gold bands of light like a net over the city, catching the edges of rooftops and shooing shadows into corners. The district of Acorte enjoys a peace from the early-morning bustle that the rest of Lananere isn’t permitted. Well-fed cats lounge on white brick walls, and well-trained dogs chase their tails in gated-off front yards. Instead of the clamor of bakers and blacksmiths and women rushing to the market, there are only quick-footed house staff out on their errands and men in dark suits checking golden timepieces on their brisk walks to work. It’s too early yet for the children in their bibs and tuckers to be skipping off to school, hand-in-hand with their governesses.

Through this morning’s hushed stillness, the most noise on the Segovia comes from Doctor Carlos Egidio, the clanking buckles on his medical kit, and the sharp click of polished, military-grade boots as the royal guard escorts him to the palace.

Carlos doesn’t make this walk daily anymore—Matron Ana and her team of junior nurses have the run of the palace for the day-to-day and have little need of him. It takes a special case to pull him away from his students this early, but the letter stuffed in his bag more than qualifies.

Breakbone fever.  Not half an hour ago, Carlos had been woken by the aggressive knocking of the blank-faced guard at his left, and handed an order from the Crown itself: Niklaus de Iglesia, el Glorioso, the hero of the Battle of Ameixial, the king’s only surviving son, the boy who bards will tell you conquered half of France, has come down with the breakbone fever, and his father, understandably, is starting to panic.

For a different reason, Carlos would like to panic himself.

It’s all his own frail stomach, he knows. His own frail mind. He’s never claimed to be a brave man, or a strong one, and only nods along politely when others call him smart. But… to treat Niklaus de Iglesia…

El Glorioso. It’s a pretty word, for a warmonger.

Palacio Laroya stands tall at the end of the wide street, growing taller as Carlos scurries towards the shimmering gates. The king and his company had settled in there a week ago. Lananere had knelt with honor, thrilled to host their king, but until this morning, Carlos—along with everyone else—had no idea why the progress back to Toledo had halted. Rumors flit about like parakeets, with little more value than the birdsong. Maria-Leonora acts as his filter for all of it—he keeps track on the war’s progress from official postings, but it’s his wife’s women who splash color on those black-and-white pages.

They color is with an awful lot of red.

Battlegrounds are contained within France and Germany; no Spanish civilian has seen bloodshed firsthand. The violence is a distant thing here. But Carlos is the son of a Spanish soldier and a French farmgirl, and he still remembers his time in Pays-de-la-Loire. He’d met his father by pure chance when his company doubled back through the village they’d traveled through four years prior, and Carlos’s grandfather had given himself and his mother to Captain Egidio when he demanded them. Carlos understands, in a way that no one else he’s met in Lananere has, what such a simple statement as “the company rested in a farm settlement for the night,” can truly mean.

And the way he’s heard it, Niklaus de Iglesia’s battalions tend to take scenic routes. It keeps up morale, so they say.

By the time Carlos is within the towering gates of the palace, there’s a pit the shape of a grave in his stomach. His fingers are drumming a fast beat on the handle of his medicine kit, and the sweat of his palms has it trying to slip through his grasp. He doesn’t want to go into this place, to see this thing—

But he was requested specifically. Deigo II, King of Aragon, King of Castile, King of the Two Sicilies, Lord of the Netherlands, Great Master of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and a dozen other titles that weren’t included on the parchment handed to him by the royal guard marching alongside at his left, had called for him. Carlos had stammered; tried to shirk the summons, claiming he wasn’t worthy—but Maria-Leonora, still in her dressing robe, had shrieked his acceptance for him. It was a good call, he knows, he knows—if his dear wife hadn’t shoved him along, he’d have risked causing offence. He’d have risked being seen as disloyal. Risked them both, and then where would they be? Face-to-face with an Inquisitor? No, no, he couldn’t face that, couldn’t do that to Maria-Leonora, after everything.

Yet still…

The guard at his side, whose name has not been offered, stands a head taller than him and walks with perfect self-assurance and the brisk stride of a man with a purpose. No one stops them as they pass through the main gate and courtyard, which is a relief to Carlos. He’s not sure he could pick his feet up again, if they ceased their movement.

