Jemin abruptly stopped his blabbering about the impossible when the lady returned with a bowl of steaming soup. “Go ahead, dear.” She held it out to him. “That’s exactly what you need to get back on your feet.”
Jemin reached out of the blanket and took the bowl with cautious hands. It felt burning hot on his palms, but he didn’t set it down, aching for heat almost as much as he was aching for clarity.
The second the lady turned around, Neelis and Seri tucked their heads together with Jemin’s from the outside, probably looking as if they were smelling the soup, but they were actually eyeing Jemin as if the cold had left permanent damage on his brain. Jemin ignored them for half a second to taste his meal. It was something more traditional to the eastern regions, a creamy soup with bits of meat and red peppers. On the edge of the bowl, a slice of bread was sitting at a dangerous inward-tilt. He grabbed it and dipped it into the liquid, then took a bite of the dripping bread. Warmth streamed through his body as he swallowed, and a savory, spicy taste lingered on his tongue that let him believe for a moment that he had been dreaming.
“There is something else,” Neelis said, tearing his attention back to reality. His eyes were two onyxes, alarmed and unusually wide.
Jemin glanced at Seri, and now that she didn’t have a snide comment to make, he realized there was something more, not regarding the red-eyed mystery warlock but regarding him.
“Do I want to know?” he asked, readying himself for anything, but Neelis’ look made him internally cringe.
“Are you feeling all right?” Seri asked after a while of nothing but the back-to-normal hum of voices chatting over watery coffee.
Jemin wasn’t sure what she was actually asking. Whether he was in shock? Or if he was still feeling weak and numb? “Naked,” Jemin finally said, hoping to relax the situation.
“That can be easily remedied.” Neelis nodded at the drying clothes. “Half an hour, and you’re all set.”
Seri’s lips curved, but her eyes remained serious.
“Do you know how we got you out of there?” Neelis asked, and Jemin remembered the claws in his shoulder. He had thought it had been Gan Krai-Yutu. He shook his head. “When we got there, the shifter bolted,” Neelis explained. “We transformed into our Yutu-shapes and went onto the ice to get you. Four paws distribute the force better than two human legs.”
Jemin raised an eyebrow, thinking of the crumbling ice. “I can’t remember seeing you.”
“That’s because we didn’t get there until your head was going in and out of the water,” Seri let him know. “And for the record, you scream like a girl when you’re drowning.” She leaned back on the armrest and played with Jemin’s drying hair.
Jemin ignored her and returned his attention to Neelis. “The ice carried just fine before the guy started throwing flames at me.”
“Like Maray and Corey?” Neelis’ face was darkening more by the second.
Jemin nodded. “Exactly like them.” He was glad the two girls were on his side. Battle magic wasn’t exactly fun when you were on the losing team—he’d experienced it twice, Maray in the tunnels and supposed Gan Krai today. It was anything but funny.
“When we got to you, you were basically ready to give up,” Neelis continued. “All we could do was drag your cramping body out of the water and make sure we got you to a warm place before you faded.”
“And I am grateful for that,” Jemin interrupted and inclined his head. If it hadn’t been for Neelis and Seri, he wouldn’t be eating soup and wondering about Neelis’ cryptic skepticism right now.
“Don’t thank me yet.” Neelis stopped him, holding up one hand. “Before I pulled you out of the water, I didn’t have the time to change back…”
Jemin waited for the significance of Neelis’ words to settle in his mind and when, after a while, he still didn’t understand what the shifter was trying to say, Seri leaned closer with a meaningful look on her face. “He is not apologizing for being buck naked when he changed back after he fished you out of the water.” She winked. “Neither am I.”
He was just about to ask her if she was serious when it hit him. Neelis was the only shifter he knew who had created other shifters. Bites, scratches, anything… He had accidentally built his now little pack of Yutu-shifters that way, and now that Jemin thought about it: Neelis had scratched him on the chest and shoulder when he had lifted Jemin out of the ice-cold lake.
The steaming soup almost spilled over the blanket covering his legs as recognition set in. He was going to be one of them.
