Page 12 of A King’s Trust (Heart-Mage Trilogy #1)

12

THE TASTE OF DREAMROOT

T hey were so close to the isles Beau could practically smell the salt off the sea and the scent on the air of Ma Corlia’s stew. One more night camped, and then they’d see the distant glitter of the ocean by midday tomorrow. If Elias hadn’t been visibly exhausted, Beau would’ve tried to ride straight through the night so he could be there by the break of dawn.

But Elias was worn thin by his own constant alert. Beau wasn’t the only one who noticed. As Uriel directed the setup of camp and readied dinner’s cookfire, Oria said, “I’ll make tea. At least one of us is going to have a long night.” She cast a viciously annoyed look at El, who merely watched her walk to the supplies. Beau wondered whether she was irritated by what she saw as over-vigilance or by Elias’s clear distrust of her and Jude to spell him.

“How long until whatever smells so good is done?” Beau asked, and Uriel smiled.

“Not for a while yet, I’m afraid. But there’s bread and cheese.”

Beau dragged two camp stools out of the crates and set them next to the fire, grabbing El by the shoulders and forcing him onto one. “You cannot go on like this,” he muttered. “But for tonight, I’ll stay up with you. Then we’ll be in the isles and you can relax a little.”

Once it was steeped, Oria brought them each a mug of tea. Beau breathed in the floral steam with pleasure. He wasn’t sure what Oria had put in there, but it smelled divine.

El sniffed it, tasted it, and then drained the whole mug in one long swallow. “I’ll need another cup or two to make it through the night,” he admitted quietly.

“You can’t stay awake forever, no matter how fast you drink your tea,” Beau said, taking a healthy swig from his own mug. It was the perfect temperature, but much too sweet, like someone had coated the inside of the pot with honey. He took another gulp before the aftertaste caught up with him and he coughed on the bitterness. “Oria, what did you—”

He cut the question off because he didn’t need to ask. He knew that taste: dreamroot. Buried under honey and hibiscus and something spicy, but he’d drunk the bitter herb almost every night since he was fifteen. Its flavor was usually much more subtle, which meant even under all that extra flavoring, it was strong .

He dropped his mug on the ground to split neatly into two pieces and snatched El’s out of his hand. Empty. Totally empty.

“Elias,” he said quickly, “have you ever had dreamroot before?”

“What? No.” El’s face lit with concern. “Wh—”

“Then get away from the fire because you’re about to fall over,” Beau said, pulling El to his feet and around the fire ring toward the tent. “Oria! Jude! Help, Elias is about to—”

Oria stood across the fire, watching. No surprise on her face. No concern. Jude came to stand behind her, holding his sword.

Everything slowed down.

Someone had brewed them tea with dreamroot strong enough to knock a man out on smell alone. Someone knew Elias had no tolerance. Someone wanted them out of the city, away from the palace. Someone wanted them unconscious, or at least incapacitated.

And Jude and Oria were watching, waiting.

Behind Beau, Master Uriel demanded to know what was going on and called for Aloise and Capucine, who both expressed concern for the wavering Elias. It wasn’t them; it was Jude and Oria. It was…Beau’s head swung. Lady Penamour stood next to her fire, hugging herself, eyes wide but mouth set grimly as Nilah hovered next to her, watching him and Elias. Behind them, Gerard watched too, sharklike smile vanished from his blank face.

“ You .” Elias pointed a blade at Oria. His hand wavered. “Highness, you have to go.”

Years of tolerance built up or not, Beau could already feel the impending wave of sleep coming. “I’m not going to be running anywhere.” He didn’t draw his knife; he was as likely to stab himself when the dreamroot threw him to the ground as to hit anyone else.

“No, no no no,” El whispered under his breath. “This can’t be happening. What’s the antidote for dreamroot? Gods, I’m not this fucking stupid.” He jerked a knife from his belt and threw it at Oria, who would’ve taken it in the throat if Jude hadn’t whipped his sword across to deflect. It sliced along the top of her shoulder before whirling into the grass behind.

Oria hissed and pulled her sword, but Jude held her still. They’d wait until Elias fell, and he would any moment. Beau’s mind raced. If they could get to Tempest—

He dragged El backward, away from the fire and the rest of the party, noting how heavy his First’s steps had grown. Beau could’ve been wearing falconry gloves for how thick and clumsy his fingers felt as he tried to untie his horse. She huffed and pressed her face against him, making it even harder to move.

Master Uriel shouted behind him. “What is this? What’ve you done to the prince? Oria? Jude? What honor do you have?”

