Poison's Kiss (Poison's Kiss #1)(49)

“Well, we didn’t know that. When Iyla showed up with a black eye and told me that you’d had her beaten—well, the story didn’t add up. She hadn’t told me that you worked with the Naga before then, and she should have. That’s when I realized she’d been playing us. That maybe we could never discover any of the Naga’s secrets because she didn’t want us to.”

My heart squeezes at the thought that maybe some of my time with Deven was real. “But wait,” I say, “if Iyla told you I was a visha kanya, why did you seem so surprised when I told you earlier?”

Deven shakes his head. “See, that’s the thing. She didn’t tell me that. She told me that you worked for the Naga and that you were trying to kill me by poisoning my drinks. She always claimed she needed more time to find the vish kanya. That she had no idea where the Naga were keeping them.”

I stare at my hands as I try to decide what it means that Iyla gave Deven only a half-truth. What it means that she only partially betrayed me. Was that for my benefit? For hers?

Deven clears his throat. “Do you know where the others are?” he asks.

I swallow hard. I should tell him that I’m the only one, but the fact that Iyla didn’t makes me nervous. She must have had some reason to withhold that information. What did she know that I don’t?

But I owe him some kind of answer. “My handlers never let me meet the others,” I say. “They said it kept us all safer if we didn’t know each other.” It’s the closest thing to the truth I have to offer.

“Basic tradecraft,” Deven says. “I thought as much, but I had to ask.”

“I wish I knew more,” I say, grateful he believes me.

And then a thought occurs to me that sends butterflies dancing in my stomach. “Are you immune?”

The corner of his mouth ticks up. “Yes.”

My first thought is that I gave away five years of my life for nothing. And the second is this: I could have kissed him.

I still could.

Neither of us speaks for a moment, and I stare at my feet while I wait for my cheeks to cool. It doesn’t matter if Deven is immune or not; he would never want to kiss me. And I have more important things to think about, like helping Mani. But still, my train of thought leads me to one more question.

“If Iyla was never your girlfriend, then why did you kiss her?”

He frowns. “Her cover was that I was a mark she was trying to woo. In public places she made sure to be thorough.”





My head is heavy with new information, but none of it points toward where the Naga might have taken Mani. I stand up and pull on my sandals. They’re still damp from when I rinsed them in the shower. I can’t just sit here. I have to start searching.

“What are you doing?” Deven asks.

“I’m going to find my brother.”

He raises an eyebrow. “And how do you plan to do that?”

“I’m going to start with the girls’ home. It’s where I was raised. Where they kept all of the vish kanya and spies.”

He chews his lip. “I doubt they would keep him somewhere so obvious, but it’s worth a try. We can at least have a look around and see if we find some more clues.”

“We?” I ask. “You’re coming with me?”

He reaches out and circles my wrist with his fingers, and my breath catches in my throat. I forgot to replace my bracelets after I showered. Deven’s eyes widen as his thumb brushes against the scars.

“What did they do to you?” His voice is husky with emotion.

“They’re snakebites,” I tell him. I can’t bear to see the naked pity on his face, so I drop my gaze.

He grabs my other wrist and turns both of my hands over in his own, examining them from every angle. “Oh, Marinda,” he breathes. “There are so many.”

I don’t tell him that these are only half of my scars. That my ankles are just as ravaged, but that no one gets close enough to my feet for me to bother concealing them.

Instead I swallow the lump in my throat and pull away from him. “We have to go,” I say.

Deven drops my hands and it takes him a moment to find his voice. “Let’s wait until dark,” he says. “And then I promise I’ll help you find Mani and get him to safety.”

I shake my head. “No. We have to go now. It’s been hours. He must be terrified.”

“I’m sure he is,” Deven says. “But we’re not even certain where they’re keeping him, and it won’t do Mani any good for you to get yourself killed.”

“They won’t kill me,” I say.

“Won’t they?” he asks softly, his gaze traveling to my wrists and then back to my face. “Isn’t that exactly what they did to Japa? And he didn’t betray them, Marinda. You did.”

I press a palm to my forehead and squeeze my eyes closed. I don’t want to think about what they did to Japa, what they could be doing to Mani. But I know I can’t sit here and do nothing while we wait for the sun to disappear. I go to the wall where the door is and lean against it.

“How do I get out of here?”

“We have a better chance of saving him if we wait,” Deven says. “I care about him too.”

My stomach clenches and I fall heavily into a chair. “You don’t know Gopal like I do. You don’t know what he’s capable of. If we go now, I can promise to stay with him in exchange for Mani. That’s a trade I know Gopal will make. He doesn’t care about Mani—I’m what he wants. And then you can take Mani and get him far away from here.”