The Kinder Poison

by Natalie Mae

  “No. He knew exactly what kind of person our father would disapprove of and wanted to be sure his own advantage was guaranteed.” A muscle twitches in his jaw. “You should have told me. I would have paid twice his price.”

  “He didn’t pay me!”

  But my words don’t move him. Kasta only scrutinizes me, as I did with Jet—looking for the tell, for the lie. Except his eyes look feverish.

  I move a few steps more, putting the low table in front of the couch between us.

  “I suppose for him,” he says, sinking onto the cushions, “it wasn’t enough the Mestrah resurrected an ancient contest to show his lack of confidence in me. Did you know, in the centuries since the Crossing last happened, not a single second- or third-born has ever taken the throne? All the Mestrahs have been firstborns. All of them.”

  The pain in his voice is a heavy, horrible thing, and I glance at the windows. “I thought the gods told the Mestrah to hold the contest.”

  “Did they?” Kasta snickers, and a shadow slips under his skin as he rises, like the face of another person beneath the surface. “Or did he bend their will for his own gain? I’ve done much research on the Crossing since my father reinstated it. Enough to know that even the holy sacrifice, supposedly chosen by Numet herself, is actually marked by a High Priest. Odd how Forsaken who’d spoken against the priests, or caused unrest in the towns, suddenly found themselves called to the highest of purposes.” A knife of a smile. “Perhaps the gods are at our mercy, and not the other way around.”

  “But that’s sacrilege,” I say before I can stop myself.

  “It’s progress.” His eyes harden. “And when I am Mestrah, it will be proven.”

  I shudder to think what that means. That he’ll use the gods, as he believes his father has, to justify doing things that are against our laws? He starts for me again, and I twirl behind a carved chair.

  “If you’re not my brother’s agent,” he growls, “why are you running?”

  “You’re angry,” I say. “And I just spent the longest ten minutes of my life hearing how terrible a choice I am for you. How do I know you’re not going to throw me out of a window?”

  “I told you, you do not need to fear me.”

  “But you can’t see your face right now.”

  He lunges. I leap away, but he catches my wrist and pulls me to his chest, his other hand a lock around my bare side. He looks down at me, jaw tense, and I grimace at all the places our bodies touch. At all the places he could draw my life away, as easily as a flame from tinder. Jet’s warnings rush through my head. There is something wrong with Kasta. A blackness that has clung to him since we were very small . . .

  I can feel it blooming around us, as if the shadows are crawling from the walls.

  “Aera,” I say. “Please.”

  “You know, I almost believed you,” he says, running his thumb on the inside of my wrist. The touch crawls under my skin like scorpions. “That you could be this simple, detached girl from a simple, detached town. An ally. Someone not predisposed to hate me.” His eyes wander to the jewel dangling near my eye. “That I had something that was only mine.”

  I shove his shoulder with my free hand, but he keeps me tight against him. “You might have,” I say, swallowing the panic riddling through my chest. My only reassuring thought is that if he wanted to kill me, he’d probably have done it by now. Which means I still have a chance at getting out of here.

  “You might still,” I say. “But you have to believe I knew nothing about this before I came here. I’m not Jet’s puppet. I’m not here to hurt you.” I tug my captive arm. “Please. You’re hurting me.”

  He considers my wrist, and whether it’s the dim light or that I’m finally getting through to him, his face seems to soften. His grip loosens—but not enough to pull away.

  “Might still?” he whispers. “You would . . . you would forgive me for how I’ve treated you?”

  Someone pounds on the door, startling us both. “Kasta!”

  Jet. Even before Kasta’s fingers clench around my arm, my nerves turn to fire.

  “Liar,” he says.

  “No!” I say. “I have nothing to do with—”

  “We need to talk,” Jet says. “Open the door.”

  Kasta ignores him, looking down as the shadows overtake his face, twisting his lips into a sneer.

