Page 52 of Silver & Smoke
But she didn’t need to be a Warsword to sense the danger ahead. Wren gnawed on her lip, a faint yet familiar floral scent tickling her nostrils.
‘My lord!’ one of Darian’s scouts cried, running towards them.
‘What is it?’ Darian demanded.
‘You have to see it for yourself,’ the scout said, his voice wavering.
But the nobleman didn’t move a muscle. Instead, he surveyed his man critically. ‘We have royals among us. Is it safe for them to enter the town?’
‘Everyone’s dead.’
Darian blinked, his only tell the tightening of his grip on the pommel of his sword. ‘Very well. Lead on.’
Their company moved forwards, and no one said a word. Wren’sheart was in her throat as they walked into the outer town square, that strange sense ofwrongnessstill humming around them.
She gasped.
Not at the prominent gallows erected in the heart of the place, but at the dozens of bodies littered across the ground. Men, women and children of all ages lay lifeless in the dirt.
‘Furies save us...’ Dessa breathed nearby.
Wren darted to the closest body.
‘Wren, no—’ Thea called out. But she was already there, searching for a pulse.
She found none. Not on the first body, or the second, or the rest that came after.
The scout was right – everyone was dead.
Wren had seen bodies piled like this before, during the shadow war, but it had always been after a battle, where blood had raged as hot as the fires that burst from her potions, and weapons had clashed with the song of violence. This was different.
These deaths were quiet, calculated.
It had been a mass execution.
Wren sought Darian. The nobleman was walking around the bodies like she was, staring at them in disbelief.
‘This town was governed by one of Lord Briar’s relatives,’ he said, glancing back towards the port, where the lord remained oblivious to the slaughter.
Wren’s gaze fell to the well before the gallows. Stepping over the dead, she approached it. Its bucket was raised and swaying in the gentle breeze as though someone had paused mid-task. She reached for the ladle and peered into the water. There was nothing to be seen; the water was clear, but that faint scent nagged at her.
‘Is it some form of dark alchemy?’ Dessa asked, staring into the bucket beside her.
‘There are no signs of struggle,’ Cal called out as he searched the corpses for clues. ‘No injuries that I can see...’
Wren looked at the devastation before her, recognizing the subtle sweet fragrance at last. Oleander.
‘Because they weren’t slain by blades,’ she ventured slowly. ‘They were poisoned.’
CHAPTER 27
Torj
‘It is often argued that when denied the sword, women learned that the vial was the deadlier weapon – patient, precise and impossible to trace. Which is why many claim that poison is the weapon of womenfolk’
– The Midrealms Chronicles
‘SHIT.’TORJ’S GAZEsettled on Wren as the realization dawned in all its ugly glory.
