Chapter Forty-Four
I knocked on the door to the kitchens. Paused. Knocked again.
“Come on,” I said. “Open up.”
Once Stefan realized the Volds hadn’t killed Hans, he’d listen. I’d stop him from torching the ships, from killing the generals. We’d put together another plan, a better plan.
Wind pearled through the gardens, rattling the rose bushes, rustling the hedges, the smell of it full and floral with a hint of herbs, lemon balm, rosemary, and thyme. Night rendered each leaf in sharp black.
I pounded harder. “Guys. Come on. It’s me.”
A shuffle, a scrape. The door swung open to reveal Pehr, blond hair, bright eyes. Without the steward’s uniform, he seemed younger. For whatever reason, he wore his cream sweater backward.
“Isyyyyy,” he said, resting his arm above the frame. “Finally joined the party?”
I ducked around him. “Where’s Stefan?”
The long table had been shoved off to the side, covered in maps, and not one, not two, but eight clay pipes and bowls filled with green powder. The other steward, Loren, plucked one up and took a drag.
Great. They were getting high.
“What is this?” I said, wrinkling my nose and waving away the smoke. “Hemp?”
Pehr tweaked my cheek. “Why so grumpy? You knock, we answer. You come, we play.” A shrug, as if this should all be obvious.
“Stefan,” I snapped. “I need Stefan.”
“Katrina and Gretchen are around back. Carl is…” Pehr scratched his chin and nodded.
“Stefan.”
“Ooh, someone’s grumpy. You wanna know what else we got?”
“No.”
Pehr fumbled with the pouch and shoved a handful of withered roots in my hand, white like tube worms and coarse with dirt. “We stole it. From the scary man with the forky tongue. Try it.” He shoved the roots harder. “Try it, try it, try it.”
I batted his hands away. “I don’t want to try the root. Where’s Stefan?”
“Mmm…dunno.”
“You do. Tell me.”
He shrugged. “Downstairs?”
The hemp smoke made my eyes water, clung to my clothes. “We’re in the kitchen. There is no downstairs .”
Pehr giggled and reached for a bowl of cookies.
“The cellar,” Loren supplied.
Oh. Right. The cellar.
The cellar was outside, around the corner and down a flight of narrow steps built from splintered wood and swept with leaves. Spiders crept through shadows, their forelegs gleaming. Each razor hair stood straight.
I reached the door at the bottom and tried to push it open. It stuck. I threw my shoulder against it once, twice.
It scraped.
In the room at the bottom, baskets of blood-oranges, barrels of beer. And crates, dozens of them, all packed with lamp-oil incinerates. They’d dragged a table down here, cluttered it with empty bottles and yellow rags. A knife sat beside a half-cored apple, the blade sticky with juice. A single candle burned.
“Hello?” I called.
Cobwebs crusted corners. The candle guttered.
“Stefan?”
Wherever he went, he hadn’t been gone long.
A few bottles had been corralled off to the side of the table. I picked up the first and sniffed. S?ven. No surprise they’d kept it out. I’d brought my bottle on the scouting trip with the Volds. There was another bottle with a peeling label and the cherry-citrus scent of white wine. A jar of vinegar, good for scrapes, and—
A flash, a glint, a silver flask, two suns embossed on the front, dark red liquid crusted along the rim, but—
Suns. I traced one with my thumb, the metal textured and cool.
He makes me drink from his cup of suns.
It wasn’t…? Could it…?
I unscrewed it, sniffed. I’d teased Stefan about drinking in the morning. But this? It wasn’t wine. It didn’t even smell alcoholic, the liquid subtly acrid, syrupy sweet, all the smoke and velvet, dark like cassis berries soaked in sugar, so strong it made my eyes hurt.
It smelled like plums.
It smelled like honey.
It smelled like…like fly agaric.
The speckled mushroom grew in the forests of Larland, shaded by trees and temperate things. In small doses, it could treat muscular pain.
But in large doses…?
I poured some on the back of my hand, my face reflected in the blood-red drop.
I do not want to drink, I do not.
In large doses, it would cause hallucinations, fevers.
Madness.
Why would Stefan be feeding this to the king?
A door creaked.
