“All right?” he asks her.
Daphne does a quick inventory. Her throat is dry and rough, her muscles a bit sore. She desperately wants a bath and some food, though nothing seems appetizing at the moment.
“More or less,” she tells Bairre. The words are hoarse but intelligible. “How long did I sleep this time?” she asks, afraid of the answer.
“You had a normal night’s sleep,” Bairre assures her with a small smile.
She leans her head back against the pillow and casts her gaze toward the ceiling. “Are there any updates?”
“Zenia’s nanny along with her husband and brother,” Bairre says. “All executed now.”
She feels him watching her for a reaction and she wonders which one she should give him. Horror at the thought of their deaths? Sadness? Guilt? She’s too exhausted to pretend any of those things.
“They tried to kill me,” she tells him. “I’m not sorry they’re dead.”
He nods, glancing away. “They were interrogated thoroughly beforehand, but they didn’t say who they were working with,” he says.
He says interrogated, but Daphne hears tortured. She wonders if he knows it himself.
“But it wasn’t the rebels,” she says.
“No,” Bairre says. “It wasn’t the rebels.”
Even though one of those rebels was holding a knife to her throat a week ago, she believes that. “I need to speak with Cliona,” she says.
Bairre frowns slightly at the change of subject. “She’s checked in on you a few times,” he says. “But you should really rest some more.”
“I’m fine,” she tells him. “Actually, I’d like some fresh air. Can you ask Cliona to meet me for a walk through the garden?”
“You almost died, Daphne,” he says, as if she is unaware of this.
“But I didn’t,” Daphne says, trying to sound surer than she feels. “We’ll be careful, it’s only the garden.”
“Careful isn’t enough. Careful won’t stop an arrow or a bullet or a poisonous gas or—”
“Perhaps the assassins should consult you—it seems you’ve put a lot of thought into how best to murder me,” she says.
Bairre fixes her with a dark look, one that reminds her of other things that were said while she was sick. I’m here because I want to be, he told her.
“This is serious, Daphne,” he says.
It’s different, she thinks, than the way he said her name before, when she had her hand against his cheek.
“So am I,” she says, pushing the thought aside. “I know the risks; I’m the one they tried to kill. But I’ve been stuck in bed for a day and a half and I refuse to let fear keep me sequestered in this room any longer.”
He holds her gaze for a long moment, his jaw tight. “Fine,” he says eventually, getting to his feet. “But you’ll take guards with you.”
Daphne opens her mouth to argue, then closes it again. This is why she didn’t tell anyone about the first attempt—she knew it would mean losing her freedom. But now that they’ve passed that point, there is no going back.
“Fine,” she replies. “But I want Mattlock and Haskin,” she says, remembering the guards who accompanied her and Cliona to the dressmaker, two of the ones Cliona said were with the rebels. Ones who will keep quiet about anything they might overhear.
He nods once. “Done,” he says, starting toward the door. “I think I’ll join you as well—a little fresh air sounds nice.”
Daphne opens her mouth to protest, but he’s already gone, the door closing firmly behind him. She flops back down against the pillows and lets out a groan. She can’t very well speak freely with Cliona if Bairre is there as well.
If only she hadn’t gotten poisoned, she would already have been able to talk with Cliona. The thought of it still rankles—of the three sisters, she’s always been the most adept at creating and identifying poisons. The fact that one almost felled her is embarrassing.
Daphne frowns, a memory filtering back through her mind. Beatriz. The vial she sent. The poison she thought Daphne could identify. After failing so miserably with one poison, she’s determined to redeem herself. She crosses toward the jewelry box on her vanity and sifts through it, finding the false bottom and pulling out the glass vial Beatriz sent, full of the dark red liquid.
Daphne unstoppers the vial and smells it. Wine. She puts the stopper back in the vial and holds it up to the sunlight streaming through her window, turning it this way and that. She squints, looking at the liquid, at the fine, siltlike flecks that sink to the bottom.
Someone is adding something to King Cesare’s wine. Daphne frowns and digs through the hidden compartment of her jewelry box again. It’s full of other vials of liquids and powders, funnels, and other necessities her mother’s apothecary put together for her. Daphne finds a strip of white cloth and a magnifying glass and takes a seat at her vanity.
After shaking the vial, she spills a splash of the wine onto the cloth and watches as the liquid is absorbed, leaving a few grains of grit on the surface. She takes the magnifying glass and holds it up to the cloth, her heart beating so loudly in her chest that she wonders if the entire castle can hear it. The grains are rough and all different sizes, as if they’ve been ground up from something with a mortar and pestle, though she’s quite certain by the uniform color that they come from the same source.
She pinches them off the cloth and brings them to her tongue—even if they are poisonous, such a small amount won’t hurt her. That taste. She knows that taste.
Her hands begin to shake as she rifles through her miniature laboratory, searching for a vial. When she finds it, she opens it and spills some of the seeds inside onto her palm, comparing the color to the remaining grains. They are the same shade of brown—so dark it’s nearly black. She pops one of the seeds into her mouth and bites down, crunching it between her back teeth. It tastes the same, too.
Daphne’s mind is a blur as she closes everything up again. She rings for her maid and lets the girl change her into a fresh day dress and braid her hair, one thought echoing all the while in her mind.
She needs to talk to Beatriz. Now.
* * *
—
When Daphne finally makes it down to the garden, swaddled in so many layers of wool and fur she’s actually sweating, she finds Cliona, Bairre, and Haimish already waiting, Mattlock and Haskin standing just a few feet away. Perhaps she should be surprised that Haimish is there, but she isn’t. She can’t think of much beyond Beatriz, though she knows that Haimish’s presence is a lot less worrisome than Bairre’s. She’ll need to find a way to be rid of Bairre if she’s going to get the stardust Cliona promised.
When Cliona sees her, she smiles, and even though Daphne knows better, she could almost swear the other girl looks genuinely relieved to see her.