2. Kat
Kat
D istant voices—soft, almost musical, echoing like they were in a large space. Not familiar.
I fought my heavy eyelids. The idea of lying here in some unknown place with unknown people prickled me—far too vulnerable. And the lack of footsteps punctuating the sound felt off .
Unsafe.
I managed to pry my eyes open, letting in bright, bright light.
Was I dead? I’d heard stories like that. King Arthur when he began his adventures in the Underworld had first seen a pure white light.
I squinted and tried to keep quiet—whoever was nearby, I didn’t want them to know I was awake—but my body wasn’t entirely under my command, and its stiffness made me groan.
Nearby, a gasp. The rustle of movement. The sudden silence of a held breath.
So much for secrecy. I tried to rub my eyes, but maybe my body was taking a while to catch up with my mind, because my arms wouldn’t move. Instead I had to blink away the weight of sleep and this blinding light.
A white ceiling vaulted overhead—marble, judging by the veins creeping across it and down the walls. The veins led to a large cabinet divided into little drawers, with two large glass doors. Inside glinted jars and bottles in a hundred sizes and a hundred colours.
And there .
To one side, shadows churning, sitting forward in his chair, silver eyes wide—Bastian.
I smiled. I couldn’t help it. Not with the way his eyebrows inched up in the very image of hope. Not with the way his familiarity soothed that uncomfortable sense of vulnerability that came with waking somewhere so un familiar.
His chest and shoulders sank as he let out a long breath, relief palpable in the still air. “Katherine.” He said it softly, like I was a forest animal he didn’t want to scare away.
Something warm kindled in my chest, and like a fool, I nodded.
In a single smooth movement, he stood.
He made it a step closer before something came crashing down inside him. His chin dipped and his eyebrows thundered together as his gaze slid from mine. For a second, his eyes screwed shut.
Was that regret? And… something else? Something dark, like the shadows pooling around his feet. His hands fisted, and the shadows snapped close, like a hound whose leash had been yanked.
In silence, he pivoted and strode for the door.
He crushed my heart under the ball of his foot with that turn.
But then I remembered.
The poison. The changeling.
The truth.
I let my head sink back onto the pillow as he called into the echoing hall for someone.
He’d betrayed me and I’d betrayed him. Of course he wouldn’t come to me, and I didn’t want him to, either. It was only that moment when I’d woken—the instant before I remembered everything.
There were snatches of other moments, too. Asher treating me. Talk of blood. Snow. A deer’s antlers. Strange fever dreams.
Eyes shut, I shook my head, like that would toss it all into some semblance of order. I could sort through the past later—I still didn’t know about now . “Where am—?”
But when I tried again to lift my hands, I couldn’t. And not because they wouldn’t move. No. Because leather straps bit into my wrists, binding me to the bed.
Heart leaping, I yanked. “Bastian?” This had to be why he’d worn that momentary look of regret. What had he done? What was he going to do? Was this retribution for my plan to poison him? My throat clenched. “What’s going on?”
From the doorway, he winced at my wide-eyed stare.
Was this how he’d looked at his father before he’d killed him? He was a bad ally. Not someone to be relied on. I had to remember all those hard-learned lessons.
Sitting up, I held my breath for the count of three in an attempt to control it. “What are you going to do to me?”
He flinched. “What? No, I’m not…” He shook his head, jerky rather than smooth as he returned, giving the bed a wide berth. “It’s nothing like that.” But another wince creased around his eyes. “You’ve been thrashing around in your sleep. We didn’t want you hurting anyone.”
He couldn’t lie—not directly. Still, I tugged on the bindings. I was trapped and the sweeping arch of the vaulted ceiling and something in the air told me this wasn’t Lunden. “Where are we?”
“Elfhame.” Arms folded, he leant against the cabinet and watched me like I might still run despite the straps. He didn’t come and unfasten them, either.
