Page 36 of A Touch of Poison
But I could feel the blood on my hands, even though it had been long ago. Throwing her head across the throne room had felt dramatic and daring.
Now I knew it for what it was.
Brash and thoughtless.
Not that I wouldn’t kill her again if I faced the same situation. But some aspects of how I dealt with it—those I’d change if I had my time again.
The orrery on the mantelpiece chimed softly. Almost time for that meeting. I cleared my throat and straightened. “Was there anything else?”
She shook her head. “That’s all I heard.”
“And I appreciate you bringing it to me.” I stood and gestured for the door. “If you hear anything else—”
“Aye, I know how to find you and yourfriends.” She looked at Faolán for the first time since she’d walked into my office. It was the kind of look that made me want to break things. One people gave shapechangers too often.
Instead, I squeezed my pen and herded both her and Faolán out the door. Even he couldn’t know about my next task.
He shot me a questioning frown after she’d gone. “You don’t think Princess Nyx could’ve survived, do you? No one ever found her body.”
“Three arrowsanda fall from the bridge? I think it’s safe to say she’s long gone. If by some miracle she survived all that, she would’ve come back by now.”
“Hmm. True.”
Once he was gone and the door locked, I approached the far side of my office.
A carved panel showed the planets and the Celestial Serpent threatening to swallow them up as he raged at the loss of his beloved Tellurian Serpent. A pale echo of her coiled between planets and stars—a reminder that they were all made from her body. If only he would remember.
Another panel depicted them in the timebefore. The time before her death. The time before time. In utter blackness, the paired serpents’ undulating bodies knotted together to create the universe. One light with dark stars covering her scales, the other dark—her opposite in every way.
The light in the dark. The dark in the light.
The edges of a hidden door disappeared into their scales and stars, invisible, even to sharp eyes like Faolán’s.
I stroked the dark serpent’s head, drawing upon the magic around me so I didn’t have to say the activation word out loud, and the panel glided open. It closed behind me as I entered an unlit passageway.
Even if I hadn’t been able to see in the gloom, I knew this route so well, I could’ve followed it with my eyes shut.
Over the centuries, my office had always belonged to the previous ruler’s Shadows. Officially, I was just Braea’s representative in the Convocation, a council that helped give continuity and balance between the two monarchs. But everyone knew I was a spymaster. The identity of my Dawn counterpart was unknown, but we had a drop point should we ever need to share information for the good of the realm.
In all my years of doing this job, it had remained empty.
I wondered if they had their own network of secret passageways. There was no record of mine on any plans of the palace, so there was no way of knowing for sure when they’d been built or by whom. But I’d put my money on Tenebris’s first spymaster designing them at the same time as the palace. They integrated too seamlessly, taking me to my rooms, to Braea’s, and to various other strategic locations, including my destination today.
Ahead, a door awaited me in the gloom. I pressed the ring on my third finger into a tiny indent. The faint thrum of magic signalled the lock opening.
When I stepped through, the world shifted.
A secret lodestone. The only one, as far as I knew, and I’d scoured the palace, searching for weaknesses. No need for guards when our side could only be unlocked with the spymaster’s ring.
The afternoon sky opened overhead, bathing the overgrown courtyard and its disused fountain in sunlight. This was where I met with my spy from Dawn, so we could be assured no one would spot us. She’d told me about this next meeting—one I wouldn’t take part in so much asobserve.
I’d reverse engineered my key and had one made for her that opened the door ahead of me, which led into Dawn, but only if I left it unlocked from this side. It had no effect on the door leading to Dusk.
I rarely entered their side, always conscious that the Night Queen’s Shadow being found there could be catastrophic for the relationship between our courts. Frankly, I wouldn’t blame them if they considered it an act of war.
But this was too good a chance to miss. Caelus had made little to no effort to win the human queen’s hand, and this meeting with King Lucius would surely explain what he’dreallybeen up to. For the king to summon him the day he’d returned—it had to be important.
Occasional peepholes covered in spidersilk mesh opened to left and right, and I aimed for the one that peered into Lucius’s study. He only used it for more formal occasions—he must’ve summoned Caelus here to remind him of his own importance.
