He Sold Me Into Slavery, I Returned as Queen novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Cup

At the welcome feast the Queen smells wolfsbane in her wine and names it before the whole hall, Corvin refuses to drink the second cup, and he whispers her childhood name against her hand.

The welcome feast started at dusk, and Corvin spent the first hour being loved.

He sat at the second table, between two councilors who kept patting his arm.

Rosamund sat beside him and did not eat.

Every time I glanced down the hall, she was watching me with her lips pressed together.

My father had sent word that he was unwell and would not attend.

I understood that better than anyone in the room.

Lysander sat at my right, cutting meat he did not eat.

"You haven't looked at your plate once," he said quietly.

"I'm not hungry."

"You're counting something," he said. "You count when you're angry."

I looked at him.

He had noticed that in two years, and I had never told him.

"Eat the bread," he said. "I'll watch the room for you."

The music stopped for the toasts.

Corvin rose with a cup in his hand, and the hall turned to him.

"To the Crown, which sees a candidate's heart," he said. "And to Queen Solveig, who has every right to doubt me."

"May I earn her trust before this week is out."

People sighed with pleasure.

Aldous Pellam, at the head table, nodded and clapped.

A servant came up on my left and set a gold cup in front of me.

It was filled with the spiced red wine the royal kitchen poured for toasts.

I lifted it to answer Corvin, as courtesy demanded.

The smell reached me before the rim reached my lip.

It was green and bitter and sharp enough to sting my nose, and I had breathed it for eight years.

Wolfsbane.

It had been in my food, my water and the hay I slept on.

The traders had used it to hide my scent and to stop my body from healing.

My arm stopped in the air.

Then I set the cup down on the table, very gently.

"Your Majesty," I said, and my voice carried to the back of the hall. "There is wolfsbane in this cup."

The music had already stopped, and now the room stopped too.

Lysander put down his knife.

"Say that again."

"Wolfsbane. In my wine. I would know that smell in my sleep."

Corvin's hand flew to his chest.

"That is impossible, Your Highness! The cups came straight from the royal kitchen!"

"Then the kitchen can explain it," Lysander said, and he did not raise his voice.

"Send for Maud."

Maud Quill came in with her green headscarf crooked and a tray of vials on her arm.

She had been the one to scrub the wolfsbane out of my blood when I was sixteen.

She took one look at my face, dipped a pale strip of paper into my cup, and held it up to the torchlight.

The paper turned black from the tip down.

"Wolfsbane, and a lot of it," Maud said. "Enough to stop a wolf's heart in an hour."

Gasps went around the hall.

Several people looked at the wine in their own hands and set it down.

Lysander stood.

"Who poured this?"

The servant who had brought it was shaking so hard the tray rattled.

"A squire gave me the jug at the kitchen door, Your Majesty. He said it was the Queen's special vintage."

"What squire?"

"Highmoor blue," the servant whispered. "Lord Leland's man."

Every head in the hall turned to Corvin.

"I have no squire in the capital!" Corvin said. "I came with my betrothed and the Alpha. I swear it!"

He swayed, and tears started down his face.

Rosamund grabbed his sleeve and cried out that he would never hurt anyone.

Aldous was on his feet, red to the roots of his beard.

"A servant's word against a candidate's!" he said. "This is a misunderstanding, Your Majesty, and I won't have the boy accused over a mislabeled jug."

"Then he will have no trouble proving it," Lysander said. "Pour a second cup from that same jug."

A page ran to do it.

The cup came back full and was placed in front of Corvin.

"Drink it, Lord Leland," Lysander said, "and all of this ends tonight."

Corvin stared at the cup.

His fingers did not close on it.

Every eye in the hall watched his hand.

"I won't drink from a cup I've been publicly accused over," he said finally, and his voice broke. "No honest man would be asked to."

"No," Lysander said coldly. "An honest man wouldn't need asking."

Corvin turned to me, shaking, and bowed over my hand as though to beg pardon.

Nobody was close enough to hear him but me.

"Hello, Ellie," he whispered against my knuckles. "Welcome home."

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