The King's Table

The Long Hall is lit by a thousand candles and not one of them is warm.

The table runs the length of the room under a ceiling painted with a night sky, real gold leaf for stars. Forty vampires in their finest sit along it, and the only things on their plates are crystal goblets of something dark that isn't wine.

Your place is set with china, silver, and actual food. A single human setting in a sea of crystal. You feel like the only lit window on a dark street.

And you've been seated at the king's right hand.

A murmur goes down the table when the steward leads you there. Lady Iulia's eyebrows rise a careful quarter inch. Lord Radu, three seats down, smiles at his goblet like it told him a joke.

"Custom puts guests at the far end," you say quietly, as you sit.

"Custom," Severin says without looking at you, "is a thing I made up in 1790. I can unmake it."

He's in black again, a coat with silver frogging at the collar, and up close he's worse. The candlelight finds every hard, elegant line of his face, the shadows under cheekbones you could cut paper on. When he turns his head, the woman across from you forgets to put her goblet down.

You remember why you're here. You lift the bottle from beside your chair, ribbon and all.

"A gift from the Directorate, Your Majesty. From my mentor, Verity Kinsale. I'm told it's a very good year."

"I don't drink wine."

"I know. It's a gesture."

"Your kind love gestures." But he nods to the steward, who takes the bottle, opens it at the sideboard with a whisper of cork, and pours one glass, for you, because you are the only one here who can drink it.

The steward sets the glass at your hand. Deep red, almost black in the candlelight.

"To the Accord," you say, lifting it.

"To its funeral," Severin says pleasantly, lifting his goblet.

Laughter down the table. You smile anyway and bring the glass toward your lips.

He moves.

You don't see it. One moment his hand is on his goblet and the next it's closed around your wrist, cool and absolutely firm, stopping the glass an inch from your mouth. Not hurting. Just stopping.

The table goes silent.

He isn't looking at you. He's looking at the wine. His nostrils flare once. Something in his face goes very still and very cold.

"Let go," he says.

You let go of the glass. He takes it from your fingers, raises it, and drinks the whole thing in one long swallow while forty vampires stare.

He sets the empty glass down on the white cloth.

"Poison," he says.

The word hits the table like a dropped tray.

Chairs scrape. Someone gasps. Radu is on his feet; Iulia's hand is pressed flat to her chest. Guards appear at every door at once, Mircea among them, his eyes already burning silver. You sit frozen with your hand still curved around a glass that isn't there.

Severin turns to look at you.

And the contempt in his face is so complete, so cold and old and certain, that you physically lean back from it.

"Clever," he says softly, in Romanian, for you alone. "A dead envoy at my table. Did they promise you a medal, or only a grave?"

"What?" Your voice cracks. "I don't, I didn't, that's Verity's wine, she, I was going to drink it, you just watched me, I was going to drink it."

He stares at you.

You see it happen. You see him read your face, your shaking hands, the way you're staring at the empty glass like it might bite. You see the contempt crack straight down the middle, and under it something you don't have a name for. Something almost like horror.

"You didn't know," he says.

"Of course I didn't know! My name is Ava Tregarthen, I translate contracts for a living, I don't poison people!"

"Your Majesty." Mircea is at his shoulder. "Are you…"

"It cannot hurt me. You know that." Severin is still looking at you. "It would have hurt her. Within the hour, I think. It tastes of bitter almonds and cold iron and a laboratory." He stands. The whole hall rises with him in a wave of silk. "Captain. The envoy does not return to Villa Aster. She goes to the east tower. Double the guard on the door. Triple it. No one enters her rooms but you and Ilinca. Nothing reaches her mouth that has not come through me."

"Wait," you say. "Wait, you can't just..."

"I can." He looks down at you, and for a heartbeat you think he's going to say something else. His jaw works. Then he turns and walks out of the Long Hall without another word, and the doors close behind him with a sound like a lid.

The east tower is round, with a wide bed under a canopy of midnight-blue velvet, a fire already roaring, bookshelves curving around the walls, and a window so high it shows only stars.

It's beautiful. It also has four guards outside the door.

Mircea brings your suitcase from Villa Aster himself, and your briefcase, and the crescent lantern from the market. He sets the lantern on the windowsill with surprising care.

"Emlyn," you say. "Is he all right? He's alone down there."

"Mr. Ingram is being looked after. And questioned, politely." Mircea pauses at the door. "Envoy. In a hundred and forty years of service I've seen the king taste poison four times. Every time, it was meant for him." He hesitates. "This is the first time he drank it for someone else."

He shuts the door. The lock turns on the inside. Your side. You notice that.

You don't sleep. You sit by the fire with your knees pulled up and Verity's card in your hand. For your first toast, after your first victory. You turn it over and over until the edges go soft.

You're braver than you think, Ava, Verity told you on the platform in Vienna. That's why it's you.

It can't be her. It can't. Someone switched the bottle. Someone at Villa Aster, in the pouch, on the train.

The high window grays. You hear the citadel go quiet as dawn comes and the whole city sinks into its day-sleep, bolts shooting home on shutters all over the cliffs. A human maid brings breakfast on a tray with a note: Tasted. M.A. You can't eat it.

You doze in the chair. You wake in blue dusk with your neck aching and the fire low.

And your phone, face down on the arm of the chair, lights up through the velvet.

Unknown number.

You turn it over. One text, perfectly punctuated, arriving in the first minute after sunset like he was waiting for the light to go.

You will not drink anything I have not tasted first. That is not a request. S.