Chapter Text
Robin
Robin had never seen the Dancing Lights.
They were Caldara’s pride and joy, his country’s shining tourist attraction, and Robin hadn’t laid eyes on them once. He even lived in the palace, right under where they emerged, and yet every year, the exact same thing happened.
“Finish your deliveries and be back before the Solstice Festival starts,” Dr. Farrow said. “Don’t be late. No stopping for tea or fire cakes or any other nonsense.”
“If I finish early, could I—”
“When have you ever finished early?” Dr. Farrow snapped, and Robin closed his mouth. He stood in wait as Farrow leafed through the stack of letters. “The answer is no. You’re to man the doctor’s office as well tonight. And I do not want a repeat of last year.”
Robin nodded, biting the inside of his cheek. Last year, he’d tried to creep up to the main floor to catch a glimpse of the Lights from a window, but he hadn’t even made it down the hallway before Farrow returned to gather herbs of a recreational variety, caught him, and took his holiday privileges for the rest of the season.
Robin hadn’t shirked his duties: everyone was at the festival. And if someone did require medical attention, they would need Farrow, not him.
“If…if I’m going to be helping out with the doctor’s duties,” Robin started. “Perhaps you could teach me a little medicine? I’ve been reading up on it and—”
“No,” Farrow said. He took a pen to the letters, scribbling numbers for recipes at the top of each page. “It’s bad enough you’re the apothecary. As soon as I’m able, I’ll be taking on an apprentice from the Academy. You are not—” Farrow frowned. “What do you mean ‘reading up on it’?”
Ice shot through Robin’s veins. “Well. I thought it would help my apothecary studies. To just…” He petered off upon seeing Farrow’s face: thick brows twisted and lip curled.
“Take a peek? Of my books?”
Maybe. Yes. “Of course not,” Robin scrambled. His collar felt hot, and he took a step back as Farrow rose from his seat.
“If you have been going through my books again, boy, I will have you out of my office by nightfall.”
“Prince Sylvan got some for me!”
Farrow stopped.
While it wasn’t the only source of Robin’s reading, it was true. Those books were the first gift Sylvan had given him. Robin still remembered the feeling of their fingers brushing as the prince handed them off. “He…he let me borrow a few from the library, is all.”
Farrow’s brow twitched. He turned back to the letters. “I suppose it can’t be helped then.” He grabbed the pile and handed them to Robin. “But I tire of having these discussions. Gather ingredients, make the recipes—how I tell you to—and deliver them. Apothecary is a clerical job: anyone with half a brain could do it. Given you have at least seventy-five percent of one,” he grumbled, “there should be no issue. But that’s where your duties end. Understood?”
Robin nodded and took the letters. It was only when he closed the door to their adjoining offices that he dropped in shoulders in relief.
That was foolish, Robin thought, then he shook his head. First thing’s first. Do the job you have.
It wasn’t that Robin disliked his job—he found the gathering of plants and the stirring of ingredients to be calming and enjoyable—but there was a limit to what herbs could do. He wanted to help people with more than their colds.
Robin looked over the letters, where Dr. Farrow had written the corresponding recipe he was to concoct at the top. Most of this stack was part of Robin’s normal weekly routine and he was able to package the remedies quickly, but one request was new: noblewoman Laurel Avery had come down with a fever. Dr. Farrow had written 543 at the top, which was the number for the common fever medicine.
If Robin remembered correctly, 543 called for a few ingredients that he had in the Royal Garden or drying inside, including mint.
He scanned his bookshelf for the correct volume and gently nudged Lun from her place on top of the books. The snow moth bumped her head against Robin’s palm, expecting to be pet.
“Why is it you’re always where I need to be?” Robin asked. With one hand, he scooped her up. Despite the appearance of their namesake, Robin always thought snow moths were more similar to flying squirrels than anything else, and she was able to fit comfortably his hand. Careful of her bent wing, he deposited Lun on the desk in the spot he’d made for her: a small bundle of half-nibbled soft clothes that were nestled between a few rarely-used plague volumes. Lun fluttered her wings and her eyes blinked open—and she suddenly began chittering wildly.
