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  Chapter 10: Prince of the Day

  His heart thudded once. Hard. And then everything started to fade.

  A numbing warmth overtook his limbs, spreading inward, like he was sinking into a thick, velvet dark. The room tilted further. His vision tunneled.

  Voices; unfamiliar ones; murmured at the edges of hearing. And then, through the growing silence, Ruwan's voice, crisp and cold: “Quick, grab him and go. I’ll take care of the evidence.”

  Then; nothing.

  He floated. A slow drift, weightless, like a leaf falling through syrup. Every breath tasted like ash and old flowers. Something tugged at the edge of his mind; soft, rhythmic, growing louder.

  Thump-thump. Thump-thump. His heartbeat, but warped. Wooden. Hollow. Then came the blooming.

  He couldn’t see his body, not fully; only pieces of it, flickering through shadows. His fingers split open. No blood, just petals. White, waxy blossoms unfurled from beneath his nails. Bark cracked along his arms in spirals, as if his skin had forgotten how to be human.

  Am I dying?

  A voice laughed gently in the back of his skull. You’re becoming something more.

  His legs locked in place. He looked down; bare feet buried in rich, dark soil. Roots twined up his calves like serpents. His spine creaked. His chest heaved, bark spreading across his sternum.

  He screamed, or thought he did. The sound came out like wind through hollow reeds.

  Then;

  Hands on his body. Real ones.

  “Get the hood on him,” someone said. A jolt of motion. He was being carried. His limbs flopped uselessly. The hallucinations didn’t stop; they layered over reality like stained glass.

  “Safe House under the Cavernous Tavern,” came a different voice. “Poison’s hitting hard,” another replied. The hood came down, cutting off what little light remained. The world shrank to breath and heartbeat.

  Inside the dark, the voices didn’t stop. They multiplied.

  “He’s not ready.”

  “He still dreams like a boy.”

  “Soon, he’ll remember.”

  Sunlight.

  Real sunlight? No; too warm, too clean. A memory. Sam was small again. A child. A boy holding his mother’s hand in a sea of strangers. Flags waved above the crowd. His father stood on a platform, voice echoing proudly through a crystal amplifier.

  His mother smiled down at him, her features clear and kind. “One day,” she said, “you’ll stand up there too.”

  “I don’t want to,” he replied. She crouched and wrapped her arms around him. “You don’t have to yet. Just listen. Just be here.” Someone handed her a crown of wildflowers. She placed it gently on his head. “There,” she said. “Prince of the day.” And for a while, he believed it. The wind carried the scent of roasted nuts, music danced in the distance, and the square felt safe; felt whole.

  Then a single leaf fell.

  He reached for it. It melted into his skin. His arm turned green. The flowers in his crown grew. And somewhere, in the dark beneath the square, the vines began to stir again.

  The warmth faded first.

  Then came the cold; seeping, stagnant, like damp stone after rainfall. Sam stirred, groggy and slow, his limbs aching as if he'd spent hours wrestling with his own bones. The weight of the hood still pressed against his face, but he could feel it loosening, the coarse fabric catching against his jaw as it was pulled back.

  Cool air kissed his skin. The scent of mildew, sweat, and earth hit next. Stone walls. A low ceiling. A single, guttering torch behind his lids. He blinked. The world bled back in through gray tones and shifting blur.

  But the roots were still there; he could feel them in his arms, phantom-like, coiled beneath his skin. His fingertips twitched. He half-expected petals to unfurl again. Nothing.

  Only skin. Clammy. Shaking. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. The memory still echoed behind his eyes; his mother’s hands, the flower crown, the sound of a rallying crowd. The imagined sunlight still warmed his shoulders. The words Prince of the day throbbed in the hollow of his chest like a bruise.

  Stone scraped. A metal bucket clanged. “He’s waking,” someone said. Not a voice he recognized. Sam tried to move, but his body protested. Muscles rebelled. The weight of the poison; or whatever it had been; hadn’t finished with him yet.

  The voice came again, closer. “Can you hear me?” He opened his mouth. Nothing came out but breath and dust. “Don’t push him,” said a second voice. “The mind takes time to come back from this kind of poison.”

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  Poison.

  His eyes found the torchlight, watched it flicker and warp against the damp-streaked walls.

  Poison.

  Had it all been in his head? He curled his fingers slowly. No bark. No blossoms. Just bone and skin. But the dread didn’t lift. The roots were gone, yes. But the sense of something planted inside him remained.

  Waiting.

  Watching.

  Growing.

  “He looks like he’s still seeing things,” the crouching guard muttered, snapping his fingers once, twice in front of Sam’s face. No reaction. “Can’t blame him,” the other said. “That was Shadebark. Mixed with Godsroot and something else I didn’t recognize.”

  “Who the hell poisons someone with that and doesn’t kill them?” The first guard grunted, shifting his weight. “Took two doses of Blackwort to counter it. More than we usually risk.”

  “He’s lucky he didn’t seize right through it.” Sam blinked slowly. The names meant nothing to him, but they rattled in his skull like loose bones. Shadebark. Godsroot. Blackwort. Each word stirred a different echo: vines splitting skin, fingers blooming with flowers, his tongue thick with soil. His lungs had grown roots. His heart thudded like a warped drum made of bark.

  “Think it’ll hold?” The crouching guard glanced over his shoulder.“It has to,” the other muttered. “If the dose doesn’t stabilize soon, he’s going to be useless. Or worse; dead.”

  “He’s not dead.”

  “He’s not awake, either.”

  Sam swallowed thickly, his throat raw. The taste of something bitter still coated his tongue, and the air around him smelled like sap and ash. He agreed with them, he wasn’t dead. But he wasn’t whole, either.

