Chapter 28 #2
“I would’ve brought spiced wine for old time’s sake,” she continues, “but I find it, like most other human things, highly…unpalatable.”
Goddess, but how I loathe this woman’s entire personality.
I pick up the dark amethyst bottle, vividly imagining myself cracking it against the side of her head. Instead I read the label. Or I try to at least. The words are written in Old Fae.
My magic brushes over the label, my intentions making the script tremble, then morph.
Syrinx Theriaca Amortalis
Starfall Fields
I reach out and top her wineglass off. “Here’s to drinking down unpalatable things,” I say, pulling back the wine bottle, again fighting the urge to hit her with it.
I grab the other glass and pour myself a drink. Pale purple liquid splashes into it.
Eislyn hasn’t moved, and yet intuition is telling me that she’s tense. “I assumed you wouldn’t trust any drink I gave you.”
You shouldn’t trust any drink of hers, Memnon adds.
“Should I be worried?” I ask, twirling the glass in my hand and sending the lavender liquid spinning.
Eislyn’s eyes are sharp on me, her mouth curving into a smile. “Time and wisdom are bedfellows, human. I’ll let you decide.”
Nero’s growls, which had quieted at some point, now begin again.
I place a hand on his head, steadying him, and lift my other shoulder. “I’m just a silly little fool. But how about this?” I draw upon my magic and focus on the soft purple wine. “If poison or curses lay within this brew,” I incant, “change thy color from purple to blue.”
My magic swirls around the glass, then settles into the liquid. When the small plumes of my power dissipate, the wine is still lavender.
I arch a brow. “There, I’ve done my due diligence.”
There are a thousand and one reasons why one shouldn’t accept drinks from an enemy, even after warding themselves and spelling the wine.
Today, however, I don’t really give a shit about any of them.
I lift my glass to her. And then I take a drink.
SELENE. I can sense Memnon’s horror as I swallow down the mouthful of wine.
MEMNON.
SHE WANTS TO KILL YOU, he admonishes me. DON’T MAKE IT easy for her… His words grow increasingly quiet as he speaks.
Relax, old man, I say down our bond. I want to kill her too. And neither of us are dead yet.
Actually, the wine tastes good. It’s crisp and floral with the lightness of champagne.
Across our bond, I can tell the sorcerer is losing it.
I take another sip. It’s pretty damn good wine. Which leaves me a little conflicted, since I don’t really want to credit Eislyn for having good taste in anything.
I feel conflicted, that is, until my stomach spasms. And there it is, my bad decision catching up with me.
Mother of Witches, I do feel strange. Tingly. My magic moves rapidly through my veins, the sensation almost electric.
I move to my bed and sit down, ignoring the way sweat pricks at my hairline.
Eislyn watches me impassively, but I swear she’s clenched her jaw, which probably pairs nicely with her permanently clenched butthole.
Not that I know about the clenching habits of her butthole. But I can guess.
Eislyn lifts her chin. “To think you went from threatening me with weapons and fearing my offerings to drinking my wine. How far you have fallen.”
I take another drink.
I really am a silly little fool.
“Two thousand years it’s been,” Eislyn says, taking a sip of her own wine and watching me carefully.
“Few fae live such long lives. And a human?” She shakes her head.
“You should have been dead. Long dead. Your bones turned to ash.” She sounds accusing.
Even a touch indignant. “Instead, here you are.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“Here I am,” I agree as Nero hops up on the bed next to me, his attention fixed on Eislyn, his muscles tense.
“I saw you got my note,” she adds.
The one in Memnon’s old tomb.
I take another long swallow of my drink. Will drinking of Eislyn’s fae wine help the situation?
No.
Will it blunt the edge of this conversation?
Maybe?
“I didn’t expect to find you in a place like this.” Her eyes move over the walls of my room. “Reinventing yourself, old queen?” she says.
I stare at her for a long moment, perplexed and trying not to show it.
