“What do you mean before? Someone else poisoned you?” he asks.
“No,” she says quickly. She pauses, searching for a plausible lie, but nothing comes. Her mind feels clouded with fog, nothing visible except what’s directly before her—in this case, the truth. “But last week, the girth of my saddle was damaged and I nearly ended up trampled.”
Bairre lets out a long exhale. “Perhaps you simply fell.”
She glares at him. “I assure you I didn’t. You can ask Cliona, she was there.”
Stars above, what was in that poison? Truth serum? She closes her eyes for a moment and opens them again. “Don’t tell your father. It isn’t as big an issue as it seems, they failed both times.”
“And you’re content to let them try a third?” he snaps.
Daphne opens her mouth, then closes it again, swallowing her words. She knows he’s right, but she can’t help but feel that the attempts on her life mark her as a failure. Like she’s vulnerable and therefore weak. The thought of anyone knowing fills her with shame.
“If they try a third time, they’ll fail a third time,” she says.
“The only reason they failed this time is because you happened to spot that deer before finishing the water. The physician said a few more sips and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Daphne suddenly feels nauseated, any retort she could have given stolen away by the knowledge of how close she came to death.
Daphne remembers the girl who passed it to her, Rufus’s oldest sister, Liana. She remembers that the girl wouldn’t look at her. Her mother’s words come back to her. Men say poison is a woman’s weapon. They say it like an insult because they think it cowardly, but poison is clean, it’s covert. It is so much easier to control the effects of a poison than it is the tip of a blade in the heat of combat. It is easy to get away with and, if used correctly, impossible to trace. Poison is a woman’s weapon because it is a smart weapon.
“Liana,” she says slowly. “She didn’t seem to like me.”
Bairre lets out a long breath. “Zenia confessed.”
Zenia. Daphne remembers the youngest girl, her hair still hanging in two plaits on either side of her round, freckled face. She couldn’t be more than ten years old.
“I thought you said your father was still trying to find the person responsible,” Daphne says.
“Zenia was only following orders. She didn’t know what the poison would do. All she had to do was empty a vial they gave her into your water. Someone offered her a wish so powerful it would bring her father back from the dead. That someone is the person we’re trying to find.”
“A wish can’t do that,” Daphne says.
“No, but she was desperate enough to believe it might be,” he says. He runs a hand through his hair. His eyes are tired—whatever sleep he’s managed to get, it hasn’t been enough. “She’s being held in her family’s rooms until it can be decided what to do with her. Rufus has been begging for mercy, of course.”
“Of course,” Daphne says. She tries to sit up, but pain ricochets through her body and her arms collapse.
“Careful,” Bairre says, leaning forward. He reaches out like he wants to touch her but thinks better of it and lets his hand fall back to his side.
“She’s a child,” Daphne says, ignoring him. “She didn’t know what she was doing.”
“She tried to kill you,” Bairre says, his eyes sparking with something she can’t quite put a name to.
“If someone told you they could bring back Cillian, you would have done the same, I would bet.”
He shakes his head. “You said it yourself—it isn’t possible.”
“But if you thought it was, if there were even the slightest chance,” she says, “there’s nothing you wouldn’t have done.”
He doesn’t deny it.
“Keep her under watch,” Daphne says. “Question her as thoroughly as possible to find who put her up to it. Then let her brother discipline her as he sees fit.”
Bairre looks ready to protest when there is a knock at the door.
“Come in,” Bairre says, and a servant enters, holding a pitcher of water on his tray. He moves to pour it into the glass Bairre holds, but he stops him.
“You drink it first,” Bairre says.
The man pauses, his face turning a shade paler.
“Your Highness—”
“A necessary precaution,” Bairre says with a smile that might as well be strung with barbed wire. “You understand. I’m sure there’s nothing to fear.”
The servant swallows before taking a sip from the side of the pitcher. Satisfied, Bairre holds out Daphne’s glass and lets him fill it before setting the tray on the table.
“Will…will there be anything else?” the servant asks, his voice wavering.
“Not at the moment,” Bairre says, passing the glass back to Daphne. “Thank you.”
The servant scurries away, closing the door behind him.
Daphne takes a sip from the refreshed water glass, watching Bairre over the rim of it.
“Why are you here?” she asks him again.
He frowns at her. “Someone tried to poison you, remember?”
She shakes her head. “Why aren’t you out there interrogating the rest of the castle?”
“My father is handling that,” he says.
“Still, your time would be better spent helping him than playing nursemaid to me,” she says.
He shakes his head. “Zenia didn’t make that poison herself, it wasn’t her plot. Which means someone—maybe many someones—still want you dead. I wasn’t going to leave you alone, at their mercy, even before I knew about the other attempt.”
“There are guards,” she points out.
“I’m not sure I trust them, either,” he says. Daphne remembers her trip to the dressmaker, how three out of the four guards who accompanied them were on the side of the rebels, according to Cliona. Bairre isn’t wrong to have suspicions. “How are you feeling?”
“My head feels like it’s been cleaved in two,” she tells him. “And I’m so cold. But it also feels like my whole body is on fire.”
Bairre leans forward, touching her forehead with the back of his hand. “You’re still burning up,” he says. “You should try to sleep more.”
He takes a cloth from the table beside him and dabs it along her brow, her cheeks, down her neck. It comes away damp with sweat. This close, she can see the tiredness in his eyes, how pallid his skin is.
“How long has it been?” she asks.
“A day,” he answers.