Page 140 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers

Her glare flashes. “Not the ones outside, no.” The guard’s bright hair is pulled back in a tight bun, and when a lightning flash explodes past the window, I see it—the single twist of a tiny Cymrean braid woven through it.

“Cash,” I whisper, a tremor of dread twisting up my spine.

Talon steps closer to my side, but Cash… he takes a half step forward and arcs his sword up at the guard. Her own sword sweeps up to meet it in an ear-shattering clang.

“You dare to challengeme?” Cash’s voice is a deadly, vicious tone I’ve never heard from him before. His free arm slams into the guard’s ribs.

Steel flashes, quick and sharp—the hand wasn’t free at all but clutching a small blade.

She stumbles, a choking gasp sputtering from her lips.

The short sword falls from her hand, but Cash wrenches the narrow hilt he’s just slammed between her ribs up in a brutal twisting motion.

The guard’s eyes bulge, blood trickling finally out from her mouth.

Cash heaves a shoulder against his father’s gleaming door, and it cracks open.

“Get her inside,” he barks at Talon, and holds the door open long enough for us to slip in quickly after him.

The guard, now in Talon’s arms, chokes on thick streams of crimson, her fingers clawing uselessly on the hilt still buried in her side.

I peek through the doorway quickly and see that there’s not a spot of blood on the floor outside the door. No sign of what we’ve done.Yet.

When Cash slams the door shut, Talon dumps the guard on the floor, moving their own blade across her throat. She stops fighting then, the furious light in her eyes burned out.

Once we’re inside, every inch of my skin crawls. The roomsmells… wrong. Sour. Like soiled sheets and sweat and unwashed skin. The chamber is easily twice the size of Cash’s room, and there’s a table set up with vials and liquids and powders at the foot of the High King’s bed.

A faint ringing fills my ears. This is not what a king’s bed-chamber should be like. This is a smell of… I shudder.

Ofdeath, and rotting things.

Cash walks up to the table and runs a hand along the delicate glass vials and bowls. One look is enough to chill my blood—I know the flecks of silverish shards from even a brief glance.

Cinnabar.

Nothing else causes the psychosis and paranoia that it can in the right dose. The trick is keeping it low enough not to kill your victim—but the High Queen is Cymrean.

They poison as easily as they breathe.

Keeva made a name for herself by being one of the few to stock that particular substance.

I slip one vial into my pocket, just in case I need proof later.

“Poison,” Cash realizes aloud, looking to the bed. His father lies there, licking his lips in sleep and wheezing like a wounded animal under a mountain of blankets. “I suspected, but there was no way to prove it. She just kept saying he was…” His jaw grits, venom bright in his cold eyes.

“Indisposed,” I say softly, thinking back to the High Queen’s words at the masked ball.

Darkness pulls down around Cash’s moonlit features. Whatever he plans to do with this proof now that he’s got it, I don’t intend to wait around here to find out.

I have to be quick—then I have to get out.

I step to the edge of the bed, to where the man who’s haunted my nightmares for as long as I can remember sleeps restlessly. This is the man who tore my family apart, who was behind every single terrible thing that’s ever been done to us. Old Ones, how is this what power looks like up close? The High King’s skin is thin, almost like parchment worn at the edges. Thick streaks of gray shoot through his hair and line the thick eyebrows over the two eyes clenched tightly shut against the terrors of his own mind.

He may be the High King.

He may be the one stealing magic from us, keeping this conspiracy of silence as the nobles continue to drain every last drop from the Seven Wells. And he may be the one who banished the Martyr and the mages, and who has made our isle so damn weak.

He is all of those things, but he’s still just a man—a man made of only flesh and bone and blood.