Elias threw two more knives, each more poorly targeted than the last. He growled when the second throw took him off balance and he fell to one knee. “ No, get up .” He stood shakily and stumbled up back-to-back with Beau. The prince shook Tempest’s line free.

“Get on,” Beau said. “Get on the horse, we can—”

“You get on the fucking horse,” Elias said, words half slurred. “ Run .” He was standing through sheer will, weaving and wavering, the hand on his sword white-knuckled with how hard he gripped.

Internally screaming at his muscles as they slackened and slumped, Beau hefted his upper body onto Tempest’s back and dragged his leg over. It was painfully slow. By the time he sat up, Oria had a bow unslung and an arrow nocked, ignoring the raised hands and raised voices of everyone else in the campsite.

“Shit.” He tried to duck down Tempest’s other side and rolled off as she shied, unused to being ridden bareback. Hitting the ground knocked the breath out of his lungs.

Elias dropped to both knees as his legs buckled, and Oria and Jude closed in. Nilah followed close behind. Fuck . “El, you have to get up,” Beau said desperately. He couldn’t lift Elias. He wasn’t sure he could lift himself. He felt half paralyzed, limbs barely responding.

Teeth gritted, Elias bullied himself back to his feet, but he’d dropped his sword. The other two of Beau’s flight stopped a few feet away, healthy fear of El on both of their faces. He lunged, taking Oria to the ground with a tackle around the waist.

They rolled, Elias striking ferociously but slowly, each hit weaker than the last. Jude grabbed one of El’s arms, letting Oria get the upper hand and pin him to the ground, grip tight around his throat. For only a few seconds, El clawed at her face before his arms dropped, his eyes rolled back, and he lost consciousness.

Beau, groaning, rolled over and crawled to El’s sword. It had to weigh fifty pounds at least. He couldn’t get off his knees; he could barely lift the blade. If it hadn’t been so fucking dire, it might’ve been funny: Crown Prince Beauregard on his knees in the dirt, weak as a kitten.

“If you want to kill me, you’ve got me,” Beau said. “Leave Elias and my servants alone. They merely have the bad luck of being in my service.” Jude started dragging El into the trees and Beau found more strength in his voice. “I said leave Elias alone .” To Beau’s immense surprise, Jude did drop Elias and turn back.

Lady Penamour approached at last, eyes cautious but smug around the mouth. “I’m afraid I need you and your guard. I have some questions.”

“Unconscious people are famously good at answering questions,” Beau said. His tongue felt thick, and his words blurred.

“The dreamroot was for everyone’s safety. Elias is not the kind to stand aside and let me get my answers without interference. A dangerous man.” Behind her, Gerard snorted softly.

He’ll kill you the moment he wakes up , Beau thought but didn’t say. If they hadn’t already thought it, he wouldn’t plant the idea to slit his throat now. Sudden anxiety gripped Beau— if he wakes up. Dreamroot wasn’t some harmless sleep aid; it needed careful dosing. Elias had no resistance at all, and that had been an enormous measure of the stuff.

“Is he breathing?” he asked, nodding toward Elias.

Oria plucked the sword out of Beau’s hands effortlessly, tossing it aside. “You’re awfully concerned about someone else for a man with a blade at his throat.” He realized her sword point was under his chin, and also that his head was very, very heavy.

Dizzy with effort, Beau raised it again. “Cut me, then. See what answers you get.”

She knocked him hard over the ear and he hit the ground with first shoulder, then skull. Lying on his side, Beau wavered on the edge of consciousness, swimming in and out of reality.

“P ick up his feet and we can tie them both to…no, he’s not all the way out of…must absolutely abuse the stuff if he’s still…not my fault, is it?”

The voices were indistinguishable, untethered to the world he could periodically open his eyes to see. Beau was carried, dropped, sat up against a tree. Bark scraped his arms as someone pulled his hands around the trunk behind him and bound him. His head lolled, straining his neck.

He could hear people moving in and out, more scraping and dragging, and then the footsteps and voices quieted, and he drifted more solidly into sleep. The prince jerked awake what felt like a moment later, adrenaline pumping through his body.

It was dark, though campfires cast enough light to see. His feet, stretched before him, were unbound, but his shoulders screamed from the way his arms had been tied. He lifted his head. Elias slumped against a second tree across from him.

“Elias,” he said thickly, nudging the other man’s hip with his foot. He kicked more roughly when the guard didn’t stir. “Elias, wake up. Please wake up.”

