Six Goblets #4
“I should be getting on,” Janos said, then twisted himself out of Bal’s hold and slipped away. Urias squeezed Esme’s arms before following. Esme made to follow him, but Bal caught her wrist.
“It’s got Janos and Isobel’s names on it,” he whispered in her ear. “And Hallel’s, and Mak’kon’s too.”
Esme’s eyes widened. What spell would have to do with all of them?
“Could you read any sentence?” she asked, yanking him aside and melting back into the crowd for imaginary privacy.
“Something about a wedding. That’s it. He was bleeding like a bitch.” Bal spat it out like Janos had any control over that. “Who’s it on?”
“Him, Urias, Mak’kon, and Isobel,” she whispered, eyeing Mak’kon from across the room. He was already looking at her, but not with his usual hatred. “I’ll know what it says within the hour.”
“How?”
“Don’t know yet.” She bit her lip. “But I will.”
“Ah, it is the twenty-first hour!” Isobel’s voice pierced Esme’s scheming. The queen stood atop her dais with a table in front of her. The room cheered. “It is time for our heirs to tackle their first trial! Come to me, my kinglings.”
Esme was out of time.
She pushed Bal forward through the crowd. He floundered, desperate to buy himself time, but the faster he and Janos drank those goblets, the faster Esme would know what that new spell said. No doubt it had something to do with this trial.
Everyone ceased their milling and turned to Isobel and the heirs on the dais.
The prince had fury in his gaze, but he looked solely at Isobel.
She must have been the one to put the spell on him.
Esme’s stomach turned at the thought of bitter, bitchy Isobel of all people colluding with Magic, but it wasn’t something she could deal with now.
As long as that spell didn’t mention anything about neutralizing poisons, it wouldn’t matter.
“Tonight, I’ve devised a trial meant to assess Virya’s favor,” Isobel sang, clapping her hands. “Girls! Won’t you bring in the trays.”
The serving girls from before tottered in their shoes as they brought the trays through the crowds and up to the dais.
Isobel snapped her fingers and Mak’kon took them, careful to keep them straight.
He brought them up the stairs and placed them on the table in front of the heirs.
From the very first second those girls entered the room, Esme had watched them.
The liars’ nectar meant for Janos was sitting right in front of him, poisoned to all hell.
It was too late to change her plan. Her best hope was that the spell wasn’t anything too terrible and that Janos would drink the original poisoned cup and die.
Her mind cranked through a million options, none of which she could plan for.
Anxiety ramped her pulse to a gallop and she picked at her lip from the front row as Mak’kon took the golden domes off the trays.
The room flinched at the smell, but Esme had long since acclimated to it. Janos, though, gagged over the edge of the small podium and grabbed his neck, but those spell wounds were too fresh and he groaned when he squeezed the open flesh.
Bal looked at the trays with a hand covering his mouth and tears in his eyes. He shook his head, but when he found Esme in the crowd his brows creased.
“We here in Amaris know this smell well.” Isobel had the nerve to giggle.
Freak. “Liars’ nectar. Before each of you sits three cups.
One is poisoned with nectar and the other two are decoys with the same scent and taste.
Should Virya wish you to be the king, then she shall lead your hand to the cup of salvation.
Should she find you unworthy, you may perish here.
I now invite you, darlings, to choose a cup and allow Virya to choose you. ”
Esme gulped down deep breaths. She was about to undo everything Omniel ever ruined.
She’d crown Bal, and then she’d whisper into his ear for the next fifty years, and she’d fix it.
She’d fix everything. The terrible laws in the terrible structure of this terrible country.
She’d braid her hair how she used to and speak her own language.
She’d pray to Ojalla. She wouldn’t have to kneel to Omniel’s fake fucking clouds in the sky.
She wouldn’t have to revere his vanquished line.
She’d never spread ruin in his name ever again.
Her freedom was so close, rushing in the blood in her ears, banging against her skull. Overwhelming, overpowering.
Bal took a heaving breath, his hand floating to the cup in the middle of the tray. He looked terrified, but Esme knew he had no reason to be. Virya didn’t need to choose him; she already had.
Janos considered each cup like there really was a god whispering in his ear. Then he sneered at Isobel and grabbed the third cup. He watched her as he drank it, but Isobel wore the most pleased smile.
Janos clenched his jaw.
He took the second cup and did the same. And then the third. The crowd began to panic, but Isobel kept her same little smile.
