The Feral King's Assassin Bride

Episode5

AELIRA

He was at breakfast.

I stopped in the doorway of the dining hall and looked at him, seated at the head of the table, reading documents, a cup of something hot at his elbow and felt the ground shift slightly under everything I had built the last twelve hours on.

He looked completely fine.

Fine in the way of a man who had slept adequately and had things to do. His color was normal. His posture was normal. He did not look like a person whose body was rotting from the inside.

He looked up when he felt me standing there. Said nothing. Returned to his documents.

I sat down. Ate nothing. Thought very carefully.

Maybe it needs more time, I told myself. Veinrot works slowly. That is the point of it.

I watched him drink from his cup. Turn a page. Make a note in the margin of something.

I told myself it was fine. That it was working and I simply could not see it yet. That by tonight — by tomorrow morning — it would be undeniable.

I told myself this all the way through breakfast and did not believe a word of it.

>

Lrd Braylen's letter came in the mid-afternoon.

Come to the courtyard. Alone.

I found him with his back facing the courtyard entrance, his eyes looking around to be sure no one was watching.

"Well?" he said.

"I did it. Last night."

His face didn't change. "Good."

"The broth." I kept my voice low. "He drank it."

"You saw him drink it."

"I made him drank it. This morning—" I paused. "He was at breakfast."

Braylen's eyes moved to mine.

"He looked fine," I said. "Completely fine. No sign of—" I exhaled slowly. "Maybe it needs more time."

"Maybe," Braylen said, and he was watching me too carefully now. "Or maybe you miscounted."

"I didn't miscalculate."

"Don't waste time, Aelira. The feral king killed—"

"I know." I sighed. "I'll make sure this time. If he needs another dose—"

"Send Torrax when you' need to get another dose." He nodded once and left without looking back.

I stood there for a moment after.

Something was wrong. I wanted to call back and ask him about what i had encountered at the records hall, but i decided against it.

I will find out more myself.

I had done it. I had finally done it. So why did it feel like something was already ahead of me — something I had missed.

I was still standing there when I felt it.

The courtyard air shifted.

I looked back.

Emrys was at the courtyard entrance.

He had not been there a moment ago.

His eyes were on me. Past me, to where Lord Braylen had been standing.

Had he seen us?

The thought barely finished before the air went wrong entirely, that electric pressure that dropped over everything at once—

And then he shifted.

Amber eyes, fully lit. The air around him doing something that made my own beast go still in a way it almost never did.

I walked fast back into Vorkasteel.

Three Sovereign-ranked nobles who had been talking in low voices went quiet. A servant at the end of the corridor turned and walked the other way, quickly. A guard at the junction ahead took three steps back and seemed to decide he had somewhere else to be.

The hall emptied like water draining out.

I reached my chambers. He stopped at the door — too large in that form, the frame too small. The silence stretched.

Then his beast lowered its head.

Not a bow. A slight incline, slow and clearly against its will, I could see the moment it happened in the jaw that tightened right after.

I stood in my room and watched the most feared Eirakh in Eirenmoor bow to me.

Against his will. Furiously. Completely.

And I felt the last certain thing I had about this situation walk quietly out.

I had given him the poison last night.

He had drunk it.

And this morning, he was standing at breakfast like nothing had touched him.

But now, I was looking at the greenish mark on his chest.

His beast had pushed its fur aside, scraped it back with one large paw, revealing the skin beneath and there it was. At the heart. Veins threaded through with green, darker at the center, spreading outward in a pattern that looked less like rot and more like something targeted.

Something that was not Veinrot Elixir.

My poison rots from the inside out, I thought slowly.

This one only touches the heart.

The beast scratched at it again, the same motion I had noticed at the table this morningt, Emrys had been doing it while we looked at each other. While I was watching for signs of my poison working and almost finding amusement in his seemingly unchanged appearance.

He had been scratching at his chest. And I had not put that together until right now.

"What have they done to you?" The words came out before I decided to say them. I stepped forward. My hand moved to the green threaded veins above his heart. The beast went still under my touch. A low growl. Then louder.

Then it lay down in the doorway with a sound like a small earthquake and Emrys came back.

He was white-chalk pale. His breathing was uneven in a way I had not heard from him before, shallow, laboured.

I moved without thinking. "You will not die." My hands found his face. His shoulders. "Not like this. Not by someone else's hand."

I called for the maids. Called for Kael.

Kael appeared so fast he must have already been close, one look at Emrys and his expression did something controlled and terrible.

"How long?" he said.

"I do nott know," I said. "Since last night at least. Possibly before."

"Since last—" He stopped. Looked at me. "You didn't do this."

"Not me," I said.

He held my gaze for one more second. Then he turned and began issuing orders to the maids, low, fast, precise. One of them moved immediately toward the door to fetch the healer. Another to get supplies.

And then the third, a young maid, barely past her first century, who had been standing slightly apart from the others went still.

Kael noticed it the same moment I did. His eyes moved to her and stayed there.

"You," he said quietly. "Where were you last night during the evening meal preparation?"

The maid's eyes went to the floor.

"Answer him," I said.

She looked up at me and then, slowly, at Emrys slumped against the doorframe.

And she said: "A man named Torrax told me it would not kill him. He told me it would only weaken him enough for—"

She stopped.

"Who is Torrax?" Kael asked.

"I do not know him, My lord." She whimpered. "He threatened me. I happened to hear his name when someone I didn't get to see called him."

The room went very quiet.

I looked at her, at Kael and then at the mark above Emrys's heart, green and spreading and deliberate.

And I thought of Lord Braylen in the courtyard this morning. Maybe you miscalculated the dose.

How carefully he had watched me when he said it.

What had he done?