Koda takes the glass, swaying a little as he rises. His voice slurs and he nearly spills his drink all over her as he bends right down to her and stares into her black eyes. “Your loyalty can go fuck itself.”
Crone makes a tut-tutting sound, blowing him off as she turns her back on him and approaches my fountain. Even slower than she approached Koda. So painfully slowly that it’s obvious she doesn’t offer me any sort of loyalty at all—not that anyone could have been in doubt about that already.
I stand and stride to her, taking the final glass before she offers it. “I demand your loyalty, Crone. But I will also require your obedience and your life.”
My focus is on the pulse at her neck as I speak, testing her reaction.
She spins away from me, and her deepest fear continues to elude me.
“Drink and accept my loyalty,” she cries.
Arga has sunk back to his chair, holding his glass up to Crone before he puts it to his lips. Esta also drinks right away. Koda takes a beat, scowling into the glass, and finally, I take a sip.
The liquid is surprisingly sweet. It tastes like grape juice. But after I swallow the first mouthful, a bitter aftertaste remains on my tongue. I had to shut down my demon sight because of my surroundings, but my wolf’s senses—her acute sense of smell and taste—are suddenly screaming at me, even though I’m not sure why.
The other royals empty their glasses, drinking every drop, but I stop and peer at the swirls within the liquid. My reflection stares back at me, my suddenly-transforming eyes quickly becoming the color of my hair.
Crone half-turns back to me. She is expressionless, but the pulse at the base of her neck is beating faster than before.
She’s… not afraid. Excited, maybe?
“What’s wrong, Nova?” she asks sweetly. As if she’s genuinely concerned.
I resume my study of the swirling liquid. “What’s in this?”
A question I should have asked before I took a mouthful.
“Your next trial,” Crone replies, her voice booming across the room so loudly that she makes the watching elites jump. “The wine you drank contains poison.”
She swings from Koda to Esta to Arga, and then back to me. “There are four of you, but only three vials of antidote.”
As she speaks, previously-concealed doors open along each of the side walls—three doors on each. At the same time, the walls transition from opaque to transparent, then back to opaque again, so that, for a few moments, I can see inside the closest ones. They are all large spaces, each decorated differently, each one cluttered.
“The three vials are hidden somewhere in these six rooms. You have thirty minutes to find a vial.” Crone gleams at me. “Or you will die.”
CHAPTERFORTY
Four of us. Three vials of antidote. One of us is guaranteed to die.
Arga shoots to his feet, his face flushed. “What the fuck?”
His outburst takes me by surprise since I was sure Crone would have warned him. But he drank the whole glass. He pitches it against the nearest wall, nearly hitting a couple of elites, who dart out of the way before the glass smashes, the last few crimson drops dripping down the wall like blood.
Koda breaks the tense silence, his heavy laughter peeling out before he points at Crone and says, “So much for your fucking loyalty.”
Esta, too, appears surprised, her hand shaking visibly around her glass.
Crone’s lips rise into a cold smile. “You’d better hurry.”
A step behind me, Roman has tensed up, his muscles bunching as he strikes a rune against his wrist. It glows with dark light, a perfect script.
“Oh, I don’t think so, Lord Rune.” Crone spins to him. “I’ve formulated this poison very carefully to account for any healing rune you could create.”
Roman’s lips are bloodless as he presses them together, the tension in his shoulders and thigh muscles warning me he’s going to charge at Crone at any moment.
I step between them.
My heart is hammering, and I try to calm myself. The faster my heart beats, the quicker the poison will spread through my body.
