I stand outside her room at war with myself.
When I close my eyes she’s there—vividly before me, seated on that bed, her sleeve yanked off one shoulder. That beautiful, creamy shoulder with its pinkish undertones, so unusual here among the pale, blue-toned troldefolk. Even in my imagination, I long to reach out, to touch, to taste, to know—
Morar-juk! What is wrong with me?
“Your Majesty?”
I wrench my eyes open, staring blankly before me into the outer chamber of the apartment. Hael stands in the open doorway. She blocks the way as solidly as any barricade. I don’t know how long she’s been there. “What?” I growl.
She salutes, her face hard and unreadable. “Madame Ar has requested your presence in the infirmary. She wishes to speak to you. Concerning Lord Rath.”
I nod. There are only two people in all of Mythanar who have the audacity to summon me across the palace: my stepmother and Madame Ar. In this case, at least, I’m eager to hear what our uggrha healer has to say.
Stepping briskly to the door, I make as though to pass by Hael. At the last moment, however, I stop and turn to her sharply. She meets my gaze. Stoic as ever. Her skin is grayer than usual, the soft white darkened until it’s nearly a match for the ugly gray stone that creeps up her neck and over her jaw. Despite her deformity, she is a handsome woman with proud, dignified features. Hers has always been the face of one of my most trusted friends.
My heart twists painfully. I want to punish her. She’s the one who put me in this situation. Twice over, she could have spared me. She was supposed to protect me against a deceit like this—first at the Between Gate, again in the bridal chamber. Twice over, she has failed in her duty, left me exposed, vulnerable. Humiliated.
“Captain,” I say coldly.
“Your Majesty.” She’s calm. But she knows what’s coming.
“You are relieved of your post.”
Her eyes widen ever so slightly.
“You will no longer be in charge of my personal guard. I have a new role for you instead.”
I can almost hear the words she forces back down her throat. The pleas, the apologies, the excuses. They clamor in the silence between us, shine in the dark depths of her pupils.
“From now on, you are solely responsible for the safety of Faraine Cyhorn of Gavaria. So long as the princess remains in our care, her life is in your hands.” I take a menacing step closer and drop my voice an octave. “If anything happens to her—anything at all—I will hold you personally responsible.”
Her breath quickens. She holds my gaze, but I wonder if her resolve will break, if the flood of protests will pour forth. At last, however, she offers another salute. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”
I don’t wait for more. Leaving her in the doorway, I flee the room, flee that whole wing of the palace. But I’m not quick enough to flee the betrayal shadowing my heart. Everywhere I turn I see only traitors and those who failed to protect me from them. I trusted Hael with my life. I would have trusted Faraine just the same. Yet here am I, a proven fool.
And what of my brother? Sul’s face springs to mind, craning to look up at me from the ground as I pinned him down, my foot on his neck. “I would never do that to you,” he’d insisted, when I accused him of lacing my drink with poison. “I would take the draught myself first.”
Do I believe him? I did in that moment, but now? I don’t know. The truth is, I fell under the influence of raog while in a locked room with only Sul and Hael present. Sul was the one who ordered drinks, the one to pour, the one to hand me my cup. He and Hael could be co-conspirators, of course. Working in secret to bring me down . . . for what purpose? To place Sul on my throne? And Hael, how would she benefit? Would she finally gain the love she craves from my handsome half-brother? Would he make her his queen?
My footsteps stumble. I lurch to one side, lean hard against the wall, breath ratcheting in my lungs. Dark, terrible doubts burn in my brain. Surely, these cannot be sane thoughts. It must be the poison, still working through my blood. If I go on like this, I will cease to discern reality from suspicion and end up paralyzed with dread.
I close my eyes, draw several long breaths. Then, a growl rumbling in my chest, I push away from the wall and continue at a slower, more sedate pace. Anyone I pass can see nothing but calm resolution in my face. Nevertheless, no one dares address me or make a bid for my attention.
So, I make my way unhindered to the infirmary. Three members of my personal guard stand outside the door, including Yok, Hael’s younger brother and the newest member of the cohort. They snap to attention as I pass. Yok opens the door for me. I step through and down the short stair into the catacomb-like space in which our healer works.
Right there on the front three tables are the chopped-up remains of a cave devil. The gruesome head lies on a platter on the foremost table, long black tongue spilling out from its sagging jaw. The sight makes my stomach turn.
Madame Ar is busy at another workstation across the room. She measures something with great care, adds a bit of a dark mixture, swirls, then holds the tall vial up to a globe of moonfire light. Her face is a study.
I clear my throat. “You wished to see me, Ar?”
She whirls on heel. “Vor!” she bursts out and fairly launches herself at me, shoving her strange brew into my face. “Do you see this? Do you smell it?”
