Текст книги "The poison daughter"

Автор книги: Sheila Masterson

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 48 страниц)

The music ends, and everyone claps for our performance. Henry steps back and gestures to me like I’m the star of the show. I wave them off and pull him away from the dance floor.

I lead him past the row of tables toward the windows. I’ve caught Gaven’s notice. He frowns, and I force a smile and pretend I’m showing Henry the view, gesturing to the windows while scanning the room for Kellan. He’s nowhere to be found, but neither is Libby, so maybe they stepped out or had an emergency with the kids.

Henry’s parents are also missing from the table, but I heard my mother tell them something about a rare painting of Mountain Haven that hangs in our library. They might have gone to see it. Maybe that’s where Libby and Kellan are. My brother Thomas is also notably absent, though his wife Veronica is chatting with my sisters Electra and Sophie. There’s one more empty seat at the table next to Able.

Henry follows my gaze. “Where did Rafe disappear to?”

“Hopefully the Divine hells,” I grumble.

Henry smirks, but it’s there and gone. He tilts his head in a strange, predatory way, like an animal straining to hear something. Then, he grabs me.

I try to pull away. “What are you⁠—”

He throws me to the ground and covers me with his body. A loud blast rattles the house. The windows shatter. My head smacks against the marble floor, and the world goes dark.

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9HENRY

Glass rains down in an endless stream. I curl around Harlow, trying to shield her from the shrapnel.

For a moment, there’s an awful silence. My body is frozen—stuck in a panicked echo of the past. I’ve heard a terrible, violent silence like this before.

Then, shouts and cries ring out as the dust settles. The room smells like smoke and blood, but there’s a hint of something fruity and fermented. The wine. There was a wagon of it sitting out front when we arrived tonight. Someone could have easily snuck some sort of magical incendiary device in with the real wine.

Harlow groans beneath me. She mumbles something, but my ears are ringing from the blast.

I roll to the side, ignoring the bite of glass in my arm as I rise to stand and pull Harlow to her feet. I take her face in my hands.

“What did you say?”

She narrows her eyes. “You covered me before the explosion.”

That’s going to be hard to explain. I brush a thumb over the lump already forming on the back of her head. “I think you hit your head pretty hard.”

Her bodyguard is beside us in a second, taking hold of her arm. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Henry protected me from the glass,” she says.

“I noticed.” Gaven’s suspicious gaze is fixed on me. “He’s a fast thinker.”

I can hear the unspoken accusation in his words. He also noticed that I moved too soon. I knew he would be an issue eventually, but I’m going to have to deal with him sooner rather than later.

Shouts outside the shattered windows draw our attention. “Bleed no more!”

“Rebels,” Gaven grumbles.

The shouts are close. I need to get Harlow and my parents out of here.

“This kind of stuff wouldn’t happen if they didn’t insist on having everyone important and magical in one room,” Harlow grumbles.

The room is alive with shouting and groans of pain, but Harlow seems surprisingly calm as she reaches into a hidden pocket in her dress and withdraws a dagger.

“We need to get you to safety,” Gaven says. He eyes me skeptically. “It would be wise to leave him behind.”

“Play nice, Gaven,” she chides. “We need him. Trust me. I’d leave him if I could.”

“Thanks,” I grumble.

I place my hand on her back to guide her out of the mayhem and into the hallway. The Stellarium Blossoms scent of her skin and the iron smell of blood hit me.

I pull her to a stop. “You’re wounded.”

She lifts her arm. A piece of glass juts out of her forearm. “I figured it was best to leave it in.”

I take her wrist and make quick work of the mess, pulling the shard from the wound and clasping my hand over it. She flinches as my magic presses in, sewing the tissue and skin back together.

“Bleeding woods, that itches!” she says.

Finally, I pull my hand back and wipe away her blood with my sleeve, revealing pristine pale skin.

Gaven gives me a begrudging nod. “Fine. He can come.”

The bodyguard leads us down the hallway, away from the chaos of the dining room.

“Miss Harlow!” A man runs toward us, and I’m instantly ready to shove Harlow behind me. I need this alliance to look real.