“Isy.” Stefan stood in the doorway, his jacket shucked over a shoulder, hair curling over his ears. Circles rimmed his eyes and his cravat hung open at his throat. Red. The color of—
He licks me with his frog tongue, ties it round my neck.
Had Stefan been poisoning the king to win the royal physician position? Or was there a more sinister plot? What would he do now that I’d discovered him?
I liked Stefan, I did, but suddenly, we were back in the apothecary scrambling over Hans’s journals, his fingers digging into my hip a little too hard, and we were back in the closet, his hand tangled through my sweater, the scent of him, mint and musk, and he was pushing me against the shelves harder, harder, and I couldn’t breathe and his eyes blazed, dark and murderous, and didn’t he always have that violent edge?
I had to keep him distracted so I could get out.
“You’re here.” I shoved the flask against the other bottles. It rattled. “I came looking for you.”
“You have the boxes?”
“I’m working on it. I have…news.”
Every muscle in my body screamed to run, run, run. Pretend I don’t know, didn’t see.
You get nervous when you lie. It’s a tell.
Candlelight shaded Stefan’s lashes, his teeth. He shut the door and lowered his eyes, demure. “You do?”
Lie!
I slid my fingers along the rim of the table, edging for the door. “Yes.” The word was no louder than a breath.
“What’s this news?”
A hiss, a crackle. Beads of wax pattered down the shaft.
“I wanted to tell you…about the plan to steal the Lover’s Boxes.” The lip of the table ran out. My hands met air.
Stefan cocked a brow. “The plan to steal the Lover’s Boxes?”
“Yes.” Another breath.
He took a step forward.
I took a step back.
“What is this plan?”
If it comes to a physical fight, I want you to run. “We’re going to do it. Tomorrow. We have a plan. It’s a good plan. It’s—”
His gaze flicked to the open flask. His lips curled into a predatory smile. “Oh, Isabel. You’ve been poking around where you don’t belong.”
I snatched the knife from the table. “Don’t come any closer.”
He lunged.
I ducked, slashing his inner thigh.
Blood spurted, hot and metallic. It coated my hands, my lips, made everything slick.
He screamed. Something—his elbow?—knocked against my ruined ear.
Pain erupted across the side of my head. The world rippled, pulsed.
I dropped the knife with a clatter and hobbled to the door.
It stuck. I jiggled the handle, my hands squelching over the metal, the blood like fat, like oil. It caught between my fingers.
No, no, no.
Behind me, a sweep, a scrape.
“Help,” I called, pounding on the wood. “ Help !”
No answer.
My ear pulsed, my head throbbed. The wood seemed to buckle, seemed to bow, a swirl of chestnut and honey.
Behind me, the drag of a foot across dirt. Jars rattled.
“ HELP !”
I got a grip on the handle and wrenched the door open. Stony cold air washed my face. In the stairwell, a lantern burned. Up ahead, the vague outline of a door and—
Stefan grabbed my leg, pulling me to the ground.
His fingers tangled through my hair. My knee on his chest. A hand clawing at my ears, my throat. “You know, you were always—”
At the door, a flash of a figure, slim frame, short hair. Gray sweater.
Katrina.
“The bottle,” I said. “The clear one. It’s s?ven. I need—”
The shift of shadow. A tink of glass.
I tilted my head.
Katrina picked up the s?ven bottle and fingered it. Her eyes flicked between Stefan and me. Candlelight flickered off her irises, her cheeks. She swallowed.
I had my knee on Stefan’s stomach, my fingers tangled through his hair. My vision prickled and air, he was cutting off my air, and I was suffocating, but all we needed to do was drug him. Katrina would drug him and—
Something warm and wet shoved against my mouth, the scent of it cloying and sweet, like sugar and strawberries.
“I’m sorry,” Katrina sobbed. “I’m sorry, but the Volds corrupted you. And Hans—”
“They didn’t kill him!” I screamed, but the s?ven slurred the words, and they came out wrong, all garbled, and they made me inhale. The rag pressed harder, linen fibers sticking to my tongue, my teeth, and suddenly I was drowning, floating, dying, a burst of light, a flash of silver, and my eyes became heavy, so, so heavy.
I reached up, the back of my fingers catching her cheek. Her eye. I needed to find her eye, but the smell of s?ven, of sweet strawberries, was dragging me down, down, do—