The Sleeping Prince - Melinda Salisbury Page 0,110

us, so we never forget what our blood did. We who will always carry the sins of others, piling on more each generation.”

Her tale ends. The ringing silence that follows her words makes me feel as though the walls are closing in around me; I’m suddenly terrifyingly aware that I’m underground, under tons of rock and earth. If the ceiling caved in now, this would be our tomb, and none would know it. I’m consumed by the need for sky, the need for air. The need for sound.

“The queen knew all of this, didn’t she?” Twylla asks. “That’s where she got the idea to make me poisonous. From that. From our past. She was laughing at us. At them. Make the descendant of the poisoner the sanctioned killer of traitors.”

Amara nods. “Helewys was known for her cravings for tales of alchemy and lore. It was a slight, to them, to the people who wouldn’t bow to her. To openly make you a poisoner, given your ancestry. Perhaps she hoped to draw them out through you.”

Again they fall silent. A faint rumbling in the distance reminds me that somewhere above us battle still rages.

“So that’s why he wants Twylla?” I ask. “Because he knows her ancestors tried to kill him? He wants revenge.”

Amara looks at me and then turns to her daughter. “And because she could do it again,” she says.

Twylla stares at her mother. “What are you…?” But she doesn’t finish her sentence. Instead she begins to laugh. I turn to Amara and she shakes her head slightly, looking back at her daughter. Twylla tilts her chin towards the ceiling and laughs, the sound echoing off the bones. “I can’t escape it, can I? I have renounced two destinies. I tried to hide behind the skirts of a queen, and then I fled across a whole kingdom, and yet it still will not let me go. They’re the same thing. And I can’t run from it.”

“Twylla…” Amara says.

“They told me I held poison in my skin.” Twylla looks at me, her tone now dreamy, her gaze unfocused as she remembers. “They gave me a potion each moon and told me it was poison. That it made me poisonous to the touch. It was my job to kill traitors by laying my hands on them. Of course, it wasn’t me. They were poisoned before I got anywhere near them. It was your brother who proved it a lie, when he…” She stops, and her face clears. “Yet it was true all along, in a different way. Not my skin, but my blood is poison. My blood.” Her laughter dies away and silence rings in its place. “So I am to execute him, with poison,” Twylla says. “I almost wish the queen were here to see this. She, I think, would enjoy this.”

“Not just your blood,” Amara says swiftly. “Your blood is part of the poison. Not all of it.”

“What poison could work on him now?”

I make a sound of surprise. Of realization. “I think I know,” I say. “The potion Silas made – the base that all alchemists use – it’s the reversal of the one used to put Aurek to sleep. His children used what was left of the poison and broke it down. They believed if they could reverse it, they could wake him. In apothecary, like cures like, you see. In alchemy too.” I pause, trying to put my thoughts in order. “So if we reverse the reversed potion, we’ll have the original one used to poison him.”

“And we have my blood to add,” Twylla says, her voice still distant.

Like when Silas adds his blood to the Opus Magnum. Twylla’s blood must react with it too, but not alchemically. Fatally. “We can poison him again,” I say. “Add new strength to the poison already in him.”

“Can you make it?” Twylla asks, suddenly keen as a hawk.

I try to remember what I saw. “Yes, I think so.”

“I believe the Sisters have a plan in place to try and replicate the poison,” Amara says.

“No,” Twylla shakes her head dismissively. “I want Errin to work with me. Not them.”

Amara sits back, crossing her arms. I swallow. “Of course.” I say, then turn to Amara. “I might be the best choice anyway. Silas told me the alchemists are lacking in the apothecary arts. They’ve never really needed them; it would mean them learning techniques from scratch. But to me, deconstructing a potion is child’s play. I can deconstruct the Opus Magnum if