A Kiss of Venom (An Araneae Nation Novella)

by Edwards, Hailey

  Grasping my shoulders, Armand searched my face. “Who are you?”

  “Nicolette.”

  “Liar.” He punched the wall behind my head. “Why are you here?”

  “Took a nasty fall.” If my aches were any indication.

  “I know why you are in the laboratory. I carried you in here myself.” His chest heaved. “Why are you in Erania? Did you come to kill my sister?”

  I wet my lips. “Yes.”

  “And the girl?” Armand shook me. “How are her eyes that color?”

  Pain ricocheted through me, forcing a whimper past my lips.

  “How are any of our eyes their color?” I snapped.

  He shook me harder. “She is not my daughter.”

  “No she bloody well isn’t,” I snarled at him. “She’s mine.”

  “Look at this.” Henri lifted a lock of my hair. “The roots. They’re blonde.”

  I had taken care to dye my hair before arriving. There was no way my roots were showing yet.

  Cold sweat broke over my skin. “How long have I been here?”

  “Two weeks.” Henri ran his fingers through my hair, studying me.

  It was too much. All this was too much. My thin thread of composure broke.

  “Where is she?” I demanded.

  “With my sister—” Armand sneered, “—the one you failed to murder.”

  My laughter was too high, too sharp. “I didn’t come for Lourdes.”

  The brothers shared a look. “Pascale,” they said in unison.

  Henri rubbed his chin. “It would explain the Theridiidae venom in her system, though not how it got there.” He walked a slow circle around the room, I could tell by how his voice traveled. “Do you think she meant to kill herself? No. There’s the girl to consider. Sympathy? That seems a better bet.”

  “She stabbed herself in the shoulder blade with a dart?” Armand sounded skeptical.

  Henri frowned. “We don’t know for certain that was the entry point.”

  “The skin was necrotic by the time we carried her down to the lab,” Armand reminded him.

  “True.” Henri conceded the point.

  “Can I see my daughter?”

  Both males narrowed their gazes on me.

  “Not until we get some answers.” Armand looked to his brother. “Give us a few minutes.”

  Henri folded his arms. “I don’t think that’s wise.”

  “I don’t care.” Armand’s gaze sliced through me. “I want answers, and I’m going to get them.”

  “Ten minutes.” Henri pointed a warning finger. “Then I’m fetching Lourdes and Rhys.”

  At the paladin’s name, I shuddered. If he thought I was here for his wife…

  “Focus.” Armand shook me a third time.

  My eyes crossed. “I can’t when you’re rattling my brain.”

  “Tell me who you are. I want to hear you say it.”

  “I don’t owe you anything.” Stubborn tears stung my eyes and spilled hotly onto my cheeks. I wiped them dry with the back of my shaking hand. All those years I wasted hating him, missing him, waking in the night to an empty bed and emptier life, aching for his touch, his kisses and his warmth. “It doesn’t matter who I am.”

  “It matters,” he assured me. “If not to you, then it does to the little girl pleading with my sister to spare your life.”

  “Let me go.” I struggled, but it hurt too much to last long or to accomplish much.

  “Answer me.” His fingers tensed, no doubt preparing to shake me again.

  I dared him with my smile. “Check behind my ear.”

  “What did you say?” His grip loosened.

  I took great pains to enunciate for him. “Check. Behind. My. Ear.”

  He didn’t have to ask which one. He released my shoulders, cupping my face in one hand while he turned it to the left. He folded down the tip of my right ear, and his breath hitched. He ran a thumb over the ridge there, feeling the scar he had given me when we were children, the one that I’d turned into his brand. It was an old Salticidae custom few remembered. The delicate layering of scarred tissue made a tattoo from old wounds. My marks were faded, but the slight tremble in his fingers said he understood.

  He pulled back, staring into my face, really looking at me, and he cursed.

  “Astrid.” The name hung between us.

  “Astrid died a long time ago.” That poor girl had been laid to rest as necessity demanded.

