I don’t have the heart to tell him I despise the tapestries. That I can’t stand to give them any more than passing glances when my path crosses them in the hall.
“Of course not. Of course not,” Gunter says by way of apologizing for accidentally implying that I’m a liar by nature. “But vow or not, you must break this one.”
I close my eyes and take a breath. How in Alondria I’m going to convince Gunter not to go anywhere near the parasite tonight, I have no idea. Now that I’m here, I can’t imagine why I thought this would ever work. But then an image of Blaise flashes before my closed eyes—one of her rocking and shaking and muttering, her eyes glazed over and far, far away—and I know I must.
“Blaise is under the impression the parasite is the devious sort and will trick us into a dangerous bargain.”
Gunter narrows his eyes over his spectacles. “Well, then we shall agree to consider her bargain over the span of the next mooncycle, to provide time for consideration and insight. And to receive Blaise’s input on the matter.”
I exhale. It’s not a bad idea, but it’s still not anything Blaise will be comfortable with. “She also expressed concern that the parasite has the ability to sway minds, especially the minds of males.”
Gunter laughs, actually laughs, and even his belly shakes. “I can guarantee you, there is no such magical power that exists. We shall avert our eyes from whatever form she takes if we must, but I, for one, am not concerned.”
I rub at my temples, my headache returning with full force. When I take a swig of blood from the flask on my belt, a bit of the pain subsides. “Gunter, please. We have to find another way.”
Gunter cocks a brow at me. “I can think of no better way to ascertain information about the nature of this creature than to interview it ourselves.”
I lean back against the wall and tilt my head backward, chewing against the inside of my cheek, mulling over my words. “I think…I think something might have happened to her.”
“Of course something’s happened to her, my boy. She’s been infested with an ancient form of evil magic, tossed into prison by the male she adored, kidnapped from the aforementioned jail, and locked up and tortured in the basement of a foreign queen’s castle.”
“I don’t mean any of that. I mean, I think something happened to her that causes her to panic at the idea of being alone in a room with males during a time in which she has no control, no idea of what’s happening to her body.”
Gunter just stares at me for a moment, and in the moment our eyes lock, I know we’re thinking of the same event. The event we’ve never discussed. The secret we’ll both take to our graves, should we abandon our immortality by being subjected to violent deaths.
It happened several years ago, when I was thirteen, shortly after I arrived at the castle. At Gunter’s command, I was working on perfecting an antidote for any poisons using wormwood as their base. There had been a rattling at the door, and I’d assumed it to be Gunter—because who else would it have been—when none other but the King of Mystral had strode into our workroom cell.
It had taken only a few short words to recognize that the king was delighted to find me alone.
An alarm had sounded in the back of my mind—my mother had warned me at an early age of what some twisted adults might try to do if they ever caught me by myself.
I’d tried to excuse myself, but the king had blocked my path on the way to the door, resting his hand upon my shoulder and snaking his fingers up my collarbone, caressing my neck.
His touch had been slick and clammy, and the thought of it—the thought of what could have occurred had Gunter not arrived that moment—still haunts me.
But Gunter had arrived, and he’d barreled into the workroom as if on a mission, though he didn’t dare acknowledge what he had just witnessed. Instead, he launched into a drawn-out explanation of the necessity for better trade relations with Charshon in order to obtain the flax he needed for his thread.
The king had clearly been disgruntled, but Gunter had paid him no mind.
Gunter only glanced at me once, but the look in his eyes had been enough to melt the terror keeping my feet sutured to the ground.
I’d scurried out of the dungeons and rushed to my room after that, but it occurred to me that the king might come looking for me there, so instead I crossed the hall and locked myself in Gunter’s room, perching myself on the seat of his spinning wheel, never taking my eyes off his door.
I was right; the king had knocked on my door across the hall. He’d even waited long enough for a servant to pass and asked them to fetch a key for him.
He’d found the room empty and given up.
The next day, the king was found dead. Poisoned.
Neighboring kingdoms blamed Abra for it; said her ascension to power had always been suspicious. It wasn’t difficult to believe she’d enchanted the king with her wiles, only to spike his wine with poison. After all, didn’t she wear a bracelet infused with the same poison that had killed her husband?
I knew it was Gunter, of course. The king’s symptoms had all pointed to wormwood—he’d vomited his guts up in a long and arduous death. For weeks, I skirted around the castle on my tiptoes, sure the queen would discover Gunter’s transgression, sure my mentor would die for having protected me.
But the queen shouldered the insults, the accusations from other royals, none of which could be proven. She mourned her husband as if she’d loved him, but she hadn’t searched for his killer. Not really. Not like one would expect from a widow of unlimited resources.
I’d wondered about it for years, and only when I reached maturity did I begin to suspect what kept the queen from pursuing the truth surrounding her husband’s death.
She’d made me come to dinner one evening, and all at once, she started talking about him. About how he wanted a child so badly. That he’d always been good with children—fancied and took special care of the servants’ children whenever he found them running about the castle.
I’d realized it then; the queen had known what her husband was, and had simply decided not to know.
So when someone had hated him enough to poison him, she hadn’t pursued the murderer, too fearful was she of discovering the motive.
Gunter sighs, then crosses the room and sits at his spinning wheel, picking flax from the pile next to him and threading it through the machine.
My mentor doesn’t have to say a word; I know he’ll honor Blaise’s request.
CHAPTER 17
BLAISE: AGE TWELVE
My father is dead.
It happened in the night while I slept. No one bothered to wake me, not even in the morning when the entire household knew of it.
They took his body away before sunrise because Clarissa told them to. I keep trying to come up with a reason she would do that, but I can’t think of any except that she meant to punish me.
Clarissa believes that the timing of my father’s death is for the best. After all, our neighbors won’t ask questions when I lock myself away in mourning. They won’t pry when I no longer walk in public.
