Poison & Wonder // 9
CHAPTER NINE
Kieran was fifteen when he met her.
Fuming after an argument with his father, he left the manor to roam the town alone, nowhere to go, sneaking out for the first time. Then the men caught the scent of blessed blood. Kieran scurried under a bridge, hooves thundering over his head, shallow water murmuring under the soles of his boots.
Small fingers closed around the crook of his arm, reeling him back.
Kieran twisted around, dagger raised toward her. The girl’s wide eyes caught on the blade, blue as the night. The rest of her he took in slower—a curved, long nose, her most striking feature; full lips parted in a gasp; hair falling in a thick curtain of waves down her back.
“Let me help you,” she pleaded.
Kieran shouldn’t trust a girl standing amongst shadows. But he was alone, and magicless men ran above them, thirsty for his blood.
She whirled him around, pressing his back against the pier, a hand clamped over his mouth. His dagger flew to her throat, but she didn’t flinch. As the hunters’ steps faded, she let him go.
The tip of his dagger drifted from her neck to her bodice, poised to strike her heart. He could have tossed her back, away from the shoring, plunging her into the river.
“Follow me.” Her voice was so commanding he forgot she was a peasant girl, and he was the Ruler’s son.
Lowering his dagger, Kieran accepted the order and followed her through every narrow alley she turned to. Invernia’s doors were shut. On the dead end tucked between the tailor and the bakery, Faye crouched, attempting to shift a heavy stone. Together, they pushed it to the side with a thump, giving way to a hole in the ground. He glanced over his shoulder, checking if the noise had attracted attention, but she was already jumping into the pit.
Kieran followed her like a blind man.
If it weren’t for his moonlight magic, they’d have to stumble through the unknown in complete darkness. Using it left her no doubt he was a Moonblessed. She could have turned on him, but it was a gamble he was willing to take. Light rose from the palm of his hand, casting a pearlescent glow over her lovely face.
He found her the most breathtaking thing, despite her hollow cheeks and the mud on the hem of her dress.
She stared at the light in silence before urging him to move.
Kieran clasped her wrist, lest she had any ideas of leaving him in the underground and calling back the magicless. Again, she did not flinch. It seemed to him that strange girl was a statue come to life, who’d forgotten her flesh was now tender to the knife. She walked about as if nothing could touch her.
They weaved through cold stone corridors, arched and carved by human hands, which forked into two or three more directions. She always knew which way to go. Despite being aware that the tunnels connected the city—Conan even used the entrance hidden in the courtyard to escape his duties—Kieran had never ventured down there.
“Where are we?” Kieran asked.
“Thought the cat had eaten your tongue.” Her voice had a sweet, high tone, but there was the edge of a sting beneath it.
He jerked her wrist back, forcing her to face him. “I don’t have time to play.”
“You aren’t very bright, regardless of your magic.” Faye had a mean face, not yet softened by life at the manor. “These tunnels circle the whole of Strelon. We’re passing the forgery, I think. Is there a place you could go for solace?”
Since Moonblessed don’t prosper alone, Faye must have known the answer.
“Yes. On the other side of the woods.”
“I usually don’t go there.” She frowned. “There are all types of creatures in the woods.”
“I know. I’m one of them.”
Instead of realizing she was alone with a wolf deep inside the tunnels, she said, “Perfect. You shall keep me safe from the monsters as I have done for you.” She strode onward. “What’s your name?”
Should I lie?
“Kieran.” At least, he protected his surname.
“I’m Faye Nightingale,” she said, perking up. “I live at the orphanage.”
Her life rested on the palms of Kieran’s hands. As an orphan, she’d be another unclaimed body in the underground tunnels, not worth the fuss of a proper search—Kieran would know, being his father’s son. The Ruler didn’t waste resources on lost causes.
“How do you know this place?” Kieran had been young, reckless, and far from the throne. Back then, he didn’t care to erect a wall of self-protection around him.
Faye smirked. “I use it to sneak out of the orphanage.”
“Why do you need to sneak out?”
“So I can have a drink at the Lucky Coin, silly. There’s this barmaid I know… she lets me in without asking my age.” Her eyes glinted with mischief.
“What happens if you’re caught?”
“You ask very unsuitable questions.”
What a strange, wicked girl.
“I snuck out too,” Kieran said, puffing out his chest.
“Really?” Faye’s gaze was the first compliment she ever gave him. “What for?”
Not for the careless whims of boyhood. “I needed air.”
He felt pathetic.
“Are your parents very strict?”
“My father is. My mother died,” Kieran babbled.
Faye’s fingers were so light on his shoulder, but the feeling was a ghost imprinted onto his skin. “I’m sorry. My mother died during childbirth, and my father was a fisherman. He drowned when I was younger.”