  “I gave her that scar when we were twelve.” He stared at the marking. “I wanted to impress her, so I stole Lourdes’s bow and an arrow, but it was strung too tight. When I aimed at her toy bear, I…”

  “Missed the mark by a few feet.” I helped him remember. “The arrow hit the ceiling right over my head and ricocheted. It almost sliced my ear off on its way down. Our fathers were furious.”

  “When the wound healed…” he finished the story, “…the scar was shaped like an A.”

  Males. So delusional. “Only if you stood on your head and closed your right eye.”

  That story, our story, was the reason why I had painfully branded the actual letter behind my ear after the first time we made love. What a thrill it had been, wearing his mark where no one could see.

  His voice was thick. “It can’t be.”

  “I assure you,” I said with regret, “it is.”

  He was nodding, as though he agreed with me, but he kept a hand to that ear, to that scar. His breaths came faster. “Her parents told me she died.”

  “As far as they’re concerned, I did.”

  “They said…” He swallowed hard. “But here you are.”

  I spread my hands. “Here I am.”

  He sank onto the edge of the bed. “I don’t understand.”

  “Here’s the short version.” I scooted away while I had the chance. “I fell in love with the second heir to the Araneidae clan. I broke the law of my mother’s people by sharing his bed before we were married. When his sister caught us and turned us in to his parents, they made their positions known. I wasn’t good enough for him. I wasn’t what his clan needed. I was a youthful mistake. I was also no longer welcome in their clan home.”

  Checking to make sure I held his attention, I continued. “When my parents were escorted to the edge of Erania and asked politely never to return, they had only one choice. Since Father’s clan had turned us out, our family sought refuge with Mother’s clan. Though I had broken their law, the Salticidae are a forgiving people—within reason—and they allowed me to live on a parcel of land outside their village. I might still live there today if I hadn’t become violently ill a month after our arrival.” His dawning realization tightened my throat. I cleared it. “Forgiveness only extends so far. A sullied female was one thing, but a sullied female and her bastard daughter…”

  His jaw clenched at that. Good. I hoped it hurt him twice as much to hear as it did for me to say.

  He shoved from the bed. “You should have told me.”

  “Told you how?” I sized him up. “My parents gave me to the Maratus. They gave us away.”

  The Maratus were, as far as the Salticidae were concerned, lepers. They were little more than a band of outcast Salticidae, those who had broken The One Law or shamed themselves in other ways.

  Other clans used more colorful names for us. Thieves. Whores. Liars. Murderers.

  I preferred to think of us as survivalists.

  He paled. “You announced yourselves as Ctenidae.”

  “In case you haven’t realized, I lied.”

  He shoved from the bed and paced. “You really are a Maratus.”

  “They are my people. They are all we have in this world. They took me in. They took care of me and taught me how to care for Maisy. They provided for us until I could be trained and put to use.” I watched him absorb that. “The Maratus have One Law too. Faith bound one to each other. We break all ties with family if we have any left and cleave only to our clansmen, those who understand what it’s like to m
ake one mistake that costs you everything and to have to pay for that every single day.”

  “Your new family taught you hatred,” he said softly.

  “No.” I told him the truth. “You did that.”

  “I did what I thought was right,” he yelled. “I had to send you away. I had no choice.”

  “Neither did I.” Those had all been taken from me.

  He spun on his heel, snarling, “You came to kill my sister.”

  I leaned forward. “Who told you that?”

  “Are you denying it?”

  “No.” I was caught well and good. The truth was refreshing for a change. “I’m curious.”

  He glared at me. “One of our guests came forward with the information.”

  I snorted. “And you believed him, of course.”

  “After what you did to that guard? What you did to me?” He shook his head. “Of course I did.”

  Thinking back to Henri’s remark about an accomplice, I surmised, “He neglected to mention which sister, I take it?”

  “He led us to believe Lourdes was the target.”

  “When did he come to you?” It would help me frame out those final moments.

