It was just after eight in the morning on the twenty-fourth of April that I found myself alone in the healer’s quarters. It marked my first solo day as a healer, seeing as the twins had taken the morning off after a late night of work. In truth, I was excited for the independence I had been granted - it showed that they had faith in me as a healer. Mornings were usually the most quiet, people mostly sending for headache tonics or contraceptives — nothing that I shouldn’t be able to handle on my own.
And then the chief advisor to the Crown Prince stumbled into the healing room. The Prince himself was half slumped and leaning heavily on the older man with sweat falling from his face like rain from clouds. I jumped to my feet from where I sat, the thundering of my heart like that of a thousand horses racing through the castle, hooves shattering the stone into spiderwebs that threatened to bring the whole palace down. Something was horribly wrong. I dropped into a quick curtsy anyway.
“The twins? Where are the twins?” Delalieu asked, the strain in his voice made obvious by the slight tremor shaking his words. I blanched and the blood ran from my head only to pool in my toes like liquid metal, completely rooting me to the ground where I stood.
“It’s just me this morning, I — they had a late night.” It seemed to dawn on both of us at the same time that I was the only option, the only hope. Sweat began to gather at my hairline, slipping down my temples in rivers and streams and rainstorms. I wiped my sweaty palms on my apron in an attempt to soothe my quaking hands, rushing to where the prince had collapsed on the bed face down. The shirt that was bone white from the front was blood red on the back. Had I taken it and twisted, I would have been able to make puddles on the floor.
I began rushing, moving as fast as the beat of my heart and started by cutting his shirt straight up the center and carefully peeling it away from wounds. Slash after slash after slash marked his back, fresh wounds over old scars that left the prince’s back entirely mangled. Some of the marks slipped over onto his sides, rose up onto the rounded nature of his shoulders. It didn’t take much inspection for me to know what had happened. Prince Warner had been whipped: his back so ravaged by leather that his skin had ripped open and wept blood.
I immediately grabbed the cart for lacerations and wheeled it to Warner’s bedside, pulling out a numbing serum and injecting it in several places to ease the pain, apologizing over and over for every little prick of the needle despite knowing it was the least of his worries. After a brief moment, his muscles relaxed and he let out a deep sigh as he turned to look at me. Red bloomed across my cheeks like roses in spring, his green eyes glassy and bloodshot while he watched my face. Beautiful. Prince Warner was breathtaking and inhumanly beautiful and I didn’t know how such a person could be real, how someone that looked like that could exist, that someone with such a perfectly smooth face could have a back made of maps of rivers and streams and lakes of blood.
With the prince on my table I was in no rush taking my time and being gentle. I glanced at the prince every so often to ensure that nothing I was doing was causing pain and every time his eyes were on me and every time my cheeks flushed with embarrassment. My nerves flickered like flame in the wind beneath my skin but somehow I managed to ease the shaking of my hands. I couldn’t relax my shoulders that were being pulled too taut or my jaw that was wired shut by the anxiety of the prince bloody and broken on the bed or the fact that he looked nowhere else but my scarlet face.
It wasn’t just the prince staring that had me unhinged. It was that someone had done this to him, someone had willingly whipped the nineteen year old boy that lay before me. Someone had beat him until his back resembled the pulp of a blood orange, his blood dripping dripping dripping onto the too-white sheets in stains that would never come out. It wouldn’t be something that I would be able to forget, it was burned and branded into my mind with red hot iron.
“What’s your name, love?” When he spoke I nearly jolted and dropped another blood soaked rag to the floor, shifting my eyes in his direction and bowing my head before speaking.
“Juliette, Your Highness,” I replied, cursing the way my voice quivered. Everyone knew how awful the prince was - it was the biggest reason that my anxiety constricted my chest so horribly, so tightly until I was taking the shortest breaths to keep my body oxygenated. Stories of Warner were whispered among staff like legends passed down through generations. Warner as a skilled soldier in war, Warner who never smiled or spoke to anyone. When he did speak to them, it was typically to bark out an order. I had only seen him around the palace once during my training, and it felt odd and foreign to see him so relaxed as he was now. But that was just the tonic at work because this boy was nothing like the man of reputation that so greatly proceeds him.
“Juliette,” he breathed, turning my name over on his tongue like fine wine. He said my name so softly, the way you might whisper to a lover whilst sharing a pillow before bed. The way he said it made it difficult to believe the stories, but I couldn’t exactly ignore them either.