“I’m sorry,” Kieran echoed. His knuckles brushed hers, and he lied to himself, pretending it was an accident. “Do you have anyone else? Siblings?”
Although she was not the first girl he spoke to, she was the first he cared to listen.
“No one,” Faye said in a smaller voice. “But I’d like to have a big family. What about you?”
She appeared so interested in everything that came out of his mouth that Kieran had no choice but to keep talking. “I have a little brother. He’s a handful. Maybe one day a big family will adopt you.”
“People rarely come down to the orphanage. When they do, they’re looking for free maids or sorcerer material, not daughters.” A scowl flashed on Faye’s face before she smoothed it into neutrality. “I wish I had magic too,” she added in a murmur as if afraid the walls might hear.
Magicless aren’t supposed to beg for it. Moonblessed bestow magic upon the ones they think will be of use, which was why Kieran had them on his track, drooling over the thought of ripping him open to drink his blood. It would cost them their lives. Maybe they meant to drain the heir to make a statement about the Moonblessed’s precious blood, the magic they dangled like bait.
His grandmother had promised folks a new existence. She had made them sorcerers and sent them off into her battles. The newly made sorcerers expired, their magic depleted, defending Lunaris. The survivors filled the noble houses with healing, irrigated their fields, toiled their land. Better to work than to starve.
“I thought you were scared of magic. There are tons of it in the woods,” Kieran said.
“Of course not.” Faye nudged his shoulder. “I have weak lungs; won’t live much longer. If I were a wolf, I would have healers to cure me into old age.” Her words were light and steady, even as she confessed her illness.
“What else would you do with your magic?”
“Dream of a better world. Dream it into existence.”
She sounded so noble.
They reached the end of their journey, facing up a wall. Above them, the tunnel opened into the woods. A ladder was propped against the wall. Kieran climbed up ahead, helping her after him.
When she stepped over the twigs, a coughing fit raked through Faye’s body. Her knees bucked, but Kieran held her upright and waited it out. She was dying. Pale, eyes rimmed with shadows, she was magicless and frail, unfit to survive another winter. “I should go back to the orphanage.”
“Did you mean it? Would you like to have magic of your own?” It sounded like a crime, but she never judged him, nodding at his question. “Even if that made you a sorceress?”
“Magic is magic.” Faye’s eyes rolled back, body slacking.
He carried her to the manor, her heart beating against his chest like it belonged. Kieran ought to have confirmed her wishes, made sure she understood what being a sorceress would entail. But his selfishness could not be denied—he would save the girl.
With a snap of his fingers, Kieran flashed a moonbeam against Conan’s window. A sign in a language he couldn’t speak with anyone else. Flash two times for trouble.
Conan cracked the window open at the second flash, took in the scene, and sprung downstairs. Farther from the guards, the kitchen windows were another of his curfew escape routes. When he reached them, he was panting, blonde hair spiked in every direction.
Eyes narrowed in a threat—don’t let her fall—Kieran placed Faye into Conan’s arms.
Never, brother, he seemed to answer as he pulled her into safety, a broad grin on his face.
Avoiding the guards, the brothers moved into an empty room and lay Faye on the bed.
“I’m at a loss here, Kieran. Care to explain why you’re carrying fainting girls around town?”
“Be quiet.” Kieran placed a hand over her burning forehead. “Go to your chamber.”
“I’m not leaving you alone with an unconscious girl,” Conan said sternly.
Anger twisted Kieran’s insides. “What exactly are you insinuating?” And where had he learned such things? If Kieran hadn’t his hands so full, he would have had a conversation about his brother’s runaway habits.
“Nothing. Oh, gods, that was awful of me! Forgive me.” Conan raked a hand through his blonde hair. “But really, Kieran, you’re not helping your case. Just tell me who she is and what happened.”
“Stay if you will. But you won’t call for Father, and you won’t lose your mind over it.”
“Over what?” Conan swallowed hard, staring at the girl he would come to love as a sister.
“Just last week, you said you wanted to do something that’d give Father a raging headache, did you not?”
“It might have been an exaggeration.”
“I never ask you for anything. I’m asking you to keep quiet and let me do this now. This girl saved my life.”
In a rare feat, Conan turned serious. “What happened?”
“I was being chased. Magicless wanting to become sorcerers, I think. Wanting my blood, at least.” Bitterness flooded Kieran’s mouth.
Conan’s eyes were the size of the moon. “They tried to draw blood?” His voice shook. “Whatever you’re about to do, if it’s meant to repay her for saving your life, count me in.”
Gently, Kieran rocked Faye’s shoulders, calling out her name until she opened her eyes.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“Can you trust me?”
