Chapter 44

ChapterForty-Four

Ascream caught in her throat as Alistair withered in front of her. The poison in his drink was strong. As he slumped onto the ground, she could already see foam bubbling out of his mouth. Black veins spread out from his lips, eyes, and down his neck.

She had no idea what they’d poisoned him with. Though panic pressed against her chest, she knew she could help him. Thea could figure it out if only she could find his drink.

Frantically she grabbed his glass, but it had already fallen to the floor. Empty.

“Alistair,” she said as she rolled him onto his back. “Alistair, wake up. Please.”

His eyes rolled back in his head, and he shuddered one last time. Then his body went still. That foam trickled down his cheek and his skin turned paler than she could imagine. His freckles stood out so stark against the suddenly gray color, and she had the sudden thought she hadn’t ever gotten the chance to count all of them. Not in their entirety.

“No,” she whispered. “No, no. Alistair, you have to wake up.”

Thea shoved his shoulders, but he didn’t react. The limp weight of his body was too heavy for her to move on her own.

A choked sound echoed in her throat as tears burned in her eyes. “Alistair. Please, don’t do this.”

She hovered her shaking fingers over the buttons at his throat. She fumbled to give him more room to breathe. More air so that he didn’t have to fight to breathe. That was why his chest wasn’t rising and falling. He wasn’t dead.

He couldn’t be.

Keening cries reached her ears, but she was too busy untying the tie around his neck. The buttons were undone, but he still couldn’t breathe. She needed to give him more ways to breathe easier so that he wasn’t struggling so hard.

Shaking now, she realized the horrible cries were her. Those awful sounds wrenched out of her mouth as she grabbed his hands.

“You’re so cold,” she said, bringing his hands up to her lips and blowing on them to warm them. “We need to get you inside. A fire might... might help.”

Maybe if she could warm up his skin, then the poison would loosen its hold on him. All she had to do was warm him up, and he’d open his eyes again. He’d be all right. He’d wake and smile at her with that half smile she loved so dearly.

“Can someone...” She cleared her throat and wiped her nose on the back of her forearm. “Can someone please help me get him up?”

But when she looked up from his body, there were no kind faces looking back at her. There were only smiles and grins. Some people had even returned to their conversations as though Alistair hadn’t fallen in front of them. A group to her right didn’t even notice her. They just kept talking about the corpse flower and how lucky they were to see it bloom.

And then everyone turned away. They all went back to living their lives as though a man hadn’t died in front of them. They didn’t care.

“Why isn’t anyone looking at us?” she asked, her voice shaking with emotion. “Why can’t any of you care about what is happening?”

No one responded to her. A couple of people started walking away through the greenery, disappearing into the gardens and likely to some meeting house beyond.

“Someone,” she cried out. “Help us!”

She’d never felt more alone in her life. All these people walked away from her, knowing that they could help. They just chose not to.

Squeezing his limp hand tighter in hers, she steeled herself for what would be a very long walk. If they thought she wouldn’t pick him up and haul his body out to the carriage where his pooka awaited them, then they were about to see the real spectacle of a lifetime.

She turned back toward Alistair, then stood up to wrench her damned skirts out of the way.

Except an oily voice interrupted her. “I warned you, didn’t I? Soon you would need a new employer and now you are alone in Wildecliff. Such a pity.”

That pale man had better stop talking, or she was going to punch him in the throat. Nostrils flaring with anger, she whirled on him. “If you’re so invested in his life, and you seem to be around every corner, then perhaps you should help me get him back to the carriage.”

“Now, why would I do that?” Marren stopped in front of her and crossed his arms over his chest. “It seems fitting that a dead body should remain next to the corpse flower. Maybe the bloom will consume him.”

“That’s not how an arum feeds,” she hissed, dashing away tears that kept falling down her cheeks. “Are you going to help me or not?”

“Not.” She shrugged. “I’ve been waiting to see the last Orbweaver die for a very long time. I wanted to savor the moment before I left for the night.”

