Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10: POISON DRESSED AS CONCERN

|| Vespera’s POV ||

Contrary to popular belief, I didn't hate omegas.

People just assumed I did. It would have been a convenient story for them, a simple one. Proud warrior she-wolf sneers at weak little omega, jealousy and spite, claws and hairpins. It made me easy to read, and easy to dismiss.

But hate was a feeling, and feelings were expensive. They made you sloppy, especially as a wolf. They made you reach for a silver pin in front of forty witnesses because a girl in a blue gown had looked at you with a pair of enormous, frightened eyes.

It was a lapse in my judgement, but it was out of character. And I wasn't going to allow it to happen again.

What I had for Ashvara Darkwater was not hatred. It was only that she occupied my place.

I was the only one fit to be Alpha King Mason’s Luna.

She wore a title that was always going to be mine. She stood beside a man who was always going to be mine, in a palace I had walked since I was a pup, and she did it in a borrowed gown with a branded chest and a wolf too weak to cast a shadow.

A pathetic, unworthy female. So, the problem and the solution was simple.

She needed to be removed from here, with the least possible noise.

That last part mattered, because Alpha King Mason was not Astar Frostmane. He did not throw his mate to the dogs the moment she became inconvenient.

If I made a mistake, if I made a scene, he would look at me with those storm-gray eyes and I would lose any chance I had of ever standing beside him again.

That was the way a good warrior won a long war.

So I began with the elders.

I did it over tea, in the south sitting room, where the old wolves gathered in the afternoons to complain about the young. I brought a plate of honeyed figs, the ones they liked. I sat with them, and I listened to them grumble about Mason's sudden decision. And when the moment was right, I asked the right questions.

“I only wonder,” I said, stirring my cup, “what omega blood does to a pure alpha bloodline after a few generations.”

Silence.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I added. “I’m sure the King knows best. I just remember that my grandmother had always told me that the royal line was kept pure for a reason.”

I chose my words carefully, so that I didn't say a single thing that could ever be repeated to Mason as an accusation. I just let the thought lie there on the table among the figs, small and bright and poisonous. Elder Brannoch’s mustache twitched. Another old wolf set her cup down too carefully.

They were already afraid, and fear was a seed. All I had to do was water it.

“It would be a shame,” one of them murmured, “if the kingdom were weakened.”

“A terrible shame,” I agreed, and I took a fig. The elders glanced at each other with a meaningful look, and I knew my job was done.

Next up, the kitchen. It was more satisfying because it was direct.

I found the right servant soon enough, a boy, barely nineteen, recently posted from the lower villages, assigned to the pantry and to carrying trays. He had the bitten fingernails and hollow eyes of someone who was unhappy and had nowhere to put it.

I watched him for two days, and learned everything I needed to know about him.

On the third evening, I met him by the herb cellar. “You’re the one who brings the Alpha King’s mate her tray,” I said.

He went white. “My lady, I…”

“Quiet.” I placed a small purse in his palm. It was heavy with silver, enough to move his entire family out of the lower village and into a proper house. I watched his fingers close around it and I watched his face change as he did the arithmetic. “That is the first of many, only if you would do what I say.”

Then I gave him the second thing, fear. I gave it to him gently, in a low voice, with a smile.

“I would hate to learn that someone had been talking,” I said. “Your sister works in the laundries, doesn’t she? Such a long way to carry baskets, in this weather.”

He trembled, staring at me with large frightened eyes.

I handed him a small vial containing a pale powder, mixed in a tincture of valerian and bitter root, enough to unsettle the stomach and weaken the nerves without leaving a trace.

It wasn't poison, at least not in any way a healer would recognize. Poison was crude, got people killed, and dead omegas became martyrs, and martyrs were far more dangerous than living failures.

No. What I gave him was something that would slowly cause suspicion, with precision.

A slight paleness, a faint tremor in the fingers, a touch of dizziness when she stood too fast. It was nothing that anyone could point to and say “there, that is the sickness.” Only a quiet, steady wasting that read, to anyone watching, exactly like an omega who could not hold herself together under the pressure of royal life.

“You are to put a portion of this vial into meal,” I told him. “Not too much, never too much. Do you understand?”

He nodded, crying a little. I patted his cheek. “Good boy.”

I watched her at her next public appearance.

It was a small affair, a midday reception in the garden court, just a handful of nobles and the elders and the sort of curious wolves who attended such things for the gossip. I stood at the far end of the terrace with a glass of wine, perfectly still, and I watched.

She wore a pale lilac dress, holding herself very straight, which I would give her; there was steel in that skinny spine. But she was pale, her skin the color of old paper, and when a servant offered her a cup of water I saw a small shake in her hands. The cup trembled in her fingers and a little water slopped over the rim and onto her wrist.

She set it down too quickly.

Two ladies near me exchanged glances. One of them lifted her fan. “Poor thing,” she whispered, in a voice that meant the opposite. “She looks ready to faint.”

“The strain is too much for her.”

“Well. She is an omega. Far too unfit for the position she has been trying to carry.”

I let my lips curve just a little.

Across the court, Mason was speaking to a lord about a border treaty, but his eyes kept drifting to her. I saw him notice it too. A small frown. A flicker of worry crossing his face like a cloud over the sun. He took a half step toward her, and she turned away from him, her shoulders stiff, refusing to let him see that she was struggling.

Foolish girl.

Proud, foolish girl.

She didn’t even know she was being poisoned. She was only fighting the symptoms with her own stubborn pride, and every ounce of that pride was helping me.

The court watched her with judgement, and I watched the court watching her.

I felt the first real calm I had felt in weeks. It spread through me slowly, warm and satisfying as good wine.