Most of the next four days - for I later found out that was how long I was unconscious - was a featureless blur to me. I had faint flickers of awareness, but nothing much. I remembered someone bathing my forehead with a cool cloth, and someone holding my hand, and I remembered something being forced down my throat that made me vomit until I was spitting out blood. The emetic did its job, however, and whatever poison had entered my system left it.

There was another memory, although it was so faint and, frankly, so absurd that it was probably just a creation of my fevered brain. I thought I remembered Irina sitting by my bedside, one of my hands gripped between hers, my knuckles pressed to her lips. She was mumbling something, and although I didn't remember the words, I remembered the desperate cadence to her voice. She was begging, and she was clinging to me like I might disappear if she let go.

But of course, that couldn't have really happened. It must have been a dream.

When I finally woke up properly, it was to Irina sitting next to me in an armchair that had been dragged up to the bed. She was dozing, so I took advantage of the moment to try to recall what had happened. The last thing I recalled was going to dinner, and then…

And then…

And then I took a sip from my wineglass, and drank a mouthful of poison.

I didn't remember much of anything coherent after that, so to find out what had happened, I would have to wake Irina. For a moment, though, I hesitated. Could I trust her? Had she been the one to poison me in the first place? If I woke her now, would she be glad to see me alive, or would she press a pillow to my face and smother me to death?

Perhaps it was foolish of me, but I didn't think she would. If she'd wanted to smother me, she could have done so while I was unconscious. To wait would be foolish, and Irina was no fool. And as for whether or not the poison had been hers… Well, what difference would it really make? She would hardly admit to it. I would just have to bear not knowing.

I wasn't quite sure why, but I didn't think it was hers anyway.

When I opened my mouth to speak, only a thin rasp came out, but it was enough to wake Irina. "Mirnatius!" she gasped when she saw my eyes were open. "Oh, thank the Lord. We were beginning to fear you would never wake."

"We?" I croaked out.

Irina poured a cup of water from the pitcher next to my bed and lifted my head to pour it into my mouth. "My physician has been attending to you for the past four days," she explained. "We were able to expel the poison from your body, but he was afraid we might have been too late. You were very weak."

"Do we have any idea who was behind it?" I asked.

Irina sighed. "We haven't found anyone yet, but I have my suspicions. But I've been more focused on you than on finding the would-be assassins."

That was foolish, but it sent a strange warm feeling to my chest. I wasn't quite sure what the feeling meant, but it was pleasant.

"Have there been any further attempts?" I asked. Surely, while I was recuperating and still weak would have been the best time for another assassination attempt.

"No," Irina replied fiercely. "I've had guards outside the room at all times, and I've never left your side. No one but the physician has been able to enter the room. No one has tried to hurt you."

The ferociousness of Irina's response surprised me, but I didn't say anything about it. I still felt weak and exhausted, and the thought of getting in an argument wasn't one I could stomach at the moment. Even the discussion we were having was almost beyond me; it was difficult to even keep my eyes open.

"You can go back to sleep, if you're tired," Irina said, apparently seeing my weariness on my face. "I will make sure no one comes in."

The thought was tempting, I wouldn't deny that, but I shook my head. "Who do you suspect?"

"Given the timing, I have to wonder if it might have been orchestrated by one of our advisors," Irina replied. "Perhaps with Casimir's knowledge, or perhaps on his behalf without his awareness. Or it may have been someone associated with Ulrich, but I think Casimir might be more likely. Of course, there are others it could have been as well, but I think someone associated with one of the princes is most likely."

I hummed in agreement, my eyes drifting closed again. I wanted to keep them open, I wanted to keep talking, but they were so heavy…

"Go to sleep, Mirnatius," Irina said in a gentle voice. "We'll speak more when you wake next."

I allowed my eyes to close and slipped into slumber almost immediately. Just as I was on the edge of it, I thought I felt lips against my forehead, but I was so close to sleep that it must have simply been a dream.

The next time I woke, there was a man bending over me. I wanted to pull away, but I was so weak I could barely move at all. All I could manage was a sharp hiss, but I'd hardly had time to let it out before Irina appeared in my field of view.

"It's alright, Mirnatius!" she told me, reaching for my hand. "This is my physician. He saved your life."

"Your Majesty," the man said, taking a step back and bowing. "I'm glad to see you awake."

"Doctor Nikolai has been working tirelessly to tend to you," Irina added.

I could pick up on a cue when I heard one, even though I didn't always choose to care. "I suppose I owe you my thanks, then," I rasped.

Silently, Irina filled a glass with water for me and helped me to drink it. "It will be some time before you are fully recovered," the doctor said as I drank. "But I expect you will be well enough to leave this bed within a few days."

"Are you hungry?" Irina asked me. "I've made sure the kitchens have had broth ready for the past few days, so you would have some when you woke."

