Page 26 of Silver & Smoke
Wren blinked up at the horticulturist, stunned. ‘You know, in all my years of study, no Master Alchemist has ever told me that...’
Braxton shrugged again. ‘Lady Pendelton likes her flowers fresh. They keep for longer if I cut them in the morning for her vases.’
Wren nodded, taking care of the thorns as she harvested another rose. ‘Well, thank you for sharing that. I’ll keep it in mind.’ She raised a brow at him. ‘Any other gems of wisdom?’
‘Depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On why you want to know.’
‘Well, I’m not selling your trade secrets to the competition, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ she told him, wrapping her samples in fresh silkspore.
Braxton huffed a laugh. ‘Whatareyou trying to do? Propagate? Make perfume? Garnish your drinks?’
Wren smiled. ‘I’ll take any and all insights.’
‘Well, in that case, I’d tell you that sometimes hardwood cuttings taken in late autumn or winter have a higher rate of success than spring softwood cuttings, particularly with this variety... And in terms of morecreativepursuits, the fruit that forms after flowering is often overlooked and underestimated.’
‘You mean rose hip?’ Wren asked. ‘It has lots of medicinal purposes.’
‘Exactly,’ he said with a wink. ‘You may want to take a few samples of that too, eh?’
Wren found herself grinning. ‘You don’t happen to have a greenhouse, do you, Braxton?’
‘Vernich the Bloodletter is dead,’ Torj announced to the gathered nobility and bannermen.
Shocked whispers broke out across the Pendelton dining hall, and Wren herself sucked in a sharp breath from where she sat at the head of the table. She had spent much of the morning in Braxton’s greenhouse, testing her silvertide cuttings from Delmira against those grown at the estate border. She had lost hours dissecting the rose hip from each and adding it to her experiments, testing its response to Torj’s blood samples only to be dragged away from her work to the debriefing happening around her now.
‘Vernich? You think Vernich is dead?’ Thea repeated from behind her, flinching at the news.
Darian sat to Wren’s right, his expression unreadable, and on her left Kipp said nothing, but she saw a muscle feather in his jaw.
Wren hadn’t known the Bloodletter well, only that he’d had a bloody history with Thea, Cal and Kipp from when they were shieldbearers. The eldest Warsword of the original cohort had someunorthodox methods that had often left his trainees in the infirmary. And yet, during the shadow war, Vernich Warner had shown them a different side of himself, and in the end, he had been celebrated as a hero alongside the rest. Which was why the news was so shocking.
‘What else, Torj?’ Thea called.
‘Another Warsword, Ashlyn Graves, is also believed to be dead. Parts of her were found along with Vernich’s mace. The amount of blood spilled there suggests none survived,’ Torj replied, bowing his head for a moment. ‘But it’s with worse tidings than these that Hawthorne, Whitlock and I rejoin you... Our orders took us to villages of the Broken Isles, where a new kind of devastation has impacted the people there. Silas is creating an army of followers similar to the monsters called howlers in the shadow war, if not a less developed form of the very same thing. They crave violence and are willing to join any cause in order to gain access to a bloodbath. That is who makes up much of his army. People who were once normal citizens of the midrealms, who are now lusting after violence of any kind and flocking to Silas’s ranks.’
Wren watched him, devastation washing over her in waves. It was just like the shadow war. The only difference was that she now knew the man who stood before them was her soul-bonded, and that he was dying. Even from where she sat, she could see the tremor he was trying to hide in his fingers – a symptom that was presenting far too early given what Lord Lucian had claimed about the poison being slow to release...
Was he somehow increasing Torj’s rate of decline in order to force her hand with Darian sooner? Or had he lied? At Wren’s request, Darian had attempted on several occasions to obtain the information from his father without raising suspicion, but to no avail. Either the senior Lord of Larkwood Valley kept his cards incredibly close to his chest, or he didn’t trust his own son. Or both.
Wren stiffened as the veins in Torj’s neck momentarily darkened,a glimpse of the poison surging within. Darian squeezed her hand in warning and she averted her gaze from the Bear Slayer, turning instead to Lord Lucian, who had taken the floor.
‘And what of the fact that you bring the Prince of Naarva with you?’ the nobleman said, the edge in his voice clear for all to hear. ‘When the matter of his abdication remains unresolved and he was to remain confined in his residence at Drevenor?’
Zavier stood. ‘The Guild Master herself charged the Warswords with my protection. Not only did she have cause to fear for my life, but she also expected my expertise as an alchemist may be useful on the road. Which it has been. It was I who identified the dark alchemy and shadow magic being used to weaponize those poor souls into bloodthirsty creatures.’
‘So we have one wayward prince who garners the protection of not one, butthreeWarswords?’ Lucian scoffed. ‘That doesn’t support Silas’s arguments at all.’
‘I didn’t say I—’
But Lord Lucian didn’t let the Prince of Naarva finish. ‘We thank you and the Warswords for the information.’ He turned to his fellow noblemen. ‘Lord Pendelton, Lord Briar, perhaps we should continue our discussion somewhere more private?’
Darian squeezed Wren’s hand again. ‘That’s my cue, my love.’
‘And mine,’ she replied, rising to her feet.