Alba. The fae realm. “How? Why?” But I knew and that knowledge unfolded, revealing more memories. “The poison. Asher said the healers here—”
Through the door swept a tall woman, her long, cream braids adding to the impression of height. “Awake at last.” The briefest smile flashed over her lips as she pulled on a pair of gloves made of some sort of fine material that sheened in the light.
“This is Elthea. She’s been looking after you.” There was no warmth in Bastian’s tone, just something stiff and almost formal.
“That’s right.” She stood over me, peering down. “You almost died.” She said it as though it was my fault for doing something foolish.
Which, I supposed was right. After all, I’d known what was in the glass when I’d gulped down the aconite-laced mead. Then again, I’d been fully aware of the consequences of not drinking it.
Bastian may have hurt me. He might even have manipulated the simmering competition for the queen’s hand. But I held with my decision: he didn’t deserve to die, and if I’d let him take the poison, it would’ve been a diplomatic disaster.
I gave Elthea a faint shrug as if to say, “Humans, eh?”
She checked me over, peering into my eyes, placing a piece of carved crystal over my heart, then pausing, head tilted as though listening.
As she noted the results in a book, she asked questions: whether I felt dizzy, if I could feel and move my legs.
Next, she made me track a little ball of fae light that moved slowly at first, then darted across the ceiling.
All the while, Bastian watched in silence.
Eventually Elthea nodded as if satisfied. She unbuckled the straps around my wrists and took a step back before glancing at him. “Have you told her?”
Another wince. He shook his head, and unease slithered through me.
Dread. That was the other feeling I’d seen warring its way across his face, and now I felt it too.
“Told me what?” Goosebumps crept over my bare arms as I swung my legs over the side of the bed. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Elthea lifted her chin, closing her notebook.
“I haven’t been able to fully remove the poison from your system.
Its power seems to reset with nightfall.
” Her lips pressed together. “Your condition is stable, but you need”—her pale eyes flicked back to Bastian who appeared frozen—“ the antidote every day before sunset, or the poison will resume its effects as though you’ve just taken it. ”
“Is there enough antidote? Asher said it took a week to—”
“There’s plenty.”
“That’s fine then.”
But Bastian remained propped against the cabinet, still and stiff and silent. Anyone would think he was the one who’d just discovered he was poisoned.
There was more to this.
I swallowed and looked from him to her and back again. “Isn’t it?”
His arms tightened over his chest, but it was Elthea who spoke. “You’ll have to stay in Elfhame while I work on a permanent cure for you, but I’m confident I’ll find one.” And she looked it. Not arrogant, just confident and competent.
That was what had me exhaling my relief.
I would get cured, then return to my estate— Robin’s estate—and hide from the entire world.
Especially Bastian. Home, away from him and reminders of intrigue and deceit and the horrible foolishness of what I’d believed I’d almost had.
Then I could figure out what to do next.
I’d have to check on Ella—but with unCavendish dead, at least she was safe.
It wasn’t clear whether I’d be welcome back at court or if I was banned for my behaviour at the wedding, so checking on her might require some manoeuvring.
Fingers crossed I wasn’t in trouble with the queen—maybe she knew I’d helped prevent war with the fae.
Maybe she’d want to reward me, and I would get a divorce at last.
The silence rang on and Bastian remained clenched tight.
It prickled through me like the threat of a dagger’s point. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Elthea sucked in a breath and opened her mouth.
“I’ll do it.” Bastian clenched his jaw and straightened from his lean. “You’re right. There is more—a side effect of the poison and so many different magics coming together.”
Different magics? I frowned from him to Elthea, but her cool expression gave away nothing.
Slowly, he stalked across the room as though I was not a wild animal who might run, but one that might attack.
“Your body has been the confluence for a lot of magic in a very short space of time. There’s whatever the changeling put in the poison.
” He raised a finger. “Asher’s attempts to heal you.
My…” His eyebrows flickered together. “I’m not sure what you remember from Lunden. ”
“You gave me your blood.”
His throat bobbed. “I did. So my magic is inside you.” Three fingers now. “And then Elthea used her gifts to save you.”