“What’s gotten into you?” Robin asked and sent a wary look to the door. He liked to have it open when he had to burn herbs, but he went to close it now. “Absolutely not. Last time you escaped, you got into Mrs. Shyer’s dresses, and she threatened to cook you.” He fed Lun some cherries to quiet her down and pulled his notebook off the shelf where he had scrawled the following:
:: Laurel Avery, 43. Allergens: mint—Hives.
He glanced at the door leading to the doctor’s office, hoping Farrow had left.
A little tweaking to his recipe won’t hurt.
Robin had been working on altering some of the recipes for a while now. The problem would be tinkering with the substitute to ensure it didn’t trigger Avery’s allergy as well, but he’d dealt with replacing mint before and had been successful.
He gathered the materials, and began.
***
Lun’s fluff radiated warmth on his neck helped as she nuzzled closer under his hood, but Robin still shivered. The Solstice was supposed to mark the beginning of Winter, but in Caldara, this was more of a formality: a good summer consisted of light snowfall and, if the gods were kind, a lack of snow storms and ice rain. And I forgot my gloves…But if Farrow hears me come back, he’s going to chew me out for forgetting them. He held his flamestone tightly in his hand instead, taking in its heat.
He started down the road, waving to the palace guards as he left through the main gate. It was a trek to get across the whole town, but by now he had a method of shortcuts to make his way through.
The first stop was for one of his regulars, a nobleman who suffered from joint pain.
“You sure you can’t come in for a cup of tea?” Krasin, the head servant, said and took the parcel. “The old man’s fast asleep and will be for a while.”
“Not today,” Robin said. The only thing that made the slogging route through the snow bearable was talking to the house servants, but if he started, he’d never get anything done. “I have to finish my deliveries early.”
“Ah,” Krasin responded. “In time for the Festival?”
Robin forced himself to nod and smile.
“Enjoy,” he said. “I’m taking Marcell. It’s supposed to be a good one this year.”
I bet, Robin thought.
“Did you finally buck up and ask Sylvan—”
“I have to go, Krasin!” Robin’s face burned intensely, and Krasin laughed as he bid him goodbye.
Lun’s hooked claws dug into his shoulder as he ran down the snow-covered slopes, skidding as his boots caught ice. At least with his deliveries complete, his pack was light.
Gods help me. He could see the sun progress down the sky. Farrow was going to be furious.
“Mrs. Arrington!” he called, finally slowing as he saw the older woman tending to her greenhouse. He struggled to a stop, heaving his breath. “I’m here!”
She held her basket against her hip, looking at him through the glass, amused. “Late again, boy?”
“No,” he said with a smile, righting his hood and fixing his curls.
She rolled her eyes and came closer to him. “What do you have for me?”
Robin took out folded cloth from his pocket containing a few mixed poultices and two vials of new ingredients.
“Is that…”
“Fireweed and Siren’s Salt.”
She examined the vials, holding them up so the light could illuminate the shimmering contents. “Never seen these in person,” she murmured. “You sure these won’t be missed?”
“The royal garden has more than the king knows what to do with,” Robin muttered. “All the nobles ever get are colds—it’s a waste.” Especially with whispers of war on the horizon. Everything’s so expensive. “Please, give it to your patients.”
“As always, thank you,” she said. Then, her eyes darted to him. “Don’t suppose you have time to deliver today as well, do you? These old bones can’t make it through the snow as well.”
The words “Of course!” were out of his mouth before he could add up the extra time it would take, but he grabbed her parcel anyway.
Robin wandered down icy streets. The residents were doing their best to bundle inside, though from the look of the buildings, Robin wouldn’t guess anyone lived there. Wind whistled between cramped alleys and his footsteps alone tracked through the snow.
He didn’t spend much time in the outskirts. Mrs. Arrington was at her limit treating the servants of the nobles, their families, travelers, and laypeople.
No one treated people in the outskirts.
Not regularly, anyway. He and Mrs. Arrington would set up clinics when they could spare it, but those instances were few and far between.
Today, though, Mrs. Arrington said someone had come to her asking for a poultice for their child. It took Robin a while to find the correct house, brushing ice off of neglected placards, but he finally was able to place the bundle inside their mail slot. He tried to retrace his snow-covered footsteps, figuring his way out of the maze with his anxiety spurring him on. Farrow was planning to leave for the festival before sundown, and he was sure that time would be long past when he made it back. If he could just convince Mrs. Arrington’s husband to take him near the palace on his horse—
“Ah!”