“Relax, that’s Arthur,” Harlow says. “He was Aidia’s bodyguard before she married Rafe.”

Arthur closes the distance between us. “Kellan is wounded.”

Harlow takes off behind him with surprising speed. We tear down the corridor. I can’t help but notice Harlow walked right by the rest of her wounded family in the dining room, but now she’s sprinting to get to Kellan. That’s valuable information.

When she rounds the corner ahead, she draws up short and throws an arm out to stop Gaven and me.

“Arthur, stop!” she shouts. But it’s too late.

The guard is several feet ahead of her. He goes rigid, shakes for a few seconds, and then collapses to the floor. Harlow drags him back from the invisible boundary and presses her fingers to his neck. I shouldn’t be surprised how casual the motion is for her, but it makes me wonder how often she checks a body for a pulse—or a lack of one. I suppose it makes sense if murder is one of her pastimes.

“He’s alive.”

“What is it?” Gaven asks, glancing down the hallway.

Her gaze tracks over something I can’t see. “It looks like some sort of trap from someone with a malice blessing. Do the rebels have⁠—”

“Magic,” Gaven offers. “Yes, your brother warned me there had been a few magical disturbances of late.”

Harlow scowls at him. “And you didn’t think to mention that to me?”

The guard crosses his arms. “So you’d be aware when you sneak out?”

“So I can warn your common ass,” she counters.

This is exactly why I need Harlow. Much as I might loathe her, I need her insights into her family, their blessing, and her ability to see magic. We can’t fight the Carrenwells blind. You can’t stop what you can’t see coming. The sooner I get her to trust me, the sooner I can set to unraveling her family’s power over the city.

“Can you undo whatever the trap is?” I ask.

Harlow shakes her head. “I don’t have holy fire to burn it away. We’d need my father or one of my siblings.”

Everyone knows Able has holy fire because he’s the heir, but she’s suggesting one of her other siblings has it too, and I can’t tell if it’s a bluff.

“If the rebels did this, it seems they’re trying to corral us in the dining room,” I say.

She nods before meeting Gaven’s eye. “We need to find Kellan, which means we need to show Henry.”

Gaven sighs and bends to drag Arthur away. Harlow wordlessly crosses the hall and pauses in front of what looks like a normal wood-paneled wall. She glances both ways down the hall and then presses into the molding. A hidden door swings open, and she waves me inside. Gaven grunts as he drags Arthur inside and lays him on the ground. Harlow follows with a quick glance over her shoulder before she presses the door closed.

There’s a soft scratch, and a match flickers to life. Harlow lights a candle. The narrow passage brightens.

Gaven glances down at Arthur. “He’ll be confused when he wakes up, but he’ll figure it out once he gets his bearings.”

Harlow steps over Arthur and leads us down the long corridor. It grows narrower before it dead ends. She hands Gaven the candle and presses her ear to the solid wall. After a moment of silence, she whispers something I can’t hear. Before my eyes, the wall goes transparent and the hallway comes into focus.

Harlow gasps. Across from where we wait, Kellan is sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood. Gaven grabs her arm before she can move. He blows out the candle and sets it on a table to the right of the opening, then whispers something and presses through the viscous barrier between us and the hallway.

Harlow takes my hand and whispers something that sounds like “Stellaria” before yanking me through the opening. The oily film of the barrier spills over me, and suddenly I’m in the hallway. I turn around. We stepped through a mirror—clearly some type of magic created by someone with a blessing from Divine Stellaria.

When I turn back, Harlow is kneeling next to her brother, smacking his cheek. “Kel, wake up.”

She tugs his shirt to the side, and the metallic scent of his blood hits me. The wound in his stomach is still bleeding, soaking through his white shirt.

Beside him, a rebel lies dead. The captain of the city guard got the best of this fight, but not by much.

“Fix him!” Harlow says, her panicked face turning up to mine. It’s the first time I’ve seen her look anything but completely in control. “Please, Henry.”

I stare down at her brother. His family may not have actually killed my sister, but they orchestrated her death all the same. I should let him die. It would be a fitting end for him to bleed out at the hand of the rebels.