In the dark, he whispered urgently, over and over, “Elias, I need you. Please wake up. Wake up , El, please .” In the flickering shadows, he couldn’t see if the man was breathing and couldn’t hear over the wind through the underbrush and his own pounding heart.

Elias didn’t wake, and footsteps thumped closer again. Beau tried to push to his feet, but the rope must’ve caught on something because he couldn’t drag it up the tree, so he succeeded only in nearly dislocating his shoulder. Beau’s knife was gone, not that he’d have been able to draw it, and Elias had no weapons left either.

“Please, El, I need you.” Elias made the first sound Beau had heard, a quiet groan. He wasn’t awake, but he wasn’t dead, which was enough to put Beau’s heart in his throat.

With fresh urgency, Beau dragged the rope between his wrists back and forth against the bark, trying to wear through it. A cold, sharp point pressed against his jaw, and then hot breath struck his ear as someone whispered, “Should’ve known a sot like you could sponge up dreamroot like it was nothing.”

“Nice of you to rejoin us, Oria,” Beau said as lightly as he could manage. “I don’t suppose you’re here to free the man you’re charged with protecting?”

“You’re not the man I was charged with protecting,” she said, stepping around the tree and lifting Elias’s head by the hair to peer into his face before dropping it again.

“I beg to differ.” Beau chafed rope against bark again, though he knew there was little hope of effecting an escape that way. “Where are my servants? And what are you doing to El?”

Oria uncapped a small, pungent-smelling canister and held it under El’s nose. “Your servants are fine, though I did have to fight Aloise for her frying pan. As for this lout, I’m waking him up. Lady Penamour wants this over with.”

When El jerked his head up, gagging on the smell of whatever Oria held in front of him, and flexed his arms to find them bound; when he looked up into Oria’s smugly smiling face; and when he met Beau’s eyes across from him to see him trussed up in the same way, Elias’s eyes widened, the skin around them tightening as he hissed in a breath.

Beau nudged him with a foot. “Are you all right?”

Pressing his leg to Beau’s foot, El asked hoarsely, “Are you?” When Beau nodded, El turned to Oria. “I have a question for you.”

“What’s that?” Oria’s face and tone dripped with arrogance.

Elias leaned toward her, dropping his voice, and she leaned in. “Do you have family? Someone you send letters home to?”

She scowled. “Why?”

He dropped his voice further, and Oria, frowning, crouched closer. “I want to know where to send your remains.” He headbutted Oria so hard and fast Beau barely had time to hear the crack before she reeled back, nose bleeding. With one leg, El snagged the back of hers while her head was back, and Oria landed hard in the dirt.

Elias’s heel came down on her stomach, driving air and sound out of her in a violent yawp, and then he was working her sword out of its scabbard with booted feet.

Oria scrambled back, unsheathing her blade and pointing it at the bound guard. “I’m going to gut you from nutsack to nose,” she growled, blood pouring freely over her mouth and chin from her broken nose.

“Oria!” Jude grabbed her shoulder, pulled her back. “We’re not here to hurt them. The duchess wants them alive.”

“I don’t give a fuck what she wants,” Oria snarled, and Elias replied with a guttural, predator noise that sent shivers of instinctive terror up Beau’s spine.

Lady Penamour appeared between the trees on the other side of Beau and Elias from the treacherous guards, staying carefully out of range of Elias’s legs. “Mistress Oria, hold,” she said, all calm command. “We’re too close to what we’ve wanted to ruin it now. Sheathe your sword.”

Gerard appeared behind her, a smudge against the darkness, his watching eyes glimmering in the dark. Elias dropped his weight onto his shoulders to gain reach as he swiped again at Oria’s legs, almost catching her foot before Jude stomped hard on his ankle. The First howled in pain, breathing through gritted teeth as he tried to kick Jude instead.

“El, stop,” Beau burst out. “Stop before you get killed. Stop . If they wanted us dead, they could’ve slit our throats when we were out. Let’s hear what they want.”

Panting, Elias looked at Beau, white visible all around the irises of his eyes, a cornered animal, teeth bared in threat as he strained at the limits of his bindings. Something flared in his eyes—not peace, not the calm Beau called for. Desperation. Anguish.

Then he swallowed it, going blank as stone. He hefted himself back up and reset against the tree. Every muscle in his body remained so tight it was painful to look at, but he no longer snarled and slavered like a trapped beast.

Only once he’d visibly calmed did Oria sheathe her sword, and her hand hovered, ready to grab it again. Penamour drew up a stool out of Elias’s reach, spreading her skirts neatly around her with an unbothered air. Beau caught the hitch in her breath, though, and the shake of her fingers as she tucked a loose hair behind her ear.