Anger burned in her chest until she felt like she couldn’t breathe. “All of you monsters keep talking about him as though he is the reason for his father’s evil. For his brother’s nightmarish tendencies. He was the only good one in the family.”

Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say. Marren rushed toward her so quickly that she tried to escape. Her foot caught on the edge of her skirt, and she fell backward. Thea landed hard beside Alistair on the ground once more.

He leaned down to hiss in her face, “You speak of great men who changed how Wildecliff works. Balthazar was evil, yes, but he was everything that a Wildecliff man aspires to be. His sons were dangerous, and they left this realm in a whirlwind of violence and blood. Alistair Orbweaver was the last, because he was the weakest and the easiest to pick off.”

Lower lip trembling, she stared up at him with what she hoped was all the hatred in her heart. “None of you will ever be so great as this man. You are nothing more than a bully. You will die alone and unloved, and I pity you for that.”

He laughed at her. “How quaint. You think I care about love? No, I care little for those paltry emotions that have no place here. You are the weakest amongst us, even lesser than Alistair. And now you will die beside him.”

She didn’t see a weapon on him. No one had drawn a sword or a dagger. She tilted her head up and glared. “I’d like to see you try to kill me.”

He turned away, surveying the flower that had brought so many people to this room. There were few left now. Only two couples who stood so close to the flower they could have touched it if they wanted. And Marren, who curled up his lip at the smell but still stood close to it.

“Do you know there are many poisons in the world that can kill a man?” he asked.

“Of course I do. My family is full of farmers.”

“Then you understand that there are very few poisons in this world that can kill someone like Alistair. His father took many precautions. He used to poison his sons with microdoses every single night for months on end. The boys were always very sickly when they were little.” Marren smoothed his white hair back from his face. “Alistair didn’t take to any of those poisons as well as his brothers did. One of those elixirs almost destroyed the blood vessels in his body. That’s why he was always cold.”

The horrific parenting technique startled her. Her heart ached for Alistair, but they were wasting time. She stood up and girded her skirts at her waistband, ignoring the startled sounds from the ladies nearby. Stockings were sure to ruin their sensibilities, but she’d be damned if she tripped again. “What a story.”

“It is. So imagine my surprise when a young woman arrives in Wildecliff who can devour any flower, any poison from the land.” He watched as she wedged her arms underneath Alistair’s and grunted with effort. “You were an enigma and a problem in my plan. You’d taste any poison I gave him and not die from it.”

Thea’s heart thundered in her chest as she heaved Alistair upright. He was sort of in a seated position now, though limp in her arms. For such a thin man, he was surprisingly heavy. She wouldn’t be able to lift him up like this, but she could drag him down the dirt pathway. That would have to do.

“Thea, are you listening to me?” Marren called out.

She let out a little grunt. “Not in the slightest.”

“I’m trying to tell you that the poison in Alistair’s cup had nothing to do with any poison you might think of. Although I’m very surprised it’s taking so much longer to affect you.”

What?

She blinked and realized that the vision in her right eye had gone blurry. She let Alistair lean against her legs as she rubbed at it, but nothing she did would clear her vision.

“What do you mean, affecting me?” she asked. “I drank nothing.”

Marren stepped closer with his hands raised. “No, you didn’t. And maybe that’s the difference which I find so unusual. You see, he drank the poison only I can create. But you? You just had it on your hand.”

He’d kissed her hand.

His gift was that he secreted poison, and he’d spit it onto her hand when he kissed the back of her knuckles. She should have guessed. She should have seen something on her skin that wasn’t supposed to be there. Why hadn’t either of them noticed?

The world seemed to tilt to the side, and she fell down onto her knees behind Alistair. Gasping for breath, Thea wrapped her arms around his body and held him to her chest.

“Even now, you are so unwilling to let him go.” Marren walked by her and spat into his hand.

She could see now the poison he’d chosen for them was clear. No wonder it was so hard to see. He walked up next to her and patted her bare shoulder with that tainted hand. She didn’t feel its wetness, but the sensation of icy cold spread down her arm.

