The west guest suite had been designed for visiting royalty. This was unfortunate. Not because the room was inadequate, on the contrary, it was one of the best in the estate, the bed large enough to accommodate a family of particularly dramatic nobles, old Sonomian ward stones set into the walls, the windows overlooking an inner courtyard where the trees had been cultivated to block sightlines from the street.
The problem was that I'd never intended to actually use it for royalty. I'd assumed the room would remain an expensive reminder that House Konstantin possessed enough dignity to prepare for guests we hoped would never visit.
Yet there the Crown Prince lay. Pale. Sweating. Breathing too shallowly. The dark mark beneath his sternum had stopped spreading when he entered the estate, but it hadn't faded, black veins still curling across his skin, looking less like an illness and more like something trying to write itself through him.