Does she…think I’ve been alive this entire time?
That would be absurd. But then, so would the idea that I just spontaneously reincarnated.
Eislyn’s eyes drop to my ring. “And you’re married.” She raises her brows. “That’s a surprise, given the tomb Memnon woke to.”
She’s making a lot of calculated assumptions.
She might’ve been able to verify my marriage license, but she likely does not know with certainty that I was the one to rouse Memnon from his sleep nor my reasons for presumably doing so.
She is also unaware of the deal I made with the Hungering Ones that wiped Memnon from memory.
She only knows that one day she remembered this fragment of her past.
Eislyn must be burning with curiosity about these things.
That fills me with more than a little glee.
“I imagine he was angry,” she says, fishing for more information.
My mind wheels back to that torchlit chamber, carved with line after line of Sarmatian writing—writing I had developed.
Eislyn saw my effort and used it to make that subterranean prison, all so that when Memnon woke, she could spin a tale that I had betrayed him and she could use my writing as proof.
And then she would get what she wanted, which was presumably Memnon.
“Angry enough to marry me,” I agree, giving her nothing she doesn’t already know. I take another drink, my hand trembling just a little.
My magic still tingles, so sharply at times it feels like a static electric shock.
She drops her feet from my desk and leans back in my seat, making herself comfortable.
“What magic have you been up to, Empress?” She looks genuinely intrigued.
I tilt my head. “You’ve spied on me and sent demons after me, and yet you cannot figure that out? Perhaps I’m not the only one who’s fallen far.
“In fact,” I continue, brightening, “we should toast to that.” I lift my glass. “To being a godsdamned disappointment.”
I drink. She doesn’t. And I’m pretty sure I’ve pissed her off.
Not that her expression changes much. Eislyn has even fewer tells now than she did back in Sarmatia. But I sense I’m getting beneath her skin.
“You stole my memories and my palace from me,” she finally says. Again, there is no angry expression, but the words are accusation enough.
I swirl the wine. “It was my palace, if I remember correctly.”
The corner of her mouth twitches, and now I know I’m not imagining her outrage.
I nearly preen at the thought of it.
I stare at the pale purple wine in my glass. “When you finally remembered its existence, I wonder what it felt like to see only ruins left of it.” I tilt my head in consideration.
She sips from her glass, studying me some more. This moment feels like we’re walking on a knife’s edge. I can sense her trying to puzzle me out.
“So pleased that I forgot,” she finally says. “But then, Memnon’s tomb only appeared to be recently disturbed. Why would you leave him and a perfectly good palace to rot?” Her gaze flicks over me curiously. “Unless, of course, for some reason you couldn’t return to it in all that time as well.”
Eislyn watches me carefully, like a shark scenting blood, and I’m aware she’s come dangerously close to the truth.
“Neat theory,” I say.
“I don’t think it’s a theory,” she says.
“I think we both forgot the past. All that time you went without your soul mate. What agony existing without him must’ve been—to be a soul mate with half of your bond missing.
How did he awaken? Did you find him? That certainly must have been a strange reunion.
” She leans forward. “But what I really want to know is how you managed to wipe all our minds.”
I’ve gone still, the tingling within me all but forgotten. Again, she cannot know for certain that it was me who was responsible for making her forget. But it’s a compelling enough possibility that she’s throwing it out.
“How about this,” I say, leaning forward. “I’ll tell you all my secrets if you’ll answer this: What did you want with Memnon?” I search her features. “What was worth killing off his entire family and sealing him up in a tomb?”
Her eyes drop to my daggers, then my ring, before returning to meet my gaze. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now, does it?” she says.
“You tell me.”
She smiles then, and her devious eyes, though bright, appear so very, very hollow. “Hmm, I don’t think I will.” She takes another sip of wine.
I guess we’re keeping our secrets for now.
“So have you given up counseling rulers?” I ask.