"Food would be a good idea," the doctor agreed. "You need to work on regaining your strength. I'm afraid the poison has left you very weak."

"Then I shall eat," I replied. I did feel hungry, after all, and I had the feeling that I'd only feel hungrier once the first spoonful of broth hit my tongue.

"I'll send for the broth," Irina replied, leaving the room in a flurry of skirts. While she was gone, I watched the doctor pack up his things, never taking my eyes off him.

"You're the physician Irina sent for, from Vysnia?" I asked after a long moment.

"Indeed, Your Majesty."

"The one who examined her to see if she is with child?"

"The very same."

"The baby. It's healthy?"

"Both the tsarina and the baby are in perfect health," the doctor told me. "The tsarina has been stressed, of course, but I don't believe it's been enough to impact their health."

"And you will be staying until the child is born?"

"If Your Majesty wishes."

"I do," I replied. Irina trusted the man, and I had to admit that he seemed a more than competent doctor. "And whatever you require to treat the tsarina and the baby will be provided. Anything you need. Price is no object."

"You are too gracious, Your Majesty," the doctor replied. "The tsarina is lucky to have such a loving husband."

Of course he would assume it was for Irina. It was partially for her - after all, I wouldn't want to see her weakened or killed by something that could have been prevented by throwing a bit of money around - but it was mostly for the child. I'd been born shackled to a demon, which was perhaps the worst disadvantage I could think of. I wanted to make sure my child was born with every advantage they could possibly have.

"The broth should be here in a minute," Irina stated as she reentered the room. "Thank you so much, Doctor Nikolai."

"Of course, Your Majesty," the doctor replied with a bow. "All should be well, but if anything worrying happens, send a servant for me and I will come immediately." He looked over at me. "But I do not anticipate that will be required. You should be out of the danger now, Your Majesty."

"I'm glad to hear it," I replied. "Thank you."

My thanks was clearly more of a dismissal than Irina's had been, but I needed to talk to Irina alone. Yes, she seemed to trust her doctor, and yes, he'd clearly done good work in saving my life, but that didn't mean I wanted to discuss sensitive matters in front of him. And speculating on who had made an attempt on my life was a very sensitive matter indeed.

The doctor bowed and left, and almost before the door shut entirely behind him, there was another knock. Irina went to the door, opening it and standing in such a way that whoever was outside wouldn't be able to see much of anything within. "Thank you, Maria," I heard her say, and then she ducked back into the room, holding a tray with a bowl of broth. The servant pulled the door shut, and Irina brought the tray over to me, setting it down on the table by the bed.

"How much do the people know?" I asked, trying to push myself into a sitting position.

"Everyone knows you were poisoned, unfortunately," Irina replied, helping me up. "There was quite an upset at dinner when you collapsed. There are rumors that you're dead, but I've done all I can to dispel them."

"You didn't let that servant see me, though," I countered. "Wouldn't it dispel rumors best if people saw me alive?"

"Perhaps," Irina replied, "but no one besides myself and Doctor Nikolai knows your current condition. I worry that, if word got back to the would-be assassins of how weak you are…"

"So you believe them unlikely to mount another attempt at the moment, so long as they don't know for certain that it's even required," I said. "But should they discover my current weakness, you believe they would?"

"I fear it would be seen as a good time to strike," Irina replied. "It would be seen as a weakness to be taken advantage of. When you're well enough to leave the bed, we'll make a public appearance and show everyone that their tsar is still very much alive, but until then…"

"Until then, I hide away," I replied. "I suppose there's not much else I can do anyway, given that I can't leave the bed."

"You came very close to death," Irina replied, and if I wasn't mistaken, her voice very nearly wobbled. "I'm glad to know you'll be leaving the bed at all."

"And who do you think it was who brought me so close to death?" I asked. "Before, you said you thought it might have been one of the princes?"

"Well, I believe it may have been done on their behalf," Irina replied. "With or without their knowledge, I cannot be certain, at least not yet."

"Casimir has supporters within our court, we know that much," I said. "And Ulrich has his daughter at your side, who is in a perfect position for such a strike."

"You mentioned that Vassilia looked at you oddly earlier than night," Irina said. "Of course, that could have been unrelated, but she may also have known something."

"And, of course, there are our advisors," I added. "We know they're a traitorous lot. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that one of them stooped to attempted assassination."

"Nor would it surprise me," Irina agreed. "And considering the attempt occurred only a few days after we announced my pregnancy, the timing seems suspect."

"You may have a point," I agreed. "Although they may have just spread a few rumors."

"I didn't hear any rumors," Irina disagreed. "And I've made a few inquiries, and there don't seem to be any around."

"It certainly would be quite a coincidence," I said dryly.

"I thought you didn't believe in coincidences?" Irina countered.