Indoors, there’s only slightly less of the eerie stillness that had clutched the city. Close to walls, servants and soldiers dart about like bees in a hive, quiet but intent. If he was here at this hour twenty years ago, he would all but have to fight through a pack of scullery maids and footmen as they rushed about to ready their masters’ days. The stillness now should feel peaceful, but instead it just feels like winter. Dead and cold.

Wars are ideally not waged in winter. Boundaries are maintained, supply lines are fortified, but there’s traditionally some effort made to avoid open conflict. There’s some civility in that, Carlos thinks. Something almost gentlemanly about it.

Niklaus de Iglesia has not abided by that practice in the five years since he’s been given command. The bastard boy is unceasing. He marches his men hard, plunges them into enemy territory without backup or adequate supplies, and he suffers heavy losses. But still he’s called Glorioso. An architect of impossible victories, they say, though it seems they wouldn’t be half so impossible if the boy had any patience.

He’s not been back in Spain for over three years, too busy cutting a bloody swath through Europe. Every month, there’s word of a fresh siege broken, a new city sacked, a virgin stretch of forest burned. The death tolls come by the thousands, and Carlos knows there are thousands more who receive no graves or compensation from the crown. The trail he’s blazed from France to Holland is littered with villages like his own birthplace—full of bodies and bastard babies and blood and endless, relentless misery.

Finally, they come to a stop in the maze-like inner sanctum of Laroya. The entrance isn’t grand and holds only two guards, far fewer than some other rooms they passed. The man who escorted him here says only, “Mind your tongue now, Doctor,” before ushering him into a wide, dark room and closing the door behind him.

Carlos blinks as his eyes adjust, clutching at his kit. The room is lit only by a handful of candles burning along the walls, and shadows hang like heavy curtains. There’s a vase of white lilies-of-the-valley on a table in the center, where three people are gathered around: two young girls in the chairs, clutching at their elbows, and an old man pacing around its circumference, his chin in his hand.

Not old, he corrects, squinting. Younger than me, at least. The man’s hair isn’t gray as he’d thought at first glance, but pale blond. His shoulders are hunched, but still broad and strong, bent only by worry. He brings his hands out from behind his back, a massive ruby signet ring flashing in the candlelight, and they are steady, unwrinkled, and free of liver spots. There are deep lines carved on his face, but Carlos recognizes it as the look of worry he’s seen at a thousand bedsides. Greif, even premature, can age even the young.

The girls are proof of that. The smaller one, with neat braids of fire-red hair, can’t be more than twelve, but the hushed solemnity of her manner has given her the air of a grown woman. It doesn’t quite suit her, but the stubborn set of her jaw gives the impression that she will make things suit her, however it must be done. The older girl looks to be around eighteen, though the almost obnoxiously large pair of diamonds on her left-hand ring finger indicate that she’s married, which would be young for it. Or—it would be, back home, and for some reason, despite her fine gown, that’s what she reminds Carlos of: a dozen sweet-faced farm girls he’d known and mourned. She’s a strikingly pretty little thing, but a pallor is cast over it: brown eyes blotchy from tears, clear skin pale from fear. She’s even more frazzled than the man—their father?—, fiddling with the ribbon tied at the end of her long, dark braid—a braid that’s frizzy and uneven in a way that means it hasn’t been undone in days.

The pacing, the staring, the fidgeting—all of it done with a vacant, anguished look in their eyes. Every member of this family, regardless of the expression it’s fixed in, has that look that Carlos has grown too familiar with in his forty years of practice. Keen, but unfocused, and haunted already: the look one adopts when the unthinkable is drawing near. This is a family, he knows, that has begun to prepare for a loss that will shatter them.

It takes Carlos two beats too long to put together why.

“Doctor Egidio,” the man says, halting in his pacing and turning to him. “You came.” He takes his hand off of his squared chin. When he waves his hand, the massive ring shimmers in the candlelight, and Carlos’s common sense returns like a cow has kicked it into him.

The ring, he realizes, going cold. On his finger, that silver-studded ruby—oh great merciful God, that’s the king of Spain.

With a heart-stopping bolt of sheer panic, Carlos all but flings himself face-first onto the floor. Oh. Oh, of course—he’d thought there would be further pageantry, not that he’d simply stumble into the royal family’s private sitting room—but no, no warning, no fanfare; he’s just been presented to the King of Spain.