  “I’m done being made the fool,” he says. “I will not sit by while you run us in circles in the desert, waiting for news of Jet’s victory. The priests have yet to mark a sacrifice. Let me spare them the trouble of finding a traitor.” His hand slips to the knife at his belt, the metal grating as he draws it from the sheath. “I wonder. Will your precious Jet try to save you? Or will it be his hand that slices your throat?”

  He jerks my arm to the side, and for a second I consider that striking a god’s son is its own kind of sacrilege—followed by the precise jab of my fingers into his eyes. Kasta swears and releases me. I spring away, but he grabs my hair, a musical ting sounding as the jewel from my mother’s head chain snaps free. He throws me against the couch. Jet bangs on the door. I roll away, yelling for him, but Kasta jumps on top of me and wrenches my arm against the backrest, the blade hot on my wrist—

  I twist and knee him in the side. Handling spooked horses has made me familiar with dead weight, but none of them were as agile or determined as the prince. He grunts, gets ahold of my wrist as I try to wiggle free, flips me onto my stomach, and twists my arm up my back—

  Lights spark through my vision, my skin alive with panic. The knife sears my skin. I clench my teeth and whip my head back, a sickening crunch sounding as I collide with Kasta’s face. He releases me with a snarl. I scramble away from him, around the low table, gasping and cradling my bleeding arm, trying to back into the farthest corner of the room.

  I attacked a prince. I attacked a prince and there is no world in which this will end well for me.

  Kasta stares at his hand, at the blood dripping onto it from his nose.

  “You dare to strike me,” he says, twisting the hilt of his knife. The blade glows and lengthens, and I shrink against the wall, edging toward the windows. “You’ll pay dearly for that.”

  I bolt for the nearest window. Kasta flips a table aside, gaining on me, when the curtains burst open and I fear he’s called on some higher form of his power, on corpses that will rend and rip and—

  Jet leaps in instead, out of breath. I could sob for gratefulness as I rush behind him, and he draws his blade, torchlight dancing across his winged armor. He glances at my bleeding wrist and turns pained eyes on his brother.

  “Kasta,” he says, almost softly. “What are you doing?”

  Kasta circles us like a jackal, his face wild with fury. “This is your fault,” he spits. “You planted her. You knew Father would condemn me for it. You’ve humiliated me for the last time!”

  He lunges forward, and Jet moves to meet him, their blades flashing like sparks. Kasta strikes, his blade singing off the metal of Jet’s armor, who grunts and jerks back, only to find Kasta right on him again. He parries and twists; Kasta swings recklessly and overbalances, leaving his side open. I brace myself for Jet’s strike—

  It doesn’t come. Jet backs away, and Kasta, seething, pursues. Metal shrieks against metal. Kasta is ruthless, his swings pointed and deadly, but though Jet gets another opportunity to cut him—and another—he doesn’t.

  He’s not going to strike his brother. I don’t know if it’s because he blames himself for what’s happened or it’s some kind of personal honor, but I don’t see this ending well for him either way.

  I have to find a way to subdue Kasta.

  I search the room for anything that could help. The chairs are too heavy and unwieldy. I try to lift a small falcon statue, only to find it’s attached to the table. The perfume bottles are too small to do any damage, but if I ca
n distract him . . .

  The broken ends of my mother’s head chain tap my brow, and with a jolt I remember the protection rune carved into the gem. I sprint for the couch and drop to the tile, searching around its clawed feet, pawing beneath the purple silk of an end table. I’m panicking that the stone’s been lost when a torch flashes off something red by the table. I dive to retrieve it, clutching the precious garnet in my fingers.

  Except I don’t know how to use it to protect someone else. Does Jet need to be holding it? I only know it’s supposed to work automatically—

  The screech of grinding metal rips through the air, and I whirl to see Jet’s sword clang across the tile and disappear under the bed. He backs away from Kasta, hands splayed.

  I press my thumb into the gem’s side, begging it to activate.

  “You’re not going to kill me,” Jet says. “You’re going to realize this plan you think I’ve concocted makes no sense, and you’ve put the blame on an innocent girl, and that tomorrow, you can change who your First will be. Our father will be pleased. You’ll win the advantage, and your victory will be all but guaranteed.”