“You’re going to die here with him, Thea, and that’s an awful thing to happen to you both. If you’d been more willing to work with me, I might have spared your life. Or at least argued to spare it with the Headmistress.” He shrugged. “It’s a shame to waste a pretty face, but that is sometimes how life goes. Now, I’m going to go inside and get myself a drink that doesn’t have poison in it.”

His laughter trailed away behind her. She struggled to breathe, mouth open against Alistair’s shoulder as the remaining people left the area.

Soon, it was just her and Alistair. As it had always been. As it should have been. Forever and always. She loved him, and he loved her, and this wasn’t supposed to be how it ended.

They were supposed to wake up with each other every single morning with a smile and a cup of tea. Their story should have been softer, as it was when they were children. Just two teenagers trying to figure out who they were and who they wanted to be. She should have had all the time in the world with him.

And these horrible people had taken that away from them both. The Headmistress. Marren. The Academy. No one wanted to see anyone else happy, and that was what was wrong with this place. With these people.

They were rotting from the inside out. Like a pumpkin left outside too long after Beltane.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered against his skin. “I’m so sorry, Alistair. If I could save you, I would, but I have a small gift and it’s not... It’s not enough to bring someone back from the dead.”

She heard a faint chirp beside them but could see nothing. For a moment, she let herself believe it was a chipmunk or a bird that lived in the greenhouse, but she knew better. With cold, numb fingers, she pulled out the tiny whistle and blew into it.

There they were.

Ten faerie creatures were all standing around them. Three of them looked like pixies with dragonfly wings. Three others were brownies with their adorable, mouse-like faces. The last was the pooka who had been waiting in the car, except this time he looked like some horrible mashup of a cat with a snake for a tail and human eyes.

They faded as she lost her breath, but Thea didn’t want to be alone as she died. She struggled in one last breath and blew into the whistle.

The pooka had walked over to an aloe plant nearby and ripped a piece off. He held it out for her, bowing low.

Aloe. For healing.

Letting the whistle drop from her lips, she reached out for it and squeezed the goo into her mouth. The cool innards of the aloe plant helped a little, but not enough to curb the poison running through her veins.

Shakily lifting the whistle, she blew into it again. The brownies had gathered together and held out an iris for her to consume. For valor and faith.

She let the flower dissolve on her tongue and then looked at the pixies while exhaling. They held out a single white dogwood flower she hadn’t even realized grew in this greenhouse.

“Love undiminished by adversity,” she whispered, then swallowed the petals.

It was enough to keep her alive for a little while longer, but not enough to spare her life. Or Alistair’s. And she shook with a great sense of rage that filled her from the bottom of her feet to the top of her head.

Reaching into her pocket with a steadier hand, she pulled out the flower her mother and sisters had created for her. “Courage,” she said. “I need all of it.”

Thea placed the flower on her tongue, and, as the words she had said rang through her mind, she realized all of it was exactly what she needed. She wanted revenge. She wanted to destroy these people who dared to take from her the one man she loved. The person she adored more than life itself.

They thought her weak.

She would prove them wrong.

Thea walked along the garden path, grabbing fistfuls of flowers as she passed. She didn’t care what they were; she consumed them anyway. Joy. Glory. Magic. Wisdom. Over and over, the flowers of this greenhouse gave her power until she felt as though she walked without her feet ever touching the ground.

And then she turned toward the corpse flower as the poison in her veins thickened, and her limbs grew heavy.

“It’s not enough,” she growled as she stalked toward the one plant she certainly had never tasted.

Thea climbed onto the edge of the flower, lifted her hands, and ripped into it. The scent of a corpse grew so strong it stuck to her nose and flooded her lungs. She feared she would smell nothing else for the rest of her life, just rotting corpses and horrific nightmares as she tore into the flesh of the flower. Sticky ooze clung to her fingers as she lifted the shredded piece to her lips.

“I am not weak,” she snarled as she looked up at the glistening red flesh of the flower. “And I will consume them all.”