Tressa's Treasures (The King's Jewel Book 1) (29 page)

"There was an odd shower."

"What's that?" I asked.

"While I was out—a few drops of rain fell, but the sky was so clear. Could that have been it?"

"Aye, maybe."

I dipped a towel into the pot, letting it soak up the mixture. When it had cooled enough for me to touch it, I squeezed out the excess fluid so it wouldn't drip. Gingerly, I sat next to him and unbuttoned his shirt. He grabbed my hand, stopping my progress.

"Tressa, I can't let you touch me unless you swear you won't hurt yourself."

"Don't be silly. I'll be fine." I tried to pull my hand away, but he wouldn't let it go.

"Tressa, I'm not joking. Don't you dare sacrifice yourself for me. If you did, I could never live with myself."

I struggled against the tears that blurred my vision.

"And how am I supposed to live with myself if you die?" I asked.

"You must live; too many people depend on you. You must take care of Sophia for me."

He coughed again, and it seemed to be gentler this time. I wanted to get back to my ministrations, but he wouldn't release me, even through the painful coughs.

"Tressa, swear that you won't hurt yourself for me."

I nodded reluctantly.

"Okay. I swear."

He let go of my hand, and it seemed like his entire body relaxed. I finished unbuttoning his shirt and opened it wide to expose his chest. I covered it with the hot towel then dipped a second in the pot, wringing it out and laying it on top of the first. I did this once more with a third towel.

I put my hands palms down on either side of his chest, allowing an easy flow for my essence to move into him. A slow and steady pace might be enough to keep us both alive.

The flow of energy kept the towels warm without me needing to reheat them. I whispered a long, ancient invocation I had memorized ages ago. It was a laborious prayer, especially for the healing of mortal illnesses. I didn't know if it would be helpful in this situation, but at the very least it had a calming effect on me.

"Sing for me," Alexander requested in a groggy, sleepy voice.

I continued the invocation without faltering, but I switched to singing it to the tune of a soft, sweet love song from my youth.

When I finished forty-five minutes later, he was asleep. I took the towels off and covered him with extra blankets to keep him warm.

He continued to cough, but the severity had lessened considerably, and he slept through them. The steam in the room had him sweating. His sweat was a putrid, yellowish-green color that I took to be a good sign: I hoped it meant that the impurities inside him were working their way out.

Exhausted, I went down to the kitchen to eat something before I slept. I was determined to be vigilant about keeping my strength up so I could keep feeding my essence over to him. After a quick sandwich, I crawled into bed behind him. It took mere seconds for me to fall asleep.

I jerked awake from another nightmare filled with fire and Deaglan Mór. Alexander stirred and weakly patted my hand; as usual he woke when I did.

The yellowish-green of his sweat soaked my clothes, and my face was flushed where it had been pressed against his shoulder. His clothes clung to his body, drenched with sweat. I placed the back of my hand on his forehead. He burned with fever.

I stopped the steamer and opened the bedroom door to let the air cool. He was so weak I nearly had to drag him to the bathroom. Without bothering to remove our already wet clothing, I went with him into the shower and let the cold-water rain down on both of us.

I didn't get out of the shower until my teeth were chattering. I toweled off and dressed before getting Alexander into dry clothes. He sat on a chair while I changed the bed linens. Then I tucked him back in the dry bed. He was unsettlingly quiet throughout the entire process.

The fever called for a different preparation. This time I started by mixing a concoction for him to drink. It had several things in it, but it tasted mostly of lemon and cucumber.

He only took a few sips when I brought it to him.

"Xander, you need to drink. You're losing too much fluid."

He took a small amount more with my continued urging, but it still wasn’t enough.

I tried another slow invocation, since the one I did last night had been so effective on his cough. I put many of the same ingredients from the drink into a basin of cool water. Then I took a sponge and systematically swabbed his face, hands, and feet with the cool tonic, singing the invocation and easing my essence into him as I had the previous night. Intermittently, I made him take more sips of the tonic.

This time it didn't help. His fever remained just as high. He had once again perspired through his clothes and through the bed linens with the ugly, yellow-green sweat. In my exhausted state, the thought of getting him into dry clothes and changing the linens again seemed daunting. I had just gotten up to start when Shamus and Mamó arrived.

Relief rushed through me at the sight of them. I was glad to have someone with whom to share my burden. I ran to hug my grandmother, and I would have hugged Shamus too if he hadn't held me off.

Mamó quickly assessed the situation.

"Shamus and I will get him cleaned up. You need to go sleep," she informed me.

"I can't sleep now. I'm the only one here with the gift of healing. I—"

"You must sleep. You need to keep rebuilding your strength, or we will lose him for sure."

Her blunt words shocked me. I nodded and turned to do as she ordered. I stopped at the door.

"You need to get him to take the tonic. He needs to drink as much as possible."

"Yes,
a leanbh
, I know this. Go."

I nodded, but I hesitated again as I looked at his expressionless face. I longed for him to turn to smile at me. I rushed back into the room and kissed his hot forehead.

"I will take good care of him,
a leanbh
. Now go take care of yourself."

This time I did as she told me.

When I woke several hours later, Rosheen was taking a turn nursing Alexander. She hummed as she tried to get him to drink. Someone had added a plastic straw to the cup of tonic. She held the straw to his mouth.

Relief crossed her face when she saw me.

"Mamó asked me to come sit with him a while," she whispered. "Music seems to calm him, but he's not sipping the tonic anymore."

