The Stolen Heir by Holly Black

I remember his hands in my hair, combing out the tangles and braiding it, and feel a shiver all down my neck.

Just before dawn, the speaker arrives.

“Speaker Gorga,” Oak says, rising. He has three little braids in the back, one coming undone.

“Let me conduct you to my home, where you can rest,” she says. “Next nightfall, we will bring you safely across the snow to your destination.”

“Generous,” Oak says.

Tiernan glances around as we move through the village, alert to opportunities.

When we arrive at her house, she opens the door, beckoning us inside. A clay stove vents into the ceiling above and gives the place a cozy warmth. There’s a pile of logs by the fire, and she adds more, causing the stove’s embers to blaze up.

Then she waves us to a bed covered in furs of many sorts stitched together. I will have to hop to get up on it. “You may sleep in my bed tonight.”

“That’s too generous,” Oak tells her.

“It is a small thing.” She takes down a stoppered bottle and pours the contents into four little cups. “Now let us have a drink together before you rest.”

She lifts her cup and throws it back.

I pick up mine. The herbal, almost licorice scent hits my senses. Sediment shifts in the bottom. I think of my fears that first night when Oak offered me tea. And I think about how easy it would be to put the poison at the bottoms of certain cups, instead of in a bottle, to make it appear we were all drinking the same thing.

I glance at the prince, wanting to give him a warning but unable to come up with a way to do so without Speaker Gorga noticing. Oak drinks his in a gulp and then reaches for mine, plucking it out of my fingers and drinking it, too.

“No!” I cry, but I am too late.

“Delicious,” he announces, grabbing for Tiernan’s. “Like mother’s milk.”

Even Speaker Gorga looks alarmed. If she had measured out the doses carefully, then the prince just drank three times what she’d calculated.

“Forgive my greed,” Oak says.

“My lord,” Tiernan cautions, horror in his face.

“Perhaps you would like another round?” Speaker Gorga suggests uncertainly, holding up the half-full bottle.

“I might as well, and the others have yet to have a taste,” the prince says.

She pours more into the cups. When I look into the depths, there is sediment, but significantly less. The poison, whatever it was, was already in the vessels. Prepared ahead of us even entering the room.

I take mine and tip it against my teeth, but do not drink. I make myself visibly swallow twice. Across the table, Oak has gotten Gorga’s attention with some question about the fruits encased in ice, and so I am able to drop my hand beneath the table and surreptitiously pour out the contents onto my cloak.

I do not look down, and so I’m not sure if I’ve gotten away with it. Nor do I dare look at Tiernan to see if he has managed something similar.

“Why don’t I leave the bottle?” Speaker Gorga asks, putting it down. “Let me know if there is anything else you require.”

“What more could we ever want?” Oak muses.

With a small, tense smile, she rises and leaves.

For a moment, we sit just as we are. Then the prince stands, staggers, and falls to his knees. He begins to laugh.

“Throw it up,” Tiernan says, clapping Oak’s back.

The prince manages to make himself retch twice into a stone bowl before slumping down beside it. “Don’t worry,” he says, his amber eyes shining too brightly. Despite the cold, sweat has started on his forehead. “It’s my poison.”

“What have you done?” I ask him, my voice harsh. When he only smiles dreamily, I turn to Tiernan. “Why would he do that?”

The knight appears equally horrified. “Because he is madder than the troll king.”

I open and close drawers, hoping to find an antidote. There’s nothing that looks even vaguely promising. “What was it? What does he mean, his poison?”

Tiernan goes over to one of the cups, sniffs it, then shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“I was born with blusher mushroom in my veins,” the prince says, the words coming out slowly, as though his tongue is not quite his own. “It takes a great deal of it to affect me for long.”

I recall what he said the night he’d been poisoned with deathsweet. Alas, that it wasn’t blusher mushroom.

“How did you know what it was?” I demand, kneeling beside him, thinking of how recently he’d had another poison in his blood.

“I was desperate,” he forces out. “I was just so afraid that one of you . . . that you . . .” His words trail off, and his eyes seem to be staring at nothing. His mouth moves a little, but not enough for sound to come out.

I watch the rise and fall of his chest. It is very slow, too slow. I press my fingers to his clammy forehead, despair making everything feel as though time is speeding and crawling all at once.

Just thinking requires pushing through a fog of dread. He knows what he’s doing, I tell myself. He’s not a fool. He’s not dying. He’s not dead.

Tiernan looks up at the shadows changing in the bottle glass high above us. A pinkish, soft light filters through, showing me the anguish on his face.

Dawn.

He tries the door. There’s no visible lock, but it doesn’t open. Barred. And there are, of course, no windows through which sunlight might strike Gorga and turn her to stone. He throws his whole weight against the door suddenly, but it doesn’t budge.