  Boots scraped against stone. “He’s stable enough,” one guard said, rising. “Let him sweat it out. We’ve done our part.”

  “Orders were to keep him breathing. Nothing said about babysitting.” A door creaked open, then slammed shut. Silence followed; heavy, close, broken only by the lingering drip of water somewhere beyond the stone.

  Sam exhaled slowly, raggedly. The breath felt real. Felt his. The hallucinations had dulled. The phantom itch of bark under his skin was fading. No more vines coiling around his spine. No flowers budding from bone. Just dampness. Cold stone beneath him. A room that smelled of mildew and metal.

  He cracked his eyes open. The ceiling above him was low and vaulted, made of old stonework. The dim lantern light threw shadows that danced across the walls; bare, save for an iron hook or two, and a thick wooden door banded in black iron.

  His limbs ached. He moved one arm and winced at the stiffness. His tunic clung to him, damp from the water and sweat. He shifted upright slowly, spine popping as he leaned against the nearest wall.

  He touched his chest. No bark. No vines. Just his heartbeat; still there, still his. Beating hard. Reluctantly steady. A cot. A bucket. No windows.

  No weapons. Sam closed his eyes again. Think. Breathe. Piece it together. They’d drugged him. Or poisoned him, more like. Ruwan’s voice still echoed in his mind; cold, efficient.

  “Quick, grab him and go.” Whatever they wanted from him, they hadn’t killed him to get it. Which meant he still had time. Maybe not much; but enough to plan.

  He flexed his fingers; first his right hand. A little stiff, but responsive. Then his left. That was slower.

  A dull ache pulsed beneath the skin of his forearm, up to the shoulder. He rolled up the sleeve with cautious fingers. The breath caught in his throat.

  Veins; faintly luminescent; green, like lichen-lit roots beneath the skin. They spiderwebbed up from his wrist, curled under the elbow, and spread thin tendrils toward his bicep. The glow wasn’t bright, but it was wrong. Wrong in a quiet, insidious way. His skin felt warmer there, slightly swollen, like something unnatural stirred just below the surface.

  He touched it. No pain. Just that odd, subtle thrum beneath the flesh, like the echo of a second heartbeat that wasn’t quite his. The hallucinations were gone, but this; this was real.

  He let the sleeve fall back down and clenched his fist. Whatever they gave him, the antidote hadn’t cleared all of it. And something was still changing.

  Sam stared at his arm a moment longer, heart thudding slow and heavy in his chest. He pressed a thumb gently against one of the thickest veins near his inner elbow. The skin there was warm; warmer than the rest of his body; and pliant, almost too soft. There was no pain, but there was a reaction.

  The vein pulsed faintly beneath his touch, like it acknowledged him. Or worse; responded. He shifted his pressure, pressing firmer.

  A tiny shiver trembled up the vein, the green glow flaring slightly; barely noticeable, like a firefly blinking awake beneath his skin. It didn’t hurt, but it sent a ripple of cold dread up his spine. The sensation was intimate, aware. His stomach turned.

  He pressed a knuckle to his shoulder where the vein thinned out and disappeared under skin. Nothing. No reaction. But near the elbow, near the wrist; those areas felt… active.

  Like something had taken root. His breathing slowed as he drew his arm back into his lap, covering it again. This wasn’t just leftover poison. Something else had been introduced.

  Sam drew a shaky breath, his pulse hammering in his ears as he focused all his attention on the veins. The green spread beneath his skin like creeping ivy, unnatural in its smoothness and pulse. He could feel the faint, constant thrum of it; whatever it was; running through them, steady as breath.

  His fingertips tingled as he flexed his hand, trying to will it away. No, not away. He needed to control it. He needed to redirect it. He narrowed his focus to the thickest vein, the one snaking up toward his shoulder. He tried to imagine it shrinking, pulling back. Visualized it retreating into his skin, away from the surface, away from his control.

  Nothing happened. His brow furrowed. He pressed harder, trying to focus on it the way he would a tense muscle; willing it to contract, to obey.

  A low, uncomfortable pulse of warmth surged in his veins, but the green didn’t shrink, didn’t fade. Instead, a faint twisting sensation slithered beneath the skin, as if the veins were responding to his thoughts.

  His chest tightened. It was like pushing against something that had its own mind; one that was more ancient and powerful than anything he could force. His breathing turned shallow. He gritted his teeth and willed the vein to stop. Please, stop.

  For a brief, terrible moment, it felt like the vein recoiled, like it responded to his panic. But then, the sensation of control slipped through his fingers, like sand. The vein pulsed again, stronger this time, a slow, heavy rhythm against his skin.

  "Shit," Sam muttered, clenching his fist as if that would stop the power coursing beneath it. His breath came fast now, the anxiety building. The green veins weren’t just poisoning him; they were becoming a part of him. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t push them back. They’d woven themselves into his flesh, like they had every intention of staying.

  Sam took a deep breath, forcing his chest to rise slowly and evenly. His heart hammered in his ribs, but he ignored it, centering his focus on the air filling his lungs. He closed his eyes and let the world fade into the rhythm of his breath. In. Out.

  The pounding in his skull began to dull, and the heat in his left arm softened, becoming more of a constant hum than a searing burn. His breath steadied, slow and deliberate. "Control," he whispered to himself, the word feeling like a mantra. He would regain it; he had to.

  He reached for the feeling again, the strange, pulsing green veins. This time, he would not push against them. He wouldn’t fight them. Instead, he let his awareness sink into them, listening to the pulse as it coursed through his body. The green lines under his skin weren't his enemy, not exactly. They were a part of him now; however unwillingly. And if he could accept them, maybe he could direct them. Maybe he could find a way to coexist.