Page 96 of Winter Gods & Serpents

She clicked her tongue at me. “I am married.”

I leaned onto my side. “How is married life? Fancy a mistress? I will be gentle.”

She pushed onto my wound and I winced at the burn. “Keep looking after it, you know I can't heal it completely.” She placed a moist bandage over it, stinking foul of herbs and alcohol. “I will remove the scar on the next session.”

“No,” I said quietly. “The scar stays.”

All my scars stay, they were mine. Mine to remember, forget, use.

She glanced over the marred skin, probably wondering how a princess wished to remain marked. “It stays then.”

Nia laid in my bed, eyes glued to pages of a brown leather-bound book. “Cai said you went by the Bruma halls again, though I told you to stay away from there. If I repeat to you once more to keep away from unnecessary danger I will send you back to Alaric.”

More than enough she has kept putting herself in front row of danger, one I never would normally allow.

She didn’t answer, I didn’t think she even heard me. “And she is gone,” I said and leaned over the pages she was intensively studying. “Mirkroot, isn’t that like an aphrodisiac? Nia, Nia,” I teased amused.

She frowned at me. “Mirkroot is that only for humans, to Aura something else completely. The plant is magic grown from Koy. To Aura it acts as an enhancer combining with magic to heighten its flow. It doesn’t add it, just courses more of your mana in one gathered moment, but only for a while. Mirkroot is deadly, Snow.”

I shuffled in bed making myself comfortable. “Why are you inquiring about this?”

“The Bruma halls, they stank of it every time I visited. In Fernfoss, the herbalist would keep it in the front desk so the whole place reeked of it. Imagine my surprise when Bruma halls brought me the lovely memory of lusting couples who lacked vigour. Verglasers, they were strange, agitated and on edge, their magic almost sizzled metallic in the air leaking out of control.”

“What?” I scooted near her, flipping through the book pages. “You think the Verglasers are consuming it, do you think my father is giving it to them?”

“I don’t know, but someone definitely is.”

“Is that why Cai barely took that one by the western bay ruins?”

Each trip, each batch of Verglasers caught heading toward the Volants, he returned even more tired and worn out. Now we knew why.

“I never believe the stories of that fool, but he said that the soldier blasted ice about a mile within their radius. I’m thinking he didn’t lie about it. I will have to enquire a bit more about this. Why would anyone sacrifice perfectly capable Aura for what, maybe a year at best of exhilarated magic?”

I snatched her book away and threw it across the room. “Renick is not someone I take lightly. You will not mess in his court anymore. No more of this, it’s an order.”

She rose her body to protest but I threw her a glare. “I didn’t come here to make sacrifices, Nia. You are to end it. If Verglasers are consuming mirkroot, damned they be, I care not. We are not going up against them, not with my plan.”

“Alright,” she sighed given up, dropping back on the bed.

“He is preparing for war, isn’t he? What I cannot understand are these confusing patterns he is leaving.”

Father was usually simple, leaving traces here and there with an obvious result, but now I’d found him spread all over and now in this confusing deal with Adriata.

“I am telling you, it is not your father. He is greedy, not stupid to sacrifice so many of his Aura. Alaric was right, some tutors were complaining on the lowering number of Aura in Isjord.” She approached, laying by my side fiddling with a long strand of my hair. “Why do you pick fights with him? You ignore and bear Malik just fine.”

Surprised at the sudden change of conversation I turned facing her. “He is not scared of me.”

“Then he is an idiot.”

“Not anymore, he found out about the poison micro dosing just looking at my blood, eyes and lips. He could tell every single one you’ve been giving me.”

“What?” she asked wide eyed before biting her lip in concentration. “You think he might try and poison you with something else now that he knows?”

“He snapped a man’s neck without even touching him, poisoning is the least of my troubles, but he truly needs me and there have been several chances to kill me, and he didn’t.”

He’d faded us in the middle of nowhere to ask for my truth, not to harm, kill, threaten or anything at that. He might have been given the opportunity a thousand times to do just that, whisk me away to kill me with no issue and without anyone even doubting, yet he didn’t and hadn’t.

“He is Adriatian.”