I’m Sorry I Poisoned Your Murderer
I’M SORRY I POISONED YOUR MURDERER
Eventually, everyone left. When the other Wraiths attempted to come to Esme’s side, Isobel commanded them to turn on their heels and march back to their rooms. Her Highness said something snide when she left, but it passed through Esme without even denting her consciousness.
All Esme could do was claw at the dais. She didn’t even have the composure to keep her glamour up.
Her nails, daring to shine silver, left streaks in the wood.
She could feel a thousand sets of bright blue eyes slicing into her spine.
Omniel, everywhere. He was always everywhere, but he liked to come out at times like this, when she was at her lowest, when she had failed.
In her darkest moments, she was never alone.
He was always there, yanking her hair out by the roots or cracking her fingers like slivers of wood or garroting her until her vision blackened.
He and his violence and his dominion were always there.
In the emptiness of the banquet hall, with Omniel Asterou’s hands all over her, Esme wept. Openly, childishly. She should have fucking known, but she’d dared to have hope. How stupid was that?
“Esme?”
She cut her cry off in the middle. When had someone snuck in? She snatched her glamour back on and finally pried herself off the floor to see Bal standing at the mouth of the hall. He’d come back.
Her lips wobbled. She wanted to say something snarky or composed or… or something Esme would say, but she couldn’t.
Bal walked over the scattered debris of the ruined feast. Place settings, forks, lamb shanks—he ignored it all until he was standing in front of her.
“Why are you here?” she asked. She sounded lost for the first time in her life.
“You’ve been here for hours. Let’s get you to bed,” he said, offering her his hand. There it was—that cloying smile, lovesick and gooey. The one that made her already messy emotions only unravel further.
“I—I have poison all over me. I stink,” she said.
“You’ve had poison all over you all night,” he said with a wink, and grabbed the hand that hadn’t been forced down Janos’s throat.
Those eyes on her back, those knives in her flesh, eased out.
Now, the only eyes on her that mattered were these pretty brown ones, and the hand on her was not cruel—not a bit.
No snapped bones, no burned skin. “Let’s get you back to your room, and we can call a Viryan. ”
Esme didn’t have the words to tell him the wounds on her arm would be shiny scar tissue by sunrise, so instead she let him help her off the dais and into his arms. When she tried to pull away, he didn’t let her. She could overpower him, but leaving half her weight on his shoulder was easier.
Bal led her from the banquet hall and took her soft directions to her room until finally he delivered her to her door. When she reached for the key on her belt, he caught her hand and pushed it out of the way while he grabbed her keys and unlocked the door. The second it was open, Esme froze solid.
“Oh.” Tagas licked his lips, standing straighter. “General.”
Bal nodded. “Wraith.”
The rest of the Wraiths, save for Urias, sat around her living room. They couldn’t stay with her, but they’d waited. Esme’s chest hurt just seeing them. Did they know she’d failed, too?
“Is she—” Mina stepped out of Esme’s bathing room.
Usually, Esme’s heart flipped whenever she saw her, but tonight she just felt like she’d failed her and Gia so spectacularly.
Mina didn’t look disappointed, though. She squeezed through the thicket of Wraiths to throw her arms around Esme’s neck.
For a few seconds, Esme clamped her lips shut and tried not to weep again.
Then Mina’s weight pushed her backwards into Bal’s chest, and his hands jumped to her waist to steady her.
Locked between two warm bodies, Esme jolted to life, and she hugged Mina back.
She trembled in her wife’s arms, but Bal steadied her, his body a pillar to lean against.
So Esme leaned. She held her wife with all the strength she had, and let Bal do the work of holding her together for it.
When Bal exhaled behind them, Mina flinched away, eyes wide. Esme realized a second too late what they’d just done in front of him and spun to find Bal still standing there, hands suspended in the air where her waist had been.
“I’m her…” Mina stuttered. Wife was only correct answer, but it wasn’t one she could give. “Lady-in-waiting.”
“I hear ladies-in-waiting are very close here,” Bal said, smiling at Esme and Esme alone. He knew damn well Mina was no lady-in-waiting. When he finally looked to her, he nodded at Esme’s arm. “I’ll retrieve a Viryan if you want to handle the rest.”
Daphna stood suddenly. “We’ll run the bath,” they announced, grabbing Padrian, Tagas, and Samander and dragging the men to Esme’s bathing room.
Esme’s head swiveled between Bal and a suspicious Mina. Bal was a stranger dragging her bereaved wife back to her room, after all. Bal’s brow creased, but he kept that smile.