“Y-y-your Majesty,” he says. “I am—in awe of your magnificence and humbled by your call—honored, and—ah, and—”

“It’s quite alright,” the king says, with a voice that, for all the world, reminds Carlos of a sea-faring ship. Deep and vast and great. And he used it to say, it’s quite alright to Carlos, a French-born bastard farm boy.

Carlos, clambering up from his knees, flounders. “I… Your Magnificence.” He gulps like a fish, glancing at the two girls with fresh eyes. The little red-headed child would be Infanta Sofía, the only surviving royal child and heir presumptive to the throne. His gaze skitters over her—her iron-stiff posture and squared shoulders, the tightness of her jaw despite its proud angle. She wears no crown, but Carlos doesn’t understand how he didn’t instantly see she was a princess of the blood.

The older girl takes him a moment longer to place. Her birth wasn’t sung out by heralds; her name hasn’t been penned into dynastic ledgers. But he’s sure he’s heard of her before. Scraps of Maria-Leonora’s gossip flicker through his mind like he’s flipping through a notebook. There were whispers—and nothing more than whispers—that Niklaus had—somehow or other, from somewhere or other—settled upon a single bed-warmer upon the campaign trail through France. Carlos hadn’t doubted he’d ripped some poor girl away from her home and family—but if he’s right, she sits here now with a ring on her finger and tears in her eyes, brushing elbows with the crown princess of the Spanish Empire.

Deigo II waves his hand. “Doctor. You were told of—his condition.” His voice is clipped in a way that does nothing to mask the fear. “He does not eat; he can scarcely stay awake. Not even for Julie. They said it was breakbone fever. My son.” He shakes his head, as if to reject the diagnosis. No, Carlos imagines him saying, I am the king; I command it to be otherwise. “I will not… I will not…”

He breaks off, and paces around the table twice more. Carlos feels light-headed from the absurdity of him seeing his king like this, like any other worried father he’s tried to be honest with over nearly forty years of work.

“He’s… he’s my only boy,” Deigo Segundo, King of the Old World and the New, says, and his voice breaks. He looks away. “I’ve buried so many children. I don’t… I can’t…” He swallows, then turns back to Carlos. “He’s my only son. And he’s—he is his mother’s only son. Only child. I won’t lose him, and I won’t lose all that is left of her. Heal him, Doctor. Please.”

“He’s my brother,” the princess adds, and she does not look up from where her eyes are fixed on the flowers. Her hands are clasped around her elbows, fingertips moving nervously over the perfect golden fabric of her day dress. “I want…” She presses her lips together. “I want him to wake up. He promised that he would teach me naughty German songs, when he came back.”

“Sofía,” the elder girl scolds, but there’s no heat to it at all. Her voice is thin, only barely free of tears, and carries a thick Pas-de-Calais accent that he has not heard in a very, very long time. “You’re too young for that, chouchou.”

That makes Carlos blink. Well-bred women don’t call their betters little cabbage. The girl’s French is native and low-country. He glances down at the rings on her finger, and wonders how it is they came to be there.

Not even for Julie, Deigo II had said. There’s a long story hidden in those four words.

“I’m not,” Infanta Sofía snaps, but she leans into Julie’s side. Her solemn mask is fracturing, little mouth screwing up like a baby’s. “I was when he left, but it’s been years, and he hasn’t—I haven’t seen him since—he better not, Julie, he better not cheat me out of that. No one else will teach me them.”

“They should not,” she says. Her Spanish is halting, but her words are earnest. “You are better than that—”

“I’m as naughty as I want to be! He’s my brother and he doesn’t get to—he can’t—”

“Girls,” Deigo II says, gently. “Let us give the good doctor leave. He can help Nikito better than your demands, my darling.” Sofía scowls, furious and hurting, and turns into Julie’s shoulder. “Please,” he continues, and points the hand with his royal signet ring to the door beyond them. “He is in there. We cannot remain in his room too long, lest the girls take ill, too, but—call us, if there’s… if there’s anything to be told.”

Without even thinking about it, Carlos nods. “I will,” he says—an order from his king, what else can he do? The king and Julie watch him expectantly, and with a kick, he realizes he has to go. He scrambles forward, clutching his bag, and pushes open the door that will take him to the dying young general.

He shuts it behind him. The hinges creak like hogs whining.

