Текст книги "The poison daughter"

Автор книги: Sheila Masterson

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 48 страниц)

10HARLOW

Guardian’s Crossing teems with people. Raucous laughter and quick fiddle music bring the drunk crowd to a frenzy as I cut down the back hallway and slide up to the bar.

Bea marks my presence immediately. She passes a pitcher of ale to a pretty young waitress and pulls a pint.

She leans over the bar as she hands it to me. “I did background for your new client personally, but between what happened with the last client setting you up and the attack on South Hold, I think you should take a break. Rest up.”

I shake my head as if I can rattle away the memory of Kellan lying in a pool of his own blood. Listening to Bea would mean admitting that I’m losing my edge. This has always been the unnavigable rift between us. Bea has always wanted me to be soft in a way I can’t afford.

I lean over the bar and whisper to keep from being overheard. “I’m fairly certain the setup was courtesy of Rafe. He made a comment about it at my engagement dinner.”

Bea’s eyes darken, and it’s like a cloud has gone over the sun. All the warmth is erased from her face. “That fucking ghoul. I swear to the Divine, I’m going to choke the life out of that man someday.” She shakes her head and blows out a slow breath. “His desire for power is matched only by your father.”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her that Rafe knows about my magic, but if I tell her, she won’t continue to help me do this work that’s given me a purpose to focus on while I can’t help Aidia. So many things in my life are out of my hands right now, but this is something I can do.

“As for the attack, it was just a couple overzealous men who weren’t as brave as they fancied themselves,” I say. “The real shame is that mother’s fine dishes are no longer with us. May Divine Asher deliver them.”

She frowns, and I know I haven’t sold my apathy.

I squeeze her hand. “I’m fine and I may as well do some good with the last bit of my time here. I leave for Mountain Haven tomorrow. The Havenwoods want to return to the fort and have us married immediately. They don’t feel comfortable staying in the city any longer.”

Bea tilts her head to the side. “You think that’s what the rebels were hoping for? To scare them off?”

I shrug a shoulder. “I think they would have had more men and a more solid plan if they actually wanted to take us out. If you come for all of the high magical families at once, you better not fail, you know?”

Bea nods. “And what better way to cast doubt on your parents’ ability to protect their people than to show it on display to the very people they’ve already failed.”

“So, I suppose this job is my last for a while,” I say. “One last hurrah before Henry makes an honest woman of me.”

“I’m certain no man could handle such a task,” Bea says. She scrubs at a nonexistent spot on the bar, not meeting my eye. “Tell me—what’s he like, this new husband?” She glances up at me and a lock of dark hair falls into her face.

I shove down the desire to tuck it behind her ear. “He’s a man.”

She waits for me to say more, and when I don’t, she bursts out laughing. “Oh, he is in for so much trouble.”

“He’s just a job, Bea. Like you with this bar.”

Her grin grows wider. “Yes, but the difference is when this bar fucks me, it’s metaphorical. That’s not the case with your mountain man.”

I purse my lips. “Jealous?”

She shakes her head and smirks. “It’s different when you love someone.”

“I wouldn’t know, but that’s hardly a concern here.”

She pauses her scrubbing and sets the rag down. “Are you nervous?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

I knock back half of my beer and burp in the least ladylike way possible. “I’m cautious. I’ve never even left the city gates, and while that’s terrifying, it’s also almost…a relief.”

I see the recognition in Bea’s eyes. She knows what it is to be trapped here, to feel that the same walls that keep you safe also cage you in.

The itch to leave is ever-present. Each time it grows too large to contain, I stand on the top of the South Hold guard towers and stare down into the Drained Wood. I think of the gray-skinned, clawed creatures lurking in the dark. I think of their black-hole auras. I imagine fighting my way through the woods.

But I can’t imagine anything beyond.

The concept of escape is too abstract. I’ve heard stories from travelers and tradesmen, but none of it feels more real than the threat of death outside of our city walls.

Beyond the woods might as well be the edge of the world. An adventurous few people have come to visit Lunameade, but the natives don’t leave.

The bar lights go out and the whole crowd groans in unison. The fiddlers play on, but the dancing stops. The fire is bright enough that people aren’t crashing into each other, but not enough that they feel comfortable with such a frenzied dance.

Bea pulls fresh candles from beneath the counter. “As if it doesn’t happen multiple times a week.”

The rolling blackouts are normal, considering how cloudy it gets this time of year, but after an uncommonly sunny fall, people have become accustomed to the ease of sunstone lighting.