  “He stopped me just inside the city. He told me his friend had overheard a plot to assassinate the maven. When the friend confronted the would-be assassin, she stabbed him in…a delicate place. The male who stopped me was well-dressed, well-spoken, and though I didn’t know him I had no reason to disbelieve his story given the fact my head still rang from my own interlude with the assassin.” He seemed at a loss. “At least with Lourdes, I can understand. She’s the maven and accepted those risks. Pascale is…” He stopped before saying more. His steps slowed. “Colleen is behind this, isn’t she?”

  He sank into a chair near the door and put his head in his hands.

  Because it no longer mattered, I armed him with that knowledge. “She is.”

  “That stupid, stupid girl,” he muttered. “She might be the death of us all.”

  He must have meant Pascale. Colleen was well past the blush of maidenhood.

  “Maven Colleen won’t stop until Pascale is dead, or she is.” Her bevy of assassins proved that.

  “How much did she offer you?” He lifted his head. “How much is Pascale’s life worth to her?”

  “Enough gold I could start over.” I grimaced. “She offered me a small fortune.”

  “Pascale is my sister.” He shook his head. “You could have killed her so easily?”

  “Her life was not the only one in the balance. I would have killed her, you, anyone.”

  “Colleen threatened Maisy.” The way he said it told me he was working through the problem.

  “Why else would I have risked bringing her here, of all the godsforsaken places?”

  “You had no choice.” He sounded heartened by the fact.

  “I had a choice.” I could have taken her and run, but revenge lured me here. “I made it.”

  Raking a hand through his hair, Armand blew out a sigh. “Are you a threat to my family?”

  “No,” I told him truthfully. “I broke my contract with Colleen. That’s why I was caught.”

  His arms dropped. “What changed your mind?”

  “She knew Maisy was my daughter. Only a handful of people knew that, and I trusted them with our lives. More than that, Colleen knew you were Maisy’s father when no one knew that for certain.”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Who could have told her?”

  “My parents, a clan elder, someone eager to deny a connection to me—take your pick.” The fact was, “I was raised Salticidae, with their beliefs, and my pregnancy was common knowledge when I lived there. I’m sure gossip was plentiful in Beltania after my family left. People would have known I had been caught with you. If they asked the right questions of the right people and learned why the Salticidae shunned me, it wouldn’t have been a great leap to realize you were Maisy’s father. Who else could it have been?”

  He didn’t ask if I had been with anyone else. I was glad. It spared me from admitting I hadn’t.

  Armand lowered his head. His brow puckered and his expression drifted miles away from here.

  “The point is,” I continued, “that Maven Colleen held that knowledge over my head, but a secret is only powerful until it’s been told. When she gave that information to my competition, she ensured that others could learn the truth. If I couldn’t trust her to protect Maisy’s identity, then she wouldn’t hesitate to endanger her in other ways. The male you spoke with? The one who ratted me out? I told him the deal was off. That’s why he came after me. The maven had told him if I failed to get revenge for her son, then she wished the same fate on me as the one she endured—the death of my child.”

  “If I convinced Lourdes to let you leave with Maisy,” he asked, “where would you go?”

  “Home.” We had nowhere else to go.

  “What if I don’t want…” he swallowed, “…my daughter to grow up without her father?”

  I set my jaw. “She’s done well without him up to this point.”

  He nodded as though my response was the one he had expected.

  A knock on the door preceded Henri. He strode to Armand. “Lourdes is asking for you.”

  Armand clasped his brother’s shoulder before angling a grim look toward me. “I will speak with Lourdes and see what can be done for you, for our…for Maisy’s sake. I can’t make any promises.”

  “I’m not asking for one.” I shifted onto my opposite side. “I know you don’t keep them.”

  Chapter Five

  Three days passed with no word from Armand. Henri grew frustrated with my constant demands to see Maisy. If I hadn’t stormed into his laboratory and smashed one of his percolating experiments, he might have let me stay in the bedroom where he had stashed me until further notice. It was part of his office and answered my earlier questions about where he spent his nights. Obviously it was there.