“Is this where you explain why you’ve committed treason?” Beau asked.

Her dark eyes flashed, hard and glittering. “You’re one to talk, Your Highness.”

“Contrary to what the peerage seems to believe, pissing off a bunch of nobles is not, in fact, treason,” Beau said. He was numb, adrenaline making it hard to feel or think.

She unrolled a cloth bundle across her lap to reveal several small items cast in shadow by her body. “We searched you for weapons and found the most incredible trove. I expected to find some Maurilel artifacts on you, Your Highness, and of course I did, but I do believe Elias was the most magical person on the continent until an hour or so ago.”

Penamour lifted one—a butterfly, glittering in the firelight. In her other hand, she held up a glass ball wrapped in wire. Beau knew them both from the vault but went entirely fuzzy imagining how they’d gotten here. Elias was the most magical person on the continent.

El had these artifacts. He took them from the vault.

Beau remembered clearly, then, leaving the vault ahead of Elias. He never went back to check the items, never ducked in on his guard because he trusted him completely. He always had.

“This is an interesting collection. An Orb of Tethering?” She examined the glass ball in the firelight. “Strange thing to carry around, given the conditions required for it to work. The feather is, I assume, a sort of weapon? And what does this hideous necklace do?”

Every artifact left in the vaults sat now in Penamour’s lap. And there, beside them, the spoon-shaped Useful Thing and two simple rings—Beau’s artifacts. Essentially all the magic Beau had ever seen was in the duchess’s possession. “We don’t know.”

She didn’t pick it up. “So you carried it around? You’re more foolish than I thought. It’s corrupted. But this —” The duchess picked up a flat, oblong amethyst the length of her little finger and narrow. “This is incredible. No wonder Elias is such a force of nature.”

Beau frowned at the stone. That hadn’t been in the vault. “It’s an artifact?”

“Yes, and powerful. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s a Perception Stone. There weren’t many made, but well-kept stones can last a long time; they don’t degrade like some of the relics have.”

“And Elias was carrying it?” When Beau snuck a glance at him, Elias was glaring determinedly at Gerard. Where the hell had Elias gotten another artifact? He wished then that he’d cared more about making Elias tell him the truth. Beau was missing something, and he suspected it was about to get him killed.

Lady Penamour was too perceptive by half. She smiled wolfishly. “Oh, you didn’t know he had this? Now that has to be an interesting story. Guards don’t just happen upon Maurilel magic. Did you steal this from the palace vault right out from under the prince’s nose?”

Elias turned his glare on Penamour but said nothing. She kept the stone and the rings in her hand but rolled the other artifacts back into their bundle and tucked it into a pocket of her skirt. “Now I’m the most magical person on the continent,” she murmured. At a normal volume, she said, “The question is, which is a better tool for getting the truth out of you? It’s not a good idea to use more than one at a time.”

“You don’t need any of them,” Beau said, flexing his shoulders fruitlessly, trying to gain any relief. “Here’s the truth: my brother fell off a horse. It was an accident. He died. My life was ruined. Your plans were ruined. Everyone lost.”

“Your brother died from a paralytic you had shot into him. And before you get any ideas of doing it to me, I had an antidote made. Did you think no one knew? We found the dart.”

Beau sat up straighter. “The what? The dart ? Hold on, someone shot Char with a poisoned dart?” He pictured his brother, strong and statuesque, slipping sideways out of the saddle, slumped like a sack. Such a freak accident. But if he’d been hit with poison… “The fucking Twelve, he was murdered?”

“Enough of the lies!” Penamour snapped. “Gods, I’ve never met someone so good at acting and so over the top with his lies. You had to know you were overselling it. ‘Oh, my brother was a saint, I’d do anything for him.’ As if I didn’t know what you two were to each other. But then you paint on that innocent face and get all teary-eyed, like you’ve never been hurt deeper in your life. Like you’re capable of being hurt like that.” Her scowl sliced through Beau.

Beau retreated into his skull, shrinking until he was so distant from the world he peered out through the holes of his eye sockets like windows in a far wall. Her words ricocheted, echoing through the cavernous expanse of his head. They made no impact at all.

Char was murdered. Someone had murdered his brother, shot him with a paralytic poison. It wasn’t an unforeseeable accident, a horrible twist of fate. It was planned. It was intentional.

“Who would do that?” he muttered, barely summoning air for the words to float on. “Why would—he was—” Then it became hard to speak; puppeting his mouth took too much.