It’s not a perfect system, but the Bennetts of East Hold have a blessing from Divine Stellaria that allows them to store light in sunstone. They’ve built a network of it through the city to provide residents with light. It’s a limited resource, and priority goes to the gatehouses—which is just another way of saying it goes to the powerful.

For that reason, every household in the city is supplied with a monthly stipend of beeswax candles. After the attack on Fallen Hold, the wagons of supplies from the outside world slowed and then ground to a halt as the drained population made the woods unsurvivable. The Crookes, a family of beekeepers, sprang into action, teaching people how to keep hives. Most households with gardens also keep bees, and my family supplements the rest by hiring unblessed citizens to keep the hives along the walls of the city.

Guardian’s Crossing has several hives on its rooftop garden, and Bea has used the honey to make her signature Sweet Bea’s Wildflower Honey Ale every spring. The brew is so coveted that people line up around the block on the night of release. Bea once hinted that the brew paid for a year of maintenance and stock in just one month. She makes enough for three months because she’s smart enough to know that there’s no better way to charge a premium in this city than to market something as exclusive.

Bea lights several jarred candles, and I help a waitress pass them around the room. A moment later, the revelers are back to their dancing and the blustering cacophony of sounds resumes as if nothing happened.

I bend over the counter and hold out my ale to be topped off.

Bea takes it and fills it to the brim. She leans in close. “When you leave for Fallen Hold and the killing stops, that brother of yours is going to finally figure out who you are.”

I rub the bridge of my nose. “I know. I’ve been trying to come up with something.”

“And?” Bea looks so hopeful.

I twist my mug around on the bar top, drawing a finger through the beer pooling on the wood.

“Josie wants to help,” Bea says, her voice cautious.

I swallow my shock. “Absolutely not.”

“Just listen,” she says, raising her voice as much as she dares. “We don’t need to do much. You’ll be gone for, what? A couple weeks for the wedding? But I imagine you’ll be back for Dark Star Festival. We’ll continue doing intake. And we’ll take on a job or two.”

I hold up a hand. “I’m touched that you want to help, but you’re already more involved than I’d like. It’s too dangerous.”

Bea shakes her head. “Josie has been asking to help for a while—before all this. You know her history.”

I look away. I know her history well. Josie was one of our first clients ever, and she was so grateful for our help that she took over running all the administrative duties at Guardian’s Crossing.

The more I pulled away, the more Bea leaned on Josie. That was fine with me. Bea and I were casual anyway. I have never been good at letting someone in. It was inevitable.

“She’s trustworthy,” Bea says.

“I don’t doubt her trustworthiness, Bea. I would just be devastated if she got hurt, and so would you,” I snap.

A man a few seats down turns to look at us for a moment before going back to his conversation.

Bea’s face softens. “We know enough women with small magic. The girls at the pleasure houses do enough.”

I sigh. Lunameade’s pleasure district is notorious, or at least it was when we used to have regular tourists and visitors. We get very few outside visitors now since the forest is overrun with Drained and impassable to those who aren’t well-trained.

However, the reason they are so popular is that many of the bastards of the magical houses work in the district, and those who can wield small magic like glamours abound. According to Josie, violet eyes like mine are a very popular request of those blessed by Stellaria.

“We can make it work,” Bea says. “Those women are a huge part of our network and they’ve wanted to help for years if you would just⁠—”

“I’m not putting them at risk,” I say in a harsh whisper. “At least not until I have a strong plan to insulate them from the mess it could make.”

Bea pulls her hand away. She’s not one to sulk, hardened bartender that she is, but I recognize the wounded look in her eyes.

I don’t want to worry her and tell her that Rafe knows about my magic, but the last thing I need is for her and Josie to draw his attention.

“Just give me a little more time and I will come up with something.” I try for placating, but I sound so condescending. “I know you two can handle yourselves, but these are delicate times, especially after the rebel attack. If I’m not here, there’s no way for me to insulate you. Assumptions would be made, and I can’t lose you.”

“We don’t have more time. I’m not asking for your permission. I’m telling you that friendship means having someone’s back, and this is a risk we are both willing to take—and we have backup,” Bea says.

She’s trapped me here and waited until the last minute to spring it on me when I have no other option. I want to argue, but I know she’s right.

Bea looks away and nods. “I’m glad that’s settled. Now you better get going before your mark moves on or finds another lovely lady for the night.”

I grin, drain my ale, and dart out the back door. The night is cold and my breath puffs out in little white clouds as I tug up my hood and walk north, following a series of narrow alleys and quiet side streets.

Ashen Eclipse is a dark bar in the northeast quadrant of the city that is themed around Divine Stellaria and the complete darkness she washed the world with when her husband, Asher, was kidnapped.