Corey
“Drop that.” Pia made Corey almost fall off her chair in shock. The flame-haired girl stormed through the door without regard for Corey’s obvious business.
Corey lowered the book she had been studying all afternoon and examined Pia with her black eyes. The girl was wearing her emerald dress, and this time, even the shoes fit. But her face spoke urgency and that expression of dreadful anxiety Corey had seen on countless customers who’d called on Feris in cases of emergency.
“What’s going on?” Corey got to her feet and grabbed Feris’ supply bag which she always kept ready for him in case someone needed their help.
“Maray’s dad was poisoned at the choosing ceremony,” Pia explained in a rush and was out the door before Corey could even comprehend.
She stepped into her boots and followed Pia who was halfway across the yard when Corey made it outside. “Wait,” she called, and Pia seemed to remember that Corey wasn’t Yutu-powered. She spun around and grabbed Corey’s bag to carry it for her, then took Corey’s hand and pulled her forward, across the gravel, past the guards who were eyeing them as if they weren’t sure whether to stop them or let them pass.
“Princess Maray’s handmaiden and Corey the warlock,” Pia called at them as she towed Corey along the hallway toward the marble staircase leading to the representation rooms of the palace.
Corey acknowledged that Pia’s statement meant that she must have convinced Maray to choose her as a handmaiden and wanted to congratulate her, but running guards and servants distracted her attention. Everyone was headed for the dining hall.
“What happened?” Corey asked again, and Pia glanced over her shoulder, never slowing down.
“The Ambassador ate a dumpling and started choking. But somehow, it seems it isn’t the food that’s causing the problem…”
“Somehow?”
“There was a message for Maray in my dumpling saying that she should say goodbye to her dad.”
“In the dumpling?”
“That’s beside the point.” Pia’s hair bounced as she skipped up the stairs. “He was poisoned… at least, that’s what I think.”
Corey refrained from asking further questions but let Pia’s strength pull her up the stairs while metrically lifting her feet so she wouldn’t fall over them.
When they entered the dining hall, nobody but a couple of guards lifted their heads. They nodded and waved them forward to the main table in the U-shaped formation where Maray and Laura were standing next to a purple-looking Gerwin. They shoved their way through the crowd of nobles, and Corey couldn’t help but notice some disdainful looks from people who knew what others called her—devil-child.
“I’m here,” Corey said and carefully put her bag down on the table so she could take a closer look at the Ambassador.
Before she got more than different shades of purple on a lifeless face, Heck pushed in between her and the chair in which Gerwin was hanging like a puppet whose strings someone had cut.
“Your Royal Highness, I need to lay him down on the floor.” Heck didn’t wait for Laura to step away before he reached for the Ambassador before she was completely out of the way.
Corey pulled her bag from the table to the floor and opened it so she’d have access to anything she might need, but as Heck and Maray placed Gerwin in front of her, the foul odor of fast-disintegrating magic poison tickled her nostrils. It was something she had learned from Feris. Hardly anyone could smel
l magic poison, but he could, and he had shared with her what to sniff for: dusty herbs, rotten food, and a spark of something that reminded her of the smell of blood, salty and rusty and deadly.
She checked the skin on Gerwin’s neck to see if the poison had taken full effect and could see thin stripes of red under his chin. She placed a hand on his hand and tried to let her magic do the rest, but as she had expected, it didn’t. It never did with magic poisons. That was what made them so dangerous. They were strong, fast, and after a short period of time, untraceable.
“I tried,” Maray whispered as she crouched down beside her. “My magic didn’t work… or I did the wrong thing.”
Of course Maray had tried and probably drawn attention to her own magical capabilities. She had to be careful. Not everyone was as open-minded as her friends. There was a fair portion of the population who believed that that type of magic was impossible, like Gan Krai’s books suggested, and if found, the work of demons and devils—like her own biological parents.
“If anything, I know a magic poison when I see it. I can practically smell the lingering remains of magic on this one.” Corey tuned out everything else and reached for her bag to pull out her tools—Feris’ tools, but he wasn’t here to save the Ambassador.