I touched his face. He didn't open his eyes or respond. The fever still had hold of him. The small beads of sweat that covered his forehead were clear, at least, which was an improvement.

Something was off, however. He still wore the clothes Shamus had put on him earlier, and they were still dry. With that high of a fever, he should have sweated through them again.

I pushed back his hair and he rolled his head sideways. I noticed what looked like a bruise at the base of his neck and pulled his collar away to see more clearly. A web of purple lines had crawled up his shoulders and was curling along his collarbones.

I took my hand away from him, trying to hide from Rosheen the fact that it was shaking.

"I'll make some fresh tonic for him. Will you stay until I get back?" I took a deep breath, grateful I had gotten the question out without my voice cracking.

She nodded, folding her arms across her stomach. I returned with two tonics, one for him to drink, one to swab his skin. Both were chilled with plenty of ice.

"Thank you, Rosheen. You've been so much help." I hugged her, holding on to her and taking extra comfort from the hug. The gesture must have worried her; she hesitated to leave.

"It's okay, Roe, I'll be fine. You can go."

"That doesn't sound like a lie, but it doesn't sound like the truth either," she said, biting her lip.

"It's the best you're going to get right now."

She nodded, gave me a second quick hug, and left.

I took a clean washcloth and soaked it with the drink I had made for him. Then I used it to wet his lips and squeeze fluid in to his mouth.

I wet the sponge with the second mixture and swabbed his face, neck, hands and feet. I infused each stroke of his skin with my energy, willing it to heal his body. Then I went back to squeezing tonic into his mouth.

Instead of singing the same invocation, I sang hymns as I worked. As I sang, prayed, and ministered, I found myself in an almost trance-like state. Perhaps I had managed to hypnotize myself.

His energy pulled away from mine. I don't know if I had realized before then how tightly our energies were entwined, or how conscious I was of his presence, until I felt it falling away from me.

I reached out to him with my internal self. I lay across him, putting one arm around his neck and the other arm around his body, as if pressing physically closer to him would make us spiritually closer. I lay my ear to his chest, listening to his slowed heartbeat as I reached out farther and farther, desperate to feel his presence next to mine.

I was drifting, searching, singing to the metronome of his heart and moving further and further away from myself when a hand grabbed my arm and ripped me from him—ripped me completely off the bed.

Stunned out of my stupor, I scrambled to keep my footing. My legs bowed, but Shamus caught me before I fell and guided me to the chair next to the bed.

Mamó grabbed my chin and then raised it so she could study my face, her own face ashen with fear.

"You could have killed yourself, lass," she admonished.

My separation from Alexander created a grief so deep I barely heard her. Nevertheless, her words pushed through the fog in my head and added guilt to the debilitating grief. I had sworn to him I wouldn't go too far. If not for my grandmother's and Shamus's fortuitous arrival, I would have broken that oath.

Alexander groaned and then rolled onto his side. I started to go to him, but Shamus held me in the chair by gripping my shoulder.

Mamó went to him instead. She touched his skin and then offered him the glass of tonic. He took two strong swallows and even tried to hold the glass while he drank, though Mamó never let go of it.

"It seems you have revived him a bit,
a leanbh
, but at what cost?" she chided me.

"Do you think he's coming out of it?" I asked. His movements had brought me a small measure of hope.

"His aura remains, but the color has paled. He isn't fully here. He isn't fully gone."

I pursed my lips to contain my annoyance. I felt like she was purposefully being abstruse, though a part of me knew I was being illogical.

"You should go eat something. We'll stay with him a while," she said.

I acquiesced, knowing she would allow nothing else. I went to the kitchen, wondering what I could piece together from the few groceries in the house.

As it turned out, I didn't need to worry about that. A tray of food lay on the kitchen table. Jenny must have sent it down with Shamus. The savory aroma of chicken soup with egg noodles and freshly made biscuits filled the air, making me aware for the first time that I was ravenous.

I ate everything. Jenny had obviously sent enough food for both Alexander and me. Chicken soup, as I understood it, was a medicinal meal served to ailing people. I ate it all myself. When I had finished, I felt considerably fortified with renewed energy.

There was a paper folded in half on the tray. I opened it to find a note hastily written in Matt's sprawling script: When can I see him?

I didn't at once recall how much time had passed since this nightmare began. Working forward from the morning we found the hiker, I thought back to when Alexander had fallen ill, how many tonics I had prepared, and the times I had slept. I calculated that two and a half days had passed.

Perhaps I was being too cautious, but I decided three days would be best. I picked up my phone, which I had abandoned on the kitchen counter several days earlier. Matt had called and texted several times. I responded to his most recent text: twelve more hours.

Alexander's condition stayed much the same overnight. Mamó would no longer allow me to be alone with him. Rosheen and Keelin took turns staying with me when Mamó took respite from her post.

Shamus stayed the entire time. Mamó wanted him available to pull me away from Alexander if need be. However, this was an unnecessary precaution. I carefully checked myself; as much as I disliked it, I had given Alexander my word. I would not break my promise.

I monitored the progression of the purple webbing while I continued with my routine. I made him drink and swabbed him with tonic, slowly inserting bits of energy into each stroke and taking frequent breaks for food and naps.

Mamó sat vigil with me again the following morning. The fever still hadn't broken.

"How much more of this can his body take?" I asked her, my voice shaking.

"He's a strong man, lass. His aura is still holding."

"Tressa, can I come up?" Matt's warm familiar voice called from downstairs.

"Yes, Matt, please do," I called back to him.