The room is dark; too high up for sunlight. The window is open, but the sky he glimpses through it is still a pale predawn grey. He can see, but only barely, as his eyes adjust. Shadows seep down from the arched ceiling and painted walls to pool on the marble floors, and stretch like cobwebs between pieces of furniture. The large four-post bed in the corner of the large room is the deepest pit of darkness: opposite the one open window, with the curtains pulled shut.

There’s nothing for it. He can’t delay any further.

Carlos crosses the room and pulls the curtain aside.

The young man lying in the bed does look exceptionally like the king. Carlos doesn’t recall many details about the boy’s mother, but if there had ever been any doubt as to who her son’s father was, it couldn’t have outlasted his infancy. Even waxen and limp, ruddy with fever and drenched with sweat, Niklaus could have been Deigo II’s twin brother, were he twenty years younger.

He is very young, is the second thing Carlos notices. It’s one thing to know, intellectually, that someone is twenty-two; it’s another to see the patchiness of facial hair that still doesn’t know how to fill in, and tanned skin still smooth and flushed with youth. He’s a handsome boy. Under the nest of blankets, his frame is tall and strong. He understands, for a moment, why troops rally around him. Golden-haired and broad-shouldered, he looks like the kind of man you’d follow willingly into battle.

At least, Carlos imagines. He’d never have the nerve to follow anyone into anything.

Still.

When Carlos’s father came back through their village with his company of two hundred in tow, they’d raided the silos for grain and dried roots. It’s been over sixty years, and he no longer remembers his grandfather’s face—but he remembers remembering, remembers the devastation on the face of the man who’d raised him thus far.

He and his mother never knew what became of their family. Whether they made it through the winter, with so much of their stores gone. It was why there’d been so little resistance to the two of them going with Captain Egidio.

What was the death toll in Amsterdam, Niklaus’s latest conquest? How many starved in the siege before the city surrendered? How many widows and orphans were made in the battle; how many parents lost their children in the crossfire?

How many people died of sickness from diseases his army spread?

Carlos shoves those thoughts aside. It’s not your job to ponder that, he tells himself firmly. It’s your duty to heal the sick and injured. Do no harm. He can pretend, at least, that the man before him is no different than any other young man who finds himself run down with breakbone fever.

The Dengue fever is a horrible disease, the nickname breakbone is well-earned. The fever and the rash would cause enough misery, but the pain that the fever is known to cause makes it something awful. It settles into joints and muscles and sets a fire in them, until even the smallest movement is agony. Carlos has only seen it a handful of times, and never this far inland—it’s a coastal disease, and he’s grateful for it.

He sets his bag down on the bedside table with a heavy clank, and moves to take Niklaus’s wrist. His skin is hot and dry, and when he rolls back the sleeve, Carlos sees that there’s a blotchy red rash creeping up his arm. This is advanced, he notes, frowning. They should have called me earlier. He’d need to fetch Ana; see what she’d documented about the fever’s progress. Breakbone doesn’t normally last more than a week, but from the reactions of everyone around, this appears to be a severe case. He holds his hand on the boy’s wrist, taking the measure of his pulse. He doesn’t even have to wait the full minute before he can tell that his heart is racing dangerously. Bad generally, but medicine will travel faster when it’s administered. That’s the line he gives to worried families.

Is the king of Spain pacing just beyond the door, listening for a moans of pain?

The most immediate thing to be done for breakbone fever is the tend to the rash, Carlos knows. He snaps open his kit and starts rummaging, pulling out beef tallow and lemon seeds for the base. Carlos never mixes his poultices beforehand—they’re more effective when applied fresh, so that the ingredients’ properties escape onto the skin. He tosses the vial of hemlock out of the mortar, and takes the pestle from its strap on the inside of the bag. The lemon seeds are crushed first, then stirred in with the tallow. Carlos counts the measurements out loud as he goes, muttering under his breath, and he gets so caught up in his leaves of coriander that he misses it when Niklaus begins to stir. It’s only when the boy gives a low, pained moan that Carlos startles and focuses on him.

Niklaus is squinting at him with bleary eyes, dazed. His fingers twitch forward, like his hand aches to lift, and he asks, tender and hopeful, “Julie?”

Carlos blinks.

After a moment, Niklaus actually registers the shape of the person standing over his bed, and pulls a face like he’s hacking up a wad of mucus. “Eugh,” he says, and makes a feeble effort at rolling over. “Not Julie.”