  Destroying months’ worth of work in a single tantrum hadn’t impressed him.

  That’s how I ended up locked in a cell, in a room in the rear of his laboratory, a section he called the bastille.

  Forehead pressed to the bars, I was debating where a hunger strike would get me when the latch on the door began click-click-clicking. I expected a surly Henri. What I got was a disheveled Armand.

  I gestured around us. “Do you like what I’ve done with the place?”

  He shut the door behind him. “We have to talk.”

  “We do. Let’s start with the obvious.” I walked down the length of the cell. “Where is Maisy?”

  He held up his hands. “She’s with Lourdes.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Why has your sister taken such a keen interest in her?”

  His eyebrows climbed. “Besides the fact Maisy is her niece?”

  “Yes.” I stopped when I stood before him. “I expected Lourdes to wash her hands of her.”

  “She can’t. Even if she wanted to, and she doesn’t, Maisy is a very special girl.”

  I snorted. “You mean she can be capitalized upon.”

  “Aren’t you curious as to why I haven’t been back to see you before now?” he asked.

  “No.” I leaned a shoulder into the bars. “I didn’t expect to see you again until my sentencing.”

  He frowned. “I told you I would speak with Lourdes on your behalf.”

  I shrugged. “And I told you I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

  His fingers brushed my shoulder, the simple touch raising gooseflesh down my arms.

  “I waited to come until I had answers,” he said, much too close, “for all of us.”

  My stomach tightened. “Well? Are you sharing or not?”

  “Maisy fasted for two days to cleanse her system.” He eased back. “We tested her.”

  “Tested—?” I whirled around. “Is that why I was put in here? So the laboratory would be empty and you could run tests on my daughter? What have you done? Is she all righ
t? When can I see her?”

  His hands were up, defensive again. “Listen—”

  “Talk faster.” I slapped cold metal with my open palms. “What types of tests?”

  “They were noninvasive, and I never left her side, not even to see you. Maisy is fine. She was hungry. She’s eating now as a matter of fact.” To placate me, he added, “She’ll be in here to see you once she’s finished. Before then, we need to discuss her results. There’s something you must know.”

  I braced my head against the bars, wondering if he would ever make his point.

  “Her eyes are lavender,” he said by way of explanation.

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “You don’t understand.” He tried again. “It’s a trait passed down through my family. If she were a boy…but she isn’t. There are no records of female offspring having lavender eyes. It’s an indicator for the males, should any generation lack a female to ascend as maven. I have it. That’s why I’m heir and not Henri or even Channing. Birth order doesn’t matter. Only the preservation of the clan does.”

  “I remember the talk your mother gave me.” I mimicked her crisp inflection, reciting the speech she had burned into my memory. “Females of my line are born with grave responsibilities. It is their duty and privilege to nurture the spinners under our care. In the event a female child is not born in a given generation, the marked son will rise to power after his mother’s passing.” She had reached for my hand. “Armand is that son, my second heir. In the interest of protecting our people’s livelihood, their futures, he must wed a full-blooded Araneidae female, which you are not. I am so sorry, dear.”

  His head bowed, and I regretted my words the instant I realized it would sound as though I were mocking his recently departed mother. Exhaling hard, I owned my mistake. “That was cruel of me. I want to believe I’m above such petty behavior, but my claws come out whenever I’m around you.”

  His smile was faint. “I never minded your claws.”

  An awkward blush rose in my cheeks. “You were saying?”

  “The test,” he said, bringing our conversation full circle, “is the same one Lourdes and I endured when we were children. We put four spinners in a room and set them to a task. In the next room, four more were set to the same task—after Maisy touched the tips of her fingers to theirs. Six hours later, the first room was examined. The silk was fine, almost too thin, and lacked the luster associated with our silk. Their output was the minimum of what is required of any spinner hoping to secure a spot on the maven’s roster. When the second room was examined, their silk was thick and pearlescent, their output four times what the first room accomplished.” His grin smacked of pride. “She has the talent.”