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“Another drug?” she questions, holding the bottle up to the light and marvelling at the deep brown liquid as it glitters in the fading light.
“No. Poison.”
“Poison?!” she hisses, eyes as wide as saucers as she looks up at me.
“That’s right.”
“What does it do?”
“It mimics dysentery. A few minutes after ingesting it they’ll be violently sick, followed shortly after with diarrhoea. It will make them feel like death and hopefully it will weaken them enough so that we can get away.”
“Will it kill them?”
“That all depends,” I say, chewing on my lip.
“On what?”
“On whether they have the antidote?”
“You have an antidote?” she queries, watching me closely.
“No.”
Faith’s lips part and a laugh erupts from her mouth like a tinkling bell. It’s one of the most beautiful sounds I’ve heard and I can’t help but grin despite my split lip and the dangerous situation we’re in.
“If I thought I could hug you without hurting you, I would,” she says, smothering the laughter releasing from her lips. Then her smile drops. “Wait, does this mean your men aren’t coming for us?”
“Oh, Iknowthey are,” I say, believing with all my heart that it’s true. “But we can’t just sit and hope that’s going to happen before tomorrow night. I can’t let those women die, Faith. We have to act sooner rather than later. If that means incapacitating these men and making a run for it, then that’s what we’ll do. They must have vehicles to get here, right? We’ll use them to get away after we’ve poisoned the bastards.”
“You’re right,” she agrees.
“But there’s an issue with this plan. I have to somehow get it into their food, and there’s no way Soren will let me anywhere near their kitchen.”
“Does it have to be their food?”
“I can dissolve it in liquid, though food is preferable to disguise the taste. It’s bitter.”
Faith nods, dropping her gaze back to the glass bottle, her fingers wrapping around it as a slow smile pulls up her lips. “Then I think I can help.”
“How?”
“Tomorrow night, during celebration night, Soren will make a toast just before the men are given permission to…” Her eyes meet mine, hardening. I know what she’s about to say, she doesn’t need to spell it out to me. “They call it theDrink of Death.”
“Death, how apt?” I laugh. Oh the irony. “What is this drink exactly?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s some kind of hallucinogenic alcohol, not dissimilar to absynthe. It strips them of all inhibitions, their humanity.”
“Humanity? They’realreadyanimals.”
“What little they may have left, if any,” Faith whispers, as her eyes glaze over and I lose her to a memory so painful that she wraps her arms around herself and rocks back and forward as she processes it. Eventually she blinks, her face pale and her eyes brimming with tears.
“The bones in Soren’s bedchamber, they’re victims of previous celebration nights, aren’t they?” I ask softly, knowing it to be true.
“Yes,” she nods, meeting my gaze and understanding the silent question I keep inside, unable to voice it. “You want to know why I survived, why my bones aren’t displayed in that room too?”
“No, I–” I shake my head feeling so much guilt at the thought, but she’s right, I do. It seems unfathomable to me that she’s managed to survive this long. I’m glad, of course I am, but how has she managed it?
“The first year, for whatever reason only known to Soren, I wasn’t restrained like the other women. He’d already chosen me as his and I guess he just didn’t want to share me with his men, so I was locked in my cell until it was over. That didn’t stop me from hearing the screams though…” Faith blinks back her tears and drags in a shaky breath. “Every year following that I’ve been given thehonour,”Faith says with a broken whisper, “Of pouring theDrink of Deathon celebration night. It became a thing.”
