Chapter 2

Alice

I was not a lowly slave.

I was an assassin — sent here to kill Augus?

How could that possibly be true?

I don't think any person alive could hear that and stay calm. I certainly couldn't. I stood there in silence for what felt like a very long time, and not a single word would come.

"Are you sure you have the right person?"

I finally found my voice. There was a thread of hope in it — small, but there.

"Alice."

Lauren cut me off. His voice was barely more than a whisper, thin and fraying at the edges, the way a thread sounds just before it snaps. I had seen old servants in the castle go like that — that hollow, suspended sound in the hours before the end. I knew Lauren didn't have much time left.

"On your inner thigh," he said, "there is a black flower bud. That is the mark of our organization."

He looked at me. My heart dropped straight to the floor.

He cannot know that.

That mark was in the most concealed place on my body. In all the world, only two people could possibly have seen it — me, and Augus. And even Augus, for all the liberties he took, had never had the patience to examine me that carefully. A stranger — a stranger who had appeared out of nowhere — had absolutely no way of knowing it existed.

Fear began to climb.

But the answer was already there, unavoidable.

I am an assassin. I was sent here to kill Augus.

The room seemed to tilt. I thought I might actually faint.

"Alice, your mission isn't finished yet—"

Lauren's voice cut off. From somewhere above us, footsteps came fast and hard down the corridor. I stood frozen where I was. In the instant before the door swung open, Lauren's hand shot out and pressed a small knife into my coat pocket.

"What are you doing in here?"

I turned around stiffly. A tall, powerfully built man was staring at me — eyes sharp as blades, a face that could have been cast from the same mold as Augus's. I recognized him: Aike, Augus's personal attendant.

But perhaps because I had spent so long living under Augus's gaze, Aike's didn't unsettle me the way it might have. What is a wolf to someone who already lives with a lion?

"I came to bring him his meal," I said, keeping my head slightly lowered, my voice as ordinary as I could make it. "That's why I'm here."

Aike studied me for a long moment. "Leave the food at the door next time," he said at last. "Don't come inside."

"Yes."

That was a month ago. Even now, I remember exactly how I felt walking out of that dungeon.

Like someone who had just survived something they were never supposed to survive.

God only knows how terrified I was that Aike would search me. If he had pulled back my coat, he would have found the knife tucked against my stomach instantly. But he wasn't as impulsive as the Earl — he didn't tear at my clothes. I got out.

The knife was sharper than I had expected. I only pressed it against my skin for a short while, and the flesh there swelled up. A month later, it still ached faintly.

And now — what was I supposed to do with it?

I knew what Lauren had been trying to say before he was interrupted. He wanted me to finish the job. To kill Augus.

The very thought felt impossible.

Was Lauren powerful? Obviously. But what had that gotten him? He was chained in a lightless dungeon, day and night, with no way out. The maid had told me that whenever his wounds began to close, someone came with a blade to open them again. Augus was keeping him alive on purpose — just alive enough to suffer, too broken to die. I admired Lauren for enduring it. If it had been me, I think I would have given everything away at the very start.

I didn't want to be an assassin. I didn't have Lauren's sense of duty, and I had no interest in pretending otherwise. What I wanted — what I had always quietly wanted — was to be nothing more than a slave who outlived her usefulness. When I was old and worn and Augus had long since lost interest in me, I would find a quiet place somewhere, grow a garden full of flowers, keep a small cat, and live out my days in peace.

Though honestly, knowing Augus, he would probably discard me long before I grew old.

It was late, and I was exhausted. I couldn't carry these thoughts any further. I lay back down on the bed, and my eyes closed almost before my head hit the pillow.

---

I was woken by someone hammering on the door — hard enough and fast enough that I half expected the glass pane to shatter. It took me several groggy seconds to climb out of bed and cross the room.

"What do you think you're doing? Do you have any idea what time it is? Augus and Miss Linda have sent me to bring you. Now."

I didn't argue. Not out of fear of her — but because Augus despised tardiness above almost anything else. I washed up quickly and followed her out.

When we reached his door, I knocked. His voice came from inside, low and level.

"Come in."

I opened the door. Augus was seated in one of the great chairs by the window, and Linda was nestled close beside him. The chairs were magnificent — velvet on the outside, deep goose-down padding on the seat and back, the kind of furniture that seemed to belong in another world entirely. I had sat in Linda's chair once, a long time ago. Augus had yanked me out of it immediately and thrown me onto the bed as though I had contaminated the thing. He despised me touching his possessions — as if the mere contact of my hands would cause them to rot. Yet Linda sat freely in his space, and he permitted it, even welcomed it.

