The Alpha's Debt the King's Claim novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Poisoned Tea

Elspeth drinks her own tea and accuses Maeve before the elders. Maeve proves it, and Torin demands the king's court try her.

Brigid scrubbed the threshold with salt water until the grey dust ran off the stone into a clay bowl.

I stood in the doorway and watched, and I did not step down until it was clean.

Somebody in Greywater had known I would leave this house tonight, and had wanted silver waiting.

In my first life I never found out who laid the first trap.

Now I knew exactly which hands it took.

I slept two hours.

When I opened the door at dawn, the king was standing on my porch.

He had not gone back to the hall at all.

His coat was dusted with frost, and the two guards behind him looked stiff with cold.

"Your Majesty," I said. "You stood out here all night?"

"I said I would stand outside your door."

He handed me a small flask.

"Hot water and honey. You don't eat before noon."

That was true, and I had never told him, and Brigid had been asleep in my kitchen all night.

I took the flask anyway.

His fingers brushed mine, and the scar on my palm warmed.

I told myself it was the water.

At sunrise Elspeth came up the path with Cullen on one side and two elders on the other, carrying a tray.

She leaned on her cane, her auburn hair loose over her shoulders and a thick glove on each hand.

She looked small and tired and sorry.

"Maeve," she said, and her voice broke. "Please. I came to say thank you."

"For what?" I said.

"For not letting me die yesterday." She smiled shakily. "You saw me when nobody else did. I'm ashamed of how I screamed. I brought tea to make peace."

The elders nodded and murmured that she was kind.

Cullen stared at the ground.

Elspeth set the tray on my porch table and poured two cups.

The tea was dark and smelled of ginger.

She lifted her own cup, and drank half of it.

"See?" she said gently. "It's only tea."

She held out the second cup to me.

My hands stayed at my sides.

"I don't drink with people who sprinkled silver on my doorsill last night," I said.

Her eyes widened.

"What?"

"A line across the whole threshold. Ground fine."

"Maeve, I can barely walk to the privy," Elspeth whispered. "How would I..."

Her cup slipped from her fingers.

It cracked on the boards.

She clutched her throat, and her eyes rolled.

"The tea," she choked. "She poisoned it. Maeve poisoned me!"

She fell backward into the elders' arms, and tea ran from the corner of her mouth.

"Healer Corrigan!" one elder shouted. "What have you done?"

I stepped forward and knelt beside her.

"Move her flat," I said. "Brigid, bring the clean spoon and a bowl of cold water."

"Don't you touch her," the second elder said.

"Then let her die," I said, "because I'm the only healer you've got."

The elders looked at each other.

Elspeth's breath was rasping in a small, careful way.

I took her left wrist, and with my other hand I started to peel off her glove.

Her fingers clamped around mine.

"No," she gasped.

It was the strongest grip she had shown anyone in ten years.

"Why not?" I said.

"It hurts. I..."

I pulled.

The glove came away.

Under it, her fingertips were blistered, grey and raw to the first knuckle.

Silver burns.

The elders stared.

"A wolf gets burns like that from handling silver for an hour," I said. "Ask her what she was carrying last night."

"She grabbed my hand when she fell," Elspeth sobbed, and shook so hard the cane rattled. "I've had the burns for years. Torin knows."

"Then your sleeve won't mind if I look."

I reached into her left cuff before she could stop me.

My fingers found glass.

I drew out a stoppered vial no longer than my thumb, half full of fine grey powder.

Elspeth stopped sobbing.

I held the vial up in the sunrise.

"It matches the dust Brigid scrubbed off my doorsill," I said. "She kept it in a bowl." "And I'd bet my life the tea held a pinch of it. She drank half of it herself so you would see her fall."

The elders went the color of ash.

Cullen stepped in and took the vial from me with careful, gloved hands.

"I'll hold this," he said. "For the record."

"Cullen," Elspeth hissed.

He did not look at her.

Boots came fast up the path.

Torin arrived with six pack guards, his coat hanging open and his face white with fury.

"What is going on?" he said. "Who put my Elspeth on the floor?"

"Your Elspeth put herself on it," I said.

"You poisoned her tea!"

"Look at her fingers, Alpha."

He did not look.

He knelt, took her in his arms, and she turned her face into his chest with a quiet, broken sound.

"Take your hands off her, Maeve," Torin said. "I will take this to the king's own court. A healer who poisons a pack member loses her hands, and her claim goes with them."

The guards behind him stepped forward.

"Touch her," said a calm voice behind me, "and answer to the Crown."

Evander had stepped up to my shoulder without a sound.

He did not raise his voice.

The six guards stopped where they stood.

Torin looked at the king.

"Then you'll hear it," he said. "In your court. In front of everyone."

"Gladly," Evander said. "She comes with me."

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