That shocks a nervous laugh out of Carlos. “No,” he says. “I’m sorry to disappoint, my…” What is the correct form of address? “My general. She’s… she’s right outside.”

The boy all but pouts, face crumbling pitifully. Miserable, he slurs, “Want my wife.”

Does he? Carlos thinks of his own parents—another odd pair of a Spanish officer and a French farm girl. Would Captain Egidio ever have asked for his wife, were he lying in his sickbed? Had he?

Of course not. His father had held an odd sense of honor. It permitted him to rape a girl in her own field, but not to abandon the bastard the violence created, when looking at the proof of him. He’d felt a sort of pride in having a wife—in possessing, permanently, a girl he’d wanted—but there had never been anything approaching love between his parents. Never would he have wished for her to see him weak like this.

“My general,” Carlos says. “I wanted… that is, I was hoping, if you’re able to answer, that I might ask you some questions about—how you’re feeling. When you started feeling ill—”

“Is Julie well?” Niklaus demands, squinting at him with a glare equally as powerful as his royal sister’s. “And… and Sofía? My father?”

“Fine, sir. They’re all fine. Worried, but perfectly alright.”

He grunts, but slowly his face tightens into a rictus of pain. “Dn,” he starts. “Do not let her in. Any of them.” He pushes the words out through gritted teeth. “She, they cannot…”

Carlos’s mouth twitches sympathetically. “I won’t let them in. But sir, if I may ask…”

“You may,” Niklaus says, though it sounds a bit like he’s mocking him—as much as it can, when his voice is so strained.

But Carlos does need to ask. He fumbles for a bit of parchment and the ink well he has in his kit, then takes out the small red quill he keeps in his coat pocket. If the patient is awake, he needs to get the history from someone. “When did you first take ill, sir?”

“Seven days,” he answers.

“And did it come on fast?”

No, it built slowly. Two weeks ago, he was in Bordeaux. Yes, there are muscle aches; yes, there’s joint pain. The rash began five days ago. Carlos jots down his answers, vaguely impressed that the boy is answering so bluntly, without any apparent shame or deceit. But in the brief time it takes for him to ask his questions, it becomes clear that something is off. Breakbone would’ve come on fast, and he’s never heard of someone catching it on the northern coast. The final straw is when Niklaus, fading quickly, confirms that his rash reached his arms two days ago.

If it was breakbone fever, then everything Carlos knew about the disease said that the rash should have spread to his palms and face by now. Since it hasn’t…

Typhus, he realizes. This is just typhus.

Well—there’s no just about typhus fever. It’s every bit as deadly as breakbone… but it is significantly more common. Carlos has seen it hundreds of times, and made his name treating it. Niklaus has a particularly bad case, if fevers have been confused, but typhus is simpler. He’s a strong young man, and surely Laroya has an icehouse. If he calls for a tub of the stuff, he can have the fever down within minutes. Coat the rash with dayflowers and honeyed milk, coriander on the temples, plenty of garlic and more dayflowers in his tea. Even though he’d come here expecting to treat breakbone fever, he has all the necessary materials in his bag, and four decades of experience.

I can save him, he thinks. His throat is dry. His hand does not move.

Carlos studies Niklaus—his hair damp with sweat, his lips cracked with fever-heat—and does not move.

Why does he not move?

The boy has fallen back asleep, though it looks far from restful. His hands clench and unclench. His eyes flicker fast underneath his lids, moving back and forth with the rapid tide of his fever dreams. He looks like he is very young, and in a great deal of pain. He could be any young man in the whole of Valencia, but—

Carlos knows that he is not.

The idea comes to him unbidden and unwelcome.

You don’t have to save him.

And what—what a horrible thought that is! He recoils at himself. Wicked, evil—how unchristian! How uncharitable! How could he think such a thing, when he knows that on the other side of the door, there’s this man’s teary-eyed bride, his sister with the stubborn chin, his father, who begged for him to be safely cured?

His thoughts land on the girl, first. Dull brown hair and light brown eyes, face and hands tanned from working on a farm all her life. The first words from her husband’s mouth when he woke were for her, asking for her and ensuring her safety—how could he ever consider ruining that fairy-tale? If he—his eyes land on the vial of hemlock leaves he’d carelessly tossed to the side in his bag—if he took away that little girl’s husband, what would become of her then?

