What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1)(17)
“That was two questions,” Lord Byron said, raising an eyebrow as he scoffed. “But the answer is the same for them both.” I heaved a sigh of relief, hoping this would mean he wouldn’t penalize me for my impudence. He pulled a small vial out of his pocket, staring at it for a moment in thought before he twisted the cork out of the top and placed it on the desk. “You were always a pretty girl.” He tipped the vial over, pouring the amber liquid into the third glass of wine. The bittersweet aroma of belladonna filled the air as he emptied the vial into the glass, lightening the color of the wine a fraction.
“My Lord,” I murmured, my voice hushed as my body went still. A dose of belladonna like that would be lethal, would make certain I never saw the morning come. He lifted it from the desk, stepping around me and moving toward the library doors. He knocked on them, waiting until a servant pushed them open and accepted the wine from him without a word. She left the library, closing the doors behind her as Byron turned back toward me and stood beside my chair.
“She was meant to die slowly, gradually, over the years so that no one would suspect anything, but it appears we have run out of time,” he said, running the backs of his knuckles over the side of my cheek as I tried to process what he was saying.
I kept my mouth shut, not asking the question that didn’t concern me. Whoever he’d sent that poison to, I couldn’t let my curiosity prevent me from having the answers to what actually mattered to my life.
He waited, smirking down at me when I bit my tongue. “I prevented the physician from reporting you and didn’t send you to train as a Lady of the Night because that would have interfered with a plan that I’ve been working toward for a very long time.” He reached over, capping the vial of poison and depositing it into the waste bin beside his desk. “You would have ruined everything had I not intervened.”
“Lady Jaclen—” I said, snapping my mouth shut before the question could come. My tongue burned with the force of my bite, my hands trembling where I clasped them on my lap.
“Will be dead before morning,” her husband said, leaning back onto his desk once more. He stretched his hand out and caught my chin, leaning forward until his face was only a breath away from mine. “Do you understand now, Estrella?”
I nodded, squeezing my eyes closed as the horror of his intentions took root inside of me. I’d always thought myself safe from that kind of attention, so long as he never discovered I was not a virgin. Another man would take me in that way, but I’d thought myself safe from him, at the very least.
I’d never truly been safe at all.
“Why did you allow it to continue?” I asked, risking the next question.
He grinned, something evil lurking in his eyes, and I knew that whatever came next would horrify me. “Your virginity never mattered to me, though taking it would have been enjoyable. That is the High Priest’s prerogative alone. If anything, your Mist Guard saved me the trouble of listening to you cry during your first time. Now I needn’t worry about any of that nonsense, because he already broke you in. I might have arranged for it to happen myself, in time.”
“But the High Priest said The Father has plans for me. I hardly think any of that matters now,” I argued, trying to push away the image of what might have come. For once, the idea of being sacrificed to the Veil wasn’t the worst horror I could imagine. “You can’t make me your mistress if I’m dead.”
“I wouldn’t need to kill Jaclen for you to become my mistress,” he said, grabbing a cloth off his desk. A bowl of water sat beside it, and he dipped it into the liquid as he lifted one of my shaking hands off my lap. “I need her to die so that you can become my wife.”
I flinched, the agony of those words striking me like a physical blow. I couldn’t be the Lady of Mistfell. I wouldn’t long survive a life with Byron as my husband—my days and nights dominated by his demands and his company.
“I’ve shocked you. Why did you think I brought you here and taught you to read? Why did you think I taught you the decorum of a lady at great expense to myself? My whore would not need to have such abilities,” he said, pressing the cloth into one of the wounds the twilight berries had left me with the day before.
“I never considered this,” I admitted. It hadn’t even been a possibility in my mind. Killing his wife, who was a distant relation to the King, was something unthinkable even for him.
“Mistfell needs an heir. Before the sacrifice tomorrow, I will announce Jaclen’s death and inform the villagers that I have chosen another wife to give them the heir they deserve. They’ll learn that The Father himself made his will for our union known to me as I sat beside Jaclen’s death bed. The High Priest will not dare to take you from that divine purpose, and he will need to choose another to sacrifice. We’ll be married within the week—”
“No.” The word hovered between us, filling the library with the muted sound of my voice and the quiet defiance that I hadn’t even meant to say aloud. My ears rang, while nausea swirled in my gut.
“What did you just say?” he asked, his body stilling as his gaze hardened into a glare. All traces of gentleness he’d deigned to show me as part of his act disappeared, the truth of him showing in his anger.
“No,” I repeated, my voice coming through with more strength. My heart was in my chest, my skin slick with a cold sweat as I drew my line in the sand. Some fates were worse than death.