“How did you get out of coming tonight?” Cori asked softly.
Izzy shrugged. “I’m just a humble healer now. No one needed me there.”
Cori lifted one dark eyebrow. “Oh please. Your mother is one of the queen’s best friends.”
“My mother is happy in her little cottage. She doesn’t expect me to go to these things anymore.” Izzy gave her friend a smallsmile. “Which was good, because my invitation was strangely lost.”
They both chuckled. “I wish my invitation was lost,” Cori admitted. “Unfortunately,mymother loves these things.” She sobered. “I guess she thought things would be different.”
Cori’s mother was a duchess, and she’d made no attempt to hide her horror at her daughter’s choices—first joining the guards and then the crown legions—no matter that Cori was an excellent soldier and a fantastic leader. Izzy squeezed her arm, and Cori shrugged sadly.
How did everything become so complicated? Izzy sighed as she tugged the sheet off the body and started her examination. She rolled back the young woman’s sleeves and examined her arms. There was nothing to see. Not even a bruise. No discoloration on her nails. She pulled back the young woman’s eyelids but couldn’t see any change to the eye color. No strange smells. “I don’t think she could have been poisoned,” she muttered, half to herself. She looked back up. “Did she attend the feast?”
Shane cleared his throat. “Yes, she sat at the top table. She ate what we all ate.”
Izzy nodded. “How was she behaving earlier? Did she seem unwell?”
A flicker of ruby scales slid over Shane’s forearms. “She… uh… she seemed fine.”
Kai—dressed like Aiden and Luka in a richly embossed silver tunic, but with dark swirls of ink creeping over the skin visible above the collar—narrowed his eyes. “Well, you were closest,” he said scathingly. “So you would know.”
Luka grunted, and Cori looked away. God of Chaos, Izzy didn’t want to ask, but she had to know. “How close, exactly, were you?”
Shane’s eyes flicked toward Cori, but she’d turned to look at the maps on the wall, putting her back to the conversation. He answered slowly, clearly picking his words. “She seemed like herself. Witty. Charming. She loved the dancers and the music. I didn’t notice anything unusual.”
“Did she seem drunk? Did you smell anything?Tasteanything?” Kai asked, the edge in his voice sharpening.
“Well….” Shane scratched the back of his neck.
Luka crossed his arms over his chest, scales flickering. “Just tell them all of it,” he growled. “If we’re going to drag Izzy out of her bed and put her in danger, against my firm recommendation to leave her safe at home, at least be fucking honest.”
What? Was that why he didn’t want her there? Izzy blinked at him.
Shane ignored Luka’s barbed comment. His gaze had gone to the same map Cori was looking at, as if it was suddenly immensely fascinating. “Narya kissed me. She tasted of plums in spiced syrup, which is what we’d all been eating. And—” He broke off as Cori abandoned her maps, turned, and walked to Aiden and Kai, nudging them to let her stand between them and focused her attention on the floor. They immediately closed in beside her.
Shane bristled, his words apparently forgotten.
“And what?” Izzy prompted.
Shane’s gaze returned to hers, his expression blank. “I was probably one of the last people to see her alive.”
There was a moment of heavy silence as they all considered his words. “What do you mean?” Izzy asked eventually.
“I took her for a walk. We went to see the fountains in the conservatory.”
Hard to see fountains when you’re bent over the back of one of the couches, her beast muttered, distressed for Cori and unsettled by the swirling tension in the room.
Cori lifted her head, eyes flashing. “How did your fiancée feel about you showing Narya the fountains?”
“Kaliska and I are friends,” Shane muttered. “Narya suggested itin frontof Kaliska. I thought I was helping build relations. I had no idea she was going to kiss me.”
Cori snorted bitterly. “Of course. Building relations is your special skill.”
“I’m trying to save this treaty!” Shane roared at her, scales flashing. “And anyway, I really did show Narya the fountains. We had guards with us. I wouldn’t disrespect Kaliska like that.”
Cori flinched and dropped her gaze back to the carpet as if it was endlessly fascinating, the fight seeming to have drained out of her.
Izzy rubbed her aching forehead and tried to think over her beast’s angry mutters. “Is that where you left her? In the conservatory?”
