Not My Recipe

CHAPTER 6

RHAELEN'S POV

For the first time in years, my head was clear, and I did not trust it.

The burning ache behind my eyes had vanished the moment the girl wrapped her fingers around my hand, and even now, with the study silent and the candles burning low beside the fireplace, the pain had not returned.

The silver from the earlier doses was still moving through my blood, yet my mind felt sharper and calmer than it had in months. Any other man would have been grateful. I only felt suspicious.

"Take him to the cells," I ordered the guards, pointing at the kitchen servant still coughing on the stone floor. "Keep him alive and keep him away from the others. I will question him myself once I am finished here."

Two guards lifted the shaking man by his arms and dragged him out of the study. The heavy doors closed behind them, and the sound echoed through the walls of the tower.

That left the girl standing against the wall where I had pushed her, her gray tunic wrinkled and her arms wrapped tightly around her body.

Orren stood a few steps behind her with his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, as if he still had not decided whether she needed to be protected or watched.

"Sit," I said, pointing at the wooden chair in front of my desk.

She crossed the room slowly and sat on the very edge of the chair, her back straight and her hands folded in her lap. She looked pale, and her fingers were trembling slightly, but when she lifted her eyes to meet mine, they were steady.

I had watched grown soldiers lose their nerve under my silence, but she sat there with her chin raised, completely unafraid.

I sat down in my leather chair, picked up the dark glass bottle from the tray, and set it down in front of her.

"Tell me again how you knew."

"I told you," she answered quietly. "You were in pain, and your hands were shaking. When I put the tray down, there was a strange metallic smell coming from the bottle. I only guessed that something in it was harmful."

"A guess," I repeated coldly. "Silver has almost no scent when it is mixed into a bitter tonic. Healers who have trained for twenty years cannot always detect it, and you have been inside this palace for one day."

She did not look away. "I grew up in a house where I was never sure I belonged. I learned to notice when something was wrong before anyone else did."

It was an answer a lonely child would give, and I did not believe a word of it.

"Then explain the name you called me."

Her fingers tightened in her lap. "Lord of the Northern Shield."

"Only my soldiers at the southern border use that title," I said slowly. "It is never spoken inside the palace, and certainly not in front of a servant girl who arrived yesterday."

"One of the guards at the gate said it when he thought I couldn't hear him. I only repeated it."

Orren shifted behind her. "Rhaelen, the men do speak of you that way, even inside the fortress."

I ignored him. My eyes stayed on her face. "Then tell me why you walked to my left side."

For the first time since she had sat down, she hesitated. It was only a moment, but I had spent years reading the faces of liars, spies, and traitors, and I knew what hesitation looked like.

"Very few people know I was wounded on my right side," I continued, my voice dropping lower. "Orren knows. Maelora knows. The men who bandaged me know. My enemies know. Which one are you?"

"You were holding your right arm against your chest," she said at last. "I could see that it hurt you. I thought you would strike at anything that came near it."

Her answer made sense, and that bothered me even more. I would have known how to deal with a lie.

Liars usually talked too much or too little, and she did neither. Every word she spoke sounded careful, as if she were choosing each one before she let it out, yet none of it sounded false.

There was something she was not telling me, and I could feel it as clearly as I could feel the cold stone under my boots.

A faint scent drifted across the desk, wild mountain rain and crushed sweet herbs, the same scent that had followed me into my bedchamber the night before. I told myself it was only the curse playing tricks on my senses again, and I did not let myself think about it any longer than that.

"She stopped you before you killed that man," Orren said quietly. "Whatever her reasons were, Rhaelen, he would be dead right now if she had stayed silent."

"Or she planned all of it," I said, turning my cold gaze on my Beta. "Poison my medicine, wait for the madness to begin, and then step forward as the one person who can calm me. It would be a clever way to make a king trust a stranger."

"Then why would she warn you about the silver at all?"

I had no answer for that, and I disliked him for asking.

The girl sat very still, listening to us talk about her as if she were not in the room. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft, but it carried an edge I had not expected.

"You don't have to believe me, Your Majesty. But I didn't put the silver in that bottle, and I didn't come here to hurt you. A man was about to die in front of me, and he had done nothing wrong. That is all."

"Your family sent you here to replace a bride who ran from me," I said. "Forgive me if I do not trust anything that has come from the Veyrden pack."

Something flickered across her face at the mention of her family, an expression so bitter and tired that it did not belong on someone so young. It disappeared almost as quickly as it came.

"They aren't my family anymore," she said. "I signed away my place in that pack myself."

I studied her for a long moment. The sensible thing to do was to send her away.

The council had not yet canceled the marriage, but the elders would be pressing for it soon, and a girl abandoned by her own pack could simply be put on a cart and sent back across the border. It would be easy.

But if she was part of a plot, then sending her away would only hand a dangerous tool back to the people who had sent it. And if she was not, then she was the only person who had ever touched me during an attack and walked away unharmed.

Either way, I could not afford to let her out of my sight.

"Orren," I said. "She will not return to the servants' quarters. Put her in the empty chamber on the lower floor of this tower, and place two guards at her door. She is not to leave the fortress, and she is not to speak to anyone from the Veyrden delegation if they send word."

The girl's eyes widened slightly. "Am I a prisoner?"

"You are the wife of the Alpha King until the council says otherwise," I replied coldly, "and the wife of the King cannot be left sleeping among the servants. If you wish to call the guards a prison, you may."

She lowered her head, and I could not tell whether the gesture was obedience or anger. Orren stepped forward and gestured toward the door. "Lady Isolde, this way."

She stood up, bowed stiffly, and followed him out. Her footsteps faded down the staircase, and the study fell silent again.

I remained in my chair, staring at the dark glass bottle on the desk. I picked it up, brought it close to my face, and breathed in.

The thick smell of bitter herbs filled my lungs, and beneath it was that faint, sharp trace of metal. It had been there for days, perhaps even weeks, and I had never noticed.

My wolf was as silent as ever, locked behind that dark wall in my mind. But for the first time in years, the silence did not feel as heavy.

A sharp knock sounded at the door before I could think about it any further.

"Enter."

Maelora walked in, her dark hair pinned tightly beneath her hood and her leather satchel hanging from her shoulder. She was a woman who rarely hurried, but tonight her steps were quick, and her face was drawn and pale.

She crossed the room without a word of greeting, took the bottle out of my hand, and pulled out the cork.

She sniffed once, and then she went completely still.

"This is not my recipe," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that this is not what I mixed for you, Rhaelen." Her voice was low and shaking with anger. "Someone has changed the formula. They added silver dust and hid it beneath the bitterroot, and they did it carefully enough that even I did not catch the difference when I checked the first batch."

I set my hands flat on the desk. "Who could have done that?"

"Only someone who had access to my private laboratory." She finally lifted her eyes to mine, and I had never seen the healer look afraid before. "That room stays locked whenever I am away from it, and the only key hangs around my neck."