Kresley Cole: Poison Princess

“No. Not possible,” I bite out, though I already perceive her volatile toxin racing through my veins. Now I feel the betrayal and terror I’d only been able to imagine before. “Why visit this upon me? Why come here?”

“As I drove north, I began hearing a new voice. Yours.” She taps her chin with a sinister claw, saying, “I might have forgotten to mention that one tiny detail. In any case, yours grew louder, above all the others, above even Death’s—who was quite chatty once I was alone at last.” She frowns, shrugs. “But your voice was drawing me near. A wise man in the guise of a boy. Does that sound familiar?”

I make a strangled sound. “You couldn’t have heard me.”

“You’re one of the Arcana, Arthur. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out which one, couldn’t remember my grandmother’s cards well enough to match one to your tableau. Not until I saw your experiments down here in your creepy little lair. You’re the Hermit. The old man holding a lantern.”

“One among your number?” I draw my lips back from my teeth. “Never!”

“You’re denying it, just like I did. No wonder Matthew grew so frustrated with me.”

“If you believe I’m one of you, then you came here intending to do me ill!”

“No, I sought you out, hoping you knew your destiny as one of the Arcana and could teach me mine, hoping that you’d actually be good—unlike most everyone else I continue to encounter. But I was prepared to defend myself if you weren’t.”

One of my knees gives way; I reel and catch myself on the operating table. I spy my reflection in the stainless steel. I am . . . transformed. I see an aged man, holding a lamp in the dark. My own tableau ? Then my appearance returns to normal.

“Arthur, you are the Hermit, also known as the Alchemist.”

“Alchemist?” A dull roar begins in my head. The Alchemist. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be!

Yes. That is who I’ve always been. Never has it been clearer to me.

Of course Evie looked special to me when I first encountered her—because I’d seen her card. I hadn’t envisioned her with open arms in my bed; I’d seen the Empress’s tableau—the one with her beckoning.

“I kept dropping hints, waiting for you to recognize some aspect of my story, for you to make a move.” She tilts her head, and that length of silken hair sweeps over her shoulder, drowning me in her luscious rose scent, threatening to subdue me even now. “My guess? You’re so high from your wacky concoctions that you haven’t been hearing the voices.” She leans down, tells me in a confiding tone, “Drugged till your brain is soup? I’ve been there, buddy.”

“ High? I wanted focus!” Bloody saliva flies from my mouth. “The voices . . .” Suddenly I remember that hated cacophony, those useless repetitions. “They distracted me!”

“It’s like Matthew said. If you don’t listen to the voices, then you’ll die with their gloating whispers in your ear.”

Just as the other Arcana have supernatural abilities, so do I. Reminded of that, of the powers I wield, I lurch toward my lab.

Behind me, the girls beg Evie to free them, though they sound as petrified of her as they’ve ever been of me.

As Evie stupidly obliges them, I hunch over my workbench, grasping for every vial I can reach. I guzzle their colored contents, one after the other.

Black to counteract her poison. Blue to make me stronger, more aggressive, faster. Red to heal my wounds.

I have underestimated her; she’s done the same with me. If I can get upstairs, I can reach the weapons strategically stockpiled throughout my home.

I will sear her to a puddle, just like Father.

Though she must hear me slamming through my potions, she has no fear, patiently telling my subjects— mine —that she’s going to cut their chains with her claws now. “Don’t be afraid,” she assures them. “You’re almost free.”

Three slashes later, the girls clamber out of the dungeon, giving me a wide berth, fighting each other to get up the stairs.

I start for the stairs myself, crawling across the floor, fleeing to buy the elixirs time to work.

“Where were we?” Evie asks as she appears from behind the plastic sheeting. She’s brushing her hands off, as if she’d just dusted.

At the base of the stairs, I twist to keep her in sight. “Why toy with me?” Must keep her talking. Already I can feel one potion neutralizing her toxin. Under my clutching arm, my torso begins to heal. “Why act as if the poison had taken hold?”

“Just as I told you, sometimes I play roles. I portrayed a breezy caretaker when my mom was dying; I pretended indifference about Jackson and Selena, though I was about to go mad with jealousy. I acted drugged so you’d show me what you planned to do to me. And what was down in your cellar.”

“Why tell me your story?”

“Did you not listen to me at all ?” she asks with a sigh. “My MO is to await, remember? To beckon . You had to make the first move.” As I fight to climb the steps, she calmly trails behind me. “And it took me a while to wrap my head around the idea that you’d tried to drug me—that only one of us was leaving this house alive. Besides, I needed time to recuperate from my busy day . . . gardening.”

“Gardening?” I frown, can’t make sense of her words.

“Then you struck. You tipped the scales.”

At last, strength begins to pump through me, my muscles swelling. “This isn’t finished. I’ll strike again. I’ll slaughter you, girl.”

“Will you?” Her expression is hard, her green eyes devoid of pity. “Don’t you see, Arthur? Jackson was wrong. It might not be my way, but I can hunt. I’m hunting you.”

Arthur is inching up the stairs, wheezing, still threatening me at intervals, baring his bloody teeth.

Had I ever imagined it could come to this?

I arrived here an emotional mess, fresh from sobbing for two days. Little wonder. I’ve never been alone like that before, friendless and without family. I’d never felt the stab of betrayal from a boy.

Yes, I came here seeking answers from Arthur, but I was also yearning for more—a sympathetic hug, a pat on the back, any scrap of kindness.

And worse, I still expected it.

I’ve been good to people in the past, and even after the Flash—after all the times I’ve been wronged—I still nurtured this naïve belief that people wanted to be good to me too.

When I first gazed at Arthur with his aw-shucks modesty, I thought: New friend.

As simple as that.

God, how badly I needed a friend. Instead, I found a psychopath.

Even now those three girls are upstairs shrieking for help, unable to get out of this lair. I hear the youngest one bawling, begging for her mother . I can only guess how long he’s been torturing them.

Tonight Arthur has changed me forever. He’s pushed me over the edge, forcing me to become what had once been my worst nightmare.

I am altered. Before Arthur. And after. There’s no going back.

I hate him for that.

As we reach the top of the steps, he weakly lunges across the threshold, landing on his lacerated belly with a grunt. Then he begins to scrabble crablike across the floor, half looking at me, half looking at the front door he’s keen to reach.

When he nears the entrance, the girls scream and bolt into a corner.

At the door, he drags himself to his knees, stretching for a doorknob that isn’t there.

“Caught by your own trap? You creepy, filthy fiend.”

Darting glances over his shoulder at me, he reaches into the back pocket of his pants, snagging a pair of pliers.