C. Redwine - Deception

“I’m not going to get better,” Sylph says softly, and tears trace a glistening path down her cheeks.

“Of course you are.” Smithson looks at Rachel. “Tell her, Rachel. Tell her she’s going to get better.”

Rachel shivers and slowly lowers herself to the wagon bed until she’s lying pressed against Sylph’s side.

Smithson looks at me, his expression frantic. “She’s going to get better.”

I make myself meet his gaze. “I think she’s been poisoned.”

“By whom?” The veins on his neck bulge.

“By the same man who marked your door. Five of the nineteen who were in marked rooms died last night. Their symptoms started out just like hers.” My voice shakes, and I wonder if he can hear the regret I don’t know how to say. If he knows the guilt I feel for failing to protect them. “Do you have bruises too?”

He shakes his head and looks from me to Sylph, whose eyes are closed again. “How much time does she have?” He chokes on the words. “How much?”

“I don’t know. The others eventually bled . . .” I don’t want to finish the sentence. Don’t want to paint an image in his head of Sylph bleeding out while we all hover in helpless anguish by her side.

“If it’s poison, there has to be an antidote.” His agony is a palpable force, barely contained by the flimsy walls of the wagon. I can hardly stand beneath the heat of his stare. “Find the antidote, Logan. Please.”

The pressure of feeling responsible for outwitting the Commander, catching a killer, and safely delivering my people to Lankenshire doubles as his words sink in and take root.

Find the antidote . How? I don’t even know what kind of poison was used, much less where to begin looking for an antidote. But I can’t tell him that. I can’t rip his last shred of hope away from him.

“I’ll try,” I say, and put as much confidence into the words as I can muster. It isn’t much, and I know he hears it, but he nods and turns back to Sylph.

Rachel lies still beside her friend, staring at Sylph’s face as if she can hold back the poison by the force of her gaze. I leave the wagon without saying another word.

Quinn waits for me outside, his dark eyes shadowed. “What happened?” He gestures toward the row of bodies lined up under a long sheet of canvas. “We didn’t sustain this many serious injuries last night.”

I press my fingertips to my eyes as the beginning of a headache throbs against my skull. “Those people were all in marked rooms yesterday morning. They all appear to have been poisoned.”

“Does anyone else have symptoms?”

I nod. I don’t know how many of the other names on my list are already bruising. Already bleeding from the inside out, though they don’t know it yet. I don’t know which of them will die next. Lee Ann Blair? Heather Palmquist? Paul Lusk?

“What are the symptoms? Logan!” Quinn snaps, and I open my eyes. “What are the symptoms? If we know what kind of poison we’re dealing with, we might be able to save them.”

“Exhaustion. Abdominal pain. Unexplained bruising. And eventually, they bleed—”

“Through the eyes, nose, and mouth?” he asks.

“Or even faster if they’ve been cut. The blood is too thin and won’t clot.” I look at the list in my hand. Scott Godsey. Hanna Burkes. Lila Toshiko. I know these people. I care about them. I can’t just let them die.

“Castor seeds,” Quinn says, and the tone of finality in his voice raises the hairs on the back of my neck.

“Castor seeds?”

“The seeds of the castor plant are poisonous. If you swallow them unbroken, you have a chance. But if someone crushes the seeds, mixes it with a liquid, and injects it into your bloodstream, you die.”

I shake my head. “No. There has to be something. The blood just needs to clot. We have to find a plant. A seed. Something around here has to help.”

He wraps a hand around my shoulder and squeezes. “There is no antidote, Logan.”

“There must be—”

“Castor seed poison doesn’t cause the blood to thin. It causes it to clot . Inside all of their bodies, their blood is clotting, blocking their veins, growing bigger. Injuring their organs. Breaking down the tissue. Their bodies throw so much effort into clotting that the blood in their extremities grows thin and can’t clot at all. That’s when they start bleeding out.”

I stare at him in horror, my heart thundering in my ears.

“You can’t give them something to clot the blood without killing them faster. And you can’t give them something to thin the blood without causing hemorrhages from their mouth, nose, and eyes.”

I can’t speak. Can barely breathe. I throw off his arm.

“I’m sorry, Logan.”

“Maybe you’re wrong,” I say, because he has to be. He has to be.

“I’m not.”

“Maybe you are. Who made you an expert in poisons, anyway? You could be wrong.”

His expression looks carved in stone. “Willow and I are both experts in the many, many ways a person can be killed. Our father saw to that.”

“It can’t be castor seeds. It can’t . . . Sylph is sick, Quinn. She’s in there”—I gesture toward the medical wagon—“with bruises all over her body, and I have to save her. I can’t let Rachel lose anyone else. Do you hear me? I have to save her!” My voice is raw and desperate, and already the bitterness of grief is spilling into me, because I look at Quinn’s face, and I know.

I can’t save her.

I can’t save any of them.

And they’re all dead because the Commander wanted power. Because Jared gave us the device. Because we brought it back to Baalboden instead of returning it to Rowansmark.

Because of me.

Did I really think I could lead these people and prove my worthiness to them? The dregs of my belief taste like ashes on the back of my tongue as the soft sound of Smithson calling Sylph’s name in broken tones pierces the morning air.

The lazy hum of bumblebees fills the air as I climb through patches of spring grass sprinkled with wildflowers on my way to the lip of land above the river. The camp at my back is a whirlwind of activity as some pack canvas, blankets, and torches back into the supply wagon while others work with Nola and Drake to reconfigure those riding in the other wagons so we can accommodate the newly sick among us.

Three more people on my list have symptoms. Word has spread that those dying from bruises and bleeding gums were all marked. Everywhere I go, people watch me. Whispering. Wondering what I will do to keep them safe. Wondering how I can force our group to travel with so many sick and so many more destined to fall prey to the symptoms.

The soil beneath me gives a little as I walk. Bending down, I press my fingers into its cool, dark depths. Gusts of air rise from the river and roll over the edge of the meadow. The water smells like a musty, dirt-floored basement with leaky walls. The ground around me is covered in a light film of residual moisture.

We can bury our dead here. The damp soil will make for easy digging. Plus, the profusion of flowers makes this spot pretty, and that means something. We might be barely clinging to survival. We might be running low on hope and optimism. But we can still give our dead the dignity of a proper burial.

The thought that we might have more dead to bury when we set up camp this evening makes me ache down to my bones. But beneath the regret and the guilt, a steady flame of anger burns within me.

When I catch the man who did this, I’m going to punish him in ways that will be remembered long after his body has turned to dust. No one in the beleaguered group at my back will doubt that I fought for them. That I was worthy of the trust they placed in me.