The rings, he thinks, an echo of the realization of her father-in-law’s rank. That pair of diamonds that swallowed her finger past the first knuckle. Impractically large—unfashionably large. They must… that choice of rings must have been made with the original purpose in mind. If he died, and his family didn’t support her—if they turned her out of his estates and denied her her widow’s pension—he gave her rings that would keep her fed. And anyway, it certainly didn’t look like it would come to that girl selling her wedding rings. The princess royal was curled into her like a little child, and the most powerful king in the world lumped her in with his own daughter as “the girls.” So she—she would be—

If he murdered her husband—it would be murder—he wouldn’t be damning that girl.

But what sinful consideration this is! Not five minutes ago he wondered how many widows Niklaus de Iglesia has made, and now he contemplates the same evil?

But, says the devil in his ear, no one would know you did it.

He knows he could. The plan unfurls in his mind without any thought of his own, as smooth as a gliding parchment: Hemlock leaves are used to treat joint pain—the kind of pain that should be debilitating in a severe case of breakbone fever. If given in a small enough dose, just enough to kill, the death could be nearly identical to what it would look like for the fever. No one would question any trace amounts that may be found, if an autopsy were done—and why would it be? Surely, the king, who loves his only son so dearly, would not want to cut his body open and turn it inside out when everyone knew it was the fever that killed him.

He could get away with it.

It’s a rather heady notion. It strikes him that, though he’s held people’s lives in his hands daily, he’s never felt powerful for it until now. Powerful—and as queasy as if Niklaus’s sweaty hand was clenched in a fist around Carlos’s stomach.

Of course he’s never felt powerful! For all these forty-odd years, he’s upheld his oaths. Never once has he thought of breaking them. He swore before God, with his teachers and fellows watching, that he would do everything in his power to help. It’s never been a decision before. His oath is to spare the dying, treat the injured, to banish pain and suffering from the world…

His oath is to do no harm.

… Yet would it not cause more harm to spare him?  

The math flashes through his head, scrawling itself across parchment paper. How many lives would he save, by ending this one?

How many would he avenge?

Carlos smothers—smothers, what a soft word for such an awful, deliberate action, one that takes minutes and minutes—the urge to put his face in his hands.

Surely it wouldn’t be vengeance, this murder. It couldn’t be. He hasn’t lost anyone to this boy, and the right to vengeance goes to brothers, fathers; sons. Sisters, his mind supplies, flashing to the red-headed princess. Wives.

The princess will never have another sibling. Even if the king managed to sire a healthy child tomorrow, it would be thirteen years younger than herself—not at all a replacement for the brother she could lose. Would it not be her right to take vengeance for her brother? Would she fight the bride for it, or would they share? The general’s wife is so young, and pretty as a blossom; she could remarry without much effort—but would she? What had her story been, and could anyone ever compare to the handsome knight who whisked her away from some barley farm in Pas-de-Callais?

Oh, Carlos has never been a violent man, even now, as close as he’s ever come to it, but if someone killed Maria-Leonora—if someone had been called to help her, to save her, and had poured poison down her throat—he’d have no qualms calling for the constables and sending the villain off to the Inquisition. Would he even think twice?

And the father—what of the father? Does he have the right to kill someone’s child?

No, no. No one has the right to take a child from his parent.

—And then he’s right back at the start. How many parents have lost their children to the man who lies helpless before him?

Carlos can dally and wring his hands as much as he likes, but he knows what the brave thing is. The right thing—the right thing, it must be, it is, is the brave thing not always the right thing?—would be for him to end this now. To cut this warmonger off at the knees; cut this one life short before it can pass the action along a thousand times over.

The calculation, scribbling away in his mind’s eye, comes to its conclusion. The sound of scratching stops, and Carlos knows the answer deep in his gut: if he acts, he will spare so, so many lives.

His hand moves. Quickly; without thought. He’s all but blind, looking but not truly seeing himself measure out the components. This is guesswork, but Carlos knows his business well. Twenty milliliters of water, made chalky by the carom seeds added to ensure quick digestion. Dayflower petals for the recognizable color, if anyone double-checks. A heap of garlic that he crushes on the bedside table, to disguise the smell. The hemlock, when he uncorks it, even the dried, crushed leaves, reeks like curdled milk and mouse urine. Carefully, so, so carefully, he adds the ground morsels into the mixture—two, three, five, yes that will do it—and caps the vial. A long, vigorous shake, and it’s ready.

