Frederico was true to his word, having twelve vials of panacea delivered to my suite as I was dressing for the state dinner that night. Again I'd confined myself to my room, brooding over my decision and dreading how my future bride would take it. I didn't doubt that Frederico would have told the king, which was why I slipped a vial of panacea into my pocket to take to dinner with me.
I'd learned that one could never be too careful in Ardalone.
I had no interest in socializing that evening, sulking in a corner instead to monitor my betrothed's arrival. Surprisingly enough, Dulciana did not appear to be in any more foul a mood than usual. She arrived with Ana-Cristina, the pair of them chattering in Ardal before those of us waiting outside the dining room dipped polite reverences. The duques and their wives were all in attendance, including the pallid Duquesa Delmar, a pair of poorly concealed bruises etched along her collarbones.
Being the only one not to have bowed, the princesses' eyes found me almost instantly. I waved, not bothering with my idiotic grin, though the gesture alone was enough to cut Ana-Cristina's pretty mouth into a sneer. Something harsh tumbled from her lips, earning me a dangerous look from Dulciana. I held her gaze, taking a sick measure of satisfaction from the announcement awaiting her at dinner.
No matter that it meant I would be tied to her forever. I'd cross that bridge when I came to it.
Thankfully, I wasn't forced to wait much longer, the doors opening and the princesses sweeping in before the rest of us. I was shown to a seat at the opposite end of the table from the king. Dulciana was given the foot of the table, though she accepted the seat with grace, settling herself like a queen. She had attired herself appropriately tonight, a garland of gilded flowers nestled among her dark curls - as close to a tiara as she likely dared in her father's presence. Behind her, Armando and another of the royal guard took their positions, awaiting the king's arrival.
Our end of the table was populated by some of the duques' children, the Duque Delbosque's young daughter-in-law, Eliana, taking the seat to my left. She greeted me politely in Pretanian, the words dying on her lips as Dulciana silenced whatever polite conversation she'd have started with a cutting glare the moment she spoke.
But the man to her left was undeterred, a ring to match Eliana's shining on his left hand.
"I do not believe we've had the pleasure of meeting," he said to me, offering a dashing smile to Dulciana as he reached over to shake my hand, "Though I understand you've already met my wife. I am Alfonso Carvalho, heir to the Duque Delbosque."
"Enchanted, I'm sure," I replied, "Though you ought to consider yourself a lucky man with a wife as beautiful as yours."
Dulciana snorted as Eliana blushed prettily. Across the table, Inés appeared seemingly out of nowhere, meekly assuming the seat between Ana-Cristina and Dulciana. Belatedly, I wondered where Beatriz was, casting a glance down the table, only to catch Ana-Cristina's glare. She'd been wedged in beside the brutish eldest Barcolino boy, the one who had made such lewd comments in Lower Relizia, and was clearly not happy about it.
I wondered whether the king would be cruel enough to announce two betrothals that night as the servants whisked in steaming platters of fish and venison. Down the table, the king went through the same act of having his food tasted by yet another child, this one a stoic, fierce-eyed little girl, who chewed the meat and washed it down with a hearty gulp of his wine before it was torn from her fingers.
Prince Frederico, seated beside the king, was served from the same platter, before the servant bearing the tasted food hurried down to me. I was not offered a choice, the food piled onto my plate as Frederico watched, inclining his head when he finally caught my eye.
At least I'd allied myself with a man of his word.
The room fell silent when the king suddenly rose, his hands pressed against the table as he surveyed the lot of us. Our food cooled on our plates as he waited for all eyes in the room to turn to him, Dulciana the final holdout at our end of the table.
"The time has come to make an official announcement," the king said finally, disapproval plain on his face when Dulciana finally looked at him, resting her chin in her hand as if she was supremely bored.
I stared down at the heap of meat on my plate, subtly feeling for the vial of panacea in my pocket.
Here it comes, I thought.
"Princess Dulciana and Prince Thomas will be wed before the end of the month," the king said.
He was met with the clatter of Ana-Cristina's fork as it tumbled to her plate.
"But papa..." she began.
"And you," the king continued in Ardal, "Will be married to the Duque Delmar's heir the month after. I have had enough of your shameful ways, flirting with your sister's betrothed for all to see. It's high time my daughters start acting like princesses, not trollops."
I couldn't help my eyebrows from lifting as I glanced down toward Dulciana. Unlike Ana-Cristina, who had now dissolved into tears, begging her father to change his mind, Dulciana simply regarded the king with a calm, unreadable gaze as her fingers stroked the stem of her goblet. Beside her, Inés had turned green, horrified eyes locked on her father, as if her loveless arranged marriage would be proclaimed next. The Duque Delmar puffed himself up in his chair, a smug grin on his face as he ran appreciative eyes over Ana-Cristina. To his right, his wife had paled.
Beside Ana-Cristina, the duque's son draped a proprietary arm across the back of her chair.
"You can't do this!" Ana-Cristina wailed, "Rico, stop him!"
