Chapter 8: The Bottle

Ambrose Roark had taken the Duke's medicine every night for seven years, and he had never once wondered what was in it.

Now the bottle stood on his desk in the morning light, small and brown, with the Duke's gold seal on the cork.

His husband was asleep upstairs.

The word still stopped him for half a beat each time he thought it.

Wystan stood on the other side of the desk with his hands behind his back.

"You didn't drink it last night," Wystan said.

"No."

"And no fever."

"None." Ambrose turned his left hand over. The glove was still on, and the gold in its seams had gone dim and slow.

"Marshal, I need to tell you something, and you aren't going to like it."

"You tested it."

Wystan's glasses slid down his nose. He did not push them up.

"For two years," he said. "On my own pay."

"How?"

"I took a drop each month from the empty bottles in the bin. I sent it to a lab in the lower city."

Ambrose said nothing.

"It's a sedative. A strong one. And something that dulls the fever's edges so it doesn't kill you."

Wystan swallowed.

"There's a third compound. The lab couldn't name it. It isn't on any list."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you'd have gone straight to the Duke."

It was true, and Ambrose hated that it was true.

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