10
Chapter
What Remains in the Collar
Darian
The eastern tower’s laboratory smelled of wood vinegar, cold sulfur, and the thick smoke of willow charcoal burning in the hearth flue.
Two days had passed since the blizzard retreated toward the northern peaks, leaving a pale leaden sky over Asteria and a dry cold that froze water in buckets before servants could reach the upper landings.
Iven Ardel hadn’t slept more than four consecutive hours since Solstice night.
The Crown physician leaned over a gray slate table stained with reagents, linen sleeves rolled to his elbows and a waxed leather apron protecting his chest. Through the thick lenses of his work spectacles, his bloodshot eyes tracked the rhythmic drip of a glass coil where a dense, dark amber vapor condensed drop by drop into a quartz vial nestled in crushed snow.
On the iron stand, the front plate of porous brass—the piece I’d pulled from the mire beside the drain—lay submerged in a bath of rectified spirits and tartar salts.
The metal had lost its blackish patina; discharge channels once clogged with the accumulated grime of six years of illicit doses now revealed their internal structure like the dried veins of an autumn leaf.
I walked toward the table, keeping my boots from echoing across the flagstones.
“Tell me you have something, Iven,” I said, stopping two paces from the alembic.
The physician didn’t look up from the vial. He waited for the last bead of condensate to slide down the glass neck before lifting the vessel with wooden tongs and sealing it with a plug of virgin wax.
“Chemistry has no mercy, Darian,” he answered, setting the tongs on the table with a dry clatter. “I divided the microchannel residue into three fractions through fractional distillation. What that woman put into her body for years would have killed an ox.”
I stepped closer to the slate.
Across the stone, Iven had chalked three columns of meticulous notes: weights, boiling temperatures, and alchemical symbols I’d learned to decipher during border campaigns.
“Start with the base,” I ordered.
Iven tapped the blunt end of a silver spatula against the first common glass flask, where an earthy, grayish precipitate settled.
“The base is a low-grade domestic suppressant, the sort unlicensed apothecaries distill in riverside slums from bitter willow bark, lead salts, and ash. It’s cheap, unstable, and foul.
It doesn’t silence an Omega’s scent; it only inflames the lateral glands until the tissue goes numb and the scent degrades into a neutral note, like damp cloth or rotted straw. ”
A spike of rage hit my gut, a bitter heat tightening the tendons in my neck.
“Lead?” I asked.
“Lead and copper acetate,” Iven confirmed, removing his work spectacles to wipe them with a chamois cloth.
“Whoever sold her those doses was charging her to poison her by inches. Continuous use of this sludge causes muscle tremors, chronic migraines, and a progressive loss of the ability to shift. Her wolf has been living locked in a cage of rusted iron.”
My fists clenched. The image of Liora in the hall, chin raised and eyes defiant behind the silver mask, cut through my mind with painful sharpness. I remembered her answer in the middle of the dance: “I can bear it.”
She hadn’t been boasting of bravery. She was describing her entire life.
“And the second fraction?” I asked, gesturing to the middle flask, where a thick, clear liquid refracted the oil-lamp light with a greenish tint.
Iven shifted his stance; the stiffening of his shoulders betrayed a different caution, more technical and far more dangerous.
“The second fraction is the glandular inversion blocker,” he said under his breath, dropping his voice as though the tower’s ashlar walls might listen.
“A masterpiece of outlawed alchemy. It combines fossil resin with a purified male Alpha gland extract and alkaloids. Once ingested, the substance saturates the scent receptors and forces the body to project an alien territorial presence, driving up surface temperature and simulating the authority of a pure-blood lord for roughly six hours.”
“Six hours,” I repeated. “The window we calculated in the chancery.”
“Yes. But the cost is monstrous. To sustain that biological lie, the blocker demands the human body work at three times its cardiac capacity. When the pheromonal overload in the great hall shattered the resin, the barrier didn’t dissolve slowly: it ruptured like a boiler under pressure.
In a single second, the glands dumped every drop of scent held back for weeks, triggering a toxic fever and forcing her wolf to seize control of the body before fluid filled her lungs. ”
“Where is she now?” I asked, looking toward the barred window facing east. “More than sixty hours have passed since midnight of the Solstice.”