Prince Warner was capable of – and had done – so many horrible, unspeakable things. These weren’t things that I could turn a blind eye to. It didn’t matter that he said my name like he might caress a lover. It didn’t matter that he was handsome, perfectly gorgeous in such a way that it didn’t feel right for a person to look like that. But pretty men with devastating faces were just that: devastating.
It took a handful of hours to get all the wounds clean and properly bandaged. When the twins came in mid-morning and insisted on taking over in the midst of the apologies, the prince had refused and said he wanted no one but me to tend to his injuries. As I finally finished doctoring the wounds, Delalieu helped me get Warner into a sitting position. He seemed to hate needing the help, his lips tugging down in a smile and his brows knitting together, but he was still and patient while I wrapped his torso with bandages. Delalieu helped him into a clean white shirt that he’d retrieved sometime while I worked and I watched carefully was the prince pushed himself to his feet. He wobbled.
“You really should stay here to rest,” I advised all too casually, so I slapped on, “Your Highness.” Warner’s lips twitched at the corners like he wanted to smile while his fingers buttoned up his shirt. It was an effort not to stare at his body that had been carved from marble. He was unfortunately perfect.
“I can’t do that, I’m afraid. I thank you for your assistance, Juliette. I’ll send for you when my bandages need changing.” Warner bowed his head before looking me in the eye again. God, they were so green, but a clear crystal kind of green. The green that matched the jade ring he wore on his pinky finger. “Could I get a pain tonic before I leave?” I merely nodded in response, turning to go to the cabinets where we kept the tonics but Sara was already there behind me, a clear bottle with a clear liquid in her hand. I thanked her and offered it to Warner, suppressing a shudder when his fingers brushed mine - and then he was off, downing the contents of the bottle while Delalieu spoke to him in hushed tones as they left the room.
“What’s bothering you?” Adam whispers against my palm, a growing frown on the lips that he presses against my skin. It takes me a moment to pull my focus from the pattern of my dress and to his eyes. Eyes that threaten to swallow me up in dark waters every time I look into them.
“I met Prince Warner today,” I finally admit, squishing the blueberry I hold between two fingers until the juice is running down my fingers. My lips are turned down as I wipe them on the skirts of my dress, anything to keep from looking at Adam. The more I look at him, the more I want to be honest and tell him what I know. But I also know that I can’t tell anyone about the Prince, why he was on my table, or why I would be sneaking to his chambers in a few hours time to doctor his back once again.
“What did he do to you?” Adam demanded, sitting up straight. We had been lounging against a large oak tree in the courtyard for a rare evening snack. My toes were buried in soft grass that Adam insisted on ripping from the earth to give his hands something to do. Adam was a soldier in the royal guard, always standing outside the gates to the palace or assisting the prince on trips out of town.
“What do you mean what did he do to me? He needed a cut bandaged. He was perfectly nice.” I didn’t know why I was defending him. Maybe because he had seemed to helpless and nothing like the ruthless ass that he was rumored to be. But Adam had witnessed his cruelty first hand, had seen him force swords through men’s hearts.
I’d seen a broken man in the hospital wing.
Maybe it wasn’t as easy to take the punishments that he doled out. It’s fleeting thought, and one that I regretted instantly. I want to heal people - I don’t want them to hurt. Nobody deserves to be whipped like an animal.
I am pulled from my reverie by shouting across the courtyard and am instantly on my feet and moving in their direction. One of the twins, I can’t tell which from the distance, is running toward me with her skirts in her hands. I hear more than see Adam jogging next to me, but as soon as Sara whispers that it’s the prince in my ear I’m bolting back toward the hospital wing.
I can’t be bothered to give any sort of farewell to Adam, my only thought is the memory of the ravaged back I had worked so tediously to mend this morning and the way that Warner had swayed on his feet as he stood.
“What’s happened? Where is - ” I am breathless with a heaving chest by the time I all but slide into the healing room. Gasping for air, I rest a hand on the stitch at my side that my lungs may have fallen out of somewhere down the hall. To my surprise, Prince Warner is leaning against the table he had bloodied this morning with crystal eyes skimming over a handmade journal of parchment that’s so crumpled I already know what it says. A quick dig through my pockets confirms it.
“I’m flattered that you’re so concerned with my safety, love, but you didn’t have to run.” A smile is tugging at his lips and I feel my heart flutter in my chest.
Maybe he was every bit the bastard they all said he was, after all.
please reblog this as i’m unsure who wants to be tagged in warnette.
prguitarman
ellievsbear
germansingergirl