“What is it I’m supposed to be seeing and smelling?” I put up both hands and try to back away, but she pursues, determinedly waving her concoction under my nose.
“It’s the same!” she says. “Traces of raog in the blood. I found plenty of it in the woggha you brought me, particularly in the brain matter”—she nods at the cave devil head on its platter—“which proved my hypothesis. These rabid devils are indeed being poisoned. That’s what’s driving them mad.”
I frown. “I thought cave devils were immune to raog, living down deep as they do.”
Ar waves a dismissive hand. “Perhaps they are to the gaseous form we’re familiar with. This, however, is much more concentrated. They must have ingested it somehow. In the water, perhaps. And see here?” She shakes her brew in front of me. It’s black and sludgy with strange particles floating around inside it. “Do you see it?”
Baffled, I shake my head.
“I took a bit of blood from that unconscious lord you turned over to me. When mixed with vitgut and baguolg, it reacts thusly.”
“And?”
“And? And? And this proves he too was suffering from ingested raog! Albeit on a much lesser scale.” She blinks up at me, her eagerness palpable. “Don’t you see? Dispersed in gaseous form, raog influence is widespread. This was a targeted poisoning. We will have to see when he wakes if it has driven him to total madness or merely temporary insanity.”
So. My instincts led me true. While Rath is a ruthless man in his own way, he’s never been one to get his hands dirty. He would have to be mad to do something as foolish as break a prisoner from the hold and attempt to murder her. At worst, he would find someone else to do the job for him.
I grimace. Now that I know, I cannot legitimately march back into Rath’s chamber and rip his arms from their sockets. Instead, I must wait patiently for him to regain consciousness and try to learn how he came to be poisoned. In so doing, perhaps I will discover the source of my own poisoning.
“Is it possible it was self-induced?” I ask without much hope.
“Possible? Perhaps, but unlikely.” Ar shrugs. “It isn’t a pleasant poison either to ingest or to endure, not even in small doses. I cannot imagine one would take it willingly.”
I nod. Having experienced raog myself, I can’t deny the truth of her assessment. “But why,” I go on, more to myself than to Ar, “did Lord Rath target the princess in his madness? All other reported cases of raog poisonings have resulted in savage, unhinged violence followed by suicide. Why would he focus only on Faraine?”
Madame Ar chews the inside of her cheek thoughtfully. “It may be a matter of timing. It may be the dose was administered when she would be the next person he saw, thus imprinting a murderous impulse toward her upon his soul. Or it may be a piece of the victim’s hair or skin or blood was mixed in with the poison. I’ve taken samples from Lord Rath’s mouth and will conduct more tests.”
I should probably volunteer my own body for testing. It would be easier for Ar to find answers with a broader field from which to take her samples. At the moment, however, I cannot afford to be trapped in this infirmary and experimented on for hours on end. “What are you doing to treat Rath?” I say instead. Though it pains me to think of that worm receiving any help or healing, I need him alive. For the moment at least.
“A brew of steeped miraisis petals,” Ar answers dismissively, turning back to her worktable.
“Will this help?”
“It will or it won’t. It’s been known to soothe some cases of lesser poisonings. Most of the time, folks just die. When they don’t, it’s difficult to say whether it was due to any real healing properties in the miraisis or simply a lesser degree of poisoning. Either way, it can’t hurt.”
I grimace. “And if I were to ask for a dose, would you give it to me?”
“Why?” Ar turns too-cunning eyes my way, one of them enlarged by the curved-crystal eyepiece she’s pressed into her socket.
“Merely a precaution, Madame.”
She raises an eyebrow, and the eyepiece falls out to dangle on its chain. But she says only, “Send a page by in an hour. I’ll have a dose prepared for you.”
I incline my head in thanks. Then I toss a glance back to the doorway leading to the healing ward. The sickbeds are there, one of them presumably containing Lord Rath. Another guard stands in view, keeping watch over Madame Ar’s new prisoner-patient.
“Madame,” I say and turn once more to my royal healer. She’s already bent over another worktable, fiddling with strange implements. “Have you had a chance yet to run the tests I requested? On those two goblets I had sent your way?”
“On those?” Ar asks, pointing to yet another table. There I see the two krilge goblets I’d recovered from the antechamber of my council hall. They’re both submerged in clear vats of some thick, gooey substance. Little bubbles rise off them and streak to the surface where they form a greasy-looking foam. “I’m still performing the initial gulg bath,” she says. “Give it a few days.”
I nod and suppress a heavy sigh. If I’m honest, I’m not sure I want the answers my healer is working to find for me. But if someone in this palace is targeting Faraine with raog poison, I need to find out who. Before it’s too late.
