I kept backing up. I was half way to the wall.
“I guess you’re looking for an antidote. You don’t look so well, Prince,” she tsked.
Almost there. I tossed the rose across the stone wall and Ember grabbed hold of the stem between her teeth. She hesitated.
“Go, Ember,” I hissed.
“You won’t find a cure in the roses. Only death lies in the blooms. But you already know that. Did Luna need one for her little potion?” She laughed, her tinkling laughter ringing out across the lawn. “What’s the matter, Prince? Cat got your tongue?”
Just then, the ground began to tremble. Roots sprang up from the earth and wrapped around my ankles when I tried to jump over the fence, dragging me back into the garden. I clawed at the ground, at the bushes, shredding my palms.
The vines dragged me on my stomach, further into the walled garden. I managed to flip onto my back and hurriedly reached for the vial in my pocket. I drank it down in one gulp and waited for the change. The liquid was black and thick as tar, but tasted sweet. Sickly sweet. Her roots lifted me to her balcony.
“What do you have there?” she asked, a wicked smile tugging her lips. She tore the vial from my hands and sniffed the inside. “Sorghum?” she guessed. “Yes, it’s a thick, sugary sorghum, tinted with,” she sniffed again, “charcoal.”
“No...” He lied? I felt as if I’d been punched in the gut. But then a worse thought filtered through my mind. If Malex lied about giving me his blood, what else was he lying about? I struggled futilely against the vines that held me. “Let me go! Luna’s in trouble.”
“My sister is always getting herself into trouble,” Aura said with a sigh.
I ticked off the information I knew to date. Malex was supposedly helping Luna make a potion to separate her from Aura’s lifeforce. He was either lying about that, or he actually wanted them separated. But why? Why pretend to help and then lie?
What possible reason would he have for helping to unbind them?
“What is it?” she asked quizzically.
“Do you know Malex?”
“Only what I’ve seen of him with your help,” she gloated.
“Why would a dark fae prince want your life unbound from Luna’s?”
She stiffened and smelled the vial again. “What did he tell you this was?”
“His blood. He said if I drank it, I would turn into a fae and it would save me from dying.”
She commanded the roots to release my legs and I slumped to the floor of the balcony. Blood pooled in every hole made by her thorns. She crouched down beside me. “Well, Prince, it appears that he lied to you. And if you want to live, I’m the only one who can help you now. Tell me what you know, and I’ll consider it.”
It felt like a betrayal, that I was going behind Luna’s back, but Malex was up to something and I needed to protect her. This might be my only shot. Whatever it was, she and Aura needed to stay bound to one another until we figured it out.
“Don’t you already know everything? You’ve seen it through me, haven’t you?”
“I don’t know everything. I sleep at night and can only see through you, and through Pieces, during the day, unless I can hook onto your mind right before I fall asleep. If I do that, I can see things for a while. I can even influence your feelings and manipulate your actions a little. That’s a new trick,” she said with a wink. “It’s how I almost made you throttle Luna that night when you didn’t know why you were so angry or why you wanted to hurt her.”
I growled, remembering the strange feelings coursing through my veins and mind.
“Now,” she continued, “even though I’m terribly smart and can piece things together, I need to know the details about what happened while I was asleep.”
I told her everything. How he promised to help Luna when she woke this autumn, how he marked her, about the stupid favor she promised, the strange list of ingredients…everything.
“Thank you for not making me forcefully loosen your tongue,” she said with a glint in her eye that said that what Luna had done to Terigon would have been child’s play.
“I told you all I know. Will you save me?”
She smiled. “Not yet.”
I should’ve known not to trust her! I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, which sent me into a coughing fit. She sighed, crossing her arms. “But I will slow it down,” she offered.
She waved her hand over me and the pain in my chest lessened. My heart felt strong, steady, and normal.
“Thank you,” I said gratefully.
“Don’t thank me yet. I still haven’t taken the toxin out of you.” She stood and straightened her gown, all business. “Come with me.”
“I need to tell Luna about Malex,” I argued.
“We’ll tell her together.”
“She’s sleeping.”
“Then we’ll go to her in a dream.”
I felt a heavy blow to the back of my head, the sensation of being dragged by my arm, and then darkness took hold of my vision.
chapter twenty
AURA
I tried to connect with Luna. I pushed myself into her consciousness, but was met with a dark, stone wall. Running my hands over its surface, it was slick and wet in the moonlight. I brought my fingers away and rubbed them together. Sticky and wet. Bloody. The coppery scent was overwhelming.
This was what she wanted me to see; what she erected for me to find when I came to her.
A defense mechanism.
Stronger than I could bring down.
Too slippery to climb.
Too strong for my water to break through. I tried to upset the earth around the wall, but the stones were buried too deep. She’d effectively locked me out of her head.
The blood was a metaphysical promise of things to come.
I looked at the Prince laying on my bearskin rug, sleeping peacefully. His chest rose and fell softly.
If I spared him, would it calm Luna’s hatred? Could he be the olive branch extended and accepted between the two of us, the one to finally end the war?
Or was he just in the way, like his brother had been?
MALEX
By now, Prince Phillip knew that I lied about my blood. He was probably wondering if it would have worked in the first place. It would have, not that I’d ever give him a drop of what belonged to me. Including Luna.
Phillip never said he would drink it, only promising to consider doing so, but I saw the hunger and desperation in his eyes. He wanted that vial when I held it between my thumb and first finger.
The toxin would render him weak, if Aura didn’t find and tear him apart first. He didn’t know that she’d made the vines protectors of their blooms. The briars would grab and tear at him while the other flowers would retaliate against the one who plucked from their vines, releasing more of the deadly vapor that was already turning his organs to mush.
He would die quickly, and when he did, he’d take my betrayal to the grave with him.