"Father," Frederico began, his eyes sliding from his crying sister to Dulciana. "Perhaps this..."
The king silenced his son with a gesture, the crown prince falling silent.
"Dulce, please!" Ana-Cristina finally wailed, turning desperate, tear-filled eyes to her sister.
The king slammed his fist down on the table, the flatware and glasses rattling. Inés jumped, her lip trembling as she too looked toward Dulciana.
"That is enough!" the king all but snarled.
Silence blanketed the room as the king stared down his eldest daughter.
"Well I think congratulations are in order," the Duque Delmar said, grinning like the cat that got the cream as he cut over Ana-Cristina's sobs. "This is a most fortuitous match indeed!"
"I believe the polite thing to do in such a situation is to offer a toast, your Grace," Dulciana said, her voice unnervingly calm and level for the magnitude of the announcement that had just been made. The Duque Delmar glanced over at her, keen to gloat his victory.
"Only the best, now that the best of the royal line will be tied to mine," the duque said, his lips slicing into a cruel, smug smile. He lifted a hand, gesturing to one of his men-at-arms, who in turn barked an order at a servant.
Behind Dulciana, Armando shifted as the servant produced a number of bottles of fine, Vareinnian sparkling wine, already chilling in buckets of ice.
It seems that the king had shared the good news with the duque beforehand.
Corks popped and the sparkling wine fizzled as it was poured for the nobles. The other duques' guards shifted uncomfortably when the glasses were placed before the nobles without being tested first.
"A toast-" the Duque Delmar began, only for the scraping of Dulciana's chair to interrupt him. She stood at the foot of the table, the slender glass of sparkling wine clutched between her fingers.
"I hope you'll forgive the interruption," she said, a razor sharp smile on her face, "But I think it only fitting that we toast to all the happy unions of the royal line today. Such a fine Vareinnian vintage brings yet another marriage to mind..."
She raised her glass in silence, her eyes shifting to her brother, who had gone stone still in his chair.
"To Prince Frederico and the Vareinnian countess who will one day be your queen," she said.
The king's face went puce, his glare shifting to his son, but Frederico was already on his feet.
"To obedient daughters and sisters," Frederico countered, lifting his own glass, "Who know their places, in both family and country. And to our king, who always guides us down the paths our lives are meant to follow."
Whatever the words meant, they clearly appeased his father, who raised his own glass with a grunt of approval before the nobles raised their voices in agreement. The king drank first, before the rest of the table followed suit. Dulciana's face remained neutral despite the fire burning in her eyes as she took a sip from her goblet, resuming her seat. I waited until Frederico had drunk from his before taking an obligatory sip from mine, the weight of the vial a comfort in my pocket.
But it was only after the liquid had left my throat that I noticed Inés.
The younger princess had gone rigid, not even reaching for her goblet, but rather staring at it as if she were facing death incarnate.
I should have looked to her first.
The king coughed as heat began to bloom in my belly, a nutty, bitter aftertaste coating my tongue. I'd assumed it was simply the vintage, but when the Duque Dellanos huffed a cough himself and his wife reached for her water, a chill raced up my spine.
"You scheming bitch," Frederico snarled, standing so quickly that his chair toppled backwards. He whirled and dashed from the room before Armando, who had sidled towards the door in all the dramatics of the toasts, could draw his sword to stop him.
Panic mounted in the room as the rest of the dinner guests began to cough. I looked to Dulciana as heat raced up from my stomach, something far more metallic now coating my tongue.
She still wore that placid expression she'd worn throughout the dinner, calmly reaching into her cleavage to pull a pair of glass vials free. She passed one to Inés while Ana-Cristina, seeing what her sister had done, fished one out of her own cleavage.
I reached for my own, quickly swallowing the panacea, only to realize that the liquid in the princesses' vials was amber, not pink like mine.
The poisons behind the golden grate. The yellow one that Frederico had kept glancing towards...
Don't believe all you hear, though...There is no such thing as a cure for all poisons...
"I won't miss you, príncipito," Dulciana purred, smiling at the empty vial between my fingers as she swallowed the contents of her own.
Panacea wouldn't work against whatever Dulciana had put in the wine.
My eyes slid across the table to Inés, who hadn't touched her goblet, her vial still untouched between her trembling fingers. To my utter surprise, her tear-filled gaze was fixed on me.
"I warned you," she all but sobbed.
I rose, my chair scraping against the floor as a wave of dizziness upset my balance. Stumbling into the table, I was about to reach out to snatch away her vial when a scream to cut through the air.
The Duquesa Delmar kept screaming as the king's head hit the table, yellow, putrid foam at the corner of his mouth. The room erupted into a frenzy of feminine screams and ringing steel, the nobles' guards unsheathing their swords.
Inés thrust her arm across the table, still crying even as she extended her vial towards me in the chaos. I reached for it, only for the vial to go flying as Dulciana batted her sister's hand away, the glass shattering against the floor and spilling the amber remedy all over the carpet.