It’s simple.

Carlos feels very, very calm.

This is the obvious, the only answer. It’s pure arithmetic: this one life for countless others. It’s been a long time since he’s dealt with such basic maths, but even a child could come to the right decision. Even that little girl on the other side of the door—

She’s a princess, Carlos tells himself, and tries to breathe deeply. She’ll be just fine.

The poison—and isn’t that strange; in all these years, Carlos has never made something that is indisputably poison—is a vibrant blue within its vial. The color of dayflowers, nearly, and it could nearly be cheerful if Carlos didn’t know what it was. If he showed it to the family outside, he thinks the little princess might be taken with the color. It’s blue like a summer sky, blue like the iridescent highlights of peacocks’ feathers, the brilliant, eye-catching blue of poisonous animals that color themselves brightly as a warning, as a mercy.

Carlos has never made poison. He’s never combined dried hemlock with dayflower petals to see this color of blue in a bottle. Unnatural, his mind whispers. He’s made something that he should not have. The color is like a scorpion’s blinding yellow shell, or a snake’s lime-green rippling scales, or the long violet-red tentacles of a jellyfish. Stay back! their brightness warns, and he’s gone and mixed his own shade. It’s a warning, is it not?

But he must, he must. Isn’t this the right thing to do? He’s a man of science, and the numbers don’t lie. The poison—for the first time in all his life he’s made poison!— is already in his hand, and he can’t let it go to waste now. He’d scarcely even decided to make it, hadn’t he? Did he even really make the choice to murder this boy? If he didn’t, if his hands simply moved on their own, does that mean it won’t be his fault? When those little girls outside weep out their grief, will it be him who caused those tears?

Yes. He won’t lie to himself. If this is the choice he makes, then all of that pain is on him.

But hasn’t he already chosen to accept that? He’s already made the poison.

The poison.

It’s a remarkably simple thing to force liquid down a sleeping patient’s throat. Carlos has done it thousands of times, but now, he has to picture each motion before he can make his limbs follow through. As if he’s moving through water. Murder, he thinks. This is murder. And it is right, and brave, and good, and it is murder.

The cap of the vial won’t unscrew. Carlos’s hands are trembling too intensely—he can’t get—the damned thing—and he can’t catch his breath—

Three things happen in perfect unison:

Carlos turns the vial over and presses it against his knee; he bends forward to apply force; sunlight pierces through the window, finally high enough in the sky to reach into the fourth story, catches on the clean glass of the vial, in the brilliant vivid blue of the poison, and winks, as if with exaggerated mischief.

Carlos’s hands are shaking. When he presses the vial against the cap of his knee, when he leans his weight forward, when he blinks with surprise and twitches with the urge to sneeze—his hand slips. The thirty-milliliter vial of dayflowers and carom seeds and garlic and five acrid, hateful morsels of hemlock root slips from his fingers and onto the hard stone floor, and, with a small crunch, breaks into two jagged halves.

The poison is offensively bright against the dull stone floor.

Carlos pants like he had run a great distance. The tiny puddle creeps pathetically towards his shoe. Enough to kill a man. That puddle, such a bright blue, could have killed a man.

He stares, unblinking, and his hands shake for a minute more. Then, with care, he reaches into his bag once more. The medicine he applies for typhus is as familiar as the letters of his own name, but he double checks the ingredients as he combines ginger root and feverfew and black peppercorns. It’s simpler than ever to coax Niklaus’s mouth open and guide him to swallow. He keeps an ear on his breathing as he dices up coriander, and is filled with familiar pride when it grows deeper.

He needs ice, honeyed milk, and hot water. Already, Carlos is confident in his ability to save the boy, but there’s a long day of applying salves and brewing teas that needs beginning. And the family will be anxious for news.

Deigo II freezes his pacing when Carlos steps through the door, and Julie shoots to her feet. The Infanta Sofía shoots him a glare that could cut through stone, but all of them are looking at him with wide, red eyes.

“Your Majesty. Your Highness, my lady.” He greets them all with low bows of his head, then raises to offer a gentle smile. “I believe I have some good news. But first, if I may—where might I ring for a servant? There’s some glass that needs sweeping up.”

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Charlotte Parker is now an alumni of Georgia College and State University. She has obtained her paralegal certificate and hopes to attend law school in Fall 2026.