CHAPTER 19 Wren
CHAPTER 19
Wren
‘The best antidote is often immunity created via long-term exposure’
– The Poisoner’s Handbook
B ROWN LAUREL. W REN recognized the effects as soon as her hands started to tingle. The first thing she did was reach for her belt, fumbling with shaking hands for one of several vials that might help with the side effects.
It wasn’t there.
‘Shit,’ she muttered as the notes of music began to take visual form in the air before her eyes. The roots of brown laurel were widely known as hallucinogens across the midrealms, particularly when mixed with liquor.
The world shifted beneath her, and Wren looked around the gala. Throughout the foyer, people were acting strangely. A man with white-blond hair was puffing on four cigarillos at once, going cross-eyed as he watched the smoke drift from their glowing ends. A woman was running her hands up and down her curvy sides, waist-length black hair swaying, as though she couldn’t believe her own magnificent shape. Another man was putting on some sort of sword-fighting display with one hand behind his back, only instead of a sword, he used a candlestick.
Panic set in, cold and fast, Wren’s knees buckling beneath her.
Breathe , she told herself. Just breathe. It will even out, it will pass, just keep it together.
It didn’t help that next to her, Kipp, who’d had several glasses of wine already, was dancing in a circle on his own to music that certainly wasn’t the melody she could hear. A laugh bubbled out of her.
Gods, no. Not the giggles . She’d heard this was how the effects set in.
Kipp looked up at the sound and gave her a dopey grin. That only made her laugh harder. Furies, when was the last time she’d laughed ? For some reason, the question only made things funnier. Of all the locations to be bursting into hysterics, the welcoming gala of Drevenor Academy was not the ideal place.
For a brief moment, the immense fear of her teachers and peers seeing her like this struck hard – but then the whole foyer was awash with colour, her vision distorting with patterns undulating through the air as she wiped tears of laughter from her cheeks.
Kipp was still swinging his limbs about, but Wren’s gaze fell upon the giant tree in the centre of the space, which seemed to have a halo of light around it now. Without thinking, she moved towards it, reaching out in sheer awe as the markings in the bark moved to the rise and fall of the lute’s notes—
She tripped on her own feet.
A warm hand closed around her arm, hoisting her up.
Torj.
She stopped in the middle of the gala to stare up at him, his scent so rich she could taste it on her tongue. When had she last let herself look at him? Truly look? The fierce contours of his face were sharpened by his trimmed dark beard. His sea-blue eyes were like a storm calling to her, riling her already unsettled magic—
‘Gods,’ she heard him mutter. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Embers.’
‘I’ll look at you how I damn well please.’ Instead of sounding sharp, the words came out slow and sultry.
‘You usually do,’ he replied, his voice low. ‘Just not like that.’
Wren didn’t know what he was talking about, but was pleased to find she’d arrived at the mesmerizing tree. She moved her arm, and after what felt like an age, she finally touched its rough bark. The sensation beneath her fingertips was suddenly the most amazing feeling in the world.
‘Have you felt this?’ she asked the Bear Slayer in wonder, who was watching her with a guarded expression.
There was a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. ‘I’ll pass.’
‘You didn’t drink the wine?’
‘I did not.’
‘You should,’ Wren told him. ‘It’s amazing.’
‘I think it’s best if one of us remains sound of mind, don’t you?’
‘No.’
Torj laughed, the sound warm and rich. ‘Figures.’
Wren found herself staring at him again, heat blooming in her chest at the echo of his laugh. It was magical. Better than all the music in the world. Better than—
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Torj muttered, his attention snagging elsewhere.
Wren followed his gaze across the foyer to where Kipp was swimming in a fountain. There was a pretty red-headed woman splashing alongside him. It seemed like a good idea to Wren. It was getting rather stuffy in here—
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Torj murmured, his voice low in her ear.
Liking how close he was, Wren leaned in, inhaling that intoxicating scent of his. ‘You smell good.’
The Warsword actually groaned and tipped his face to the ceiling. ‘Furies save me.’
It wasn’t her fault, Wren knew that much. ‘They took my belt,’ she explained matter-of-factly, swaying to a distant melody. ‘I could have prevented this if I had it.’
‘I know.’
A loud burst of laughter rang out across the foyer, and Wren looked just in time to see Kipp drag a reluctant Cal into the fountain, water splashing over the sides, the red-headed woman shrieking gleefully.
Just as Wren had made up her mind to dart across the tiled floor to join them, a wave of mist washed over the entire foyer from above. As the cool vapour kissed her skin, Wren slowly came back to herself, the vividness of the colours fading, her feet suddenly firm on the ground.
Mortification set in instantly. She sprang apart from Torj, whose arm she was practically cradling.
Movement caught her eye. On the balcony above ground level, a tall professor appeared, draped in robes of azure and gold. He raised his hands, and silence fell immediately.
‘Welcome to Drevenor,’ he said, voice clear, cold, and commanding. ‘I am the High Chancellor, Remington Belcourt, and today, the dawn of a new cohort begins. You are all here because you were the best of the best in your studies, not just in the midrealms, but beyond what was once the Veil as well. Or so I thought.’ Piercing grey eyes scanned the throng before him. ‘Congratulations, novices. Each and every one of you has just failed your first test. Not a single pupil caught the dose of powdered brown laurel root in your drinks. Had this challenge been more sinister...you’d all be dead.’