“If she’s still running on four legs toward the plateau, she must be crossing the willow valley,” Iven calculated with clinical detachment.
“Her core temperature must be hovering near forty degrees. The wolf will drop from exhaustion before reaching the Valen estate. And when the shift breaks and she returns to human form, she won’t remember how she crossed the final stretch of road.
She’ll be dehydrated, delirious, and raw from the venom’s reaction. ”
The air in the laboratory grew unbreathable.
My wolf clawed at the back of my sternum with a low, desperate snarl, demanding I smash the flasks, saddle my black stallion, and clear the gates of Asteria at a dead gallop until I found her collapsed in the brush.
*You cannot go,* the cold voice of the strategist reminded me. *If the sovereign abandons the capital while the guard searches the apothecaries, Odran will convene a regency Council before nightfall.*
Before I could frame the next command, hurried footsteps and the rattle of mail echoed from the landing outside the spiral stair.
The laboratory’s oak door swung open without warning.
Lord Odran crossed the threshold with the pomp of a man who believed every lock in the fortress belonged to him by right of bloodline.
Behind him walked Master Vane, Dean of the court’s Alchemical Circle: a stooped elder with a sparse white beard, draped in a scarlet wool robe and the silver-link collar certifying his authority over the realm’s registry of substances.
Two guards in my uncle’s personal livery took up positions at the entrance, their halberds barred across the doorway.
“Darian,” Odran said, halting four paces from the slate table with hands folded over his stomach.
“I was informed you spent the last two hours shut away in the east tower. Envoys from Houses Karr and Sarr are still waiting in the chancery for a resolution on the marriage calendar, and Captain Thorne needs the security commission to seal the search warrants for districts three and four.”
I turned toward them without yielding ground, setting my body between Iven’s worktable and the old alchemist’s prying gaze.
“The guard’s searches proceed under the health protocol I set down in the chancery,” I replied, my voice even. “Thorne requires no political resolution to inspect contraband apothecaries. And the plateau envoys will have their answer once this laboratory finishes examining the physical evidence.”
Master Vane stepped forward, shuffling with calculated slowness as he craned his neck to peer at the alembics and flasks across the slate.
“With due respect to the Lord of the Crown, the custody of any chemical compound of unknown origin seized on Crown property falls by charter to the Alchemical Circle. Lord Odran has requested we transfer the samples to the chancery’s central laboratory for an independent assessment before Council clerks. ”
“There will be no transfer, Master,” Iven Ardel cut in before I could answer.
The royal physician stepped forward, silver spatula still in hand and chin lifted toward the Circle elder:
“This analysis forms part of an emergency toxicology and medical-relief file under the sovereign’s direct jurisdiction. The sample is unstable; any temperature change during transit would ruin the volatile fractions.”
“Volatile fractions?” Vane echoed with a condescending smile that creased his parchment cheeks.
“We are discussing an attack on Solstice security, Dr. Ardel. The Council holds reliable reports that the substance used by the intruder contained biological warfare extracts developed by coastal rebels. If you withhold the evidence in this tower without the Circle’s supervision, the plateau lords might infer that the Crown is concealing the true severity of sedition. ”
“‘Biological warfare extracts,’” I repeated, taking a step toward Odran and Vane.
The old alchemist shrank back half a step, cowed by the shadow my frame cast over his scarlet robe.
“It is one hypothesis the Council is considering, nephew,” Odran intervened, hardening his tone.
“If we prove the masked figure carried venoms from outlawed clans, we will possess legal grounds to declare a state of war along the entire western border and demand the northern packs supply their cavalry contingents at once.”
“How convenient for your alliance schemes, Uncle,” I countered with cutting coldness. “Fabricating a coastal war threat to force the barons into a pact they don’t want.”
“I am fabricating nothing!” Odran protested, striking the stone floor with the silver ferrule of his cane. “I demand to see the analysis results this instant!”
I looked at Iven.
The physician held my gaze for a fraction of a second, invisible to the two men before us: a quiet complicity born of the same discipline with which we’d saved entire companies of soldiers through last winter’s fevers.
Iven turned to the table, picked up the first flask—the one containing the cheap suppressant base with lead salts—and set it on a wooden tray beside a freshly dried sheet of parchment.