A Touch of Poison (Shadows of the Tenebris Court, #2)
Clare Sager
For the women turning their rage into power.
Let’s burn it all down.
When the moon is dim,
The veil is thin.
When the Wild Hunt ride
Run, hide. Run, hide!
ALBIONIC FOLKLORE
1
Bastian
In red paint, not quite blood coloured, but close, foot high letters read:
Hydra Ascendant!
A couple of drips spattered from the dot of the exclamation mark, adding to the gory impression. It looked like it had been painted on the side of the sculptor’s house by an overeager teenager.
Below, a crude serpentine form with three heads watched me, its eyes left blank so they shone with the pale gleam of Luminis’s moonstone.
Hydra fucking Ascendant. In my city. Marking what would normally be a busy street if we hadn’t cordoned it off.
In my pockets, my hands fisted.
At my side, Faolán tilted his head like this was an art gallery and he was trying to work out what this masterpiece meant. “What’re you thinking?”
I made a soft, dismissive sound. “That someone needs to go back to art school.”
He shot me a look, the full weight of his brow crashing down. “But—”
“I know. I know.” I lifted one side of my mouth to tell him it was a joke. Better a joke than stating outright just how much those two painted words made my bones itch. “I thought you said they’d been quiet while I was away.”
“They have… had.” He turned his frown to the graffiti as though he could stare down the painted hydra and make it disappear.
I couldn’t blame him.
Over the past few years there had been reports. Supplies stolen from a guard outpost, a hydra daubed on the wall the only clue to the perpetrators. Caravans raided by folk wearing an insignia of the three-headed creature over their hearts. Not quite the Wicked Lady, but…
Deep red hair across a crisp white pillow. Brow furrowed in a sleep that went on too long. Fingers that—
“Bastian?” Faolán ducked into my eyeline, and I flinched. Not at his giant size, but at the fact I’d drifted off while I was meant to be working and, even worse, he’d noticed.
I folded my arms like that could protect me from my friend’s long, long look, but he knew me too well. At that moment I hated him for it—just a little.
He cleared his throat and leant in, arm butting mine. “Is she still—?”
“Yes.” The word cut through the street. “Still unconscious.” After a week. I went every day to the Hall of Healing, spent as long there as I could. If she woke alone…
I squeezed my biceps in an attempt to hold back the thought.
An entire week. The healer, Elthea, didn’t seem worried, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that each day her eyes remained closed increased the chance they would stay that way forever. Bile licked the back of my throat.
“You should bring her to dinner when she wakes up.”
My head snapped around. “What? Why?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Because… you need to eat? And I’d like to get to know her.” He shrugged casually.
Too casually.
“You’d like to? Or Rose would like to?”
“My wife’s desires are mine.”
I sighed. I might’ve known Faolán would be like this once he found his person. Insufferably smitten. With his hulking size and fierce glower, it was amusing, at least.
The problem was, I now found myself understanding how he felt.
“No need to grimace about it.” That fierce glower furrowed his brow. “Thought you liked Rose’s cooking?”
I raised my hands to ward him off. “I wouldn’t dare criticise that. She’s a sorceress of the stove. It was more… Not sure I’ll have time. Especially not if these arseholes have infiltrated the city.” Perfect excuse.
He huffed out through his nose like a wolf clearing an unwanted scent. “There’s more to life than work, Bastian. No rush. You can let her acclimatise first. But”—his beard parted and his teeth gleamed—“you will bring her to dinner.”
Kat. Me. Rose and Faolán. Sat together around their cosy table, eating and laughing. Resting my arm on the back of Kat’s chair, fingertips trailing the lengths of her hair.
It was a seductive image… and an impossible one.
I had betrayed her, and when she woke up she was going to wring my neck. I might even let her.
I cleared my throat and attempted to clear my head of Kat, even though it was a doomed mission. Still, I nodded at the graffiti as much to keep myself focused as to return Faolán’s attention to it rather than me. “Who’s seen it?”
“Just a couple of locals. One who reported it. Dusk, so they came straight to us.”
“Good.” Though nothing about this was good.
All those other reports of Hydra Ascendant had been distant—none in the city of Tenebris-Luminis. And yet here I stood, not long after dawn, this red paint shoving them in my face.
Whoever the hells they were.
As best we could tell, they were some sort of rebel group with a taste for mythological creatures, small-scale raids, and a dislike for the twin thrones. Who they were and what they wanted was anyone’s guess, but it prickled me with the same sense of dread I’d had the night of Princess Sura’s ill-conceived coup. If this was heading in the same direction…
Not this time. It wouldn’t come to bloodshed.
I was in the Queensguard back then—little more than a cocky boy with more arrogance than power. Now I had my network of whispering shadows and the Queen’s ear. I had Faolán and all sorts of useful people to dig up all sorts of useful secrets.
Whatever the Ascendants thought they had planned, it wasn’t happening. Not while I still stood.
“Get it cleaned up.” I glanced along the road, which the guards had done a good job of keeping clear, despite the folk heading to and from work. “Make sure those witnesses understand they didn’t see what they think they saw. Then see what you can sniff out about all this.”
He crossed his huge arms and inclined his head. “Hmm.”
Faolán had a number of Hmms in his vocabulary. I’d never known a man to say so much with so little.
“What else?”
His hazel eyes slid from the marred wall to me. “Rose is back from visiting her parents.” He scratched his bearded chin, a study in nonchalance.
“And I owe her an apology, don’t I?” I pressed my lips together, like that could keep out the sour taste at how I’d treated her on my return from Albion. My fingers twitched at the memory of Kat’s still form in my arms, the desperation surging through me, the raw and awful need.
“You do.” His nostrils flared as he exhaled through them. “I don’t care how you talk to me. But—”
“I know.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “I was an arse. I owe her an apology and I’ll see she gets it.”
“Hmm.” This was an approving version of his signature sound, accompanied by a dip of his chin.
Maybe it was the talk of apologies or the memory of our return, but my traitorous gaze skipped up the hill to the Hall of Healing sitting atop it, gleaming and golden in the morning light.