The poison daughter

“Gaven, must you always lurk?” I snap. “Call me by my Divine-damned name when we’re alone. I can’t stand the ceremony.”

He frowns, the movement accentuating the deep groove in his brow. “Who were you talking to?”

I don’t even need to look to know Aidia has managed to disappear. It has nothing to do with magic, and everything to do with years of practice. She’s always been good at slipping away u

“Myself,” I mutter.

Gaven’s pale green eyes dart down the hallway as if looking for some unseen danger. When I was young, I’d never seen someone with such strange pale eyes, and I believed it when Aidia told me that they gave him the magical ability to see danger. Now I know that he’s just well-trained and used to my tricks, as any bodyguard should be.

All Carrenwells have a bodyguard. When I was young, I thought it was ridiculous. We’re the most powerful family in the city, both politically and magically. But when there was a particularly swift and deadly breach eleven years ago, it was Gaven’s vigilance and fearsome fighting that protected me when South Hold was overrun with Drained.

Looking at him tonight—his hair, once a deep ashen brown, gone almost entirely gray, and the faint lines of his face shadowed by the chandelier light—it occurs to me that he looks old. Not in his posture, which is still the perfect rigid stance of a soldier, or in his build, which is as broad and muscular as it’s always been, but in the look in his eye that is more wary and, perhaps, more weary than it’s ever been. He was handsome once—he still is for an older man—but something has shifted in him over the last few months, and it’s bothering me that I can’t put my finger on it.

“Did you hear the bells earlier? Southwest Hold isn’t very far. You should stay in tonight,” Gaven says. “You know how quickly things can shift. It’s been eleven years, but the attacks are more frequent than ever now.”

He’s always quick to remind me of that attack when he suspects I’m preparing for one of my nightly excursions around the city. Just like he’s always quick to bring up the fall of Mountain Haven.

The fort along the only trading route for Lunameade was supposed to be impenetrable. But one night ten years ago, their sturdy granite wall fell, and the Drained killed every last man, woman, and child inside. Seemingly overnight, the only stronghold we had outside our city walls became Fallen Hold, and Lunameade was cut off from the world. We became more isolated than we had been since my ancestors founded the city.

I know Gaven is hoping the fear will be a sobering reminder to keep him close, but I refuse to be a prisoner in my own house.

I’m well aware that the bloodsuckers outside the city walls aren’t the only threat. There are plenty of bloodthirsty people safe inside our city who would love to get a crack at one of the Carrenwells. Once a year, some overzealous rebel storms our gardens and Gaven proves his worth.

The rest of the time, he makes himself an unrelenting pain in my ass.

I weave my arm through his. “Do you know what this di

Out of the corner of my eye, the tight line of his mouth momentarily dips into a frown. He knows something.

“Care to share with me?”

“Perhaps if you share how you manage to sneak out at night?” he counters. “Or what you’re doing out there?”

I bat my lashes at him. “Oh, are we going to gossip? So eager for news of my latest love affair? I’ll tell you mine if you tell me what I’m walking into.”

He ignores my taunting.

Fair enough. I guess I’ll just have to wait to find out with everyone else.

He pauses in the hallway just before the dining room doors. No matter how many times we have done this, it still hits me in the chest that Gaven grants me this moment to brace myself. It’s a kindness my own parents have never offered.

“How’s your head?” he asks.

“It’s fine,” I say.

“If that changes⁠—”

“Just give you the look. I know.”

It’s not like he can actually get me out of a family event, but the few times I’ve had an attack in public, he’s caused enough of a diversion for me to sneak away.

He pushes the door open, and an overwhelming surge of magic in the room hits me like a blow. The room smells like beeswax candles and wine, but it looks like bright fireworks of magic bursting around the table. I close my eyes as we step inside. I can still see the auras behind my lids.

Every magical family in Lunameade in one room, the rainbow of their magic a bright swirl of color. This is what separates our family from all the others and what has kept us in power all this time.

Every guest at this di

That means no one can try to use magic on us without us noticing, and it means that even if we meet a stranger, we’ll know immediately what kind of blessing they have and how to counteract it.

Blinking my eyes open, I take in the smiling faces and expensive clothes.

My mother’s dark violet gaze sweeps over me, and she purses her lips. That’s as close to approval as I’ll get. I’m sure there’s something displeasing about my appearance. There always is. It took years of desperate striving to learn, but I’ve abandoned the notion that I can possibly please her. There’s freedom in being a disappointment.