But I have a job to do, and that would be short-sighted. Of all the members of this family, Kellan will know the most about the city’s defenses and his family’s weaknesses. And if he’s as important to Harlow as it seems, it might soften her toward me.

Kellan groans and blinks his eyes open. “Low.”

“You’re fine. Henry will fix it.” She looks at me expectantly. She trusts me—not completely, but with the health of the family member she came looking for first in the melee.

A loud crash sounds from somewhere down the hall.

“Libby?” Kellan groans.

Harlow shakes her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her.”

“I hid her in the safe room,” he says. “With Ames.”

Harlow’s shoulders relax. “I’ll find her once we get you up but take this as a sign to stop ditching your bodyguard.”

Kellan’s gaze darts over her shoulder. “Gaven.”

Pounding footsteps echo down the long hallway. I turn just in time to see several men round the corner.

Harlow stands, pushing me toward her brother. “Heal him. We will cover you.”

I want to argue with her. If she dies now, all of my planning will be for nothing. But there’s no time.

Kellan’s eyes narrow on me. “You have to decide now. If your magic is torn between protecting her and saving me, it won’t do either well. If you heal me, I can help.”

“If I heal you, you need to rest. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” I focus on Kellan’s wound, pressing my magic into him. “It will hurt, but the itch is worse.”

He nods, and the tingling in my hands stretches out, stitching his wound back together. It’s deep, the blood vessels shredded and the pain of it bright and angry. It takes longer than I want it to.

Behind me, steel clashes and men groan. The sounds of a fight fill the air, but I can’t turn to look because the wound requires too much of my concentration.

Kellan winces, and I know the itching has hit. It’s just like the natural healing process, only the speed of magical healing makes it unbearably intense. He grits his teeth as his skin heals over, and he curls up into a sitting position.

“It will still be sore for a few days,” I say.

“Understood, but I’ll have to worry about that later. There’s more coming.” He rises to his feet, and I can see the moment of hesitation as he realizes I’m going to see his magic.

We were already aware of his blessing, but I’m thrilled with the chance to see it in action.

Gaven drives a dagger into the neck of one of the rebels, while Harlow spins and slides her blade between another’s ribs. Her movements are precise as she jerks the dagger free with ease and blocks the next attack in one smooth motion by grabbing the man’s wrist. She slices across his arm and shoves him toward Gaven to finish the job.

“Nice, Low,” Kellan says.

She smiles but doesn’t turn to look at him, keeping her gaze focused on the men at the end of the hallway.

The men freeze, noticing the leader of the city guard for the first time. One of them is holding a bottle with a rag jammed in the top. He’s about to light it, but his eyes go suddenly vacant. He drops the match, carefully sets the bottle to the side. One by one, he and his companions set down their weapons and lie face down on the floor.

“They’ll stay down until the sun rises unless I tell them otherwise,” Kellan says.

I stare at the men on the floor. I knew Kellan Carrenwell was blessed by the Divine of Malice. Compulsion magic is the most feared, and therefore, the most valued among our people. But it’s one thing to know something in theory and another to see someone with a strong enough gift for manipulation that he can make a group of men that large and focused lie down for an entire night.

It makes him well-suited to running the city guard. Men listen to someone with Polm’s blessing because they don’t want to find out what happens if they don’t.

Harlow hugs Kellan, her face full of relief. For a moment, she’s not a woman who tried to casually murder me in a boarding house the other night. She’s just a woman who loves her brother. It’s too humanizing.

“Easy, Low. I’m fine,” he says.

“Getting rusty?” Harlow taunts as she draws away.

Kellan shrugs. “There were three of them and I barely got Libby out safely. I wasn’t at my best.”

“Excuses, excuses.”

Harlow is so much calmer now, her voice back to its smooth, steady cadence, her face less pale. Since Kellan’s magic is good in a fight, it’s clear that she’s just more emotionally attached to him than the rest of her family.

I tuck that knowledge away, along with the fact that Kellan’s wife doesn’t have good defensive magic, or else she wouldn’t have been hidden away.