I’ve been there a couple of times before. It’s not really my kind of place, but the city is only so big and everyone needs a change of pace sometimes.

Pausing at the end of a dark alleyway, I brush my fingers over my enchanted necklace and close my eyes. I don’t want to waste the limited magic left in it, so I just focus on changing my eyes from violet to bright blue. The familiar press of Aidia’s magic tingling behind my eyelids makes me want to cry.

When I blink my eyes open a moment later, the world looks slightly hazy. The film will clear after my body adjusts to the magic.

Two drunk men stumble by the alley, and their laughter sends me into motion again. I cross the street and take several more twists and turns down alleyways until finally I approach the back of Ashen Eclipse and peek around the side of the building. Several men stand by the door, smoking and laughing with each other.

My preference is to make an entrance, but I’d rather not get too much attention until I’m actually inside. I’ll have to use the back entrance.

I turn and immediately stumble back from a dark, looming figure beside me. Bracing my hand against my thundering heart, I laugh at myself for being so jumpy. With the streetlights out, what looks like a person is actually just a statue of Stellaria clasping Asher’s hand. As my eyes adjust, I realize her face is a mask of narrow-eyed vengeance, while Asher looks at her with total adoration.

I stare at the Divine of Endings. Asher is so rarely depicted in art around the city. People have a strange nervousness about him—as if it were he who cursed the world to darkness and not his wife.

When I was young, I was convinced that wariness came from the rarity of blessings from Divine Asher. Not one of the high houses had a family member with a blessing from the Divine of Endings, and in my lifetime I’d never heard of a New Moon Blessing Ceremony where a child had received a blessing from Asher. But my parents were always saying that the Divine were mysterious and it wasn’t up to us to question their decisions.

Aidia had other ideas about why the people of Lunameade were so wary of paying homage to the Divine of Endings. She thought that the men of Lunameade were disturbed that Asher willingly shared his power with his wife, and the reason they didn’t like statues of him in the city is because they don’t want their own wives getting ideas. Now that I’m older, that seems more likely.

Mercifully, the back door is unlocked, and I enter, slipping down a long, dimly lit hallway until I reach an equally dark bar.

The atmosphere in Ashen Eclipse is much more subdued. A man plays haunting piano music in the corner, and most of the patrons either seem to be listening to him or speaking quietly amongst themselves.

The only exception is a group of eight young men by the front windows who laugh loudly and take turns bouncing coins into shot glasses on their table. One of the men ducks out of the way of a rogue shot and slips from his stool onto the floor. His friends break out into loud hoots, and everyone in the bar turns to look at them.

I use the distraction to search for my target.

Even in the dim candlelight, my mark is so easy to identify, his bright red hair like a beacon the moment I step into the bar. I toss my cloak over a chair in the corner booth. As I cross the room, heads turn to take me in.

It’s the dress. It’s spectacular and obviously expensive, which draws the eye in this part of town. Many of the magical family guards spend time here, so it’s not exactly a bad neighborhood—more the part of town where they have just enough to covet expensive things.

There’s an opening at the bar a few seats down from my mark. I lean over to flag the bartender down, showing off my backside. The young man behind the bar is on me immediately, a flirtatious smile on his face.

“Big night, miss?”

I twist a lock of hair around my finger and nod. “Could I get a chilled bottle of sparkling wine?”

He hesitates for a moment, but I pull out a Mattingly family marker. The bartender’s eyes go wide when he sees it, and he nods. He disappears into the back room.

Interesting. When Aidia passed me this marker, I wasn’t sure it would come in handy for something, but that level of service makes me wonder if my twisted brother-in-law makes a habit of gifting his household markers to beautiful young women.

Most families give those markers out sparingly because they’re essentially a free pass to add your tab from anywhere in the city onto the corresponding Gatekeeper House’s bill.

The young bartender returns, opens the bottle, and stashes it in a bucket of ice. Batting my eyes, I snatch the bucket and two glasses and cross the room to a table in my mark’s line of sight.

His gaze is heavy on me as I cross the room and slip into my seat.

I meet his eyes as I pour myself a glass of wine. Leaning back in my chair, I take a sip, letting a few drops splash onto my chest as I draw the glass away. The chilled wine slides down between my breasts.

“Does that work?” a voice right next to my ear says.

I jump and whip my head around to see Henry’s smug smile.

He’s squatting behind me, his dark blue eyes filled with amusement as he studies my target.

I try to stuff down the panic that he might have followed me all night—that he might know Bea is involved in this.