Gaven leads me past my usual spot toward the end of the head table, and my hackles rise. I dig my fingernails into his arm, but he doesn’t slow as he guides me past my sisters, Electra, Caria

I smile and sit, placing the golden napkin in my lap.

Before I can ask, Kellan leans over and fills my glass with sparkling wine. “What did you do?” His tone is teasing, but I can see the hint of concern in his eyes at this sudden shift in the usual seating order.

He runs a hand over his jaw, the movement a disturbing echo of our father. Then, his lips tip up, and that smirk is just like mine and Aidia’s.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I whisper. “Clearly we’re celebrating.” I tilt my glass back and the fizzy liquid tingles over my tongue.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about,” Kellan says, draining his glass. He cocks his head to the side, his lilac eyes sca

Kellan is the only sibling besides Aidia that I have a relationship with. Before he took over as captain of the city watch at eighteen, he spent all of his free time with Aidia and me, and he did his best to protect us from our father’s wrath.

I turn to face him. “You mean, you don’t even know what this is about? Getting rusty in your old age?”

He refills his glass, looking at our parents and then back at me. “I’m serious.”

“So am I. I haven’t done anything.”

One of Kellan’s brows arches, disappearing beneath the dark hair falling over his forehead, the expression so startlingly like Aidia’s that it makes my chest hurt. “Perhaps the problem isn’t doing anything but doing anyone?”

I smirk. “Perhaps.”

I don’t like lying to him, but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. It’s his job as captain of the city watch to spot any threats to city security or the magical families, so I’ve been meticulous at covering my tracks. He knows that I sneak out most nights, but he assumes I’ve been sleeping my way through the city, and that’s how I like it.

“How are Jack and Kate?” I ask, leaning over to grin at his wife.

“Trouble as always, just like their father,” Libby says.

If my niece and nephew were here, I could be entertained, but children are treated like a nuisance in our family—at least until they master their magical abilities.

Libby wrings her hands. “It’s good to see you out of mourning black and looking so well, Harlow. Red suits you better.”

I smooth my dress. “If I have to be unlucky in love, at least I can look good doing it, right?”

Kellan purses his lips. He knows my late husband’s untimely death was less a lack of luck than an abundance of poison magic at the request of my parents.

I offer Libby a sincere smile. “I’m kidding. Six months in mourning seems to have ruined my social skills, but surely you have better things to worry about than one of your sisters-in-law.”

“Yes, well, I only like one of them,” Libby says, tucking her red hair behind her ear. “And Kel refuses to let me worry about him, no matter how wild the rebels get in town.”

I eye Kellan. “Has it been dangerous of late?”

Before he can answer, a servant places plates of bright orange zucchini blossoms in front of us, and I’m forced from the moment of personal co

I try to ignore the fact that I am sitting across from the man I loathe, but Rafe Mattingly’s orange aura is a vortex that pulls on everyone in the room.

Blessings from Polm, the Divine of Malice, tend to feel like that because manipulation magic relies on the wielder’s ability to attach to other people.

My oldest brother, Able, leans a conspiratorial arm on the back of Rafe’s chair and whispers to him. Rafe tips his head back and laughs. That bastard has the audacity to laugh in our house—to bare the long column of his throat like he’s certain no one would try to slit it.

With his dark golden hair falling over his forehead and the laugh lines crinkling around his eyes, it would be easy to mistake him for someone harmless. But if you pay attention, it’s impossible to miss the cu

He rests an arm on the empty chair to his left and smiles lazily at Able to his right. That’s what happens when men act up. They don’t get punished. They get rewarded with a place of honor next to the heir.

I could end him so quickly, and his little whisper of magic would do nothing to save him. I could poison his wine, or sneak him into a dark room and press my lips to his, and as sick as that would make me, it would be worth it to trick him into a swift death.

But that’s just a daydream. Rafe managed to wrestle the title of mayor away from my father four years ago. Though it’s a role designed to represent the unblessed, magicless people of Lunameade, my father held it for years, as did every ancestor in his line right up to the founder of the city—until Rafe.

Rafe has managed to convince the unblessed that he understands their plight and wants to make the city more equitable for those who lack magical gifts. It would be a more compelling notion if I didn’t know what a self-serving monster he is.

For now, he is untouchable, but he won’t be forever.