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This one began with the sweets.
Warrick slipped into the attendants’ tent shortly after dawn. In the pale light, he quickly located Dara’s bed and cupped a palm over the maid’s mouth.
Her eyes flew open. He gestured for her silence.
When she nodded, he removed his hand from her mouth. Worry pinched her expression—fearing what had brought him to seek her out.
The queen? she mouthed.
“Wake Chardryn,” he murmured. “Come to the royal tent. Have her bring her apothecary chest. Quietly.”
Again she nodded—then eyed him strangely. Likely because he’d spoken the northern tongue, as everyone from Aleron did.
“Quickly,” he said.
She scrambled from bed and was shaking Chardryn awake when Warrick left the tent.
He returned to Elina’s still-darkened tent, found her already dressed in her riding trousers and a plain tunic. Her small bundle of clothing and gold purse, he’d already added to Troll’s saddlebags. They would leave immediately after confronting Chardryn, while most of the camp was still sleeping off a night of revelry.
Glancing about the tent, he searched for the red ribbon that had bound their hands until dawn. His heart swelled when he spotted it. Elina had looped the ribbon around her wrist until it formed a bracelet.
Swiftly he kissed her, lifted her hand to kiss her palm and the ribbon that had married them, then strapped on his axe.
When Dara and Chardryn arrived, Elina was sitting at her table, lighting a small lantern. Breakfast was arrayed before her. She poured water into a goblet from a carafe.
If the nurse suffered from lack of sleep, it was not apparent by Chardryn’s sharp gaze. “Are you well, my queen?”
Warrick’s chest tightened, for the lantern revealed Elina was clearly not—her face pale and her expression tight. Though whether the strain she felt was due to the little sleep they’d enjoyed, the oncoming purge, or the emotional toll of what was about to occur, he didn’t know.
“Sit with me. You as well, Dara.” She poured a goblet of water for each. Gingerly the maid sat on Elina’s left. Chardryn placed her chest on the table and sat to Elina’s right, eyeing her curiously.
“Your Highness?” the nurse said.
“I thought you might like to oversee my king preparing my tonic.”
“Of course.”
Busily Chardryn opened jars and set them out. Warrick gave to Elina the one she needed.
Elina made a show of checking the label. “I recall you shouting at my thickheaded brute of a husband that doxweed will grow hair between my toes if he gives me too much. Say, this much?” She scooped out a full thimble of the bloodbane, dumped it into Chardryn’s goblet, and pushed it toward the nurse—who sat frozen. “Will you take a sip, Nanny Char?”
The nurse’s face was rigid. “My queen, whatever the barbarian has said to you—”
“Your barbarian king,” Elina corrected coldly. “The son of a witch and healer who knows precisely what each powder in your chest is and its effects. Who knew upon our first kiss that I had been drinking bloodbane. How did you put the mark upon my back? For it certainly was not inked there. One day, it simply appeared.”
Chardryn’s lips pressed together.
Warrick put the blade of his axe against her neck. “Answer.”
“A spellcaster in Gocea, shortly after the cursed twin of Phaira tried to steal her sister’s throne. I told the spellcaster you also had a sister, and you wished to be marked as the true heir so the same could not happen to you.”
“Why such a ruse? Ah, but I know. So that you might blame my uncle…and if my illness was thought magical, no one would look to you. Whereas if poison was suspected, you would be the first to fall under scrutiny.”
“Poison?” Dara whispered, trembling in her chair, her eyes wide and locked on the blade against the nurse’s neck.
“These five years,” Elina told her. “I am not cursed. Never was I cursed.”
Fire filled Dara’s gaze and she sat up straight. “Why would you do such?” she spat at the nurse before hunching down and shooting a contrite look at Elina. “Forgive me, my queen. I only—”
“Asked what I would have next. Why?”
With shaking hands, the nurse pushed the poisoned goblet aside. “My family have ever been loyal retainers to Aleron royalty. Serving the throne is all we have ever done. All we have known. We have no home but the palace. And Soren told me that he would kill them all if I did not comply.”
Elina’s brows drew together in a frown. “Why did you not tell me? I would have found a way for them to leave.”
“Leave the palace?” The nurse appeared affronted by the suggestion. “And do what? And be what? Nothing.”
The slight softening that Warrick had seen in Elina vanished. “What are you when you kill the queen you serve? Certainly not a loyal retainer.”
“You would have died either way, child. Do you truly believe you might survive if you return? You are not strong enough to defeat him.”
