Six Years As His Luna. He Only Wanted My Sister novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Tea

Mara's POV

Elias set the cup on the table between us and unwrapped the cloth.

I did not need to be told what was in it.

The honey had dried to a brown crust, and under it was a sour smell that made my stomach turn.

"Wolfsbane," he said. "It was in the night tea for four nights. I found the cup on the fourth."

I looked at it for a long time.

"My mother-in-law sent that tea," I said.

"Yes."

"Every night, since the wedding."

"She sent it. I don't know how much of it was poison before that winter."

I put my hand over my mouth.

For six years I had been told I was barren, weak, cold, a bad bargain.

For six years I had thought the fever had marked me in some way I couldn't see.

"Bastian knew," I said.

"He knew enough to forbid me to speak of it."

The anger came up so fast that I stood and knocked the chair over.

"He sat in his study while I shook in a bed and he did nothing. He let me be shamed in front of the elders for it. His mother said it to my face!"

"Mara."

"She tried to kill me, and then she called me barren!"

I was shouting.

I had never shouted in that house in six years, and now I shouted in a one-room cabin with nobody to hear me but the man who had saved my life.

Elias stood still and let it hit him.

"Say what you need to," he said.

"Why did you not tell me?"

"I had no proof, and I had an order. I was wrong to keep it." His voice was steady, but his hand shook. "I'll take the cup to the King tonight."

"No."

He went quiet.

"You do not take it. We take it." I wiped my face with my wrist. "I will stand up in the Holt hall in front of every elder, and I will put it on the table with my own hands."

"As you say."

"I'm still so angry, Elias."

"I know."

"I want to stop being angry."

He hesitated.

Then he took the jar from the shelf, the same pine salve, and opened it.

He took my hands in his and began working it into my cracked knuckles with his thumbs.

His hands were big and rough and very careful.

No one had ever tended my hands before.

I started crying again, softly, and he went on rubbing salve into them until the tin was warm.

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