"Don't you dare!" Dulciana snarled at her younger sister, seizing Inés wrist in a white-knuckled grip. The younger princess whimpered as a cough sputtered free from my chest.
The floor tilted as my hand found Dulciana's wrist, the sheer power of my grip breaking hers on Inés. Before I could even process what I was doing, my free hand had reached for my dinner knife as I yanked the eldest princess clear across the table toward me. Plates and glasses smashed as she thrashed, until I pressed the knife to her throat, hugging her back against me.
"Armando!" she screamed, her struggles abating when the knife's edge drew blood as she squirmed. I let the blade dig in deeper as the captain of the guard's son advanced towards us.
"Let her go!" he snarled. Dulciana's warm blood trickled over my thumb, but it was all I could do to keep my balance in the room that suddenly seemed to be spinning. The floor was littered with fallen nobles, Alfonso Carvalho screaming as he cradled a motionless Eliana in his arms, foam seeping from both of their mouths.
"Call a healer and tell your guards to stand down, or the princess dies!" I shouted, the light beginning to flicker in the corners of my vision.
Armando scoffed and I knew right then that he was not about to obey. I didn't have enough time before the poison felled me. If I was going to get out of this, I needed to act, quickly.
I backed myself towards one of the many service doorways, pressing the knife deeper.
"Armando!" Dulciana screamed, writhing in my arms. The knife bit into her neck even more and she froze, sobbing. Armando was watching me, stalking towards us as he motioned for his guards to stand down. Bizarrely, the Duque Delminas did not appear to be suffering the effects of the poison, instead whispering urgently with the Duque Dellanos, who was wheezing. I watched a vial of amber liquid pass from Delminas to Dellanos before my back hit the wall.
The king's sightless eyes stared at me from the end of the table.
It was a coup. She'd staged a coup to kill the king and any of the duques who hadn't aligned with her. Delminas was on her side and in possession of the antidote, which he was likely only handing out to those who swore their allegiance to Dulciana.
She was going to slaughter them, anyone who stood in her way.
And I could end it...
My vision faltered. No, there would be no ending this now, not if I wanted to live. I threw the princess towards the guards, stumbling sideways into the service entrance. If I killed Dulciana, I was as good as dead myself and the little bit of my brain still un-fogged by poison had registered that being alive was infinitely more preferable to being dead.
I knew in that moment that I was a very selfish person. I'd chosen to save my own life rather than forfeit it to spare my country from the war that would no doubt come at the hands of the princess.
But I had no time for thinking, not when every ounce of my concentration was focused on carrying me to the one place I suspected was safe in the entire palace. I slammed into walls and corners, forcing a finger down my throat to vomit up what little was in my stomach before lurching onward. Whatever poison they'd used had already reached my bloodstream, but I hadn't passed out yet.
If I found help, I could live.
I hit Frederico's door, the wood buckling open under my weight. It slammed into the wall and I staggered to a halt, taking in the scene before me. Frederico was perched on the window sill, his mouth wide in alarm as he noticed me. Behind him, her hands on his shoulders, was a cloaked woman with a brutal series of scars running down the side of her face. It looked as if some great wildcat had clawed her face, barely missing her eye and slicing through the corner of her lips as the scars trailed down her cheek.
"Go!" the woman shouted in Ardal, giving Frederico a push, but the prince held firm.
"Don't you dare kill him! The king is dead!" I barked, my voice barely more than a rasp as I stumbled towards them. The woman drew a short, lethal looking sword as she put herself between me and the prince.
"They poisoned him too," Frederico said.
"I don't care. We have to get you out," the woman replied, baring her teeth at me. Frederico shot her an annoyed look before he grabbed the pouch attached to her belt. She swore at him, attempting to break away before he tugged out a vial like the ones Dulciana had used in the dining room.
"Dose him," Frederico said, his hands closing around a rope I hadn't realized was tied to his waist.
"I'm not wasting it on him!" she snapped.
The sharp pain of my knees thudding against the floor was muted as my vision reduced to pinpricks.
"Damn it, save him! We need Pretania or else..."
My hearing went next as I slammed down onto the rug, my muscles unable to move quickly enough to break my fall. I felt the vibration of footfalls as a pair of booted feet stalked towards me. My head was tugged upwards by my hair, something spicy and bitter forced down my throat. I tried to cough, but my body was unresponsive. The solidity of the floor vanished and I felt as if I was hanging in free-fall as the world went dark.
My last memory was of a violent stream of Ardalonian curse words.
**A/N: I didn't have the heart to break this one into two, so it was a super long one today. That being said, because of everything going on in real life, I haven't had much time to edit this one and will likely come back to tweak it one day.
To those of you who will ask when the next update is coming, unfortunately I don't know. All I can do is ask for your patience. A family member has been hospitalized, which is why this update was delayed. While I appreciate that you are all so into the story, please understand that I am not a writing robot, I am a human being who is going through a tough time. Please consider that before posting a comment demanding an update and shaming me for not sticking to my usual update schedule.
I appreciate your patience and support and I promise I will try to get the next bit up when I can.