“Balthazar,” he said, offering Mina his hand.
“Willimina.” Mina shook it, pursing her lips at the size of it.
Esme chafed between them as Bal slid a hand to the base of her spine and Mina held her arm.
She was bloody exhausted, and now anxiety wrung her out.
Bal should be throwing a fit. For all his goodness, most men found a woman’s attraction to women revolting, if they weren’t perversely attracted to it first. Either he would threaten to have them jailed or promise not to if they let him watch.
He chuckled at the tension. “You don’t need to pretend. I know who you are.”
“And what am I?” Mina asked, chin tilting down.
“A woman who lives with her niece in West Amaris.”
Esme’s eyes widened.
“Though there’s word your home is haunted,” Bal continued. “I hear a dark figure can be seen lurking in your windows most nights.”
Esme froze. Every shadow in the room twitched toward her hand.
“Who did you hear that from?” she demanded. Her first instinct was to press a knife to his neck and make him swear never to tell anyone. But Bal didn’t look disgusted or upset.
“The same person who taught me that vipers almost never keep a single mate,” he said, “though I’ve never asked one myself.” His eyes passed from Esme to Mina, but not with the slimy veneer of lust. He was curious.
“Sometimes they have one mate with other close acquaintances, or two mates, depending on their preferences,” Esme answered, licking her lips. “Finding three or four tangled together isn’t rare.”
Bal nodded, understanding what she meant. “Three snakes seems like a fine number.”
Esme’s mouth fell open. But before she could say anything else, he stepped away.
“Go and take a bath,” he said. “I’ll send a Viryan.
Tomorrow is a rest day, so you two should sleep in.
” With that, he turned toward the door but paused as he gripped the handle.
“Oh, by the way, you should be proud of yourself tonight. It might not have worked, but it was good fun.” Then he slipped out.
“Did he just ask to join your little orgy?” Samander asked, peeking out of Esme’s bedroom.
“I read his mind. He desperately wants to join your little orgy,” Tagas said.
“He seems like he’d be fun in an orgy,” Daphna offered.
Padrian, not a fan of orgies, gagged.
“It’s not an orgy with three people,” Mina corrected, wrinkling her nose at them. “That bath better be warm.”
At the mention of the bath they claimed to be running, the Wraiths disappeared back into the bathing room.
Alone for a second, Esme let her shoulders drop.
Tonight’s events seemed a mile away now.
Esme didn’t know if he’d meant to, but Bal’s divulging of his knowledge about her and Mina had distracted her from the well of despair in her chest. Even now, that well went deep, but it didn’t yawn as wide as it had. It was manageable, at least.
Maybe that had been his intention.
Mina grabbed Esme’s cheek with one hand, the other already working on unpinning her dress. “You’re thinking too much,” she said. “Your friend is right. Let’s take a bath and sleep in.”
Esme scoffed, letting Mina tug her to her bathing room. “My friend?”
“What else do you call the man helping you back to your room past midnight?” Mina asked, raising her brow.
Esme hummed.
Bal. She’d called him Bal.
* * *
The next morning, Esme woke up beside a snoring Mina.
Normally, they didn’t do this in the castle—too many prying eyes, and there still were—but for just this morning, her wife could sleep in.
Esme kissed Mina on the ear and slipped from the bed.
She didn’t bother putting on new clothes, so in nothing but a long chemise and house coat she snagged two glasses and a bottle of wine from under her secret loose floorboard and went out in search of Urias.
She found him exactly where she knew he’d be: by Janos’s bed.
“Is that poisoned too?” Urias asked bitterly as Esme snuck into Janos’s bedroom. He was slumped in a chair by the shuddering prince.
“To be fair, I didn’t think you were so attached to him,” Esme said, sitting at the foot of Janos’s oversized bed and pouring two glasses. She held one out to Urias, who resisted for a few seconds before grabbing it.
Esme watched the comatose prince shake in his bed. His body was swamped in sweat, sheets damp and sticky. Someone had cleaned the blood and vomit out of his hair, and now it stretched out limp over his pillow, bloodred rays of a violent sun.
Omniel. He looked too much like him for Esme to stand staring at him any longer.
“He raids villages with the Wail,” she said. “The men and babies are murdered, the women are violated, and the girls are thrown out.” She took a sip of wine. “He kills Kak-sov that try to escape his borders and pillages the Micrean villages that try to help them, too.”
Urias was silent, toeing the floor. His fingers flexed over the arms of his chair.