Quiet. Four fingers. Like I was supposed to put those things together and come up with an answer. But this was a nonsense riddle. Four plus silence didn’t reveal some new perspective, some surprising solution. It was just something they weren’t telling me—something wrong.
“It’s unprecedented.” Elthea spread her hands, the gloves gone, notebook in one hand. “I’ve known few fae subject to so much concentrated magic, never mind a human.” She watched me like I might sprout an extra head and she was merely curious about the idea. She’d probably note it in her book.
“Would you two just—”
I went to scrub my face and that was when I saw.
Deep reddish purple stains covered my fingertips and nails, like I’d been picking blackberries.
No sign of my normal tan skin tone up to the the first knuckle.
I’d heard of gangrene turning fingers black, but there was no smell of rot and when I scraped my thumbnail over the tip of my forefinger, I could feel it, so my flesh wasn’t dead.
“This?” I held my hands up. “Is this it?” I huffed a laugh. “I can deal with having purple fingers.” As long as I could eventually leave Elfhame and avoid Bastian in the meantime, I could deal with anything.
Bastian’s mouth twisted, and a faint ripple ran through his shadows. Elthea watched, so obviously taking mental note of my every move, it made my nerves itch.
I swallowed. “It isn’t just this, is it? Tell me .”
“You aren’t merely a meeting point for all that power,” Elthea said at last. “You now have power of your own. A gift.”
“You mean, magic ?” Scoffing, I turned to Bastian, as though he might crack a smile that said he thought Elthea was as insane as I did.
But his gaze was fixed on the floor next to my bed. His shoulders rose and fell in a breath that looked like it was a lot of effort before he glanced at Elthea and jerked his chin towards the door.
She stiffened, a frown creasing her smooth face. “But—”
“ Elthea .” He held her gaze a long while, and the air hummed with the clash of their wills.
Finally, she huffed and strode out, knuckles white around her notebook.
My throat grew thicker and thicker with each moment as Bastian took his time bringing the chair right to the side of my bed.
What was so bad he didn’t want to tell me in front of her?
He sat, placed his elbows on the arms of the chair, interlaced his fingers, and watched me over them, his calmness belied by the shadows churning around his shoulders and thighs. “You aren’t just poisoned, Katherine. You’re poisonous.”
I blinked. “What?” Theoretically I understood the words he’d just said, but in this order they made no sense.
“The poison and the magic have… fused in your system. You will poison anyone you touch.”
A chill chased through me. I shook my head, but…
Elthea’s gloves. The leather straps. Of course. “My wrists were bound to stop me touching anyone while I slept.” My voice started far, far away but came closer with each word as the truth bored through my skull and into my brain.
Bastian nodded.
My touch was poisonous. Deadly like aconite. I thrust my hands with their telltale purple stains into my lap. “But… but the antidote will clear that. When I take it each day, I’ll stop being poisonous, right?”
His silence made my heart sputter.
“ Right ?”
His gaze dropped away. “No.”
I shook my head. “You’re wrong. It must. It’ll stop the poison in my system, so it will stop me being poisonous. I don’t believe you.” He couldn’t lie, but he could be wrong. “Bring me the antidote, and I’ll take it and I’ll show you.” My words came like my breaths—too fast, too shallow.
A hug from Ella. A dance at a ball. Morag’s occasional touch on my shoulder. These things couldn’t all suddenly become forbidden— deadly .
Elthea had called it a gift. What Bastian described was no gift.
“Bring me the antidote.”
He watched my fingers knotting together as I tried to hide their trembling. “It’s already here.”
There was no vial of liquid or jar of tablets on the side table, just Elthea’s discarded gloves. No sign of an enchanted necklace like the one unCavendish had given me or any other magical jewellery, either.
Behind him, jagged reflections played on the cabinet’s glass doors. “In there?” I leant forward, halfway to rising.
He swallowed and shook his head.
“Then where ?”
His gaze drifted up from my lap and met mine. A slow, sorry smile claimed his scarred lips as he spread his hands, indicating himself.
That meant…
Bastian was my antidote.