The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,338

sucked at it to get the blood off.

“If you weren’t a sick fuck, I mean.”

“Now, that’s no way to speak to—” His face scrunched. “Why’s your tooth taste like almonds?” He spat the tooth into his hand, suddenly horrified.

There was a nice, well-defined crack in the tooth, as if it had been engineered to break that way. Teia’s one little twist as it pulled away from her jaw. A last bit of white gel leaked out into his palm from that crack. He’d sucked down the rest.

“You were always looking at that tooth like a horny teen boy stealing glances of cleavage.” Teia laughed. Not that she had cleavage.

“You—what did you do?”

“I’m actually glad you finally took it. It’s been killing me for six months,” Teia said. There was something really important she was supposed to remember. What was it again? “Six months, worrying that damn poison tooth was going to crack and leak death into my mouth.”

Murder Sharp staggered and sagged against the door. “I can’t . . . You didn’t.”

“Oh! That was it!” Teia said. “How long’s that other poison last? The light one, lacrimae sanguinis? Does it wear off?”

“You ungrateful bitch. I would’ve . . .” Murder Sharp slid down the door. His stomach cramped, but he didn’t vomit. Not yet. Cyanide was the only poison potent enough for such a job that Karris had had access to, and it gave an ugly death.

“When’s it wear off?” she asked.

“You shamed me,” he said. “I shared with you. I trusted you. And this? This is . . . oohhh.” He fell over and puked noisily.

“How long’s it last?” Teia asked. “Please.”

“Stupid, stupid bitch.” He puked again.

“I’m stupid?” Teia asked. “Who’s the one who had his enemy tied up and didn’t finish the job? Who kidnapped me twice?”

A silly smile painted his puke-strewn face. “Stupid because . . . I never dosed you with the lacrimae sanguinis. Just the poppy. I couldn’t kill you, Teia. I couldn’ t—”

And then the convulsions began. His feet drummed against the stone floor.

It took forever, and he was incapable of speech from then on. His eyes raging at her, then rolling back in his head. His dentures had flown from his mouth and lay in a pool of vomit. He gnawed at the floor with his broken teeth, dug his fingers into it.

It was awful, and it was long, too long in her drugged stupor, before she realized she could draft paryl if she wanted to.

Unless he was lying about that. Tricking her.

He was a cunning one.

Well, she had shit to do in the next day, and she’d need paryl to do it. Might as well find out now.

She took one breath, let her fears gather in the wind in her lungs, and then blew it all out into the world. Then she flared her eyes before she took the next breath.

And didn’t die.

That was nice.

She looked at the tiniest cutting tool on Sharp’s tray and with ridiculous amounts of paryl was just barely able to lift the little thing and float it to her hand. She cut herself free of her bonds.

Then she walked over to Sharp’s desk and took out his favorite diplomatic dentures, the blindingly bright white ones.

Taking a glass of water, she gently rinsed out his mouth. He coughed weakly as some went down the wrong way. But then, in between convulsions, she put his dentures in his mouth, giving him some dignity back. As much dignity as a man dying spasming in pools of vomit can get, anyway.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “For speaking cruelly. Good night, Elijah ben-Zoheth.”

He couldn’t speak now. The light was already dimming from his eyes. She didn’t know if he heard her at all. With paryl, she squeezed his spine to stop the pain and then stopped his heart, too.

It was a mercy too long delayed.

She stood and looked down on him. There was nothing peaceful in the tension-locked corpse.

She found her split tooth and tucked it into his clenched fist.

“I feel bulletproof,” she told the dead man. “And I don’t think that’s such a good thing right now.”

For a while, she looked around the secret office, and realized that she kept forgetting what she was looking for.

“Oh!” she said suddenly, holding it up triumphantly. “The master cloak. Sharp, silly, you never even asked me about it!”

She put it on, and felt a little more herself. Then realized she was still wearing the dress Sharp had put her in. His mother’s dress? Yuck. And