"I don't." Our advisors were involved, I was certain of it. Proving that they had done it would be a separate matter.

"You should eat," Irina said, picking up the bowl of broth. "I'll tell you everything I've discovered while you do."

"Fine," I said, reaching for the bowl. Holding it proved too much for my meager strength, however, and even the spoon alone shook in my hand. Silently, Irina took the spoon from my hand and guided it to my mouth. Being spoon-fed like an infant was humiliating, but it seemed I had no other choice.

"The poison was a rare one," Irina said as she fed me. "It wouldn't be easy for someone to get, not here. Unfortunately, there aren't any shops in Koron that sell it, so we won't be able to easily track it. As for how it got all the way to our table, I have to assume either a server or someone in the kitchen was bribed. I imagine someone in the kitchen would be able to sneak the poison in more easily. Seeing as we have a great many people working in our kitchens, however, it won't be easy to track down the person without more information."

"See if you can't get other people to turn on them," I suggested between spoonfuls of broth. "Go down to the kitchen with a few guards and take whoever looks the most nervous. If they're not the person who did it, and they might be, they'll probably be the most likely to tell you who that person is."

"Perhaps," Irina agreed, which was a more positive response than I'd been expecting to get. She fed me another spoonful of broth, and I heard her scrape the bottom of the bowl. The bowl had been small, but I would rather eat slowly than eat too much and lose the food a few minutes later. Given how fragile my stomach felt, I had the feeling that was more than possible.

"If we can find one person," I said, pausing to let Irina feed me more broth, "then we might be able to unravel the entire plot to find the others."

"That's what I'm hoping for," Irina replied. "We need to hope that whoever planned this wasn't so clever as to split up the information so no one person had it all."

"If they did, then we track the information down one person at a time," I replied. "We find one person, they lead us to someone else, and we continue on like that until we get everyone."

"We will find who did this, no matter what it takes," Irina swore. "They will not get away with it."

"They didn't really get away with much," I countered. "I'm still alive, after all."

"They made an attempt on the lives of the tsar and the tsarina," Irina countered. "That is not something that can go unpunished."

I blinked. Something in my mind had shifted, had fallen out of balance, and my thoughts were stuck on it. "Wait. What?"

"Well, of course we can't leave it unpunished!" Irina cried, setting the now-empty bowl to the side. "We-"

"No, no," I dismissed, "not that. You said an attempt was made on both our lives."

"Yes, indeed," Irina replied, frowning. "What of it?"

"I thought the poison had been put in my cup."

"The poison was in the carafe of wine that was put on our table," Irina corrected. "You poured some out for both of us, remember? I was about take a sip when you dropped your glass and collapsed."

I stared at Irina. There was a strange feeling happening in my chest, something I'd never felt before. "You mean to tell me," I said, in a voice that was low and dangerous and hardly sounded like my own at all, "that whoever nearly killed me also tried to kill you?"

"Indeed," Irina said, looking confused.

"And, if it were one of our advisors, they also wanted to kill our child."

"That's part of the reason why the timing seems so coincidental," Irina replied. "Killing us before we have an heir makes things much easier." She eyed me worriedly. "Are you feeling alright?"

No, I was not feeling alright, because someone had tried to kill Irina, and I was furious.

When I first married Irina, I knew there were ways I could have gotten rid of her. I didn't need Casimir's thinly-veiled insinuations to tell me that. There were ways for tsars to do away with unwanted wives, after all. I could have had small, slowly-increasing doses of poison slipped into Irina's food, weakening her until she sickened and died. I could have staged her death as an accident and played the grieving widower for as long as it took to allay suspicion. If I'd wanted to, I could have freed myself from her.

But I didn't. I came up with a whole manner of excuses. I told myself it was because she was so popular, and if her death were even the slightest bit suspicious, there could have been uproar. After we suspected her pregnancy, I told myself it was for the sake of the child. When I was being a bit more honest with myself, I admitted that I owed Irina my freedom, and I wouldn't repay that debt by killing her.

But now, feeling the overwhelming rage that swept through me, utterly decimating any sense of balance I'd ever had, I wondered if part of me had loved her even then.

Because I loved her now, despite everything I'd done to prevent myself, despite the utter foolishness of it. My wife had nearly died, and I realized I didn't want to live without her.

"We will find the people who tried to kill us," I said, my voice trembling with rage. "We will find them, and we will make an example of them. And we will make sure that no one tries to succeed where they failed."

Irina looked at me oddly. Perhaps she was wondering where my sudden fury had come from. I wasn't quite sure of that myself. All I knew was that it was sudden and all-encompassing, and I knew that it was demanding the blood of the people who had tried to kill Irina.

"We will find them," Irina finally stated. "And they will never hurt anyone again."

They would never hurt anyone again, and I would do my best to make sure that no one ever hurt the woman I loved.