Page 27 of The Poison Princess and the Lord of Misrule

The thought sparks an image of Ren, of that moment of weakness in the moonlit garden, when I told him about my secret spot. I glance through the arched window. The moon isn’t completely full tonight—but it’s close enough. And I wonder if I’d find him there, if he’d dare to come.

I shouldn’t have told him about it, yet some traitorous, hungry part of me wanted him to follow, to be defiant for me.

And I think, maybe, I crave a little defiance, too. To do something reckless, all for myself.

The chambers are quiet, the candles burned low, Isolde long since retired to her own room down the hall. I ease from the covers of the bed and pad across the room to the wardrobe.

I think about the way Ren says my name. The way it falls from him as if he’s afraid of breaking it. The way he saysYour Highnessin a breathless cadence andPrincesswith a curl to his mouth andSerawith a reverence that makes me shiver—and each one is said with the same devotion, the same hunger held in his intense eyes.

By Nythera’s darkness, I shamelessly think about his fingers pressing sugar to my tongue. His trembling restraint as he held them there. How he hovered at the corner of my mouth as if every muscle in his body was at war as he held himself back.

I think about his thumb at my lower lip and the sugar dissolving on my tongue.

I think about the taste of him. Just the briefest taste. The salt of his skin and the sugary sweetness lingering after, and how my body had responded, bloomed open in some hot, foreign way I’ve never felt before.

And all I can think right now is how I want to feel it again.

The king touches me like I am his.

Ren touches me like he is mine.

The thought pounds in my chest with a force that knocks the breath out of me, and I open my wardrobe, my pulse loud in my ears.

The nightdresses I packed are arranged in the back, untouched since I arrived. Threnmere silk, pale and weightless. Not the heavy brocades the king’s seamstresses have been pressing on me since my arrival.

I take out one of the white ones. Thin enough that I can see the shadow of my hand through it. Sheer enough that in moonlight, on wet skin, it will cling to my body—damp, transparent—in the moonlight.

I slip out of my sleep gown and pull it on. The silk whispers against my body, cool and weightless.I throw a dark hooded cloak over the nightdress, gather it close, slip my bare feet into soft slippers.

Some of the wolfsbane bloom is still in the pocket where I left it, dried at the edges, fragrant with its violence. I touch it, my anchor. My reminder.

I am Seravyn Morvaine of Threnmere. A daughter of poison. I have wolfsbane in my blood.

I slip out of my chambers, the corridors dark and silent, the nearly full moon spilling silver through the high windows. My slippers make no sound on the stone. My breath is quiet. The cloak trails behind me like a shadow I’m dragging into the dark.

There’s a hidden staircase behind a tapestry in the north wing that leads to a door that reaches the outside garden. I found it my first week here, marking my escape if necessary.

The orchard gate is ahead. Beyond it, the path that winds down through the apple trees to the eastern wall. Beyond that, the river.

I think of Ren’s touch, of his ruined exhale as I walked away—and I crave that touch to replace the callous touch of the king on my skin.

I think, with a wild, reckless desire, that I will not allow myself to question?—

The bitter cruelty of this king, the uncertainty of my future, the dangerous game I’m playing with Ren—I don’t let myself fear any of it. Not in this moment. Not when I think of the way my belly fluttered as Ren licked his thumb, the second after I’d tasted him.

My very own poison.

As much as I am a daughter of Morrishan, goddess of thorns and the patient dark, a am also a daughter of Nythera—and to desire is to be alive. To want is to still have something left worth wanting. And after a month of being hollowed out, the fact that I can still want and desire andcraveis proof that I’m not yet a deathless garden.

Sometimes, a girl just craves a little poison.

And tonight,Morrishan forgive me, I intend to drink.

Chapter 9

Renick

Iexhale a frustrated breath, tossing on this too-soft bed.