Then, with a nod she was gone.
7
Kat
The summons arrived after lunch the next day, when a servant informed me that Bastian would like to see me.
I was shut in his rooms, so he could’ve seen me at any point over the past twenty-four hours, yet here I was, being escorted through star-ceilinged corridors to his offices. The few fae we passed watched with undisguised curiosity. At least in Albion folk usually pretended not to stare.
After Bastian had gone, I’d spent the rest of yesterday alone with only books for company.
And my thoughts.
They were the worst companions of all, reminding me of how my body had twitched and trembled out of control as I’d approached death. Reminding me that safety was impossible—this poison meant I was permanently unsafe.
To escape it, I’d buried myself in books and stayed up until I couldn’t keep my eyes open but still didn’t hear Bastian return. This morning, he’d gone by the time I got up.
Now, I felt a little queasy after eating lunch, like the poison was already making its presence known.
I fingered the necklace I’d found wrapped and placed on my bed with a brief note. It hung between my breasts, cool and solid. An inch long potion bottle made of some sort of dark crystal. It flashed green-gold-blue as it caught the light, like a dark counterpart of the moonstone buildings I’d seen yesterday.
Inside was the antidote.
With it had been a large bottle of the stuff and a tiny funnel, as well as a jar of the preventative. According to the note, a sip of this concoction was enough to save anyone I accidentally touched. Thankfully, the poison that seeped from my skin was regular aconite, easily cured by the normal antidote. Not that I fancied testing that out.
Was this gift thoughtful or practical? I couldn’t decide.
The Bastian who’d touched me yesterday—I’d have said he was being thoughtful. But the one who’d left me locked in his rooms?
Perhaps he was the one who’d not only left gowns in the armoire but two drawers full of gloves in varying designs to coordinate with different outfits.
Today I’d chosen a plain pair made of black silk so fine I could feel the coolness of the crystal pendant and count by touch the five pearls that formed each flower on my pearlwort necklace.
I clasped my hands against the urge to rip it from my throat as my skin crawled at the thought of the changeling. It was bad enough the poison he’d made lived in me, never mind wearing his jewellery.
I lost track of the route by the time we arrived at a large set of double doors, where my escort handed me over to a smiling young man who introduced himself as Brynan. Surveying me, he stepped out from behind his desk and ushered me into a large office dominated by a dark yew desk and the man who sat behind it.
“Thank you, Brynan.” Bastian didn’t even look at me as I entered, his attention focused on his assistant instead. “Ensure we aren’t disturbed.”
Once the door was shut, he nodded to a chair in front of his desk.
My pulse pounded in my throat. Why did I feel the same as I had when the queen summoned me to the throne room?
His formality was all wrong. This distance between us was all wrong. And yet it was the only way to be in our impossible situation.
He had hurt me. I had hurt him. Perhaps I’d paid for my wrongs by taking poison. Perhaps it didn’t change anything.
Surviving had changed things though—for me, in me. I had made the decision to take it and I’d been sure of it—still was—but I hadn’t expected to live to deal with the aftermath.
Yet here I was.
Alive and unsure what to do with myself, unsure what my decision meant, unsure of… anything.
And across from me sat Bastian, looking like a stranger.
So I sat like this was a formal meeting, hands clasped in my lap. “You wanted to see me?”
He blinked as though realising he’d been staring at me. “I trust you’re well rested, because we have a number of matters to discuss.”
Were we one of those matters? My stomach was so tight with nerves I couldn’t tell if I wanted that or dreaded it.
He opened a notebook and took a silver pen. “I need you to tell me about every interaction you had with the changeling. From the beginning.”
My throat clenched around any words I might’ve tried to say. That was it. He still just wanted me in order to catch his enemy. I swallowed down my anger and hurt and began at that first summons to the changeling’s office.
Bastian listened, making notes in his book, asking a string of questions when I got to the end of each encounter. So many questions.
But he didn’t invade my space as unCavendish had. He didn’t touch me or leer at me. He was the consummate professional.
How unCavendish should’ve behaved.
Good gods, I should’ve known he wasn’t the real spymaster. The realisation crumpled inside me as I described the time he’d shoved me against a wall.
I could feel his fingers on my chest and shoulders. Every hair on my body strained to attention like it wanted to escape the mere memory of his touch.
My hands squeezed together until my knuckles ached.
I should’ve known.
Shifting in my chair, I tried to erase the ghost of his thigh pressing between mine. I swallowed back the bile in my throat, focusing on the words, on the simplicity of forming sentences, relaying every detail like I was watching it all from the outside.
It was only when I reached the end of that encounter and Bastian asked no questions that I pulled my gaze up from the surface of his desk.
His pen had fallen still in his white-knuckled hold, and a terrible stillness gripped him. His chest barely moved with his breath. Above his collar, the pulse leapt in his throat. Otherwise, he might’ve been a statue.
But his shadows?
They surged from his shoulders and thrashed over the desk, reaching for me.
I didn’t pull away. Maybe with how violently they moved, I should’ve.
Before they got halfway across the desk, Bastian’s jaw twitched, and the shadows crashed to a stop like waves hitting a cliff face. He sucked in a deep breath and they retreated, spilling into his lap and out of sight. His voice grated as he continued his questions.
I had no idea how long we sat there for. I spoke myself hoarse, and Bastian brought chilled water from a cabinet and offered me tea and coffee, but his questioning didn’t relent.
At last, I reached the wedding and the realisation that unCavendish was not who I thought and his death at Bastian’s double’s hands. I sank back in my chair when his questions stopped.
My head pounded and my heart weighed in me, but there was also a kind of relief, like in voicing it, I’d handed it all over to someone else.
I still felt foolish for not realising sooner. I still felt foolish for trusting Bastian.
But I had spilled all those horrible moments I’d kept secret and festering inside me. That poison, at least, was gone.
Bastian flicked back through his notes, a thoughtful frown between his eyebrows.
The moments after unCavendish’s last breaths continued in my mind. He hadn’t asked about those, since he’d been there, but it was like my brain had been set on a course and couldn’t stop.
“You’re not allowed to die yet. That thing is dead, but it was working for someone else.”
The movement. The pain. The strange wheeling of the world round and round and round.