“Two sleeping herbs?” I ask.
“Three. Poppy extract.” She gestures to a tube that’s turned a different color. “I had to use a bit of magic to separate and find the pieces.Purchasedmagic.”
“I was afraid it was poppy,” I admit with a sigh. “Send the bill and your list to replace over to the manor. We’ll replace whatever you need.”
Maria starts to dispose of the samples and tests as I try not to think about why a mother would drug her child.Unless she doesn’t know?That is the best hope. Why, then, would the Maudite physician? Why make Isabeau think she’s cursed? Why drug her?
“Fire?” Maria asks, gesturing at the pile of chemicals and remains of the tonic in the belly of her unlit firebox.
I hold my hand out, palm down, and set fire to the mess. Maria seals the firebox. The smoke from the noxious mess will be carried away on the breeze; it’s safer than discarding the poison nearby where children or animals could get exposed to it.
“Did Father ever use any other Hunter’s magic for your work? Or just fire?” I ask.
“When your mother was ill after the last pair of babes. He stopped her bleeding,” Maria says quietly. “She’d have died if not.”
“Oh.”
“They were too small to survive, but he tried to save them, too.” Maria stares at the compounds in her tubes. “Your duke is trusting. The tonic is good for easing stomach complaints. I presume that was the original reason for it—strengthen and easing digestion—but mostof the rest is to keep her calm or make her sleep. The ingredients are as addictive as liquor, more so the longer she drinks it.”
I feel my shoulders slump, thinking about her urge to take the vial even after it was covered in excrement. Addictive poison. I must tell Isabeau that her mother lied to her, and I don’t relish the thought. At all.
I ask, to be sure I understand, “So there’s no curse?”
“That’s not for me to say.” Maria dumps the first vial. “What I can share is that this is to keep her from waking. Beyond that ...” She shrugs. “The duke is drinking medicine, dangerous medicine. If you were to drink this, I suspect you’d be fine. If I did? My heart would slow and eventually stop.”
I shiver. There are a lot of poisons I hold in the manor, but each has an antidote. I thank Maria and rush home to tell Isabeau she is not cursed. What the dowager duchess knows is still a mystery, but this, at the least, is good news.
Inside the manor I don’t pause to speak to anyone. I rush upstairs to see my love. I push open the unbarred door, and I call out, “Isabeau?”
The casement is flung open, and the cold night air flows into the room. The bed is empty, but her things are still in the room. I walk around the bed, thinking she could have fallen or ... whatever foolish explanation I can muster to explain why she’s missing.
“Isabeau?” I stare out the window into the darkened wood.
She is not there. Did the addiction to the tonic make her go to the village? Was she passing there as I was coming home? Or is she simply enjoying the stars now that she’s awake?
I return to the main level of the manor. “Mother? Have you seen Isabeau?”
“She was agitated after our evening meal and went to her room early,” Mother says with a frown. “I expect she’s in her bed by now. The curse—”
“Is a lie. The reason she sleeps at night is the new tonic. It’s not her herbs that she used to take as a child. It now has several powerful sleeping medicines. Without it, tonight, she’s awake. The curse was supposedly the reason she was sleeping, but without the tonic, she’s not sleeping. She’s not there.”
We enlist Rylan and the staff. Together, we search the house and the stable, and I am left with no recourse but to take Imp into the forest. People don’t vanish, not like this. Two thoughts wrestle in my mind: Is Isabeau in danger from the Beast of Brimmond? Or a very bizarre thought strikes me: Could she somehow be the Beast? Both thoughts fill me with fear.
“Does she have sleep-wandering troubles that the Maudite physician strives to treat with the new version of her tonic?” Mother asks carefully as she follows me to the stable. “Could this be a case of someone trying to poison her? Some people do not like that she is a woman and a duke ...”
“Perhaps.” I feel like poisoning is the least deadly possibility. “If so, if she walks in her sleep, she’s in peril now. We know there’s something in the night.” The saddle is now on Imp, and I am ready to find Isabeau. “I need to ...” My gaze finds Mother’s. “There is another reason she might be in the woods at night, a valid reason to drug her if she ... if Isa ...”
“You aren’thuntingher, Gabri,” Mother says gently. “Don’t let fears cloud your mind, child.”
I nod, but I feel like my world is collapsing. My voice is a fragment of a whisper as I ask, “Do any curses turn people into beasts?”
“Yes, but—”
“Perhaps the curse isn’t that she sleeps. Perhaps the curse is transformation.” I think of my difficulty identifying the creature. Could it be because it was hiding under the human face of my beloved?
The possibility is too horrific to imagine. Is my lover, my intended, the creature that killed my father? Is she the murderer in the night? Or is she out there, staring at the stars or insensible in the pains of missing her tonic? Is my beloved easy prey for the Beast of Brimmond? Or is she my quarry?
Chapter 29
