Protect the Prince (Crown of Shards #2)(83)

He raised his eyebrows, clearly referring to my feelings for Sullivan. First Dahlia, now Heinrich. Did everyone know how I felt about the bastard prince? Probably.

“But I don’t even know Dominic,” I protested. “And he doesn’t know me.”

Heinrich waved his hand. “Bah! That’s no excuse, and you know it. I had never even set eyes on Sophina before I married her. The two of you will get on well enough, which is more than most royals can say.”

He was right about that, so I tried another tactic.

“And what about Gemma? I don’t want to take a father away from his daughter.”

Gemma had already survived enough horrors during the massacre. She shouldn’t have to worry about losing her father too—or, worse, what might happen to Dominic at Seven Spire. Maeven and the rest of the Bastard Brigade weren’t going to stop trying to murder me just because I married Dominic, and our wedding would make him even more of a target.

Heinrich waved his hand again. “The girl is thirteen. She’s practically grown. Besides, she knows how these things work, and she’ll come to terms with it. And it’s not like she’ll never see Dominic again. He will visit her every chance he gets.”

“And to escape from me, the horrible Bellonan wife that his father forced him to marry,” I said in a wry voice.

Heinrich shrugged. “Dominic was lucky in that his first wife, Merilde, was a love match. You know how rare that is for most people, let alone royals. Now it’s time for Dominic to do his duty to his kingdom, just as I did mine by marrying his mother.”

The king stared into the fire again, his eyes dark and distant with memories. I wondered if he was thinking about his first wife or Dahlia. Perhaps both. It seemed as though the two women were tangled up together, just like Dominic, Sullivan, Rhea, and I all were.

Heinrich focused on me again. “I don’t want to force Dominic to marry you, but the massacre has tied my hands. I can’t be seen as letting you get away with what Vasilia did. I have to extract my pound of flesh from somewhere, and this is the simplest, most bloodless solution. Surely you can understand that.”

I did, more than he knew. But I couldn’t afford to give up that pound of flesh to him, and I couldn’t afford to appear weak either, not here, and especially not in the eyes of the Seven Spire nobles.

On an impulse, I reached over and grabbed his hand. I opened my mouth to tell him that together, we could find another way to fix our problems.

But the strangest thing happened. The second my skin touched his, I realized that I could feel magic pulsing through his body. Only it wasn’t his magier power, and it wasn’t anything like Dominic’s or Sullivan’s lightning.

No, this was something else—something dark, something sinister, something I doubted Heinrich even knew was there, given how soft and subtle it was.

Poison.





Chapter Eighteen


I tightened my grip on Heinrich’s hand and concentrated, wondering if I was only imagining the sensation, but I felt the same thing as before. A small, dark, deadly current running through his veins, right along with his magic.

Someone was poisoning the king.

Who? Why? When had they started? And when were they planning to finish the job?

Those questions and a dozen more crowded into my mind, but one thing seemed certain—the poisoner had to be someone close to the king. Or at least with access to his food and drink, since those were the easiest and most logical ways to administer poison.

“Everleigh?” Heinrich asked, cutting into my dark thoughts. “Is something wrong?”

I was still holding his hand, but instead of letting go, I placed my other hand on top of his and dropped my head, as though I was overcome with emotion and collecting my thoughts. Then I tightened my grip and let loose with my immunity, pushing the cold, hard power out of my body and into his.

I had done this same sort of thing when Paloma had been poisoned with wormroot by a jealous gladiator in the Black Swan troupe. I had used my immunity to counteract the poison in her body and save her, and I was hoping I could do the same to Heinrich, even though he wasn’t seconds away from dying like Paloma had been.

Back then, I had been so desperate to save Paloma that I had blasted her with my immunity over and over again until I’d finally snuffed out the poison in her veins, but I got the sense I couldn’t do that with Heinrich. He was already weak, and I might kill him outright if I used too much magic too quickly.

I also didn’t know what poison Heinrich had been exposed to, but it definitely wasn’t wormroot. No, this poison was much softer, with a sweet lavender note, something that acted very slowly and built up over the course of several months, something that you didn’t even realize was killing you until it was too late.

I sent the smallest trickle of my power into his body, testing the poison, but its magic immediately pushed back against my own, like a coral viper rearing up to strike. I gritted my teeth. This was not going to be pleasant.

But I kept going, pushing my immunity into Heinrich’s body one tiny bit at a time, and I realized that the poison wasn’t a viper. It was more like a series of venomous, parasitic vines running through his veins, right alongside his blood. So I imagined that I was a plant master and that my power was a pair of gardening shears, slowly cutting through all those tangled vines.

Snip, snip, snip.