The Foxglove King (The Nightshade Crown #1)

by Hannah F. Whitten

She had other, more interesting scars. But she kept her palm closed tight.

But she shouldn’t feel Mortem in a living man, not one who wasn’t at death’s door. Her shock was quick and sharp, and chased with something else—the scent of foxglove.

Mortem was dormant in everyone—the essence of death, the power born of entropy, just waiting to flood your body on the day it failed—but the only way to use it, to bend it to your will, was to nearly die.

She was tied into this damn city as surely as death was tied into life, as surely as the crescent moon burned into the bottom curve of her palm.

“Such a gentleman,” she remarked, starting down the hall to where Anton and Malcolm waited, unfamiliar velvet swishing around her legs. “Celibacy has got to be a drag, but you didn’t even try to peek.” The Mort made a choked noise.

“Too mean to charge for my company, too clumsy for barkeeping, and I’m a terrible cook. That rules out most gainful employment.” She said it pleasantly enough, an answer that gave away nothing important.

August nodded. “Balgia.” He gestured to Gabriel. “It seems it’s time for you to take up your title again, Gabriel Remaut.”

A duke. Gabriel was a duke?

“Besides, the girl is from the streets, Remaut. Don’t rob her of her rags-to-riches fairy tale. She’s probably dreamed of the opportunity since she was a girl.”

“I’m not sure the opportunity to lurk around the Citadel in the hope someone would tell me something useful ever occurred to me, really,”

His docility rankled her, for reasons she couldn’t quite name. That strange feeling of familiarity she had toward the Mort told her that he wasn’t supposed to be like this, placid and easily led, smothering the flames of his anger. He was someone who should let it burn.

You know the Tracts as well as I do: Parental sins are passed on to the children. Your father’s treason is carried in your blood.”

“I was ten, and Jax had just killed my father and carved out my eye. I didn’t know what else to do.”

In their twenty-fourth year of mortal life, the gods ascended: Apollius to the rulership of life and the day, Nyxara to rulership of death and the night, Hestraon to rulership of fire, Lereal to rulership of the air, Braxtos to rulership of the earth, and Caeliar to rulership of the sea.

Lore hastily braided her hair in a crown around her brow, the fanciest hairstyle she knew how to do, and pushed open her door with a sarcastic flourish. “Behold, a lady.” “Close enough, at least,” Anton said drily.

“If you don’t help me drink this, I’ll just throw back the whole bottle,” Lore said. “I promise you don’t want that. I sing when I’m drunk, and I’m a very bad singer.”

And Bleeding God help her, for a moment, Lore considered telling him the truth. Her mouth was open to let it all spill out—well, you see, I was born in the catacombs and I’ve been able to channel Mortem for as long as I can remember—and she choked the words back just in time.

“You’re hard not to notice,” Lore murmured, then clamped her lips shut. “And you say I need to work on my compliments.” Gabe shook out his shoulders. “Well. Into the breach.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder, mouth twisted in a wry smile. “I won’t bite.” Then, the smile twisting higher, “unless you decide you want me to.”

“I look forward to having you around, Lore.” His voice was low, breath brushing her temple as he leaned forward to speak into her ear. “It certainly has the potential to be interesting.” “Do you think so, Your Highness?” He was close enough that she felt the brush of his lips curving. “I know so.”

“A foxglove for a foxglove.” Bastian handed it to her with a bow and a flourish. “Beautiful and poisonous. Much like yourself, if I may be so bold as to make an assessment after our brief acquaintance.”

“As someone who was maybe one degree removed from being a pirate,” Lore said, “I would like to disabuse anyone of the notion that it’s a great time.”

“Good night, Mort.” “Good night, heretic.”

“Fuck me,” she swore softly. “You’ll have to ask more nicely than that.” Her eyes flew open—a dark human-shape bent over her, the sun behind it blurring their features.

She thought of the woman she’d seen him with in the gardens yesterday, his lips on her shoulder. If anyone saw her with Bastian and grass stains on her skirt, the conclusion they drew would have nothing to do with that kind of riding.

“The Arceneaux line had magic already, according to the Tracts.” “Which is one of many reasons why I don’t waste much time on the Tracts.” Bastian held up one hand, exaggeratedly flexed his fingers with a wicked glint in his eye. “I have been told I possess magic fingers, but the context wasn’t anything holy.”

“You’ve had years to learn about this power, with someone actually teaching you. I’ve just been trying to survive it.”

“Midsummer. A solar eclipse, so the Mortem will be particularly strong. Nyxara blocking Apollius, and all that.” He raised a brow. “Isn’t that right around your birthday?” Her twenty-fourth birthday. Her Consecration.

