let the would-be poisoner know his plan wouldn’t work. Or maybe it was a she? Poison was a woman’s trade, after all.
Yasmin’s mouth was ugly as she continued to frown in my direction. As much as I wanted to hate her, I believed she would have poisoned me over Xander.
His knuckles were white as he gripped his fork and slowly put it down on the table. He clearly wasn’t going to chance eating either. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, positive.”
He wiped his mouth with the napkin and whispered, “Thank you for saving my life.”
He scanned the table, most likely trying to assess who had it out for him.
“Earlsgaarde,” Prince Xander called out. “Please tell us why catching the beast is so important after all this time? Why now?”
Earlsgaarde stood to address the group. “Because the beast lives in your lands. It needs to be dealt with, as you can see by the unfortunate murder last night. And if you won’t hunt it down, then we have no choice but to bring our troops over and do it ourselves.”
“You speak of war!” Xander stood up, pounding his fist on the table.
“I speak of justice. What happened to our dear queen when she came into your kingdom? No one seems to know. Your father has been very vague on the matter of her disappearance. After this many years, we can only assume they’re dead. But how and by whose hand? Maybe this strange beast murdered them? Maybe it was a plot to harm our kingdom? But nonetheless, if you can’t solve a royal disappearance or find this strange beast, how could you possibly find yourself fit to rule?”
“We don’t know what happened to the queen of Florin and her child, and I’m very sorry for our failure.” Because I was so close to Xander, I heard the hitch in his voice and caught the lie. Hopefully, I was the only one. “But I can tell you we will not fail a second time. We will find answers. We will find this beast.” Xander stood up, taking his knife and plunging it into the table. “I won’t stop until it is dead.”
Scattered handclapping came from around the dining table until it built into a roar of applause. Earlsgaarde slowly sat back down. His face unreadable behind his stony mask.
Xander was riled up and continued his rant. “And I want to know where it goes in the daylight. How is it continually hiding from us, only to strike our men when we least expect it? Where’s its den?”
“You won’t find a den,” I cut in, “because you’re hunting a shapeshifter.”
The room stilled, my own heart thudding loudly in my chest at the words that even I was terrified to announce. Because of my dreams. I was connected to its thoughts, and even though they were gruesome, they weren’t animalistic. There was a human element to the thoughts, and the fact that I couldn’t get over the feeling that we were being baited.
Yassa hissed through his teeth at the word. Yasmin gave a cry and fainted. Only Xander turned to give me a curious look.
“They are just tales,” Yassa said, pounding his fist into the table. “There are no such things as shapeshifters.”
I fingered the sleeve of my dress and looked directly at Yassa, the old man squirming under my gaze.
“Oh no, they are very real, and that is probably why the creature has eluded you for so long. The beast is probably one of us, here in this room. Some are shifters by birth, whereas others become a were-animal after being bitten by another and thus shift because of a blood curse.” At that, Xander’s body stilled. I could feel the heat of his gaze boring into the back of my neck.
“How do you kill a shapeshifter?” Yassa asked.
My hands were wringing my napkin in my lap, and I could feel all eyes on me.
“Silver will stop the transformation,” I whispered, meeting Xander’s gaze. His eyes were begging me, pleading with me to stop, but I couldn’t. “And then he reverts back to his normal form, and you can kill him. But you don’t have to kill him. There are other ways to subdue—”
No one listened. The room had turned to chaos as Yassa, Earlsgaarde, and his men stood up and began to speak out at once.
“Quick, gather the silver candlesticks.”
“Heat the fire.”
“We’ll find the beast tonight!”
Yasmin, who had woken up with the help of her ladies, had once again fallen into a faint when she