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Chapter Twenty-Five
publish date:
2026-10-09 08:00:00Hadley
Nessa had developed a face.It was not a dramatic face. There was no widening of the eyes, no sudden medical urgency, none of the things television has taught me should happen when somebody looking at your insides finds something concerning.It was worse than that.She was looking at the monitor and thinking.I have learned to distrust thinking.“What?”“Nothing.”“That
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Poison Chapter Sixty-Two
Hadley By half past two I had made three separate attempts at the same section of the painting. The first got interrupted by Rowan coming in. The second by a message from the kitchen about whether I intended to eat at any point today. The third ended when I discovered I had been holding a clean brush over the wrong pot for the best part of four minutes. I put it down. Rowan looked up from the far end of the table. “That’s the third time.” “What?” “You’ve stopped.” “I’m thinking.” “You’re looking at a jar of water.” “It’s an interesting jar.” “Hadley.” I picked the brush up again. He waited. I put it down. “Fine.” He smiled, faintly. “Thought so.” —- He looked better than he had when I found him at lunchtime. Not good. Better. There is a difference and I have become extremely practised at identifying it. Aunt Elara had got hold of him after the interview and apparently responded to the entire situation by putting him in a chair and cooking enough food for six people.
Poison Chapter Sixty-One
KillianI stopped outside Avery’s room at seventeen minutes past eight.I hadn’t slept particularly well.Every time I closed my eyes, I remembered Hadley’s mouth inches from mine, her fingers around my wrist, and the fact that Maddox Callum had the worst fucking timing of anyone alive.Whether she’d have kissed me back was another matter.I’d spent an unreasonable amount of time thinking about that.I straightened my cuff.*Her.**Not now.**Want.**I know.*Ghost was quiet for a second.Then, with the entirely unearned satisfaction of an animal who had been waiting years to say it:*Want Her.*Two words.He had not managed two words together about anything since the night at the lake.I opened the door.—-Avery was sitting up in bed.There was a breakfast tray beside her, untouched except for one piece of toast that had been broken into four remarkably even pieces and then rearranged.The curtains were half drawn. Somebody had brought flowers, which were on the windowsill in a vase
Poison Chapter Sixty
Hadley The first indication that something was wrong with my morning was that my bedroom door appeared to be occupied. I discovered this at twenty-three minutes past seven. I know the time because I had looked at the clock while deciding whether twenty-three minutes past seven was too early to start an argument with my wardrobe. It was not. I had won. I was in a pale blue skirt and a cream blouse, my hair was behaving well enough that I had decided against investigating why, and I had every intention of getting downstairs before Kiana discovered that breakfast can be negotiated. I put my hand on the door handle, turned it, and pulled. The door came open about three inches. Then something moved on the other side. Something heavy. I stopped. There was a long scraping noise. I frowned at the door and pulled again. The resistance vanished. Entirely. The door came toward me considerably faster than I had planned for, and from the corridor came a crash, followed by a sound like
Poison Chapter Fifty-Nine
Killian The lift stopped at the lower level. Avery had gone quiet beside me. She was still holding my hand, and every few seconds her fingers tightened, as though she had remembered something and needed to establish that I had not gone anywhere. I let her. The doors opened onto the corridor that runs to the private healer rooms. At that hour the wing was almost silent. Two lamps burning at the station, a trolley left against the far wall with a folded cloth over whatever was on it, and somebody’s tea going cold on a windowsill. Isla was waiting outside the second treatment room. She had changed into the pale grey the senior healers wear on duty, which told me she had been most of the way to bed when I telephoned and had got dressed properly on her way down. She looked at Avery first. Then at the hand holding the front of her dress together. Then at me. “Come through,” she said. —- Avery stopped. I felt it before I saw it — the whole of her weight going backward through m
Poison Chapter Fifty-Eight
Killian By half past seven I had been asked to choose between two shades of ivory, decide whether the eastern gallery required additional seating, and give an opinion on a floral arrangement I had not seen. I had answered all three questions. Apparently none of my answers had been satisfactory. “Killian.” I looked up. Avery was beside me on the long sofa with a folder open across her knees. Talia had another spread on the low table. My mother had arranged perhaps nine fabric samples along the arm of her chair in an order that evidently meant something. “What?” “The flowers.” “Yes.” “What about them?” I looked at the photographs she was holding out. White flowers. More white flowers. An arrangement containing what appeared to be identical white flowers in a different container. “They’re fine.” Avery lowered the photographs. “Which ones?” I glanced again. “The second.” “That’s the one you said you didn’t like ten minutes ago.” “Then the first.” Talia pressed her lips t
Poison Chapter Fifty-Seven
Killian I have a mate. I have a mate, I have a country to run, and somewhere two floors below me there were two five-year-olds attempting to persuade my household staff that a wooden snake was entitled to a dessert course. There were a considerable number of things I could usefully have been thinking about. My mind had settled instead on Hadley’s thighs. Again. For fuck’s sake. —- I put the report down. It was the same report I had carried up from my office before dinner — Jaxson’s comparison of the southern patrol rotations, which I had begun at six and intended to finish afterwards. That had been twenty-five minutes ago. I had managed three paragraphs, two of which I could not now recall. My father used to say that a King learns early to put his own concerns outside the door before he sits down to work. My father, as far as I am aware, never had Hadley Roman sitting across his hips in the middle of his own training yard. He might have been more sympathetic if he had.
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