Her body drowned in the heat of him, tiny electric currents jolting up her spine as his tongue slipped between her lips.
Aris didn’t taste of belladonna, but of warm ginger and honey. And good God was it delicious. It was a conscious effort to not let her tongue move against his, and to remember that this was no kiss. He was helping her. And yet, while she didn’t mean for it to happen, she sighed against his mouth. The second she realized her slipup, Blythe jerked away, mortified.
She collected the teacup and the pot at once, settling everything back on the tray where it belonged.
“Thank you.” Her voice was brisk as she stood, scooping up the tray. “I-it’s only ginger.” Though Blythe was doing her best to avoid looking at Aris, it was impossible not to see the smugness in his grin.
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Good,” Blythe continued for no other reason than that she could not help herself. “And you should know that it’s been a long time since anyone has kissed me. You took me by surprise, that’s all.”
Aris had no right to be so amused, and yet he was practically gleaming. “It wasn’t a kiss, Miss Hawthorne.”
She had to turn away from him, refusing to let him see that she was flushed from the chest up. “Of course not. I have been kissed before, Your Highness. I know they usually elicit a more rousing response.”
Aris’s laughter ceased. “Of course they do,” he said with the utmost defensiveness. “That’s because this was not a kiss.”
Blythe only shrugged, hoping she didn’t look like she was sweating as much as she was. “If you don’t mind, I need to deliver this to Eliza.”
“By all means, don’t let me stop you.”
She didn’t intend to. Before she let herself get any more distracted, she shoved past him and hurried toward Eliza’s room, knocking on the door once, then twice when no response came.
“Open up, Auntie!” she called, knocking again. Still there was no answer. Blythe’s heart was racing, lodged in her throat as she opened the door and prepared herself for the worst.
Fortunately, Eliza had not suffocated, nor had she died in a mess of her own vomit like Blythe had once nearly done. Instead, she was asleep on her bed, above the sheets and still fully dressed. On the nightstand sat a small jar of laudanum.
Blythe let herself feel the weight of her exhale leaving her chest. Eliza wasn’t dead or poisoned; the laudanum had just put her to sleep. Perhaps it truly was a passing illness; something entirely unrelated to poison. Blythe set the tea down on a table as something gave her pause.
Clutched in Eliza’s hand, barely visible, was a tiny vial of half-consumed herbs. Not the kind prescribed by doctors, but the kind found in the very apothecaries that Eliza had always claimed to hate. Blythe reached for it, trying to get a better look. The moment her hand brushed against Eliza’s, however, it was as though Blythe were thrust back weeks into the past, when she’d stared at Elaine’s skeletal reflection in the mirror.
The Eliza before her was little more than a corpse of withered skin taut against sharpened bones. Blythe could do nothing but stare as a maggot curled over one of Eliza’s hollow eye sockets, through her nose, then disappeared back into the corpse whose cheekbones were too gaunt and whose neck was twisted at an impossible angle. There was something stirring within the depths of her body; a sickly and consuming presence that Blythe shut her eyes against.
It was a hallucination. It had to be. Eliza had been asleep, breathing contentedly only seconds before—
“Miss Hawthorne?” The prince’s voice cut through her thoughts, and her eyes fluttered open. “Miss Hawthorne, are you well?”
Blythe forced herself to look at the bed, where Eliza was curled and resting peacefully. No bones. No hollow eyes or dark presence. Just a young woman in an enviously deep sleep.
Blythe gave herself fifteen seconds to memorize what the contents of the vial looked like, and then she stepped away from Eliza and took the prince by the wrist.
“Come on,” she whispered, not daring to spare Eliza so much as another glance before hurrying from the room. “Let’s get out of here.”
THIRTY-ONE
EVEN WITH THE SKY AS GRIM AS IT WAS, THE TOWN AT THE BASE OF Foxglove’s cliffs, Fiore, was busier than Celadon had ever been.
Men strolled the streets with faces less severe than those that Signa had grown accustomed to, untroubled by the business that awaited their return in the city. Courting couples out for a seaside promenade stopped to enjoy slices of sunshine that cut through the gray clouds, their voices jovial.