  Kasta stalks forward, his face as dark as stone.

  “I’ll forfeit the race,” Jet says, backing toward the windows. “I was going to desert the second day anyway, but I’ll make it official.”

  He’s running out of space. I can’t stand the thought of him getting hurt for me, of possibly dying for me, and I don’t have a plan, of course, but I rush for them—

  “I don’t want to,” Jet says, “because that will hurt Father deeply. But I will, for you. If you’ll finally believe I want no part of this anymore.”

  “Shut up!” Kasta snaps. “I know the girl is yours. I know the first chance she gets, she’ll kill me.”

  “What?” Jet bumps against the wall. “Never. I would never—”

  Kasta strikes.

  I’m still too far.

  “No!” I yell, wishing I could rewind time, wishing I could go back to when I approached Jet at the party, and I could notice the way he was dressed, and ask someone—anyone—else for help with the food, and Kasta would raise Gallus’s wrist, and the Mestrah would smile in the throne room, and I’d be on my way back to Hen, and Jet would be in his room, dreaming of other worlds—

  Light bursts from the gem in my hand, a blinding flash in the darkness. My palm burns like ice. One of the princes cries out and something heavy hits the floor, and when my vision clears, Kasta lies on his back. Light gleams from his eyes, his mouth; drops of it glisten on his skin like rain.

  The glow fades, and Jet stands plastered against the wall, glancing at me before dropping to his brother’s side.

  “Kasta,” he says, tossing the prince’s sword across the room before shaking his shoulders. “Kasta?”

  I drop the gem, flinching as it hits the floor. No one warned me this is what true magic looked like. No one warned me this is what it felt like. Like something completely wild and unstable; like the world bending around me and cracking, feeding on my desperation and twisting it into something else. I only wanted to stop Kasta. I only wanted to protect Jet. And now . . .

  “Zahru,” Jet whispers, and I know I’ll never forget the way he looks at me, with something between fear and regret. “He’s not breathing.”

  VIII

  NOT breathing.

  I’ve killed a man. I’ve killed a prince. All this time I thought I was the one who needed rescue . . .

  “I didn’t know it could do that,” I say, my throat tightening. “It’s just a protection rune. I didn’t mean . . . I didn’t know!”

  “Water,” Jet orders. He pulls a paper spell from his tunic, and I hasten toward a marble basin, stumbling over a broken statue of Apos on my way. My hands tremble as I dip a golden cup into its depths. I spill half of it rushing back to them, but Jet takes it without a glance.

  “I didn’t mean to,” I repeat as he applies the spell to Kasta’s chest. “I mean, I did mean to, because I didn’t want him to stab you, but I didn’t mean . . .”

  “It’s working.” Jet sits back on his heels and exhales, watching the ink sink in. I don’t think I breathe at all until Kasta gasps, and Jet and I flinch, but Kasta settles back again, his chest moving quietly, his eyes closed.

  I muffle a sob, both for the relief that I’m not a murderer . . . and the realization that someone who wants to kill me is still alive.

  “The spell will keep him unconscious awhile,” Jet says, rising. “But we need to get you out of here. Someone might have seen that light or heard the struggle. If they think you’re even slightly involved, this will get messy.”

  A miserable numbness washes through me. “I’m more than slightly involved.”

  “No, you’re not. I got the upper hand and knocked him cold. It was a brawl between brothers and nothing more, understood?”

  My heart sinks at the new distance in his eyes, and I nod.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, but Jet looks away. Disgusted at how much force I used, maybe. I don’t blame him.

  “He was going to kill me,” is his only reply.

  He reaches under the bed for his lost sword, and I reluctantly lift the gem from where I dropped it, running my thumb over its burned front. I never imagined I would look at it with anything but fondness. Now I will only ever see the light, and Kasta on his back, his eyes staring as if dead. But leaving it is not an option. I promised Hen I’d return it, and so I will.