“Mortem, to me, feels like the absence of everything. An end. So I guess it doesn’t make sense that I would believe in an afterlife at all… but I do, I think. I believe in something, anyway. But in all honesty, the idea of the myriad hells makes more sense to me than the Shining Realm does. I think that whatever comes after this, it’s of our own making. Whatever we sowed in life is what we reap in death, good or bad.”

“I feel like hoping Nyxara’s afterlife isn’t terrible might be some kind of blasphemy.” “If grace is blasphemous, build me a pyre.”

Gabriel Remaut was a mess of contradictions, opposites all knotted up into one man, and she wanted to pick the knots apart.

“Maybe you could read it, too. Learn something. Since you’ve been celibate your whole life—” “You’re so sure I’ve never broken my vows, then?” She tilted her head curiously. “Have you?” Gabe gave her a cool glance over his shoulder, chin lifted. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“I was born in the catacombs,” she murmured. “To one of the Night Sisters, in what’s left of the Buried Watch.”

Slowly, he opened his hand next to her own. A sun. Well, half a sun—carved into the top part of his palm, the edges still fresh and red, only beginning to scab. A half circle arced from just below his smallest finger to his thumb, the short lines of rays cut up to his first knuckle. If they’d pressed their palms together, the upside-down crescent of her moon would fit perfectly as the completed curve of his sun.

“Do you ever sleep?” “No rest for the wicked, dearest.”

“Everyone in the Citadel has a nose for bullshit, and he doesn’t look at you like a cousin.” “How does he look at me, then?” Lore jerked her elbow from Bastian’s hold. “Like he’s not especially pleased about that vow of celibacy.”

“Are you so accustomed to being used that you don’t realize when it’s happening, as long as it’s done kindly?”

“It’ll never be enough for them, Gabe.” Despite the wicked grin, Bastian’s voice was soft. “The Church and Crown don’t forget, they don’t forgive, not any more than the gods did before them. But they’ll keep holding it in front of you like a mirage in a fucking desert. And you’ll keep chasing it, even when you know it’s not something you can touch.”

She thought of what happened this afternoon, when August had admonished her for asking questions of the corpse she’d raised instead of telling it to obey his orders. She hadn’t thought much of it then, but now she wondered why August and Anton hadn’t wanted her around when the dead started answering questions.

You can’t flee from what you are, daughter of the dark. Death is the one thing that will always find you, and you are its heir. The seed of the apocalypse, end-times walking. You are the wildfire necessary for the forest to grow, the destruction that brings rebirth.

They’ll force you to be stronger, and then break you down. Reduce you to nothing but a womb for magic they can’t make. But only if you let them. Even when you ascend, you must remember that you are wholly your own.

“I’d eat anything right about now,” Lore said around a full mouth. “See, had you not just gone through something rather traumatic, I’d be making an off-color joke about that. As it is, I will let it lie. Please admire my restraint.”

me. Just because it’s you.” “We haven’t known each other long,” she said finally, barely a whisper. The prince snorted. “No, we haven’t. But it sure feels like we have, Lore.”

“Do you think Gabe is coming back?” His blankets were on the floor, but she needed the reassurance. Needed someone to say they thought he’d still choose her, someone who knew what she was. Someone who knew what she was, and cared anyway. Bastian’s hand paused in the air a moment before settling on the wood of the door. “Of course he will. You’re here.”

Bastian unhooked his opposite arm from Lore’s grasp, then slipped a piece of paper into her hand. “A map to my rooms.” “Not exactly the most opportune time for a proposition, but I respect the effort.” “Get your mind out of the gutter, Lore.”

“I’m not stupid enough to think what happened to me is Bastian’s fault. We were children. But I’ll admit that I’m jealous.” He huffed a rueful laugh. “I’m jealous that his actions never seem to have consequences, when I’m carrying the consequences of an entire family. I’m jealous that it would take a miracle for him to be left all alone and with nothing, when everything was taken from me in an instant.”

See how easily you take to it, daughter of the dark?

“Lore and I will go,” Bastian said, with the air of a conversation decidedly closed. “I know the way to the stone garden; we’re both smart enough to make it there without being caught. We’ll figure out what’s going on, and the tatters of your honor won’t be further shredded. I know how dearly you hold them.”

The air around him almost seemed to glimmer, gold dust in the dark. Moonlight made him more beautiful, yes, but in the same way that darkness emphasized a flame. He didn’t belong in it; Bastian Arceneaux was antithetical to night.

They circled trust, but never quite landed, carrion birds with a body dying slowly.