Only then did she become aware of the crushing silence in the hall. The Breccans were watching her with mouths agape, as if they couldn’t believe what was unfolding. Her actions had cut down their protestations of innocence like a sword. Even Innes and Adaira were transfixed by her.
The enormity of what she was doing didn’t hit Sidra until she removed the pot from the hearth and poured the essence of the fire spurge into two clean cups. She waved away the steam, which scented the air with smells like burning heather and myrtle leaves, like a midsummer bonfire. She thought, If I am right, I will have changed the west.
There would be no more Aethyn doses. No more pressure on Adaira to take them, then writhe on her bedroom floor in pain for hours afterwards. No more young girls like Skye dying from a nobleman’s scheming for power. No more innocent guards having to risk their lives as cupbearers, far from home.
The essence was finally cool enough to drink.
Sidra took one of the cups and brought it to Blair first. She could see his strength waning, his life ebbing. She thought of how tirelessly he had served her, accompanying her on her patient visits, lifting her up when she needed it, catching her when she was weary, and taking her weight when she limped. How he had forgone a life of marriage and children to devote himself entirely to the guard and the east.
She blinked back her tears as she set the cup to his lips. “Drink, my friend,” she whispered, and her prayers became a wildfire, burning through her mind.
I cannot bear to see this man die for me. Please let him live. Let me be right in this one thing.
Blair closed his eyes and weakly sipped.
Sidra coaxed him to take three more sips before she set the cup aside. She took his bleeding hand in hers. Blue jewels were scattered over his lap and winking at his feet. Sidra waited to see if she would feel his blood forming into jewels in her palm, cold and jagged.
She waited, but only his blood flowed, smearing her hand.
Blair drew a deep breath. The color was returning to his face, even though he continued to tremble from the pain. But when he looked at her, she saw that his eyes were clear.
Sidra hurried to treat Keiren next. Her heart was pounding when she saw the second guard begin to recover and she sighed. Sidra could have sworn she felt her grandmother’s presence, standing behind her and watching with pride.
Then the moment ended. The nobility began to argue again, and a few of them started to depart for the doors.
Innes’s voice silenced them all when she said, “No one is leaving this hall.”
Chapter 38
With the hall doors barred and guarded, Innes ordered her thanes and their heirs to resume their seats at the table. The untouched feast had gone cold, and the candles had started to melt, the wax dripping like tears. Adaira remained standing, her attention divided between Innes, who radiated ire, and Sidra, who was gently tending to her guards. It felt as though two worlds had collided, and Adaira didn’t know where her place was, whether to drift to Sidra’s side or remain in Innes’s shadow.
Jack also seemed caught between them. He stood near the Tamerlaine guards, but he watched Innes pace, his face drawn with uneasiness. Adaira studied him a moment, her mind reeling.
If Sidra hadn’t been shrewd enough to let her guards drink first, Adaira would have lost both Sidra and Jack in one unexpected blow.
“Who poisoned their cups?” Innes asked again, stalking the table.
The thanes refused to look at her as she passed.
“We will remain here all night, and all of the next day, and the next, and so forth until one of you confesses to this crime,” Innes added.
“You cannot keep us here,” Rab muttered.
Innes halted. “What was that? Speak up and look at the one you address.”
Rab dared to lift his eyes, meeting her steel-sharp gaze. His face was flushed, his expression sullen. “I said you cannot keep us here, Laird. It was only a little poisoning, and no one has died.”
“The portcullis has been lowered and a storm is raging,” Innes replied. “You have nowhere to go.”
“What he means, Laird,” Griselda, his mother, was swift to say, with a nervous flip of her bejeweled hand, “is that it might not be one of us who committed this heinous deed. Perhaps one of your servants did it. I did hear there was gossip in the kitchens amongst some of your cooks.”
Innes set her jaw. But she turned to David and said, “Will you bring all the servants in from the kitchen?”
David nodded and left the hall for the second time that night. The guards barring the kitchen door permitted him to depart, and the minutes passed, silent and uneasy.
Adaira felt Jack’s gaze. She glanced at him to meet it, and their thoughts were mirrors, reflecting the other.
What does Innes plan to do?
I don’t know.
The uncertainty felt like a heavy cloak weighing Adaira down.
Soon the servants had arrived from the kitchen. They stood in a line, brows creased in confusion as they glanced at the untouched food, the thanes sitting with rigid postures, Innes standing like a statue.
“The two Tamerlaine cups were poisoned tonight,” she said. “Can any of you shed light on who committed this crime?”
The servants were quiet, afraid to speak. But then one of them, a young woman with braided red hair and flour dusted on her apron, lifted her hand.
“I was ordered to do it, Laird,” she confessed. “I didn’t want to, but I had no choice.”
“And who gave you this order?”
The woman looked to the table. She pointed and said, “Rab Pierce did.”
Adaira shouldn’t have been surprised. But there was a roar in her ears, a stutter in her pulse, as she looked at Rab. She wondered if she had partly brought this on herself, given the puckered scar that now marked his face and the way she had chased him down like quarry. How she had made him drink her Aethyn dose.
He was giving it back to her now, threatening two people she loved most.
Rab shot to his feet, but his face was blanched. “Liar!” he shouted at the woman. “I’ve never seen you before, and I would never give you such an order.”
“You didn’t say that last night when you were in my bed talking about how much you hate Cora,” the woman replied calmly. “Or when you set the poison in my hands. When you told me all the ways you’d hurt me if I didn’t do as you said and keep my mouth shut about it.”
Rab continued to protest, but the more he countered her the guiltier he looked. His mother was quick to rise, trying to soothe and calm him.
“I’m sure this is just a lovers’ quarrel,” Griselda said with a nervous smile. “Sit down, Rab. There’s no need to shout.”
Innes had seen enough. Her lips were pressed into a firm line, her eyes blazing with anger. She turned to one of the guards at the door. “Bring in the chopping block. Bind their hands and ankles.”
Shocked, Griselda cried, “Laird! You would take the word of this servant over us?”
“I would and I do,” Innes said. “Now kneel.”