“ Look at me ,” Penamour demanded, grabbing Beau’s chin and jerking his face up toward her. She blazed with fury; he must’ve been ignoring her for some time. “I want to know why .”

“So do I,” Beau shot back.

Snarling in frustration, Penamour stuck the Perception Stone in her pocket and shoved a Ring of Thrones onto Beau’s pointer, then slipped the second over her middle finger. Dread filled Beau as he waited for a maelstrom of emotions to slam into him.

But instead, when the rings connected, he felt…curious. Cautious. Surprised. Guilty. Wondering. Overwhelmed. Each emotion lapped over the last, soaking into his head like tea leaves leaching into hot water. Beau reeled; the emotions didn’t even feel alien. They felt like an extension of his own, like someone had parted his brain in two and only emotions could pass between the lobes.

Fascinated, horrified, Beau summoned all his anger at the invasion of his mind and pushed . Lady Penamour stumbled back a step, crying out. A rush of her anger slapped back at him, and this did slam, filling his mouth with the coppery taste of blood. The shock of it shook Beau’s concentration. He couldn’t hold onto anger when there were so many other things to feel. Penamour, too, seemed only to have had the one blast in her.

They stared for a long moment, her eyes scanning his face in excruciating, painstaking detail as her mind sifted through his. Whatever she saw, it didn’t satisfy her.

“This—” Her voice came out hoarse, shaky. “This will help me get the measure of you. But this is how I get the truth.” She drew a small glass vial out of her pocket and held it up in the moonlight so everyone could see the faintly glowing blue petals of a fragile-stemmed flower floating suspended within it. “Do you know what this is, Prince Beauregard?”

Beau was barely conscious of the question with her eagerness, triumph, and nervousness so present. He still reeled at the revelation: his brother had been murdered . He shook his head.

“Your brother didn’t know either, when he gave it to me as an engagement present. ‘A beautiful flower for a beautiful woman.’ But the Maurilel created nothing for beauty alone. I spent months researching these flowers: the sihhafleur . Their council would brew the petals into tea to facilitate open discussion. And on occasion, when they needed to question a criminal—”

She gingerly opened the vial, reached in, and plucked a petal from the flower, leaving it bedraggled with only three. “—they had them eat a petal directly. For a few minutes, that person was magically compelled to answer any question with absolute honesty. They cannot lie or stop themselves from speaking.”

She held the petal reverently, and its faint blue glow pulsed, casting her face in eerie light. He tasted her wonder like spun sugar.

“It doesn’t hurt? Just makes you tell the truth?” Beau’s mouth was numb enough that it felt like someone else’s. He was empty, a vessel for the sea of strange ebbs and flows in his head. “Give it to me. I’ve got nothing to hide.” That wasn’t strictly true; he had a few state secrets that shouldn’t be revealed, but those didn’t occur to him until the words were out of his mouth. If it would clear this up so they could discuss what happened to Char, he’d take the risk.

Lady Penamour’s face went blank as she ‘listened’ through the ring, then pursed in confusion. “So eager? You can’t defeat it, you know. It’s a magical artifact—there’s no way to prevent it from forcing the truth out of you.”

Beau looked up at her from deep within his own skull, summoned his voice from its burial in his chest. “I understand. My shoulders are killing me. Let’s get this over with.” The insanity of the situation struck him again, and it sparked a flurry of words. “If you want to hear me say I didn’t shoot my brother from horseback through an entire column of riders in some way no one else noticed, give me the fucking petal, and I’ll say it where you believe me.”

Penamour’s anger reacted, washed another blood taste into his mouth. “I know you didn’t shoot him. There were half a dozen eyes on you at the time. But your guard here—he was out of sight, and he can make that shot, I have no doubt.”

Beau turned his head to gape at Elias, who looked poleaxed, then swiveled back to the duchess. “Have you been drinking? El was by my side the entire time!”

“Except for a few minutes where he rode into the woods alongside the column, out of sight, which happened to coincide with the exact time of Char’s death.”

Elias’s voice was strangled. “Are you talking about when I went to help Lady Abadie? That was one minute—two at the most.”

Certainty tasted like stone dust, and it was heavy on Beau’s tongue from the ring. “Time enough, if you’re good,” Lady Penamour said. Elias was good—very good—but this was ridiculous. Beau’s mind moved slowly, gummily. “Open up, Elias. I want to hear this straight from your mouth. No way to weasel out of it.”

In a swift, sharp movement, El shoved up the tree to stand, dragging deep scrapes along his arms from the bark. The other guards stepped back, and Penamour lurched to her feet, dumping the stool on its side, but Gerard pressed forward. His eyes were fixed on Elias, face grim, and El stared back at him.

