Page 25 of The Prince or the Bard?
And not just because he’s the prince.
“Queen's Maid Laoise,” he says, his voice soft, “you make the queen’s tea every day. Are you certain you know what goes in it?”
I step back from him, anger reddening my neck. “Of course I know! I sent for the ingredients myself.”
“But would you know,” he asks, his brows lowered, “if the merchant who brought them to you added something to them?”
I scoff. “I don’t get them from amerchant,sir. I get them from the river fae, who ferry them from the sea fae I personally know. And before you get any ideas, they haven't the slightest interest in what happens among the earthen fae.”
“Damn!” Prince Ruairí withdraws from me, his hands going to the back of his head as he paces out a small circle. He finishes by kicking a border stone.
What's that all about? And why is he so interested in Fiadh's tea?
“I’ve been through this damned garden all winter long," he bemoans, "and not a trace of poison!”
For the first time, I take a good look around me. We’re standing in the castle’s herb garden, the hearty rosemary and box hedges the only deep green in sight. “Poison?Here?”
He nods his head. “Do you know the plant faerie-changeling hemlock?”
“What would you want with that?” I place my hands on my hips, instantly suspicious. If faerie hemlock is anything like the water hemlock of my home court’s wetlands, it’s nothing to be trifled with.
“I don’t personally want it," he explains with a huff. "But if I can find it, it would prove something.
“For fae, faerie-changling hemlock is nowhere near as deadly as the varieties from the mortal realm; it does not kill immediately like the other varietals, and is often disregarded as a poisonous plant by those who don’t know any better. But it is insidious, accumulating in the body over time, and heavily favored by spies. You might know it as faerie-changeling’s bane or—”
“Faerie-changeling carrot,” I finish for him, my stomach already uneasy.
The prince bobs his head. “Her symptoms match its consumption—not at first, as it must have been given in doses so small it would have barely irritated her digestion. But over time it would have accumulated. That would explain it all. The headaches, the weakness and fatigue—”
“Are you talking about the high queen?” My brows shoot upward. “You think someone is poisoning Queen Fiadh?”
He nods.
My mind reels. Why did I not consider it before? Her headaches and mine used to come around the same time, if not in the same degree. But the queen has gotten so much sicker. And the nausea and vomiting—the court healers assumed she was with child, then that she’d been too long away from the sea again.
And shewasbetter, for a time, after our visit to the coast.
“But why is it you?” I demand. “Why isn’t anyone else searching for the poison?”
“Haven’t you noticed, Queen's Maid Laoise? I’m so much more than a prince.”
“Yes, you're also a drunkard and a flirt,” I mutter before I can stop myself. I wince. Is it too late to add a “sir?”
Thankfully, the prince laughs, deeply and heartily. Then without warning, he steps close to me, his cloak brushing my chest.
“Can I trust you, Laoise?” he asks, leaving off my title.
My heart stutters a little. I’ve no close friends among the other servants. Other than the queen, it’s been months since anyone has called me by my name alone.
Swallowing audibly, I tuck my chin. “I’d do anything to help the queen,” I say, and I know it’s true. I would do anything forourqueen, our púca monarch.
“Then help me find that damned hemlock.”
In the year I’vespent here, I never would’ve dreamt I’d be working in secret with Prince Ruairí. But I’ve too little time to marvel at it, watching my royal cousin grow worse by the day.
Prince Ruairí tells me the faerie-changling hemlock cannot be something brought into the castle via trade or clandestine delivery, for he has “ruled out the possibility with a great degree of certainty.”
In reply, I regard him like he’s mad. But when I try to ask how he knows all that, he gets that irritating twinkle in his eye and glides away.