The Carrenwells are notoriously cagey about what magical gifts they each have. It’s another way that they hoard power; that’s only compounded by the fact that they have a record of which of the Divine has blessed every magic wielder in Lunameade. The more information I can gather quickly about each of the magical families in the high houses, the better chance we have of swaying them from supporting the Carrenwells.

Kellan pats my shoulder. “You should go find your parents. No rebels made it past me, but they may have breached a different entrance. If they know who your parents are, they won’t be safe.”

I want to laugh in his face. As if a Carrenwell has ever cared for my family’s safety. For all I know, he put Harlow up to killing me the other night. If I had to gamble on anyone knowing I was in the city, it would have been the captain of the city guard and the most well-connected of the siblings. One fake show of concern will not be enough to put my suspicion to rest.

“I think Mother said they were heading to the library to see a painting of Mountain Haven,” Harlow says.

Paranoia creeps up on me. What if the Carrenwells planned this? What if this was a trap? I have been wondering why exactly they went along with my parents’ plan. The biggest point of failure when we sent the proposal was whether they would see value in it. The fact that they do means they want something from us.

Harlow narrows her eyes at me—no, not at me; through me. Panic grips me. She’s seeing something in my aura.

“Are you well? You need to be ready,” she says.

I smile tightly. “Lead the way, lovely.”

Kellan’s brows shoot up at the exchange, but he doesn’t say anything as Harlow starts down the hallway with Gaven at her side. They pause at the corner, listening for footsteps. There’s only the distant sound of fighting and screaming from outside the house. It sounds like the rebels are on their heels.

We round the hallway, and Harlow pauses behind Gaven in front of a tall, ornate wooden door. The bodyguard leans his ear against it for a moment before pushing inside. Harlow follows, and I stride in behind her, the smell of ink and parchment mixing with candle wax and a faint scent of honey. Harlow draws up short when her eyes come to rest on a body on the far side of the room.

I look over her shoulder.

My mother is wounded. Blood pools around her on the library floor. My father crouches over her, trying to staunch the bleeding. Panic descends so quickly, I don’t realize Harlow has already taken action, ripping strips of fabric from the hem of her dress to hand to my father. My mother’s face is twisted in pain.

“They came so quickly, I couldn’t hold them all back,” he says, his voice frantic. “The guards fought them back, but⁠—”

“Kellan, you have to help,” Harlow says.

My enemy, the head of the city guard, doesn’t hesitate. He kneels next to my mother, places his hand on her shoulder, and the grimace on my mother’s face dissipates into a soft frown.

She blinks up at Kellan. “How did you⁠—”

He presses a finger to his lips. He somehow took away her pain. I loathe that I owe him more than I can express.

I place my hand over the wound in her shoulder and stitch the tissue back together with my magic. It’s slow work and I’m tired. The more I use this power to heal severe wounds, the harder it gets to weave it together. While Divine blessings are a seemingly endless source of magic, their limits are tied to both the wielder’s skill and endurance. For me, it feels like the more I heal people in a short period of time, the more my concentration wanes.

My mother believes that the natural limits of a mortal body are how the Divine ensured that their gifts wouldn’t be abused by any one person. You can condition yourself to stay at peak magical performance, but everyone hits a wall eventually.

I force my magic to focus on the surface-level healing until my mother’s skin is flawless once again.

“Mom?”

Her eyes flutter open and she gives me a grim smile. “You’re too young to look so serious, Henry. You’ll scare off your new fiancée.”

“Are you well?” I ask.

“I’m fine. Your father just panics when I’m hurt. I would have been fine.” She meets Kellan’s gaze. “Not that I don’t appreciate the assistance. That’s quite a gift you have.”

I look at the stain on the carpet. She’s lying. She’s already lost a lot of blood. I don’t know if she doesn’t want me to panic or if she doesn’t want to feel beholden to the family who robbed her of her daughter, but she wouldn’t have been fine, and she certainly wouldn’t have felt well enough for my father to help her stand.

I turn to Harlow. She’s leaning against the bookcase, looking more relaxed than she has all day.

“Should we go find the rest of your family?”

She shrugs. “Protocol is to stay in hiding until the threat is handled.”

Kellan nods. “We can show you to a safe room where we have fresh water and food that might help your mother feel more like herself. I’ll feel better when I set eyes on my wife anyway.”

