But Bastian remained propped against the cabinet, still and stiff and silent. Anyone would think he was the one who’d just discovered he was poisoned.
There was more to this.
I swallowed and looked from him to her and back again. “Isn’t it?”
His arms tightened over his chest, but it was Elthea who spoke. “You’ll have to stay in Elfhame while I work on a permanent cure for you, but I’m confident I’ll find one.” And she looked it. Not arrogant, just confident and competent.
That was what had me exhaling my relief. I would get cured, then return to my estate—Robin’s estate—and hide from the entire world. Especially Bastian. Home, away from him and reminders of intrigue and deceit and the horrible foolishness of what I’d believed I’d almost had. Then I could figure out what to do next.
I’d have to check on Ella—but with unCavendish dead, at least she was safe. It wasn’t clear whether I’d be welcome back at court or if I was banned for my behaviour at the wedding, so checking on her might require some manoeuvring. Fingers crossed I wasn’t in trouble with the queen—maybe she knew I’d helped prevent war with the fae. Maybe she’d want to reward me, and I would get a divorce at last.
The silence rang on and Bastian remained clenched tight.
It prickled through me like the threat of a dagger’s point. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Elthea sucked in a breath and opened her mouth.
“I’ll do it.” Bastian clenched his jaw and straightened from his lean. “You’re right. There is more—a side effect of the poison and so many different magics coming together.”
Different magics? I frowned from him to Elthea, but her cool expression gave away nothing.
Slowly, he stalked across the room as though I was not a wild animal who might run, but one that might attack. “Your body has been the confluence for a lot of magic in a very short space of time. There’s whatever the changeling put in the poison.” He raised a finger. “Asher’s attempts to heal you. My…” His eyebrows flickered together. “I’m not sure what you remember from Lunden.”
“You gave me your blood.”
His throat bobbed. “I did. So my magic is inside you.” Three fingers now. “And then Elthea used her gifts to save you.”
Quiet. Four fingers. Like I was supposed to put those things together and come up with an answer. But this was a nonsense riddle. Four plus silence didn’t reveal some new perspective, some surprising solution. It was just something they weren’t telling me—something wrong.
“It’s unprecedented.” Elthea spread her hands, the gloves gone, notebook in one hand. “I’ve known few fae subject to so much concentrated magic, never mind a human.” She watched me like I might sprout an extra head and she was merely curious about the idea. She’d probably note it in her book.
“Would you two just—”
I went to scrub my face and that was when I saw.
Deep reddish purple stains covered my fingertips and nails, like I’d been picking blackberries. No sign of my normal tan skin tone up to the the first knuckle. I’d heard of gangrene turning fingers black, but there was no smell of rot and when I scraped my thumbnail over the tip of my forefinger, I could feel it, so my flesh wasn’t dead.
“This?” I held my hands up. “Is this it?” I huffed a laugh. “I can deal with having purple fingers.” As long as I could eventually leave Elfhame and avoid Bastian in the meantime, I could deal with anything.
Bastian’s mouth twisted, and a faint ripple ran through his shadows. Elthea watched, so obviously taking mental note of my every move, it made my nerves itch.
I swallowed. “It isn’t just this, is it? Tell me.”
“You aren’t merely a meeting point for all that power,” Elthea said at last. “You now have power of your own. A gift.”
“You mean, magic?” Scoffing, I turned to Bastian, as though he might crack a smile that said he thought Elthea was as insane as I did.
But his gaze was fixed on the floor next to my bed. His shoulders rose and fell in a breath that looked like it was a lot of effort before he glanced at Elthea and jerked his chin towards the door.
She stiffened, a frown creasing her smooth face. “But—”
“Elthea.” He held her gaze a long while, and the air hummed with the clash of their wills.
Finally, she huffed and strode out, knuckles white around her notebook.
My throat grew thicker and thicker with each moment as Bastian took his time bringing the chair right to the side of my bed.
What was so bad he didn’t want to tell me in front of her?
He sat, placed his elbows on the arms of the chair, interlaced his fingers, and watched me over them, his calmness belied by the shadows churning around his shoulders and thighs. “You aren’t just poisoned, Katherine. You’re poisonous.”
I blinked. “What?” Theoretically I understood the words he’d just said, but in this order they made no sense.
“The poison and the magic have… fused in your system. You will poison anyone you touch.”
A chill chased through me. I shook my head, but…
Elthea’s gloves. The leather straps. Of course. “My wrists were bound to stop me touching anyone while I slept.” My voice started far, far away but came closer with each word as the truth bored through my skull and into my brain.
Bastian nodded.
My touch was poisonous. Deadly like aconite. I thrust my hands with their telltale purple stains into my lap. “But… but the antidote will clear that. When I take it each day, I’ll stop being poisonous, right?”
His silence made my heart sputter.
“Right?”
His gaze dropped away. “No.”
I shook my head. “You’re wrong. It must. It’ll stop the poison in my system, so it will stop me being poisonous. I don’t believe you.” He couldn’t lie, but he could be wrong. “Bring me the antidote, and I’ll take it and I’ll show you.” My words came like my breaths—too fast, too shallow.
A hug from Ella. A dance at a ball. Morag’s occasional touch on my shoulder. These things couldn’t all suddenly become forbidden—deadly.
Elthea had called it a gift. What Bastian described was no gift.
“Bring me the antidote.”
He watched my fingers knotting together as I tried to hide their trembling. “It’s already here.”
There was no vial of liquid or jar of tablets on the side table, just Elthea’s discarded gloves. No sign of an enchanted necklace like the one unCavendish had given me or any other magical jewellery, either.
Behind him, jagged reflections played on the cabinet’s glass doors. “In there?” I leant forward, halfway to rising.
He swallowed and shook his head.
“Then where?”
His gaze drifted up from my lap and met mine. A slow, sorry smile claimed his scarred lips as he spread his hands, indicating himself.
That meant…
Bastian was my antidote.
3
Kat
Bastian was a person not an antidote.
And yet as I stood, he was still talking about it like it was true.
“The antidote was already in my system, fixed by Asher.” He watched me take a few experimental steps. I wasn’t as wobbly as I’d expected, but he looked as though he might swoop in if I fell. “With the points of connection between us—blood, Asher’s magic, and Elthea’s magic—she was able to use that to make it so I was… your opposite. Your touch poisons; mine remedies.”