He felt jabbing pain as his foot caught something in the snow and he landed face first in the ice, catapulting Lun into the air.
“Lun!” he said, quickly digging her out of the drift. She shook her head and flicked her wings, spraying Robin with snow. Her body quaked, and he saw her wings tremble in the low light. He checked them, making sure that her right wing hadn’t gotten re-injured, but she was just cold.
He brushed it off of her and pulled his hood back up, allowing her to scramble up his arm. He winced as the snow melted against his neck.
What the hell had he tripped on in the middle of the road?
He scanned and found where his footsteps ended. He brushed the snow off to try and uncover what it was to move it from the road, but he paused his motion abruptly.
That almost looked like…a hand.
The barely-covered fingers twitched in the snow.
Oh gods.
A shiver wracked his body, but he forced himself to shove more snow aside, revealing more of the arm. He hesitated, his hand hovering over the mound lining the wall. He’d assumed it was snow. Of course it would be snow, how could it be…
His terror fought with his urgency. If the hand was moving, if he hadn’t imagined that, if it wasn’t just residual muscle spasms, then this person was alive, and he couldn’t let something as pesky as terror stop him from acting.
He pulled up the sheet and scrambled back.
The person’s skin was taught against their bones, pale and gray, and their clothing hung off of them loosely, covered in patterns of ice that crawled across their skin as well, spiking off of them like crystals, straight through the bone.
Ice sickness.
Robin gulped. In Caldara, it wasn’t just the cold one had to worry about. He’d read about certain ice crystals, deep in the heart of the mountains, that had properties that normal ice didn’t. The sickness started with standard frostbite but couldn’t be cured in normal fashion. It would spread across the body until it found some opening and infected the host. It turned one’s blood to ice and their bones grew shards of crystals. The person only had a matter of days before their body split with ice and the coldness stole the warmth of their soul.
It was also extremely contagious.
Images flashed in Robin’s mind. The drawings of distorted ice-logged corpses, frozen where they stood, isolated from anyone else.
It’s rare. Usually an ailment only found in remote farmers or woodsmen deep in the heart of the mountains. The cure was just as rare as the disease. If it spread through the outskirts, there’s no telling how many deaths would occur as a result. They would have to quarantine the corpse—
“H…help me.”
They were alive? How?
Robin opened his mouth, but nothing but breath came out, misty in the frigid air.
“Help me…” A woman’s voice, scratched and faint, emanated from the ice.
Robin’s heart beat fast in his chest. He should run. He should run, and tell someone, but they…would they help her? Without pay? With the risk of infection hanging over their heads?
“I’m not a…I can get a doctor.”
“Help me…please.” Her voice waned with a wail. A gust of wind blew across Robin’s face, and he briefly wondered if that was enough for the crystals to infect him, too.
Had he touched her hand? Or merely the snow surrounding it? He couldn’t really remember. Why did you forget your gloves!!?
“Please help me…”
“Okay,” he said, his voice catching. The cold was chilling his bones. Was it because he was sitting in the snow, or was it because of the disease already taking hold? “I will. I’ll help you. Just…” He swallowed.
::Brinicle’s Disease—colloquially known as Ice Sickness. Level 4 contagion. Suggested course of action: permanent quarantine until the host is completely ice. Torch remains.
He shook his head. There was more. There was a cure. Someone had discovered a cure. He just…had to remember.
Agonizing pain until the numbness takes you.
Blood hardening until the host can no longer form clear words.
The splitting of bone can be heard as the crystals splice—
Robin bit the inside of his tongue until he felt the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, shocking him out of the frozen terror he was trapped in.
Being near heat could slow the process. He knew that much. He tore off his cloak, draping it over the woman’s body. She was resting with her back to the wall, and he tried his best to tuck the cloth against her without touching her skin.
“It’s all right,” he said again. “It’s going to be okay.”
He wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or himself.
He dug the flamestone from his pocket and carefully placed it in her hand without touching her. She hissed at the added warmth, but he saw it melt a little of the ice—just for a moment, before the crystal returned with crackling force.