I had no right to object. So I stood where I was, hands folded, as respectful and invisible as any ordinary servant.

"Drink the medicine."

Augus didn't look at me. He gestured to the side. A moment later, the maid who had woken me appeared carrying a bowl of dark liquid.

The moment I saw it, my body flinched before I could stop it.

The medicine was black — truly black — with sediment drifting at the bottom of the bowl. I had tasted it before. It was like drinking something wrung out of a bitter animal organ, the kind of taste that strips the will to keep living. No one, not a single person alive, could swallow it without their face collapsing. Augus made me drink it whenever no precautions had been taken. The effects were brutal — violent stomach cramps that sometimes became so severe I lost consciousness.

But yesterday I had been careful. I was almost certain of it.

So why?

"You know what it is. Drink it."

Augus's patience was already thinning. I could hear it. And from beside him, Linda was watching me with that needling, triumphant look — as if she found my degradation genuinely entertaining.

"My lord," I said, raising my eyes to his. "Is there any chance — just this once — I might be excused from it?"

I was begging. I knew I was. I hoped he would take pity, just once, just this one time.

But the moment the words left my mouth, I understood what I had done.

I had just tried to override a decision made by the Duke.

"Help her."

Augus's expression didn't change. The words came out flat and cold.

Before I could react, the maid's hand clamped around my jaw. My head was wrenched back, and the entire bowl of black liquid was poured down my throat in one go.

It burned. It burned as though the medicine itself were made of fire, scorching everything it passed through.

God.

If I could have screamed, I would have.

What is this medicine even made of? It was the cruelest thing I had ever been made to endure — and I had endured a great deal. At that moment I would genuinely have preferred being in bed with Augus. At least that was only the body suffering. This felt like something deeper being destroyed.

I couldn't move. I couldn't fight. I could only wait until the maid released me and shoved me aside. The cold floor came up hard.

"Cough — cough — cough—"

I couldn't stop coughing. The spasms kept coming, one after another, until Augus's voice cut through them.

"That's enough. Get out."

I was disoriented enough that it took me a moment to make sense of it, but I wasn't imagining things — his voice was angrier now than it had been before any of this started. Angrier than when I had asked to be excused.

But why? What had I done this time? I was the one who had just been force-fed that wretched bowl of poison. Was this because I had hesitated at the beginning?

I was still trying to piece it together when I found myself in the corridor, the door shut behind me. My throat felt like scorched earth. I needed water — even a small cup would help.

Then the door opened again.

Linda.

My stomach sank.

Her face was tight with irritation, both brows drawn into a sharp line. The look in her eyes said she had been waiting for this moment.

Move. Now. Get away from here.

But I was too slow.

"Take hold of her."

Linda lifted her chin, and there was nothing in her expression except cold pleasure.

"What are you doing?" My voice shook. I couldn't help it. Augus was right on the other side of that wall — separated from us by nothing but a single door.

"What am I doing?" Linda smiled. It was the kind of smile that makes the air feel colder. I thought of a story an old servant had once told me about a witch — how a witch's smile was the most dangerous curse in the world, because it looked like warmth and delivered ruin. How the cold it brought wasn't the cold of ice water, but the cold of dozens of serpents crawling slowly across your bare skin, and you had to stay alert every moment for the one that might coil around your throat.

Linda was exactly that — the witch who commanded the snakes.

"I'm only helping the medicine absorb properly," she said pleasantly. Then she glanced at the servant beside her, and the woman moved.

I was slammed to the ground.

"Hit her," Linda said. "Don't hold back."

That smile of hers — it really did look like a serpent's tongue.

Crack.

Crack.

Crack.

Each blow drove the air out of me. I felt as though my organs were shifting loose from their moorings.

This is hell.

I'm going to die here.

I knew I should fight back. Every part of me that was still thinking knew it. But two servants had me pinned to the floor, and I couldn't move, couldn't even turn over.

I fixed my eyes on that closed door.

This time I didn't pray to God.

I prayed to Augus.

Please. Say something. You don't even have to come out — just call out, just once, just enough to stop this.

My vision was beginning to blur at the edges. The weight on top of me, and the pain, and the burning in my throat — all of it was pulling me down.

And then Augus's voice came through the door, sharp and unambiguous.

"Linda."