Chapter Five
Cian
“YOU DON’T BELIEVE THAT lying slick-head, do you?” Hunter demands, pacing my rooms as if they’re his own. We grew up like brothers; they may as well be. “Did you read her?”
“You felt me read her.” I drop into a chair. I won’t admit it, not even to him, but my trip to Albios weakened me. Not that it matters. By tomorrow, I’ll be strong again.
“And?”
I shrug. “I saw in her memories how she added the ground juniper. But her intent is murky.”
I had known she watched me from her hiding place behind the door. I felt an evil intent within the Great Hall, which should have stayed my hand until I figured it out. Instead, I took the blasted bite that would have killed a stag possessed of less magick.
The bite that brought me to Cernunnos. I don’t remember what he told me, only that I needed to beware. But if it was so fucking important, why didn’t he allow me to return with a full memory? Blasted gods—even the good ones are annoying.
“The baker says he knew nothing of the poisoning.”
“That’s what he said,” I agree. When Roffey Hornbeam was brought before me, he’d stood confidently, appearing stronger than most who chose a life in the kitchens.
I dove inside him and found resentment, a grasping for a position not yet his, and an obsession with some doe.
The image of her was blurry except for her cunt.
He’s obsessed with her cunt, though it looked fairly average to me.
I shake my head to rid it of the image. I looked for guilt, and all I got was pornography.
“The juniper was found in the spice closet of the baking kitchen.”
“The doe claimed it’s not a harmful substance.”
Hunter paces some more. “You do have allergies.”
I do. The weakness, the Aurory claimed at my birth, is meant to balance the incalculable power I hold. “Yet neither the baker nor the under-baker knows of my fallibility. They think I’m dim enough to simply favor vanilla in my baked goods and salt and pepper in my meats and savories.”
But it’s strange, and I’m about to say more when he distracts me.
“It’s true, the court dishes could use some livening.”
“Anyway, the limits of my power don’t allow me to see inside a person’s intent with any clarity. I know the doe intended me to eat the cake, I know she held anticipation in that moment, and I know hers was the hand to mix in the poison. What I don’t know is if she knew it would be poison.”
“No one else ate any. They waited for you to eat first, as always, and you collapsed immediately. The herbalist should have results soon, but Murdoch claimed you were poisoned by juniper.” He plops into the other chair before the hearth and stretches out his legs.
“If a monk of Mayhaven claims juniper is poisonous, it must be.
“And lemon, I’ve eaten without any ill effects.”
“Exactly.” He pauses. “Murdoch claimed juniper is poisonous to all, not just to you because of your allergies.”
I rub my forehead where a headache blooms.
“We need a taste tester installed, Cian, even if it makes you seem weaker. After this, the court will see the sense in it.”
“Better tell the treasury to expect an enormous drain on resources. Taste testers are going to want heavy compensation, given what’s just happened. Plus, with the faltering ley lines, pulling magick to analyze food before ingestion will be difficult.”
“It would require finesse,” Hunter agrees. “Plus, we can’t waste our magick, even on so small a thing. They’ll have to accept the risks.”
“We have enough magick, so long as the wolves from the mountains don’t attack.” So far, our treaties have held, but wolves are wolves.
My head pounds again. There are a thousand things that need doing, and as good as Hunter is at being my First, he isn’t king. He isn’t tied to the land as I am, bound by oaths and the Antler Throne.
But he understands enough what the weakening power grid might mean to all shifters across Wylding if it spreads.
A lightning strike. I hope that’s all that’s wrong with our magick. But it’s spring, the time of our strongest pull on the powers of the Earth. Some of us are managing because we’re so strong. Most are only able to shift.
Some aren’t even able to do that. Take Ayala Treadborn. The only power I sensed in her was the ability to taste flavors grown in soil without actually tasting them with her tongue. Useful for an under-baker. Of no use in attempting a coup.
Unless a more powerful hand moves behind her.