“I-I’ll be back,” he said. “I promise.”
With that, he tore back down the alley.
Once again, he found Mrs. Arrington in her greenhouse, and she balked at his state, seeing him shivering and hiding Lun under his shirt.
“I-I need the Fireweed back.” His teeth clattered and he held his sides tight. Is that the sickness starting? Or is it just the snow?
“Callide’s blessings, boy, what happened to you?” She moved to the door, and he waved his hands.
“S-stay in the greenhouse,” he said. “I think.” He swallowed. “I think I found someone with Ice Sickness.”
Her eyes widened, and he could see her own fear reflected in her face. She shook her head and spoke something that looked like it was a curse.
“The royal books said something. Something with Fireweed, but I can’t remember. Fireweed and Aspen’s bark and…and…” He pressed his palms to his eyes. “One of the Augustine salts—”
“Western or Northern?”
“Northern,” he said. “Yes. And…and…” Why can’t I remember? Why can’t I remember? It was simple, just rare, but we have Fireweed, why can’t you remember? Anyone else would be able to—
“I’ll look in some of my books. Just stay there.”
A short while later, she returned to the greenhouse.
“The recipe calls for lloprost,” she said. “That’s not something I have lying around.”
Robin’s teeth dug into his lip. It was expensive. They had it in the castle, but he’d never make it there in time, and if he was infected… “Try…try mixing St. Aleta’s Wort and cardamoms,” he said. “Two to one.”
It was something he’d theorized using as a substitute. He hadn’t been able to test it yet, though.
Better now than never.
Eventually, she came and set the vial outside and closed the door to the greenhouse again. But she lingered near the door.
“We should call the guard,” she said. “There’s a chance you aren’t infected yet,” she said. “They can help whoever it is.”
“You know what they’ll do.”
“The same thing they’ll do to you if you get infected for the sake of a stranger.”
The silence hung between them, but he stepped forward, cold fingers curling around the vial. “Thank you,” he said.
“If that works,” she said. “And that’s a big if,” she said. “Take some yourself.”
He nodded and crept back away from the door.
The woman was still huddled in his cloak, her back against the wall of an abandoned stone building. She clutched the flamestone, and Robin could see its faint glow illuminating her gaunt features.
She flinched when she saw him approach, a horrible grating sound from the crystals striking his ears.
He slowly knelt next to her.
“Hey,” he said, and immediately lamented his awkwardness. Sylvan always said he was horrible talking to people if he couldn’t be casual.
Sylvan.
Would he see him again? And what about C—
He shook his head. Now isn’t the time for that.
“I think this will help,” he said. “I need you to tilt back your head and open your mouth.”
She didn’t respond, simply looking down at the stone. She was still breathing, though. He could see that much. He hesitated but took off his turtleneck. The cold stung his body and he was wracked with shivers, the only protection from the elements now being flimsy bandages over his arms and chest. Lun dove for his hair, taking refuge under his curls.
“I’m going to touch you,” he said. And hope this works.
Wrapping the shirt around his hand, he tilted back her head and realized her jaw was completely frozen shut, the ice shards protruding through her cheeks where teeth would be.
Callide help me, he prayed and drew closer. Her eyes were wide open, and he could see the patterns of ice across them. He held his breath, tipping the contents of the vial into her eye.
She didn’t even blink, only looking up as it splashed on her.
Gods. He shook in the cold, drawing back. Was that enough?
She didn’t move, but the liquid soon disappeared from her face, sinking in.
Robin swallowed.
“Come on, Lun.”
Lun didn’t budge from her place and the cold flared into him with a gust of wind, and he almost sobbed from the sheer temperature. He grabbed her, her hooked claws digging into his flesh.
He held her still like when he used to bottle-feed her.
“You need this,” he said. “I’ll take it too. Please.”
She struggled against his hand and he drank it first, angling the vial back. It tasted horrid, but he clenched his jaw and swallowed.
“See?”
Lun fluttered against him, but stilled enough. She opened the four mandibles of her mouth, and let him trickle the drops inside. She squeaked at the taste, arms wiping her face repeatedly, then quickly clambered back up his arm.
Crack!