Holding the petal tightly between thumb and forefinger, Penamour watched El like a wolf stalking through camp. “If you’re not willing to do this nicely, Jude and Oria can always help.”

“If Oria puts her hands near me she’s going to lose a few fingers. To start.” El’s teeth snapped together audibly on the final syllable. “Fine. Give me the fucking truth plant.”

In a surprising show of bravery, Lady Penamour carried the petal to him herself. Her skirts dragged across Beau’s legs as she stepped over him to the tree-bound guard. Elias sharpened. Every cell and fiber of his body focused on Penamour in a stillness so infused with potential energy Beau feared an explosion. And he knew, he knew Elias was going to hurt her. Kill her, take her hostage, something to get himself and Beau out of this.

“El, no,” he said quietly, certainly.

A tremor, a flicker of violence jolted through Elias, and then he sighed. He stared at Penamour for a long few seconds as her shaking hand held the blue glow to his lips. After swallowing hard, he let his mouth fall open.

The moment the petal touched his tongue, it dissolved, flooding the inside of his mouth with blue glow that spilled over his lips. Elias choked, gasping for air and gagging.

“El?!” Beau’s chest was going to crack open.

“He’s fine,” Penamour said. “It takes some getting used to.” She retreated out of Elias’s reach and righted her stool, but remained standing. Hugging herself, she rocked from foot to foot.

The buzz in Beau’s body intensified as Elias took a ragged, wheezing breath in, blue-painted mouth working soundlessly. The guard shook his head and spoke in a low, authoritative voice made gravelly with strain. It was not the voice he used with Beau; he sounded like a completely different man. “I know why you’re doing this, Your Grace.” He made the title sound like an insult. “It makes perfect sense—a power-hungry younger brother ordering fratricide to seize the throne is the most likely theory, if you pay no attention to the people involved.”

Everyone was silent. Even the wind seemed to whisper. Beau held his breath, watching his best friend force words through a pinched-closed throat. Gerard advanced to just beyond the duchess’s shoulder, eyes intent on Elias.

“But you’re looking in the wrong place. Prince Beauregard didn’t do this. He would never, never have hurt his brother. He would never have ordered his death. If he’d thought there was a plot against Char, he would’ve done everything in his power to stop it. He’d have taken that poison dart himself. He’d have thrown me in front of it.”

That’s not true , Beau thought, then felt guilty, both because he’d never have traded Elias for his brother and because El must believe he would, since he couldn’t lie. The guilt was so strong it took him a moment to realize it was being fed by Penamour through the ring, borne across on waves of sour grapes and pungent rosemary—horrified, stunned.

Coughing, Elias continued, “You’ve been watching the prince, so you’ve seen he’s good . He’s a good man. And things have come out after Charmant’s death that made you question whether he was the man you thought he was. I can see you trying to fit the pieces together. You’re so obsessed with the idea that Prince Beauregard is lying about his brother, but the thing is, he’s not a good actor. He can’t keep his thoughts off his face for shit. He’s not lying about Char—he’s just wrong . He truly believes his brother was a good man who deserved the throne.”

Beau didn’t recognize the contempt that dripped from Elias’s voice when he talked about Char. He wished he was standing; from this angle, El looked like a stranger with the odd shadows cast by the fire and by his faintly glowing tongue and lips.

“You want to know whether I would’ve killed Char if His Highness had ordered it? In a heartbeat .” His intensity shook through Beau, and goosebumps sprang up all over his body. “Forget orders—I’d have done it if he’d halfway implied it would please him for Char to be dead.” Beau’s heart thumped queasily. “But he didn’t. He’d never have done that.”

Penamour’s head shook as though rejecting Elias’s testimony, but the pulses of acidic horror and bewilderment said she believed him. “You truly didn’t have him killed?” she asked Beau, disbelief and miserable guilt chasing across her face and through the ring.

“I fucking told you I didn’t,” Beau snapped. “I didn’t even believe he’d been killed until you told us about the poison. I thought it was an accident.”

She pressed her hands tight against her face, bending at the waist. “Oh gods.”

Beau gagged on the bitter seaweed and citrus peel, the horrible salt and sour yogurt. He had to squeeze his eyes shut, close out everything else to focus on pushing back the flood of emotions from her. “Enough, enough, end this. You know the truth now—”

“Yes,” Elias gasped, though his eyes were on Gerard, not the duchess. “End this. Untie me. Please .” Gerard stalked forward by inches, something predatory on his face. There was nothing in his hands, but Beau nevertheless felt the threat of a weapon. What was he doing? What did he want? Why was Elias watching him , afraid?

