“Precisely. Wolfsbane is even more dangerous than St. John’s Wort, for wolvens.”
“I didn’t notice any difference in how it smelled,” Emma said, staring at the spill on the floor.
“Most wolvens, even shifters, can’t recognize the scent. Smells too closely to average spices most wouldn’t detect.”
“Then how did you know there was wolfsbane in the tea?” Emma asked.
“My father knew herbs and plants well. Needed to, growing up hunting in these woods. He taught me how to avoid wolfsbane as soon as I was old enough to know what it was.”
“Good thing for your father, then. We’d be dead without his knowledge.”
Another thing I had to thank my father for. Even in death, he had saved my life.
“How do you think they poisoned us? No one has been in the cabin,” Emma said.
“We just had supplies dropped off yesterday,” I pointed out. “We ordered a new bag of tea leaves. Someone must’ve tampered with them before the guards delivered them.”
“Then we need to find them,” Emma insisted.
We alerted the guards, who began a full search of the surrounding area. It didn’t take but fifteen minutes for them to drag someone into the cabin.
“Sire, we foundthis onetrying to skirt round the back,” a guard said. He and another guard dragged a resentful-looking wolven shifter in by the arms.
“He had this on his person,” another guard added. He held up a flask. Inside were a few remaining droplets of the wolfsbane tincture.
I recognized the shifter immediately. It’d been years, but he was a murderer I’d put away during my time as the Phantom. I’d left evidence behind that led the Arcanea Alliance right to him. He must’ve been let out of prison recently due to some mishap in the court system. A mistrial, perhaps.
Whatever the case, he’d figured out the Phantom was involved in putting him behind bars, and now he wanted to make me pay for it. The shifter’s face rose into a snarl, and he spat at my feet. He’d come back to the scene of his attempted crime to see if he’d been victorious in his goal, instead of being smart and making a run for it. He certainly wasn’t the brightest assassin.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Emma seethed. She stomped toward the man; her hands were shaking. If not for diplomacy’s sake, I was sure she’d slap him across the face. “Poisoning our tea! You’ve got balls of steel.”
“Someone had to do something,” the shifter cried. “It was only I who was brave enough to do what no one else would!”
“And what may that be?” I asked, crossing my arms.
“As if you do not know. The pack cannot accept you,” he raged. “For the rest of your reign, there will be whispers of the criminal king, and his bastard queen! The pack may show respect to your face, but as long as you live and breathe, they will always despise you being on that throne!”
“Be silent!” I shouted.
“I take no orders from a liar and a cheat! They willneveraccept you as alpha!” the shifter barked.
“Get him out of my sight,” I snapped, and I waved him off. The guards dragged him away, and I turned my back on his curses and insults. His head would roll, to pay the price for treason later, but at the moment I couldn’t handle any more of his hateful rhetoric.
A griffin guard came in to clean up the spilled tea, and to take the teapot out of the cabin. Emma was pacing around the cabin, chewing on her thumbnail as we were left alone once again.
“It seems I will never stop paying for the sins of my past,” I said tiredly. “Even now, what I did as the Phantom continues to haunt me.”
“It’s worse than that. I knew there’d be dissenters, but I didn’t think we’d be attacked in our own village,” Emma said. “Ridiculed and mocked, yes, but this crosses a line.”
“Even worse, his words have some truth,” I said. “He walked into our home and poisoned us with wolfsbane, and he had no trouble doing so. This is a tight-knight community, Emma. People talk, and they know each other’s business. At least one person had to have an inkling of what he had planned, and no one gave us fair warning, or stopped him from doing it. If I am truly being honest, I am certain there are at least a few wolvens who knew of his plans and didn’t get in his way.”
“So… what? We have to live the rest of our lives knowing the pack hates us?” Emma flung her hands up. “It’s not like we have the time, or the energy, to deal with this on top of everything else.”
“Disloyalty cannot be allowed to simmer. It grows and spreads. He isn’t the first to try and kill us, and he won’t be the last, but if we’re to remain protected we need the majority on our side, especially the pack,” I insisted. “We can’t earn the respect of the rest of the fae if our own Faction doesn’t honor us. Gaining the respect of the wolvens is critical.”
“And how do you want us to earn their approval? If passing the Trial of Tears wasn’t enough, what is?”
“We’re going to have to prove ourselves to them. Someway, somehow.”