  “I’ll negotiate your release,” Jet says, sheathing his sword. For as steady as his voice is, his hands tremble. “I would take you right out of the palace, but the Mestrah knows who you are now. We need Kasta to dismiss you or there will be serious charges for your abandonment.” He exhales. “Even after Kasta does, I’d suggest you and your family stay with relatives until the race has finished. My brother . . . does not like when things don’t go his way. But rest assured that once he’s crowned, he’ll be too busy gloating to remember you exist.”

  I wince, imagining Fara’s face when I tell him I managed just fine at the palace . . . except that we now have to go into hiding.

  “And if he comes for me tonight?” I ask.

  Jet shakes his head. “He won’t dare. Your room is guarded, and even princes aren’t allowed to go about hurting whoever we please.” He sighs. “It’s not really you he’s angry with, anyway.”

  “And you’re all right with that?” I ask. “With me just . . . leaving?”

  Jet glances at Kasta, his jaw clenched. “This isn’t your fight.”

  But he won’t look at me.

  He lowers me into the garden as he’d tried earlier that night, and we sneak from shadow to shadow, pausing for laughing partygoers and yawning guards. When he hoists me on his shoulders to return me to my room, he nearly drops me for how fast he lets go.

  And I wonder if this is why the travelers’ tales are so spectacular. If, behind every story about a felled tiger or a supposed dragon, there is a real person, someone the storyteller wishes to forget in the only way she knows, which is to retell the story again and again until even she believes it was a dragon, and not a boy, who left her with so many scars.

  * * *

  I don’t remember the cut on my arm until dawn.

  I find it as the first rays of Numet’s light pierce the balcony, bringing to focus the brick-red smears along the top of my bedsheet. I jerk against the golden headboard and gape at the mess, praying it looks worse than it is. Dried blood crusts my entire forearm. More of it stains my bare stomach and skirt. But the only pain I feel is a dull ache near my wrist, where the blood’s thickest.

  Kasta’s words echo through my head. The priests have yet to mark a sacrifice. Let me spare them the trouble . . .

  Dread climbs my throat as I run my thumb over the scab. I want to assure myself it’s meaningless now—I can’t imagine Kasta finished whatev
er he meant to carve—but I’m struck with the sudden conviction that no one should see it.

  I’m deciding how to hide it, and how I’ll dispose of the sheets, when a crash sounds from the door. Melon and bread slices cascade across the table. The servant bringing my breakfast tray stares, eyes widening, first at my arm and then the sheets, before muttering an apology and rushing back out.

  I swallow and fight the urge to throw the sheets, and maybe myself, too, over the balcony.

  It’s all right, relax, you stopped him. I exhale and try to believe the words. It doesn’t mean I’m going to be the sacrifice, and once a Healer mends it, it’ll be like it never happened.

  It’s fine, I think. This is going to be fine.

  But I still startle when the Healer bustles in.

  “Apos, what happened?” she asks, moving to my side. Like all Healers, she’s around my age and wears the sigil of Talqo around her arm, two golden hands pressed together in prayer. Unlike most Healers, she also looks like she could best both princes in a test of strength—at the same time. Her pale fingers take a gentle hold of my arm and turn it. Her magic is already tingling through my skin, asking my body where it’s hurt.

  “I . . . well . . .” I was really hoping she wouldn’t ask questions. I wish I’d prepared a reasonable explanation in case she did, but I’m just going to have to face it that I’ll never have a plan for anything.

  “I fell?” I say, cursing myself for sounding strangled.

  “It’s all right,” she says, pressing her thumbs against my skin. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” She smiles, her gray eyes knowing. “Did you do a lot of celebrating last night?”

  I half laugh, half sob at how very wrong her assumption is. “No. I mean, I don’t drink. Yet. Not that I’m going to start. Not that I’m opposed to it, but—well, I should stop talking now.”

  She snickers. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. We all have nights we wish we could undo.”

  I bite back another sob at how badly I wish that were possible. But I start to relax, too. The Healer seems kind and reasonable, and surely if Kasta had finished what he was carving, she’d have said something about it by now. Then I just need Jet to come, and this will finally be over.