Click.
She heard, distantly, the door to her bedroom open and then footsteps coming closer, but her mind felt stretched like bread dough. She kept her focus on the spirits—if anyone hostile tried to enter her room, Alet would stop them. And if Alet failed, Bayn would defend Daleina. Ever since he’d returned, he had stayed by her side. He was with her as often as Alet and more than Arin. Her sister had visited her only twice since coming to the palace. Safer that way, Daleina told herself, and pushed that bit of hurt down with the fear. After all, she was risking another false death right now. It was better that Arin was nowhere nearby. She continued to reach out, spreading herself across the forests of Aratay.
Whoever had come into the room was waiting. She heard their breathing.
She almost had it, all of Aratay. Her skin felt slicked with sweat. She felt the rain in the east and the sun in the west as if they were hitting her skin as well. She breathed in pine and magnolia and lilac and the sweet smell of the earth.
Stay awake, she thought. Stay alive.
This was the most dangerous moment, when she was connected to all of them. If she died while she was connected to them . . .
“Do no harm,” she thought.
She sent the thought out to all of them, adding to all the other times she’d made that command, feeling the order burrow into the spirits.
“Do. No. Harm.”
She felt them resist, flailing against the reissue of the basic and most essential command, and then she felt it sink into them, like a weight inside them.
Pulling back fast, Daleina reeled her mind back into her body. She became aware of the coolness of the floor, the smell of the wood fire in the fireplace, the sound of guards walking up and down the corridors outside. She pried her eyes open. Her lids felt crusty, as if she’d been asleep for hours, and her muscles felt stiff. She exhaled—if she’d triggered another false death while she was linked to the spirits . . . but she hadn’t, and the essential command had been reinforced. She’d done her duty and all had survived—this time.
“No new blackouts?” a voice asked. Hamon.
She turned her head to see him but kept lying on the floor. She knew from experience that standing up too soon would make her entire head feel as if it had been shaken. “Not today.”
“You’ve been poisoned.”
She blinked once, twice. Slowly, she peeled herself up from the floor. She sat with her head between her knees for another moment. In a light and painfully calm voice, she said, “You used to have a better bedside manner.”
His mouth twitched at her joke, but his eyes stayed intense. He’s serious, she thought. He continued, “My mother, with the help of your sister, finished her examination of your blood and concluded that your illness isn’t natural. It was imposed externally, presumably deliberately.”
Daleina absorbed this, turned the idea over in her head, and began to laugh. She knew she shouldn’t be laughing, but she couldn’t stop. Her body shook, and her eyes teared.
He waited quietly until she finished.
Hiccupping, she got control of herself again. “It is grimly appropriate.”
“No one knows we poisoned Queen Fara. And I don’t believe in fate. I do believe in assassins.” He knelt beside her. “Daleina, if we can find your poisoner, if we find a sample of the poison . . . my mother thinks she can manufacture a cure.”
Daleina felt herself still, any hint of hysterical laugher wiped out of her. “Do you think she can?”
“She may be an amoral killer, but she’s also an amoral genius. Also she’s proud of her abilities. She wouldn’t lie about this, not if it meant gaining my admiration. When I was a child, after she’d poison someone, she’d retell the tale over and over, expecting me to worship her for her brilliance every time. She feeds on adoration. If she saves you, she’ll expect some sort of compensation—a position in the palace, she suggested; she’ll want prestige and praise.”
Daleina waved her hand. “If she saves me, she’ll be compensated. According to my seneschal, the point of having a treasury is to bribe amoral but useful people. He’s been using it to bribe the border patrol of our neighbors for years.” She closed her eyes for a second as a wave of realization crashed over her. “It’s not genetic. That means Arin is safe.” Opening her eyes, she threw her arms around Hamon.
He held her close. She felt his breath against her neck and the tightness of his arms around her. She rested her cheek against his shoulder and let herself feel, for the first time in a long time, safe.
Remembering something else he said, she raised her head. “Did you say my sister was with your mother?”
“I’ll make sure she’s all right,” Hamon promised. “In the meantime, we need to find the poison. Who would try to kill you?”
“No one. Anyone. I don’t know.” She thought of Queen Fara. The prior queen had feared the heirs, but there were no heirs to covet Daleina’s crown. Due to the Coronation Massacre . . . “Maybe the families of the heirs who died? There were some of them who blamed me for surviving when their loved ones didn’t. One of them could have sought revenge.”
Hamon nodded slowly. “They had both motive and opportunity.”
That’s what she was thinking. After the coronation, she’d visited every family, joined them for a meal, comforted them as best she could . . . She thought of how they’d broken down in tears, how some had railed in anger, how some had sat as quiet as stone, as though the news had hardened them inside. Any of them could have done it. “I visited nearly fifty families,” Daleina said. “Where do we start? How do we know—”
“It couldn’t have been just anyone,” Hamon said. “Crafting poisons, in particular creating new poisons, is a very specialized craft. This poison was designed to mimic a specific disease. Furthermore, it was designed to be undetectable by ordinary blood screens—I didn’t find it on my tests. Only a few in Aratay are skilled enough for this kind of work.”
“Do you know who those people are?”
He hesitated. “My mother might. But the poisoner might not be the poison maker. Most poison makers don’t use what they create. The risk of being caught and imprisoned is too high.”
“So we are looking for either a friend of your mother’s, or someone very wealthy. At least that narrows it down. Will you speak to your mother again? Ask for a list of her poison-making friends . . .” Daleina hesitated, not sure how to phrase her next question. He seemed so tense that the wrong word could shatter him. She didn’t have the time to be careful of his feelings, though. “Hamon, I hate to ask this, but . . . Is there any chance your mother could have done this?”