“What are you doing here? This bar has a strict no-wild-animal policy,” I say, leveling him with a glare.

He settles into the seat beside me and helps himself to my wine. “Well, lovely, as you’ve seen, I’m excellent at walking on my hind legs. I’m sure no one will notice.”

Every eye in the room presses in on us now.

I arch a brow. “Oh?”

He purses his lips. “They’re all looking at that dress—or maybe the lack of dress.”

I smile brightly. “So you noticed.”

“Isn’t that the idea? For men to notice you?”

“Why are you here?” I ask.

He leans back and holds his drink up to the room. “It’s date night with my beautiful fiancée, of course.”

“Not until later.”

He winks at a man walking by. “But how could I wait when the heart wants what it wants?” His voice is overly loud, and people keep looking at us. This is not the attention I want to be getting.

“You’re ruining everything,” I whisper.

He cocks his head. “By wanting to get to know you?”

“By standing in my way.”

“Ah. I know what happens to men who get in your way.”

I scoff. “Not all of them, unfortunately.”

“Tell me. Do you pretend to hate me because you’re stuck with me or because you can’t stop thinking about me biting your thighs?”

I almost choke on my wine. “Bold of you to assume you can imagine all the ways I loathe you.”

His lips twitch into a half-smile. He leans back, throwing a casual arm over the back of my chair as he looks around the room. “I would say this place seems a little dark for you, but I’m wondering if you’re here to do to some other man what you did to me.”

“Leave him hard and lonely in a boarding house?” I suggest.

Henry glowers at me. “No. I was talking about the poison part.”

“Tell me what you want before I smash this glass and try a more direct method,” I say, forcing my face into a sweet smile.

“To get to know you.”

That’s probably half-true, but I want to do whatever I can to get him out of my way. “Fine. Ask me a question.”

He grins and sets his glass down. “How did you learn to fight?”

I roll my eyes. “How did you?”

Henry hums in amusement. “Thank you for asking, Harlow. I was trained by my father and mother because everyone beyond the walls gets extensive training. I’m just wondering why an elegant woman with a cushy life behind these nice big walls knows how to defend herself so well.”

I purse my lips and take a sip of wine. The bubbles tingle across my tongue. “So you think I’m elegant?”

He laughs. It’s loud and genuine and it rumbles through my chest in a pleasant way. “That’s what you got out of that?” He takes a long sip of the wine. “You know you’re elegant. You don’t need me to tell you. Besides, I hear you have unusual eyes.”

“You hear?”

“I can’t see color. Ever since the attack—” His voice trails off and his eyes go far away.

“Your eyes were damaged when the Drained attacked Mountain Haven? How old were you?”

He shakes his head. “Twenty-three. I was so brazen and idiotic. Always looking for a fight. I sure got one.”

I swallow hard. I don’t like thinking of him that way—young and foolish and humbled by violence. It’s too relatable.

“Don’t do it, lovely.” His voice is almost a purr.

“Do what?”

“Don’t believe for one minute that I’m some wounded man who will be patched up by your love.”

I lean toward him. “I’m not the loving type. I have nothing to give you but poison. You, on the other hand—” I wave at him. I’m not sure what game he’s playing. One moment he’s a little too raw, and the next he’s taunting me.

Clearing my throat, I shift in my seat. “So you can’t see color. That seems like a significant disadvantage for a wild man. How do you tell which berries are poisonous?”

“I have an enhanced sense of smell, taste, and hearing. Also, the poison ones tingle a bit on the tongue,” he says.

If he can’t see color, that means he doesn’t notice my glamour. I’m suddenly relieved I only changed my eyes for this job, or I would have given up a valuable secret that I might need later. If things go wrong in Mountain Haven, a glamour might be my only way to hide.

I bring my hands to the star pendant and pull off the glamour, ignoring the intense itch in my eyes. Once it’s abated, I meet his gaze.

He just watches me as he takes a long sip of wine. He’s telling the truth.

“Do you miss it?” I ask.

“Color?”

I nod.

“I miss my sister more.”

I gasp, too shocked by the admission to keep it from slipping out. “Your sister?”

He nods, studying me intently over the rim of his glass. He takes another sip, and there’s a satisfied gleam in his eyes, like he’s happy to see me caught off guard. “Holly died when the hold fell.”

“How?”

“She was defending the wall,” he says flatly.

I could kick myself for not realizing. “She was the heir.”

The Havenwoods hadn’t publicly named an heir before the fort fell, and seeing as their blessing records are missing, I made assumptions the way everyone else in the city does when it comes to succession.