Esme almost choked on a laugh. Oh, he’s done it.
Isobel pouted at his dramatic show. Bal hadn’t even drunk his cup yet, instead watching Janos like a madman from across the dais.
Isobel leaned forward to a sweating, shaking Janos and raised her lips to his ear. “Dear nephew. Don’t you think I planned for your little show of rebel—”
Janos vomited down her dress.
Esme could barely hide her glee.
Isobel screamed as the hot bile burned though her preciously ugly dress and seared her chest. She clawed off her bodice with her nails, carving streaks in her own skin as she did.
Janos flopped onto the table, a flailing, spewing almost-corpse. His eyes rolled up into the back of his head.
The smell clouded even the farthest corner of the room, and even the acrobats hanging from the ceiling nearly fell from their perches. The crowd turned on itself, stampeding away from the stench of the accursed, vile liquid spluttering from Janos’s mouth.
Bal was not so undone. He watched Janos curiously, even as Isobel screeched in anguish. In fact, he stepped over her to examine Janos’s convulsing body. His curiosity deepened, and a strange smile tugged at those full lips, and then his grin was a slash of white teeth. He was… elated.
Bal laughed down at the pathetic body under him. It made Esme’s belly clench to see it.
Mak’kon hacked, eyes peeled back in shock.
Eventually, he snapped awake and threw himself up on the dais to kneel by Isobel.
The crowd had long since fallen into chaos.
Someone retched in a corner from the stench while another shrieked endlessly.
A traumatized lord cowered in the corner, arms braced over his head as if ready for the ceiling to flatten him like it almost had just a week ago.
Esme, who was the source of the panic and thus felt none of it, moved slowly around the dais. She had a feeling. No, she had a fact.
Isobel wasn’t just screaming about her dress. As Esme finally got a good look at her, her suspicions were confirmed.
That new spell was spitting blood down her chest. A spell that was rioting because Janos was dying.
Song’s balls, Isobel must have bargained with Magic for a spell tying herself to Janos. Fucking idiot.
Isobel’s shrieks shredded off into gurgles, her bluing skin bulging above and below the constrictor of an enchantment.
Mak’kon held her close, but his grip faltered as the spell ripped him up, too.
He didn’t look at her; he stared past her at Esme.
He couldn’t ignore her eyes this time, so he kept his gaze locked on hers. He knew. Esme could feel it.
The only thing to rip their attention from each other was the sound of Janos vomiting up something that looked awfully like an internal organ. Esme didn’t know which one, but that couldn’t have been healthy.
Urias, meanwhile, fought his way up to the dais and, when faced with Bal keeping guard over Janos’s death throes, tried to bully his way past. “Move,” he growled, his voice wearing his age.
“You can’t save him.” Bal’s wore his glee.
Urias’s face screwed up, and then he grabbed Bal by the collar and flung him from the dais with a flick of his wrist. Hauling Janos onto his side, Urias shoved his fingers down the Prince’s throat, yanking them out just before Janos spewed ink.
He did this three times, with Janos’s convulsions weakening with every expulsion, but his efforts were wasted.
Janos had drunk all three goblets—there was too much poison in him to purge.
He would be dead in minutes. All the crowd could do was watch in terror as it happened.
Well, not Esme. She schooled her face into blankness, despite the dual excitement and guilt rising in her. On one hand, she’d just pulled off the assassination of the season. On the other hand, Urias was crying.
It was so guttural you’d think his heart was being pulled from its ribs. He fumbled between clutching Janos to calm his shaking and releasing him to purge more poison. Acidic vomit smeared down his cheek, but he didn’t flinch at the pain.
Esme hadn’t realized they were that close. She wouldn’t have done something so public if she had. But it was too late. She’d take him out for drinks tomorrow to make up for it.
“You!”
Esme didn’t consider that she could be the you in question, so she just stood there, planning Bal’s coronation. He should make his royal colors gold and green. Bal was of course a friend of all colors, but green with his olive skin would simply look divine—
“Esmerelda!” a ruined voice barked again. Only two people called her that, and only one of them sounded like a half-strangled alley cat. Isobel clawed her way to where Esme was standing, kicking Mak’kon back to push herself forward. “Come here!”
Even with her voice sliced out, Esme still had to follow the idiot’s command.
“Yes?” Esme purred, holding her hands behind her back and wandering up to the edge of the dais where Isobel was hanging off the side.
“Take it out,” she spat.
“Excuse me?”