As she mixed a vial of identifier potion, she noticed that the red stripes were slowly fading as the purple got less intense. He was dying.
“Is he really dead, Corey?” Maray touched Gerwin’s hand and strangely pushed her fingers to his wrist. “There are no vitals.”
Corey wanted to ask why vitals were that important if she saw that the red stripes were still there, a sign that the poison hadn’t taken full effect, with or without breathing or heartbeat. Instead, she poured liquids into a bowl and stirred with a shaky hand. She had seen Feris do this hundreds of times and had done it plenty of times herself, but now that it was life or death for someone she cared about, it was more difficult than she remembered.
“He isn’t breathing, for sure,” she confirmed, keeping her voice steady, anxious to hide her fear from her friend. “And his heart stopped beating. Does that mean he is dead? I am not certain.”
Maray focused on her father rather than on Corey, and Corey explained what she was doing, hoping that would give Maray some comfort. She needed to know what, exactly, the poison consisted of, and for that, she needed a drop of blood.
“I am analyzing the poison, and hopefully there is an antidote…”
If she found precisely what the poison was, she was going to be able to help him.
“You mean you can bring him back?”
Maray’s question almost made her spill the identifier potion. Bringing people back from the dead was impossible. But then, they had thought the same thing about battle magic and immortality…
“If he’s not dead yet…” Corey answered truthfully and hoped Maray wouldn’t blame her forever if she didn’t manage to help Gerwin.
Corey ignored Laura’s voice in the background speaking about Gerwin being dead. She tuned out the entire noise, the murmurs, the whispers, the speculations of the nobles as she bent over Gerwin and pricked the skin on his forearm with a needle to extract a drop of blood before she let it drip into the bowl.
“Someone poisoned Grandpa?” Maray’s voice broke through her concentration.
Corey stopped for a fraction of a second before she went back to work. Feris had told her about King Almein’s death and how he had been too late to stop the ‘kiss of death’.
“He was the first one in her way on her strive for power,” Laura explained to Maray.
That was it. The ‘kiss of death’. She put down the bowl and started to pull out herbs and salts as she waited for the identifier potion to confirm what she already knew. And as it turned the correct shade of purple, she started adding the right things into a fresh bowl.
“What are you doing?” Pia had joined her on the floor, ginger head bent over Gerwin’s chest as she examined the color on his neck.
“Mixing the antidote.” Corey made sure her voice wouldn’t be audible to anyone but Pia and poured clear water into the dust of ground herbs and salts.
“This should do the trick,” she said to herself, “if we’re not too late.” With a glance at the red stripes under the Ambassador’s chin, she confirmed she had a couple of seconds to finish the potion before it would be too late. She didn’t pay attention to the fact that in the other world, people would have long declared him dead. This was Allinan.
With a deep breath, she pulled a filter from her bag and poured the potion through, catching the clear, greenish brew with a glass vial. It was ready except for that final magic touch. She closed her eyes and released her magic into the container. In her mind, she spoke the phrase Feris had said so many times, “The kiss of death is nothing but a kiss.” He hadn’t meant that potion then but death in general. A second later, she gently pulled open Gerwin’s mouth and poured part of the liquid in. Then, she pulled back one purple-veined eyelid and let some drops fall onto the blood-struck white of Gerwin’s eyes. She repeated the procedure with the second eye. Feris had never told her why that was the best way to go, and she had blindly accepted it, trusting him completely—back then. Today, she wasn’t sure anymore if anything she had learned from him was true, or real, for that matter.
She stowed the empty vial and the bowls in a padded bag designed especially for that purpose, then glanced up at Pia who was inspecting her every move as if she were anxious not to miss anything. “I’ll need your help getting him back to his chambers.” She paused to check whether the antidote was already showing any effect before she glanced over her shoulder at Maray and her mother, both of whom were now standing behind her, eyeballing her as she swallowed her fear to fail both her friend and the crown. “We can’t leave him here.”