But Henry Havenwood wasn’t born to be heir of Mountain Haven. His sister was. I should have known because magic chooses the wielder, not the other way around. Even if men want to pass their power down to their sons, they only pass a baseline affinity. What happens when they’re blessed in the Blood Well is entirely up to the Divine.

“You don’t have any other siblings?” I ask.

He shakes his head.

I’m surprised at the easy admission. Just because he’s not aware of them doesn’t mean they don’t exist, though his father did seem very protective of Evangeline during the attack.

I can’t tell if Henry is trying to lull me into a false sense of intimacy or if he’s actually oblivious. In Lunameade, no one would ever freely offer so much information about their family or their magic, but perhaps it’s not the case at Mountain Haven. If the rumors are true, and someone in his family has a gift from Asher, this means it has to be one of his parents.

I cross my arms and sit back in my seat. It’s unpleasant being on my heels like this. In one conversation, Henry has managed to dismantle all my plans for the evening and all the assumptions I’ve made about him, and he’s grinning like he knows it.

He pours us both more wine. “Why did you try to poison me a second time?”

“I thought you were lying about that ring protecting you from magical attacks, and I was right.”

“But if you were wrong, you’d have killed me in front of every magical family in Lunameade,” he says.

I shrug. “High risk. High reward.”

“You’d have started a war based on a hunch?” Henry looks like he doesn’t know whether to be angry or impressed.

“My life is a war. This would just be a battle I see coming.”

He cocks his head and looks me over in a slow, assessing way, then his gaze flits to my mark at the bar. “So what comes next for the redhead?” he asks. “You go talk to him?”

“I wait for him to come talk to me.”

Henry arches a skeptical brow. “You can’t guarantee that he will.”

“Can’t I?” I lean back in my chair, take a long sip of wine, and groan as if it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted.

Several nearby heads turn, and I tilt my glass so a few drops of wine splash onto my chest again. The sparkling wine is cold against my hot skin as it dribbles down the dip between my breasts.

Henry tracks it with his gaze.

I smile wickedly and lift my glass in a toast toward my mark, who has taken notice of me, despite Henry’s presence at my table.

Henry whips his head around just in time to see the man raise his glass to me. He shakes his head, turning back. “Shameless.”

“Men in this town are quite simple, Henry.”

“If you say so.” He glances over his shoulder at the man, who is still looking at me. “So, why him?”

I down the rest of my glass and stand abruptly. This has gone on long enough. I don’t need Henry in my business—not when I’m restless about leaving. Not when I have this one last chance to help the women who rely on me, not without a succession plan.

I can’t leave the women of the city in a lurch. Not to mention that if I leave and all the poison-based murders stop, it will be very obvious who the Poison Vixen is.

Kellan might not have figured it out yet, thanks to my signature poison vials left at the scene, but he’s not stupid. I don’t like Bea’s idea for her and Josie to take over while I’m gone. There are too many variables, and I don’t want them mixed up in this. If they’re caught, they’ll go down for the whole thing.

But that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t trust anyone else.

I move to leave, but Henry grabs my wrist. I freeze, looking from his hand to his eyes.

An amused smile plays across his lips. “Not so fast, lovely. We’re supposed to be spending time together—a hostage negotiation, as you so eloquently put it.”

I try to wrench my arm away, but he pulls my hand toward his face. He holds my gaze as he brushes his lips over my inner wrist.

It’s just a soft kiss, but the intimacy of it feels too obscene for a public place where anyone can watch us. Heat rushes through me, and I draw away from him.

He stands and presses a hand to my bare upper back. “Come on, lovely. I planned something you’ll like way more than murder.”

“Doubtful.” I glare at him skeptically, but let him usher me across the room. “I’m not going anywhere else with you.”

“Not even to meet my best friends?”

Divine dammit. I want to turn him down. That man at the bar is beating his wife and children. But I need access to the people who know Henry best; understanding their dynamics will help me manipulate them. This is my only chance to do that before I’m stuck in the fort with the lot of them.

Henry cocks his head to the side. “Or I could go with your plan and I’ll let your brother know about your hobby. It will be hard to talk your way out of that one. Especially since you’ve been the center of attention in this bar all night.”

I click my tongue. “Blackmail is beneath you.”

Henry licks his lips. “Nothing is beneath me. I will get as low and dirty as I need to in order to get what I want.”

I hold his gaze for a moment too long. Then, I cast one last frustrated glance at my mark and sigh heavily. “Fine, but if your friends are as boring as you, I’m leaving and finishing this job, and I don’t care what you tell Kellan.”

Henry helps me into my cloak and ushers me out into the oppressive dark of the city streets.

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