Potion
I was sitting at the dressing table in Tanyn’s (and now my) closet, inserting an earring.
I’d changed for dinner into a plum-colored sweater that fell off the shoulder, a matching pencil skirt, and a pair of charcoal-gray suede boots.
My mind was again a muddle, but what had pushed to the fore was worry about Tanyn, who I hadn’t heard from since that morning, and my dad, ditto with not hearing from him.
But mostly Tanyn.
Because he’d already learned that it was more than likely his father had been murdered.
But what was far worse, he might have learned since, his mother had been.
On this thought, as if I’d conjured him, I saw him in the mirror, entering the closet, so I turned on the little bench where I was sitting that was covered in sparkling porcelain taffeta.
“Hey,” I greeted.
“Shower,” he grunted, going direct to his side of the closet, grabbing some clothes, then disappearing through the door that led to the bathroom.
He closed it behind him.
He hadn’t even glanced at me.
I stared at the door, then my gaze wandered to his side of the closet.
The room was enormous. And it was not automated, so there were rails, shelves and drawers, with two islands, one on my side, one on his.
Mine was now minimally filled with my jewelry, scarves and some other accessories (and no, I did not unpack here either). His was filled with belts, wrist units, cufflinks, ties, etc.
His side of the closet was not stuffed full. In fact, it was only maybe a third full.
Mine wasn’t even that, regardless it held two suitcases and six hover-crates of my belongings.
Yes, that was how enormous the room was.
The ice marble floor was covered in a fluffy white rug that looked like fur.
Where my dressing table was on Tanyn’s side, there was a one-step platform and three-way mirror (not that I needed a dressing table, I used a mane-mate and cosme-mask to do my hair and face, but I could dabble in arranging my own hair and painting my own face—and not incidentally, Mom had prepared for that mood to strike, because all my cosmetics and hair stuff was in or on that dressing table).
And smack in the middle was a wide oval bench ringed with tassels at the bottom, this covered in alabaster mesh lace dusted with tiny sequins.
The entire room was shades of white and glisten, whereas the bedchamber had this but mostly was done up in arctic blue.
And after I inserted the earring and its twin, I got up and went to the bedroom in order to wait for Tanyn to see if I could find out what was going on before we went to dinner.
I settled on the powder-blue curve-lined sofa in front of the ice-marble-flanked fireplace with my Palm, but I looked around the room…again.
Massive bed dressed in gossamer curtains, that sofa in front of the fire, some tall, thin bow-legged tables against the walls holding crystal sculptures that looked like they were formed from ice (and I was going to have a closer look, because they appeared to be pieces by Andromeda, a celebrated sculptor who lived in the 1700s, and therefore, now were worth fantastic amounts of money).
There were also some mirrored or silver-gilt chests dotted around that were clearly for ornate purposes only, and each one was topped with massive sprays of white and blue flowers.
Mostly, though, the yawningly spacious room was empty.
Oh yes.
This was my aesthetic.
Beautiful things, but not many of them so you didn’t dull their glow.
I didn’t want to like this place because, first, liking it wasn’t good for my mental health, and second, liking it felt strangely disloyal to the citadel on Sigil.
Therefore, to take my mind off it, I went to my Palm to check my text to Gayle.
Still unanswered.
So I sent another one.
Laura’s here in Berg Castle with me. So is Aleksei. Please let us know you’re all right. We’re worried.
I sent that off and was staring at the cold fireplace when I heard Tanyn’s shoes rapping on the ice floors.
I twisted to look over the back of the couch at him, then I rose and stepped free of the couch.
He was in a black sweater, black trousers and black lace-up shoes, a sliver of the tanned skin of his ankle showing.
This getup made his eyes look like lasers.
Astonishing.
He was also perusing me top to toe, but when he was done, he growled, “Fucking hell.”
I looked down at myself and asked, “Is this not right for dinner?”
I let out a shocked peep when I looked up and found him right there, in my space.
His hands spanned my hips, and he said, “I fear I’ll be unable to competently reign, because for the next hundred years, I’ll be able to think of nothing but my need to fuck you.”
My lips parted, every inch of my body, from brain to toes, reacted to his bold compliment, but that bothersome part at the back of my brain reminded me what was afoot, and I had to stay on target.
Because his eyes were now pitch black.
No lightning.
Just black.