Corey picked up her bag, readying everything for a transfer to a more private location. She knew how ugly the process of forced detoxification could be and wanted to spare the royal family the embarrassment.
Heck was beside her the second Maray spoke his name, like a dog on call, with his sword in his hand and a crease of concern between his brows that reminded her a lot of Jemin. Did every man develop those when they spent too much time with her, or was it just coincidence?
“How can I help?”
Maray pointed at Corey, who repeated, “The Ambassador needs to get back to his chambers.”
“I can do it,” Pia offered, and Corey would have loved to let the girl help. However, the better part of the room didn’t know about her shifter-existence. So Corey nodded at Heck, who was down on his knees and quickly back up again, Gerwin safely in his arms, but as he noticed Pia’s frown, he let his knees sway just a little.
“Grab his legs, will you?” he asked Pia, who grew half an inch at being allowed to assist, and together they made their way out of the dining hall, accompanied by Goran and Pete, who were walling in each side, shielding the party from any potential harm. A pair of guards saluted at the doors—not the cheery salute they’d given before, but a serious nod of their heads, which allowed Corey to see they had given up on their Ambassador and husband to their beloved Crown Princess. Corey imagined she even heard condolences as Laura marched by after Heck.
When they got to the Ambassador’s chambers, Heck and Pia laid him down on his bed. It wasn’t the Crown Princess’ bedroom, or the Queen’s bedroom, with a double bed, but a plain, single bed with wooden carvings and beige, linen beddings. She would have expected more pomp, but this room was just like the Ambassador himself—quiet, and charming, and friendly.
Laura had sat down on the edge of the bed and taken her husband’s hand into hers. “What do you think, Corey?” There was a profound sadness in her voice that didn’t at all match the content of her words. But it was clear what she was asking.
“Your Royal Highness…” Corey searched for words. She couldn’t make predictions. Should she say he wasn’t dead? Should she say he had about a fifty-fifty chance to survive?
Instead of mentioning both thoughts, she knelt down next to the bed and opened her bag again. “Did you eat the dumplings, too? Did Maray?”
“We both did,” Laura answered with a questioning expression.
“And you are feeling all right?” Corey was about to apologize for phrasing it that way. Of course, they weren’t all right. They were both under the impression Gerwin was dead and acting accordingly, tears and devastation and all.
But Maray came to Corey’s aid. “I feel normal. No pain, no breathing problems.” She checked her hands and forearms. “Skin-color normal.”
Corey glanced sideways at the Ambassador’s face. His facial color had returned to a light shade of purple, not at all the violent tone from before but almost aesthetic. It was the first sign something was happening; a tiny sign, so small that no one else in the room had noticed.
“Thank God you didn’t mix up that dumpling, too,” Heck murmured behind Corey, and there was something funny about the way he said it. Always humorous, Heck was serious right now. Corey could tell that his comment, even though someone could have mistaken it for a joke, was absolutely serious. He wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if something happened to Maray on his watch. Corey suppressed an eye-roll.
A hiss made them all jump. Even the brave Yutu-shifter girl shrank back to the door as the sound filled the room, but Corey quickly got to her feet and bent over Gerwin to check on him, making Laura jump aside in surprise.
“It’s happening.” Corey watched Gerwin’s lips tighten as steam evaporated from his mouth with a sound like a pot of boiling soup. It wasn’t much but enough to disturb the conversation and spark a light of hope in Laura’s and Maray’s eyes—and at the same time, fear.
“What exactly is happening?” Laura demanded and returned to her husband’s side, cautious not to touch him.
“He is in detoxification.” Corey didn’t mind that probably none of them understood exactly what that meant—that the Ambassador’s body had to get rid of the magic poison somehow, and as it couldn’t pass through skin, it had to clear out some other way. The antidote was designed to make the poison boil in the stomach of the person who ate it and withdraw from their system. It was a dangerous process, causing painful damage in the tissues and requiring a long recovery process. She didn’t say a word about that. Right now, this was about life or death, not about pain or whether he’d be able to dance at Maray’s first ball in a month.
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