And yet as I stood, he was still talking about it like it was true.
“The antidote was already in my system, fixed by Asher.” He watched me take a few experimental steps. I wasn’t as wobbly as I’d expected, but he looked as though he might swoop in if I fell. “With the points of connection between us—blood, Asher’s magic, and Elthea’s magic—she was able to use that to make it so I was… your opposite. Your touch poisons; mine remedies.”
As my brain glitched on Bastian’s explanation like a mechanism with a broken part, I ducked behind a dressing screen and removed my nightgown. “Why can’t I just take a potion—the normal antidote?”
A long pause followed, and I yanked on the dusky grey dress that hung waiting for me.
“The changeling did something to the poison to make the normal antidote ineffective. This is the only way.”
“Fucking unCavendish,” I muttered, fastening tiny crystal buttons down my front. After another pause, I stepped out from behind the screen, buttoning up the cuffs of the close-fitting sleeves.
I wanted it to be a joke. Or a lie.
Anything but the truth.
But Bastian looked at me with the same dread I’d seen earlier. He rose from the chair as I emerged, all tight with anticipation of what I was going to make of all this.
What the fuck was I supposed to make of it? There was no guide in any etiquette book. This wasn’t amongst my father’s lessons. It wasn’t something society had hammered into me about how I had to behave.
I was like my sister: in uncharted waters.
I shook my head and retreated into practicality. “So, what? I have to touch you every day in order to stay alive?” My words dissolved into laughter, because it was the most incredibly fucking ridiculous sentence I’d said in my entire life.
But Bastian didn’t laugh. He pressed his lips together, sucked them in for a second, then nodded.
That sobered me. He was serious. So serious. “And if I touch anyone else, I will poison them?”
Eyebrows tight together, he bowed his head again.
More laughter caught in my throat, somewhere between hysteria and sobbing. I had to gulp in a breath and hold it to seize control of myself.
He frowned at the cabinet like he was as happy to be stuck with me as I was to be stuck with him.
Great. Just bloody great.
We emerged from the quiet of the Hall of Healing, and I had to pause at the top of the steps as light and bustle and chatter and scent hit me. This city was just as alive as Lunden, with fae laughing and talking as they strode past. Children played in the small square at the base of the steps, swatting fae lights between them.
Beyond them, pale and gleaming buildings pierced the sky with spires and pillowed it with domes. Pink-veined marble and moonstone that shone blue then gold then green as the light found different angles. I couldn’t fathom how anyone had carved such huge blocks of stone—there were no joins in the Hall of Healing’s walls, and there was no keystone at the centre of the graceful arcing bridge that spanned between the towers overhead. It was as if each building had been shaped from a single piece of rock… or perhaps grown from it.
Greenery softened the stone architecture—soaring trees and billowing shrubs, climbing plants that ambled up walls and around window frames, and small flowers that seemed to grow from the rock itself. Perhaps it was their sweetly spiced scent that drifted through the air, thick and heady like good brandy.
“Are you all right?” Bastian hovered at my side, looking out over the square. He asked the question and yet there was no sign he cared much about the answer. It was as though we’d left the building and a door had slammed inside him.
I gripped the sweeping marble handrail and straightened my back. “I’m fine. Wait”—I snatched my hand away—“does my… does it linger on things when I touch them?”
He shook his head, expression flat, but I knew him well enough to catch a hint of regret lingering in his eyes.
Or at least I thought I knew him. The man who’d looked after me in his rooms and begged me not to give up—he hadn’t seemed like someone who’d use me to uncover an enemy.
The hurt threatened to break me, but beneath that was hot anger. I used it to cauterise the wound, gritting my teeth as I wobbled down the steps.
Anger was so much better than hurt. Or easier, anyway.
We walked along a tree-lined street in silence. There was enough noise around us and, with aspens hushing in the breeze, enough above us too. The flickering undersides of their silvery leaves and the iridescent moonstone homes behind were almost enough to make me forget my anger.
Almost.
But I didn’t want that. So, arms folded to keep my hands away from anyone passing too close, I shot Bastian a sharp smile. “Doesn’t stealing me away count as coming between me and that man I’m married to?”
Nothing marred his smooth expression, but his chin jerked up. “Your husband gave me permission to bring you here in order to save your life.”
The surprise quenched my anger. “Robin?” I blinked up at Bastian. “He said you could bring me here?”
A single nod confirmed it.
I huffed. “The one good thing he’s ever done for me.” Maybe some part of him did care about me as a person rather than just as his property. Maybe he wasn’t a total arsehole. Just ninety-five percent.
A tingling sensation brushed my skin, growing as we walked. In the past, when I’d been overcome with anxiety and struggled to breathe, my cheeks had felt this way, bordering on numbness, but this wasn’t as intense and didn’t only affect my face. It had to be some symptom of shock at being here and taking in so much—or maybe of the poison lingering in my system.
Poisoned and poisonous. I shuddered away the thought and focused on this place that was both strange and familiar.
Like Lunden, the streets were busy but not choked. Still, folk gave us a wide berth. Some threw wide-eyed glances our way before hurrying down another road. Seemed the Night Queen’s Shadow had a frightening reputation even in the daylight.
When I peered along the busier intersections, I spotted fae riding, but instead of sabrecats, they sat astride deer. For all this was like any other city, there was no doubt: I wasn’t in Albion anymore.
“What kind of city is this you’ve brought me to?” I eyed him sidelong.
“For now, it’s Luminis. The moment the sun touches the horizon, it will be Tenebris.” He kept his tone cool and matter-of-fact like he had to explain his nation’s capital city to humans every day.
Perhaps I was just another mortal to him now he had what he wanted and unCavendish was dead. He’d said pretty things as the poison had pulled me under, but there was no hint of those now. Maybe the idea was to give me hope, so I’d cling to life. Maybe it had all been a fever dream and he hadn’t said a word.