My father catches my gaze. I’m dying to tell him everything I’ve learned so far—that my wife-to-be knows how to fight, that she flawlessly spotted a magical trap, that the rebels used magic, that her brother has such a strong blessing that he could compel frenzied rebels to lay down their weapons. For now, I have to hold my tongue and go wherever Harlow leads. The more they show us about the South Hold mansion, the better.

Kellan crosses the room and hesitates, glancing at me over his shoulder. It’s hard to tell if it’s an act to make us feel like he’s letting us in on something valuable, or if he’s actually fighting the instinct to protect family secrets. He lifts his hand to a large volume and pushes it in. The entire shelf of books clicks, and he pulls it away from the wall, revealing another passage.

He leads the way inside, followed by my parents, Harlow, and me, with Gaven pulling up the rear.

Harlow leans close to me. “Thank you for healing me and Kellan.”

“You seem close,” I say.

She eyes me warily. “We are, but I have a great affection for my niece and nephew, and I’m not about to let their father die if I—or in this case you—can help him.” She must see the skepticism on my face. “It’s clear that neither of us is interested in marrying into this alliance for love, so let’s make the most of it. I know things about Lunameade you don’t. You know things about Fall—” She clears her throat. “About Mountain Haven that I don’t. Kellan is very important to me. Clearly your mother is very important to you. Rochelli hurt both of our families tonight. I don’t plan to sit back and allow these rebels to hurt my family or yours. It sets a dangerous precedent if they think they can get away with it so easily.”

I nod.

“I know you don’t like us and you think we’re soft behind these walls, but my father’s magic keeps the people safe,” she says. “They don’t like to think about that when they riot and whine about sacrificing a little blood to the Divine. I don’t know what you’ve been through living outside these walls for so many years, but I think you can admit you don’t know what I’ve been through living within them.”

Harlow’s passionate, eloquent, and, unfortunately, right. I don’t know, and I need to.

This whole mid-dinner attack is almost too convenient. Her family is twisted enough to have orchestrated it to appear more sympathetic—or, worse, to point the finger at us. I can see the suspicion in Harlow’s eyes. She doesn’t trust me, but for some reason, she and her family have accepted this proposal, so she must think she needs me. I wonder if that need is strong enough to build a tentative peace on.

“You’re right.”

She chokes on a laugh and holds a hand to her ear. “Did I hear that right, my wolf? Did you finally admit that I know best?”

“I admitted that you have the entirely accidental good fortune of being right this one time,” I counter.

Her smile morphs from wicked to docile in a second as she glances at something over my shoulder.

I turn and nearly bump into my father.

“Harlow, given the way the night has gone, I’m afraid we’re going to need to return to Mountain Haven sooner than expected,” he says. “You have a day to get your affairs in order, but I think it’s best for everyone’s safety that we return to the fort.” He claps a hand on my shoulder. “We ride out at dawn the day after tomorrow.”

He leaves us on our own, and Harlow watches him go with narrowed eyes.

I read her distrust in the way she crosses her arms and angles her body away from me. My father is right, but he’s rushed to this so quickly that now it looks like we planned the attack to push the timeline.

Whatever goodwill I gained by healing her brother has been wiped away by this change of schedule.

“Have a drink with me tomorrow night,” I blurt.

Her dark eyebrows shoot up. “Why would I waste my last night at home with you?”

“Because you’re about to leave the city walls for the first time and you’d probably feel more comfortable if you had a chance to interrogate me.”

She scoffs. “You’re acting as if you’ll be honest with me.”

“I will.”

She cocks her head.

“At least half of the time.”

The corner of her full lips twitches. “You know, if you’re trying to kill me, Henry, there are more efficient ways than boring me to death with your company.”

I wink. “It’s a date.”

Harlow presses a hand to my chest. “It’s a hostage negotiation. Don’t read my agreement as anything other than a desire to survive you.”

“Bold words from a woman who already tried to kill me twice.”

She rises onto her toes, and I bend so that her mouth is closer to my ear. “Then, by the grace of the Divine, let’s hope the third time’s a charm.”

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