Page 26 of The Prince or the Bard?
It seems that the prince truly is more than meets the eye.
He’s also insufferable.
But the queen is what matters. So I put up with his secretive ways for the nonce.
Queen Fiadh sleeps more and more these days, her waking hours full of pain. When I question her on anything she might eat or imbibe outside of her meals, her eyes widen, then close.
“I can think of nothing,” she replies.
At night, I sneak into the larder, searching for anything unusual. I scrutinize every carrot placed in the queen’s food, searching for the poisoned root that so resembles it and going so far as to taste it for her. And as I don’t feel any different, it cannot be in her meals.
As the first spring flowers are cut for decorative arrangements inside the castle, I walk by every arrangement, hoping I’ll spot the lacy blooms.
In the afternoons, I patrol the grounds, sometimes alongside Prince Ruairí. The warmer the weather grows, the more people fill the gardens and greens surrounding the castle, complicating our work.
The longer we search, finding nothing, the more I’m convinced it’s there. This must be happening to Queen Fiadh for a reason. púcaí may not be High Fae, immune to nearly all maladies, but we are hearty and strong. Though we may suffer, we refuse to fade.
I just need Fiadh to hold on a little bit longer.
Today, for once, I have the gardens to myself, on account of the heavy rains. As if a water horse-shifter would mind! Hints of spring green sprouts still populate the beds alongside more mature plants, as well as where magic was used to revive the leeks for today’s meal. The rain increases the fragrances of the rosemary, lavender and thyme plants, scenting the air.
It has to be here. I scan the cut herbs and stems for anything that stands out. If faerie hemlock is truly to blame, it would be have to be somewhere it could be easily accessed by the poisoner. Somewhere no one would expect somethingdangerous to be hidden, where it would not raise questions if they were seen cutting stems.
Because if faerie-changeling hemlock is anything like water hemlock, the stems are as deadly as the root.
The soft tap of shoes upon the stones has my head snapping up. Of course. Ruairí is here, the rain rolling off his raised hood. I let it soak my hair, happy for the water.
And happier still when my eye catches on something. Could it be?
“Laoise,” he says, still using my bare name. “Why are you searching here again? We’ve checked it a hundred times.”
I smile at him a touch smugly. “I’ve been searching everywhere, Your Highness,” I say, “and only now did it occur to me that it might be hiding in plain sight.”
I point toward a clump of stems near the very base of the border hedges, trimmed far shorter than any of the garden’s other herbs.
At first, he does not understand.
“It’s planted away from the other herbs,” I explain, “and cut—”
“Shorter than the rest.” Ruairí groans, dragging a hand over his face. “All this time, I’ve been looking for telltale stems and flowers.”
“And they’ve been keeping it too short to be noticed.” The color drains from my cheeks. “They must’ve been poisoning her daily. But who? And when? When I asked the queen—”
“She denied eating or drinking anything else. As she did with me.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, letting the rhythm of the rain help me sort my thoughts.
“It was too quick,” I say at length.
“What?”
When I open my eyes, Ruairí is standing so close, I can feel his breath on my temples. Rain slips from the edges of the hood and onto the tip of my nose.
Before either of us can stop him, he reaches out, gently brushing away the drops with his fingertip. My breath catches at the contact.
I glance up at him, our eyes briefly meeting. There’s a question in his eyes—something deeper than asking what I meant just now. But there’s no time for that just yet.
Fiadh's life is in danger.