“Who is he? El. Who is Gerard?”

Elias’s eyes widened as they met Beau’s. He opened his mouth but nothing came out. His eyes bulged. Veins stood out along his throat. He jerked against the ropes with sudden urgency.

“No—forget it, I take it back,” Beau spat hastily as Elias writhed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—don’t answer that! It’s all right!”

Lady Penamour stood straight again, looking between Beau and Elias in confusion, and then turning to her footman, who’d gone still as stone, eyes the dead black of murderous intent. “Who is Gerard ?” she asked, confused.

El’s grimacing mouth showed all his teeth, the blue brightening until it must be burning his tongue, his gums, his lips. He panted, but his chest didn’t rise or fall. The air circulated uselessly in his mouth, stopped from supplying his lungs by the Maurilel magic.

“Elias, you have to answer or it’s not going to let you breathe,” Beau said, alarmed. “Penamour—call it off!”

Nilah edged into the space between Gerard and everyone else, pulling Lady Penamour aside. As if by magic, Gerard’s fingers twitched and a knife appeared. He hurled it at Elias, but Nilah was quick—she knocked it off course and cursed as the blade bit the base of her thumb.

Jude jumped into the mix, grunting in surprise and pain as a second thrown knife drew a burning line across his shoulder. Kicking Lady Penamour hard, Elias knocked her flat on her back as another knife whistled past where she had been.

Beau barely had time to draw his knees up to his chest before Gerard’s large figure barreled into the space between him and Elias, blade flashing. El whispered something fiercely to himself—the answer to the duchess’s question, since he took a full, greedy breath after—as Gerard tripped over Penamour’s prone body.

Taking advantage of the momentary stumble, El slammed a knee into Gerard’s stomach and then hooked his legs, knocking him off balance. Then there was a horrific, gritted-teeth howl of effort and pain. A breath later, Elias’s hands were free, though his sword hand still trailed rope. His left hand he cradled against his stomach.

“You’ve never been good enough to fight me , lap candy,” Gerard said with a low laugh. He stabbed at Elias, and El grabbed his wrist, twisting it, stripping the knife from his grip. He flipped it in his own hand and stabbed once, twice, three times in rapid succession, too fast to track. But Gerard moved just as quickly to dodge.

Many people were shouting. Nilah pulled Lady Penamour away from the fighting and tried to find an opening, Jude held Oria back from the fight, and Beau, numb, could only watch, tied and useless. He could only trust Elias.

El and Gerard both had blades, and Gerard had something else Beau couldn’t make out in his off hand. They fought like Beau had never seen two people fight, skill and speed Elias had never hinted at, even when showing off. He hadn’t known it was possible to be as deadly as these two men were. He understood, now, why Penamour had wanted to know where Elias got his training. This wasn’t normal. This didn’t even seem human .

But Gerard had the reach and two functional arms and no one had poisoned him tonight. He slammed his off hand under El’s shoulder blade, and Elias dropped, motionless.

He lay on the ground and didn’t move at all.

“Elias? El!” Beau tried not to be frantic. “Someone fucking cut me loose! Elias?!”

Gerard stood over El for a moment, squaliform smirk vicious in the firelight. “Consider this your warning, Lexi, to get clear.” Then he turned and vanished into the trees.

Nilah knelt behind Beau, grunting quietly as she cut through the ropes. As soon as Beau was free, he dove for Elias. “El? El?”

Lady Penamour crawled over. “A dart,” she said, breathless. “It was a dart, just like…” She trailed off as Beau rolled Elias over, barely listening. He knew his hands were too tight on the guard but he couldn’t stop clutching at him.

El’s eyes were open, and his chest caved with each breath. He was breathing, then. But he wasn’t moving, and if that dart was the same—hadn’t she said it was paralytic?

“What do I do, El? How do I help you?”

The unnatural blue of the Maurilel flower flared, and Elias’s throat constricted with a wet wheezing sound. His eyes widened and watered, locking onto Beau’s desperately.

“He can’t answer if he’s paralyzed!” Penamour said. “It’ll kill him if—”

“I take it back! I take back the question, don’t answer it!”

The relief on El’s face was immediate, and a shaky breath whistled into him. To make sure the air made it to El’s lungs, Beau set his hand on Elias’s chest. His fingers shook ferociously.

“Antidote,” Beau said. “You said you had an antidote! Where?”