Faye ignored Conan hovering behind Kieran. “You trusted me first. I can do the same.”
She shouldn’t have. Moonblessed aren’t kind.
Kieran’s teeth elongated, ripping out of his gums as blood filled his mouth. Old friends with the pain, he didn’t scream as his jaw stretched and snapped into place to accommodate the wolfish features.
She recoiled, but his fingers squeezed hers, and Faye’s frame relaxed.
“Do it,” she said.
Without a second thought, Kieran sunk his wolf fangs into a wrist, his precious blood running down his arm in rivulets.
“Open your mouth,” Conan commanded.
Faye glanced between them. Chest rising with a deep inhale, she held Kieran’s open wound to her face, breathed out, and drank. More than she ought. Enough to cure the disease in her lungs, chasing away the remembrance of Kieran’s mother’s illness. Though it couldn’t heal another wolf, moonblessed blood worked on both magicless and sorcerers—only it had secondary effects for the magicless. A few gulps would have been enough to turn her into a sorceress, but Faye drank past the point of salvation and into the path of true strength.
Father had his doubts at first, but Kieran slipped the idea into his head. Let her stay, and she might be a good offering to a noble. Make a deal out of her. Kieran sold Faye to his father as if she were a dream.
Nine years later, his father has burned to ashes and can no longer stop Kieran from brushing Faye’s hair from her face. She looks peaceful while sleeping, incapable of deceit.
“You must find a bride soon.” Clara’s voice crashes into Kieran’s peace. “Or a surrogate if you wish to marry a man.”
“Our father’s ashes haven’t yet settled into the ocean, and you’re already thinking of more ceremonies?”
Clara sighs. “I’m worried. You’re the Ruler, but you still need the Moonblessed’s support. You know you cannot marry sorcerers.”
“I don’t quite follow.”
“I just don’t want you to forget. You’re not above the rules.”
“I make the rules.”
“Invernia’s? Yes. But you don’t make Lunaris’ rules. You propose them, and all five territories get a vote. Without a majority, you can’t change a law that applies to the whole kingdom. Especially not the sorcery law.”
“I’m aware.”
Kieran has been through the lesson countless times. There’s strength in numbers. If left to their own devices, the sorcerers would realize what the Moonblessed have done, and they’d rebel. So the Moonblessed keep them docile. Feed them magic and control their reproduction, or lack thereof. They give more blood to their sorcerer soldiers so they last longer in battle, and let them drown in anguish after depleting their magic. Kieran knows it all. He cared to memorize, in particular, what happened to his uncle.
His cousin would have been twenty-two, had she not been killed alongside her parents. Would they have been good friends? Would she crumble under the crown’s weight like Kieran does? Such ideas would brand him a rebel, but he tastes satisfaction in finding himself far from what his father designed for him.
In silent prayer, Kieran follows the pattern of Faye’s breath.
“You care for her, don’t you?” Clara’s voice brings doom over the room.
Saving him from having to answer, Faye shifts and opens her eyes, then touches her bandaged neck. “The healer did a good job.”
His sister’s presence is a ghost on his back as he buries his fingers into Faye’s hair. “I won’t hurt you again, no matter what is at stake. I shouldn’t have done it.”
Faye moves her hand from her throat to clamp it on Kieran’s shoulder instead. “I wanted you to.”
He’d never bitten into a sorcerer’s flesh before, never known how much one could endure. Biting her was a mistake born out of vanity. “You have terrible ideas, sometimes. I shouldn’t have listened.”
“Did it work?”
“Yes,” Clara answers in his place.
Kieran bled a goddess to grant his father’s soul its passage—the Moonblessed were equal parts fascinated and horrified. That goddesses are immortal is of no consequence. Lupa herself neither struggled, nor questioned Kieran’s claim to her blood. Did he learn it from his grandmother? She entwined the Thorns’ history with the divine, and now the divine is Kieran’s birthright.
“Good.” A wide grin shows on Faye’s face like a row of pearls. “I have so much more to share, so many ways to help you.”
Kieran promised her they’d become equals. Not for a night, forever. She expects him to save her, to save her people, to—
He cannot fall into the trap of thinking it has something to do with himself. That she hopes once the sorcery law is gone, she may be frank, and she may not be guarded, and she may return to the moment his lips almost touched hers inside his bedchamber. That, this time, Kieran will get to savor her, devour her, keep her.
The truth is harder to swallow than dirt. Inside his head, Kieran’s wolf thrashes against the bone, howling, grunting, a toothless beast.
A knock comes at the door.
Clara has the grace of taking the guard’s message for him. When she turns back to Kieran, her lips are pressed into a bloodless line. “Montier’s army is lined up at the border.”