I sit forward, easing the thoughts out of my head and into the air.
“What if all magicks die? The Phoenixes pull from water, the wolves from fire, the polar bears from air, but what if the day comes when none of us connect with our magicks? I need the court to be strong, organized, ready to withstand a change of some magnitude.”
I don’t know why, but I feel in my gut I’m supposed to usher in a new day, that life as we know it is changing, and we must be prepared. But is it just us, or everyone in the Spring Kingdoms? Just random thoughts in my head, or a message from Cernunnos while I visited Albios?
I see the uneasy shadow finally pass across Hunter’s eyes. “Did you see something in Albios to make you afraid?”
“Not afraid.” Not even with him can I admit to being fearful. “Wary. Concerned. I sense a great evil rising. I can’t pinpoint the source.”
“How about she who poisoned you?”
The doe... so pale, so golden. My cock hardened at the first sight of her lurking in the doorway, and when she splayed on the floor of my chamber, when my magick dipped inside her...
There was a connection.
I exhale as I search the ceiling. No, there wasn’t a connection. She’s the weakest of the weak, without even the simple power to shift. There’s no possible connection between us other than the fact that she managed to lay me low.
I’m equal parts outraged that such weakness could take down my strength and strangely appreciative that she found a way to do so with such meager tools at her disposal.
Unless she’s right about juniper not being poisonous to the general population. But that would mean a Mayhaven monk lied to me. I didn’t search within Murdoch to know if he told the truth about juniper being poison, but why would he lie?
The question has throne-shaking implications.
I shift from my chair to my feet. Better to keep the muscles moving now I’m out of bed.
Striding to the decanters on a table in the corner, I pour out two glasses of fine honey mead.
When I hand one to Hunter, he nods his thanks, but instead of sinking down again, I pace the room, sipping along the way.
“What if the doe said true and the monk lied?”
Hunter springs to his feet, his expression alarmed. “Cian, you can’t think...”
I nod. I know. “The monks serve Cernunnos. They are the sacred light and truth.”
He inhales deeply through his nose. “Will you recall Murdoch?”
“In order to accuse him? That’s a political scandal right there.”
“Then you need to examine the doe more closely.” He moves to the side of my room and pulls the bell before picking up the gold uniphone.
Connected by wires from the rooms I frequent down to the housekeeper’s office, it allows voices to travel between floors and walls by virtue of a long copper wire.
“Fetch me juniper from the kitchens if any remains. If not, seek the herbalist’s and find it there. ”
“Wait.” A sudden thought occurs to me. I don’t know from where it comes, because it isn’t mine, not exactly, and yet, I instantly see the good sense of it.
“Bring the doe. Lock her to my bed.” And by the great antlers of Cernunnos, the thought hardens my cock again.
“Have a sample of the poison made available, but I want to go out and pick fresh juniper from the bush as well.”
Hunter covers the mouthpiece. “You don’t want to wait for the herbalist’s report?”
“Let’s find out ourselves. To be certain.” Because a young doe’s life is on the line, and the thought twists like acid in my belly.
He gives the appropriate orders and hangs up the uniphone. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking we trust us. I’m thinking... I’m thinking dark thoughts, brother.”
“The doe or the monks.”
“One of the monks, anyway.”
“Could still be the doe.”
But though I nod, I don’t think so. “Her hand, anyway. I’m almost certain that the intention to kill me was someone else’s.”
He claps his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. He understands as well as I do that what I’m considering will shake up the kingdom.
We’ll pick the berries ourselves and feed them to the unfortunate doe.
If she survives, it means she was telling the truth about juniper berries—and maybe, that Mayhaven was behind the attempted assassination.
And since she’ll be locked to my bed anyway.
.. If she’s wrong, I won’t fuck her. I’ll spear her on my points instead, even as the berries take her to Dubnos.
Her blood, either way, since I think she’s a virgin.
Odd, how I hope for treachery from the monks even if it should cost Cerf-Biche everything.