“I only have…” she began hesitantly, eyes scanning the trees around them as she reached into the pocket of her skirt to remove a small, padded leather pouch. From inside, she produced a tiny ampule of pale, milky liquid. “There was only enough poison on the dart to make one dose from. I needed the Bounty Flask to make more in case other people got hit, but—”

“He only needs one dose.” Beau tried to snatch it from her hands, but she pulled it away. “Give it to him!” Probably best he didn’t grab it anyway; his fingers weren’t steady, and he was afraid he’d drop it. Every time El fought another breath in, Beau’s own chest tightened.

Elias grunted and slowly, barely shook his head. He met the duchess’s eyes and then cut a glance toward Beau, twice in rapid succession. “You want me to save it for the prince, in case there are more shots coming,” Lady Penamour guessed. She carefully avoided making it a question, but Elias slow-blinked in affirmation.

“Fuck that,” Beau said. “Give it to him. Now , Penamour.”

With a mint waft of fear, she nodded, uncapped the vial, and dripped its contents between Elias’s blue lips. They sat perfectly still for several heartbeats. Beau held his breath and chewed his lower lip.

Elias gasped. He sat halfway up, but then collapsed on his side and vomited violently into the grass. When he expelled everything and flopped onto his back, the forest had gone silent. The prince set his hand on El’s chest again, feeling the breath move in and out, trying to stop shaking.

“Please tell me you killed him,” Elias spoke into the darkness.

“No,” Nilah said.

“Gods damn it.” Unsteady, Elias rolled to his feet.

“What are you going to do?” Beau asked. He snatched the blade Elias had been using before the other man could bend for it. “You’ve been poisoned not once, not twice, but three times, not to mention whatever you’ve done to your hand. Sit down.”

“He cannot get away. He cannot get away.” Elias’s voice was froggy and ragged. He extended a hand for the knife, but Beau held it out behind himself. El rotated so he was between Beau and the rest of the guards. “Give me the fucking knife , Highness.”

Not liking the way Oria eyed his First, Beau put the hilt of the knife in Elias’s palm.

“No one follows us,” Elias said, pointing the blade at each person in turn. “None of you are half as hard to kill as Gerard; I will kill you if you chase.”

Guess we’re leaving , Beau thought, backing up as Elias did, then turning to find their horses. He could only see Pormort, who’d been unsaddled. Fuck. As adrenaline drained out of him, it was replaced with rage.

How fucking dare they do this to him? To Elias?

“Po’s fine bareback,” Elias muttered, eyes darting. “Climb on. He can bear both of us.”

“Wait, please,” Lady Penamour said. She followed like she hadn’t heard a word of Elias’s warning or her own guard’s exasperated calls to stop. “Please, you’re not in danger. I was wrong, but no one’s going to hurt you, and we have to talk about what just happened. Your Highness, Elias, stop! You can’t ride out in the middle of the night without—”

“Get back,” Beau snapped, planting himself squarely between her and Elias. The rage took over, filling every corner of his head. “You almost got him killed. You wouldn’t fucking listen to me, and you almost got Elias killed!”

“I’m so sorry.” She was grey, stricken. “Is he—are you all right now, Elias? I’m sorry.”

“What the fuck do you think an apology is going to do?” Beau advanced a step and the duchess flinched back. “Unbreak his hand? Unpoison him?”

“Highness. The horse. Now,” Elias said firmly.

Beau ignored him, too angry to think. The shaking of his hands climbed into his body, rattling him in his bones. “Was it worth it? Your answers? Did you get everything you wanted? Look at him! Do you even know what all those poisons will do?”

“ Highness !” With an arm around Beau’s shoulders, El yanked him toward Po. “Get on the godsdamned horse! We’re leaving.”

“Give me the artifacts,” Beau demanded, half choked by El’s arm. “Now.”

Penamour fumbled the cloth-wrapped relics out of her pocket and handed them over. “Please, I didn’t mean for any of this to—”

Beau turned away from her and swung himself up with effort onto Po’s back. Elias tried to set his hands on Po, but the glancing touch of his wrist against the shifting warhorse made the guard hiss and explode with, “ Fuck !”

He yanked his arm back against his body. “It’s fine,” he cut off Beau’s unspoken concerns. “I broke it getting loose. It’ll be fine.” One-handed, he swung his leg and hefted himself onto Po’s back, nearly unseating Beau. “Let’s go.”

Elias against his back, night-dark forest ahead, and the duchess calling after them, Beau squeezed his legs and urged Po toward anywhere safer than here.