How to Poison Your Husband || ONC 2024

Step 2a: Research your target...

"Shouldn't we be perfecting your method?" Ash paced the room, dark wings fluttering. "We have only one chance to sell this to Lady Lillian. The fate of our twelve-story mansion is at stake!"

"I told you." Ivelle shoved another crumpet in her mouth. "You are gonna stay an' perfec' the twelf stepf plan–" she swallowed "--like the editing genius you are. Meanwhile, I'm gonna dig up some tea on the prince."

"I don't like it. I don't like this place at all."

"It's got its perks." Ivelle sucked the last of the jam off her thumb. "Mmm-mm! That was delicious."

Ash ignored her. He hopped across their four-poster bed, then fluttered to perch on top of the large mirror on the other side of the room. He wasn't normally this fidgety. Something was bothering him.

"Does Lillian seem... familiar to you?" he said, after a pause.

"Huh?"

"Like we've met her somewhere before."

Ivelle frowned at him, filching another crumpet from the generous platter the servants had brought them for dinner as she tried to puzzle through his odd behavior. "... No? I'd def'nitely 'member mee'ing fomeone as pre'ey af 'er before."

Ash fluffed his feathers unhappily. "Forget it. I still don't think you should go out alone! What if the prince pushes you down the stairs?"

"He wouldn't push two people down the stairs in one day. That'd be excessive." Ivelle slapped a quill on the nearby desk and dug in her purse to pull out the 12-step plan scribbled haphazardly on the back of an envelope. "Here. Edit it to your heart's content."

Ash groomed his feathers in agitation, seeming torn between his concern for Ivelle's safety and consternation at the state of her scribbles. His small corvid claws twitched toward the pen. "Be careful," he said at last.

"I will be the most careful person who's ever lived. Don't worry, Ash. I love you too much to leave you all alone in this world." Ivelle blew him a wicked kiss and tweaked his hat. "Especially now that you've become a social pariah among your corvid brethren."

Ivelle ducked out of the room before Ash could squawk in embarrassment, chuckling to herself. Beneath his prickly exterior, Ash was a softie. They might bicker constantly, but she couldn't imagine life without him. She'd only been eleven or so when she'd found him moping about in their cellar after her mom's botched magic spell. Back then, he'd been a shaggy adolescent barely able to fly. They'd looked out for each other ever since. She was pretty sure Ash cared about her more than her parents ever had. Her mum had sometimes been so busy with her devious plots, she'd forget Ivelle existed, and it was always Ash who'd help her scavenge unwanted bread from the bakers' waste bins and sneak into town with filched coins when her mum wasn't looking.

Ivelle turned back to the task at hand. Selling their plan to Lillian was all very well, but she knew the most important part of making this plan a success was getting the deets about Eirifold, and she wasn't going to get that information sitting around eating crumpets. Her mum–the ultimate seductress–had taught her well. You can't pull off a good heist if you haven't done the research, she'd always said. And you haven't properly researched a person until you've learned everything insignificant detail about them, from their favorite appetizer down to the shape of their nose.

Her first stop: the hub of all gossip.

The servants' quarters.

~*~

An hour later, Ivelle was no closer to figuring out how best to poison Eirifold, but she had acquired enough tea to fill several kettles.

The Prince of Estrella, to her complete lack of surprise, had a reputation among the servants. There was the time he'd splashed a servant with boiling tea for not bringing lunch fast enough, not to mention the jester who'd fallen off the balcony under mysterious circumstances while performing for Eirifold just a few weeks ago. The prince had even, the servants told her in hushed voices, released a cage full of baby tigers among the servants on washing day as a practical joke.