This meant he was feeling deep, but it wasn’t the precursor to demonic anger or arousal.
It was something else.
Thus, I asked, “Can you tell me what’s going on?”
His mouth got tight, but he guided us to the couch and down to sit on it.
“Chamber fire,” he called out, and blue flames leapt in the fireplace. “Your voice will be added to the command module for this room,” he stated.
I nodded, too tuned to him to be freaked at this statement.
A muscle jumped up his cleanshaven cheek.
Then he said, “It’s official. My father was murdered.”
I reached up and caught him at the side of his neck. “Tanyn.”
“It’s worse, sweetheart,” he murmured. “There’s indisputable evidence he’d been drugged and for a very long time.”
“Drugged? Or on drugs?” I queried.
“Drugged,” he stated. “He would not take this on his own accord. No one would take it on their own accord. In fact, whoever drugged him, and we have a good idea of who that is, should never have been able to access the drug in the first place. It’s strictly used for two purposes and two purposes only.
In matters that pertain to an imminent threat to realm security, something it has never been needed to do, or to control the criminally insane. ”
I was struck dumb at this news.
“It’s excruciatingly expensive,” he continued.
“One of the ingredients is a potion made by a single witch, the only witch who knows how to make it, and that witch was the one who stipulated the extreme limits of its use. The military can’t use it randomly or at their whim.
Only in matters where there’s a verified threat.
As for the criminally insane, that doesn’t need explanation considering what it does is make whoever takes it essentially an automaton, programmed to do what whoever gives it tells them to do. ”
Lord Beelzebub.
This meant…
“Tatra was controlling your father,” I deduced.
He jerked up his chin. “It could be no one else. And it explains…”
I took my hand from his neck to grab his and pump it. “It explains…?”
“My mother has two sisters. They were given leave to visit us on Sigil. Only once a year. This is the reason I had birthday, Summer Solstice and Dead Winter presents, or we had any extras, because it was them who either brought that stuff, or begged my father to put it into a shipment. They’re also the reason we had our pets. They brought them too.”
“Okay,” I said.
“And I overheard them talking once when they were there. About how they couldn’t believe my father scraped off Mom like he did. How he was head over heels for her. How he acted like she hung the moon and lit the stars. And how quickly it happened.”
Cold was invading my body.
“Arnaud was born just shy of a year and a half after I was. My father had barely exiled us before he came into the world. She acted fast.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“It isn’t confirmed it was her, but someone was controlling him, and she was the only one who got anything out of it.”
Gods.
I couldn’t imagine all that was going through Tanyn’s mind, it had to be agony.
“Mom was murdered too, baby,” he whispered, pain permeating his expression that corresponded with the pain that spiked into my heart.
“Are you okay to talk about that?” I asked carefully.
Another chin jerk and he began.
“She was frozen when Manny found her. Dressed to be outside. He didn’t know what happened, but to get her in that state, he knew it had to be an accident.
A fall. Something like that. But in her state, the time she’d spent outside, and him not being a physician, he couldn’t know what the marks he saw were.
There was also dried blood on her face, but we suspected that was also from the fall, and this was confirmed by the autopsy.
Also, she did have a broken ankle. She further had a broken wrist, five broken ribs, a broken cheekbone and orbital bone.
They say it’s possible she did die of hypothermia, but they aren’t sure because she could also have died from the cerebral hemorrhage she had from taking a beating. ”
I sat immobile as he took in a deep breath.
“This means there’s a good possibility my mother was beaten to death.”
I let his hand go and caught him at the neck again, this time with both of mine, moaning, “Oh, Tanyn.”
“It’s only conjecture now, but we have a theory that somehow my father realized he was being drugged.
Or he’d been given it so long, his body was accommodating to metabolize it faster, so the effects of it were wearing off.
One thing they do know, the dosage was very high in the end, because they didn’t find traces of it in his system.
They found a lot. Whatever the reason, somehow, he’d come to be considered a threat to Arnaud’s reign, actually Tatra’s, and before he could come back to himself, expose Tatra, remove Arnaud from succession, he was eliminated. ”
“But…how was your mother a threat?”
He shook his head. “We don’t know that.”
I didn’t want to say it, but it had to be said. However, I figured he already knew it.
“You were the more viable threat, Tanyn.”
“I was.” He focused intensely on me. “I am. And you are.”
“Me?”