He glanced back at the woman and saw the ice shards cracking off of her. He pushed back in the snow. The shards were clattered to the ground at an alarming pace. There were gruesome holes where the ice had torn skin and frozen blood flow, but she would be okay. It hadn’t frozen anywhere sensitive yet.
“Hah.” Robin breathed out, a grin spreading across his tear-frozen cheeks. It worked. It actually worked.
The woman blinked back to him, recognition in her eyes once more. Her skin was returning to a more lively color. She stood abruptly.
“W-woah!” Robin said, scrambling to his feet. “You should take it easy. I’ll bring you back some food and some star tea—”
But before he could get her attention, she’d vanished down the alleyway.
Robin stared into the darkness after her, shivering. If he followed after her, he’d lose where this place was. The shards sparkled in the light, with no indication that it was far more deadly than a normal icicle. His mind scoured the books he’d read. Melting the ice in fire and mixing it with the antidote was supposed to cleanse the ice of the sickness, but discomfort stirred in his stomach as he prepared to melt as much as he could of the snow in the surrounding area. How had the sickness come so far from the mountains? he thought. Did anyone else have it? He set his jaw in a hard line and did the best he could to melt everything.
Mrs. Arrington looked down at him while he sat in her chair, wrapped in one of her son’s old coats. She was wearing gloves and had her scarf pulled over her mouth as she examined his skin and his eyes. The fireplace crackled in the background.
“That was foolish.”
He didn’t answer. There wasn’t really anything he could retort to.
“…But you’re fine, boy.”
“Are you sure?” he said. “Perhaps I shouldn’t go back to the castle yet—”
“I’m sure,” she said. She hesitated. “It’s quite…swift. If you had it, you would already be ice.”
Oh.
“And so would Lun,” she said, taking off her glove and petting the moth’s head, the antennae flattening against her palm. “She would have turned even quicker as small as she is. You’re okay.”
Robin breathed out, half in relief, half just to feel the warmth against his fingertips.
“Although you’re certainly late now,” she said.
He stiffened again. Gods.
“I’ll get Allen to ride you to the gates,” she said. “But you’ll likely be sick from your idiotic idea to take off all your bloody clothes at the start of winter.”
He nervously tucked his hair back. “…Thank you,” he said.
She huffed and tossed him another firestone. “Get going before you’re out of a job.”
***
Despite the cold and his exposure to the elements, Robin felt increasingly hot as he walked through the palace gates. He could hear the sounds from the Festival music and cheers, smell the fire and the food. The lights would appear at any moment.
Farrow was going to be astronomically angry with him, but for some reason, the terror that normally accompanied that thought felt very distant.
Everything felt very distant. Perhaps it was for the best he wasn’t going to the Festival. He put his hand against the wall to steady himself, but a nauseating heat spread through his chest.
He put one foot in front of the other in an effort to at least make it down to the Apothecary. The bricks on the walls and the floor seemed to be switching places, which made it difficult to step.
Was Mrs. Arrington wrong? Did I get sick? I don’t want to make anyone else sick…Maybe I should… He stopped, unsure of which direction to choose, unsure if he could even take another step regardless.
He vaguely heard Lun chirp, but it sounded faraway. The only thing tethering his mind was the heat.
It felt like he was on fire.
He swayed and lost his footing, and everything went black.
***
Robin was having that dream about Sylvan again. He tried to kick that habit, but he couldn’t help it when he slept. As unrealistic as his desires were, he could at least have them in dreams.
He was in Sylvan’s arms, gazing up at him, the candlelight above giving him a golden halo around his head. Ice-blue eyes stared down, flecks of royal purple making them even more striking.
“Sylvan…”
Robin reached up, hooking his finger around a strand of the prince’s white locks, something he’d never dare even think about doing when he was awake. He felt the strands between the pads of his fingers. It was soft as silk and light as fresh-fallen snow.
“My,” Sylvan said, soft voice tinged with amusement. It always had a lofty air to it; Robin often wondered if part of being crown prince included having a voice that sounded like song, or if that was something unique to Sylvan. “Usually I’m courted before someone does that.”
What?
Robin stilled, and suddenly, everything became quite sharp. This wasn’t a dream.
It was a nightmare.