Page 3 of A Touch of Poison
2
Kat
Distant voices—soft, almost musical, echoing like they were in a large space. Not familiar.
I fought my heavy eyelids. The idea of lying here in some unknown place with unknown people prickled me—far too vulnerable. And the lack of footsteps punctuating the sound feltoff.
Unsafe.
I managed to pry my eyes open, letting in bright, bright light.
Was I dead? I’d heard stories like that. King Arthur when he began his adventures in the Underworld had first seen a pure white light.
I squinted and tried to keep quiet—whoever was nearby, I didn’t want them to know I was awake—but my body wasn’t entirely under my command, and its stiffness made me groan.
Nearby, a gasp. The rustle of movement. The sudden silence of a held breath.
So much for secrecy. I tried to rub my eyes, but maybe my body was taking a while to catch up with my mind, because my arms wouldn’t move. Instead I had to blink away the weight of sleep and this blinding light.
A white ceiling vaulted overhead—marble, judging by the veins creeping across it and down the walls. The veins led to a large cabinet divided into little drawers, with two large glass doors. Inside glinted jars and bottles in a hundred sizes and a hundred colours.
Andthere.
To one side, shadows churning, sitting forward in his chair, silver eyes wide—Bastian.
I smiled. I couldn’t help it. Not with the way his eyebrows inched up in the very image of hope. Not with the way his familiarity soothed that uncomfortable sense of vulnerability that came with waking somewhere sounfamiliar.
His chest and shoulders sank as he let out a long breath, relief palpable in the still air. “Katherine.” He said it softly, like I was a forest animal he didn’t want to scare away.
Something warm kindled in my chest, and like a fool, I nodded.
In a single smooth movement, he stood.
He made it a step closer before something came crashing down inside him. His chin dipped and his eyebrows thundered together as his gaze slid from mine. For a second, his eyes screwed shut.
Was that regret? And… something else? Something dark, like the shadows pooling around his feet. His hands fisted, and the shadows snapped close, like a hound whose leash had been yanked.
In silence, he pivoted and strode for the door.
He crushed my heart under the ball of his foot with that turn.
But then I remembered.
The poison. The changeling.
The truth.
I let my head sink back onto the pillow as he called into the echoing hall for someone.
He’d betrayed me and I’d betrayed him. Of course he wouldn’t come to me, and I didn’t want him to, either. It was only that moment when I’d woken—the instant before I remembered everything.
There were snatches of other moments, too. Asher treating me. Talk of blood. Snow. A deer’s antlers. Strange fever dreams.
Eyes shut, I shook my head, like that would toss it all into some semblance of order. I could sort through the past later—I still didn’t know aboutnow. “Where am—?”
But when I tried again to lift my hands, I couldn’t. And not because they wouldn’t move. No. Because leather straps bit into my wrists, binding me to the bed.
Heart leaping, I yanked. “Bastian?” This had to be why he’d worn that momentary look of regret. What had he done? What was he going to do? Was this retribution for my plan to poison him? My throat clenched. “What’s going on?”
