Poison Tree

He turned toward her with panic in his eyes. Even at that age, she could see the moment when he decided he had to shut her up.

She ran. He fol owed her, and that was when she went to the kitchen and grabbed a knife. He was more than a foot tal er than she was, but she thought that once he realized she had a weapon, he would run away. He was supposed to run.

“Why didn’t you run away?” she asked the memory. “Why did you—”

The memory shattered into reality as someone struck her. She struggled, ghting the impression that she was still grappling with Andy, and realized that her wrists were chained to the wall above her. She looked down and saw that someone had wrapped a bandage around her knee, and it was stained dark red. Seeing it made her queasy, and also made her realize she wasn’t feeling as much pain as she should have been. Someone had drugged her, either chemically or magically.

“What—” She started to ask a question and discovered there was something wrong with her jaw. She was really not looking forward to what it was going to feel like when she started feeling pain again.

“I have one simple question for you,” the man in front of her said.

She struggled to focus her vision and realized at last where she was, and who was with her. She was in one of the private rooms at the back of the Onyx Hall. Once upon a time, it had been a dressing room. There was even a shiny, framed painting left on the far wall, its silver and gold embroidery glinting in the light, as if the room were still used for something glamorous.

It wasn’t. The once-polished oor was scu ed and scratched, not to mention bloodstained, and the walls hadn’t been painted in decades. These days, Kral used this room as his own personal torture chamber. Just now, he was standing in front of Alysia with what she feared was her blood on his hands.

Alysia tried to draw a breath, but it only made her head spin. Her ribs shifted in a funny way, suggesting worse damage than she remembered suffering before she was knocked out.

“What was the question?” she managed to ask. A throbbing ache in her jaw warned her that the pain was not very far away.

“Where is she?”

Kral spoke slowly, clearly, in a way that betrayed it was taking all his self-control for him not to snap her like kindling. Alysia had seen what it looked like when he didn’t bother with that self-control, and she really did not want to bait him, but she didn’t have the rst idea what he wanted.

He was not going to like that excuse.

CHAPTER 14

“YOU’RE UPSET, ” JEHT observed as Sarik led the cubs back toward the front of the administration building.

The obvious reply, reminding him about the recent attack and the deadly ght that he had nished, would mean nothing to him. The less obvious answer, though, was much more complicated.

“Are you ever afraid?” she asked him as they entered the lobby and paused.

For a moment he looked o ended; she saw the defensive answer form on his lips and the way he looked at his younger brother as if concerned about his reaction. Then he paused, taking in Sarik’s expression. “Sometimes,” he whispered. “When the blue men captured us, and then you came, I thought you would kill us.”

Jeht and Quean had been picked up by human police after they had been thrown out of their own tribe, casualties of a coup that had overthrown the king, their father. It had taken time for SingleEarth to hear about them, to nd someone who spoke their language, and then for Sarik to reach them.

Quean said in a tiny voice, “Sometimes I still think that.”

Sarik resisted the urge to pick the smaller boy up and hug him tightly. He still saw her as his queen. Such an informal display would panic him.

“Sometimes I’m afraid, too,” she admitted. “I’m afraid now, but there is nothing I can do about it. Every time I try to fix anything, people get hurt.”

“Is the woman from earlier someone you hurt?” Jeht asked. “Is that why she is hunting you?”

“The woman who interrupted our meeting?” Sarik asked. Jeht wouldn’t have understood anything the woman said, only that she had shouted a lot. “She’s also afraid, I think,” she answered. “Some people get angry when they’re scared.”

Jeht frowned. “She didn’t smell angry or scared,” he said. “She yelled like a tiger, like she was trying to frighten people, but her scent never changed except when she looked at you.”

The words caught in Sarik’s anxiety like a shhook, tugging. Jeht was right—everyone in the room who spoke English had been focused on their own concerns and on the woman’s words. They had all acknowledged that her behavior seemed “o ,” but none of them had consciously considered her body language.

“Mary,” she asked as they entered the lobby, switching to English to speak to the secretary, “could I see the lobby tape from when our visitor came in?”

Mary pulled up the footage with a few clicks, then moved aside so Sarik and Jeht could see. Sarik watched and listened as the distressed woman who had come to look for Alysia paced and pleaded with the receptionist.

“Why isn’t she here?” the woman demanded of Mary.

“She had to leave on business, I believe,” Mary replied vaguely.

Sarik wondered if Mary had been fully informed yet about Alysia’s situation, or if she was trying to make the situation seem less dire in an attempt to calm the woman.

“I have to see her.”

“She isn’t here.” Mary was obviously losing her patience. “Please, let me show you to the conference room. The rest of the mediators are there. Maybe they can tell you more.”

The woman nodded, her hand unconsciously going to a necklace barely visible at her throat, and then followed the receptionist out.

Sarik hit the Back button and watched the scene again, this time with no volume.

There was a moment when the woman looked up at the camera immediately upon entering, obviously noticing it and pondering its presence. In that moment, it was as if her gaze locked with Sarik’s, and she seemed familiar in a way that made Sarik’s heart pound.

She was dressed in an attractive but conservative style. Sarik remembered thinking how her clothing and hairstyle made the distinct shade of her hair less striking. Add colored contacts …

I know her.

They had met in another lifetime, when this woman had been an angry sixteen-year-old girl. She had been dressed in form- tting black, with that burgundy hair cascading around her face, a perfect match to her eyes. Her gaze had xed on the other angry young woman in the room, the tigress who glared at the newcomer with a warning to stay away.

Her name was Ravyn.

And she had come into SingleEarth and asked for Alysia, and then she had seen Sarik and established in a few angry sentences that Sarik was a tiger before she stormed out.

“Who is she?” Jeht asked.

Before Sarik could answer, Lynzi emerged with her phone at her ear, saying, “We’ll be there within the hour.”

Lynzi saw Sarik and waved her over as she continued toward the parking lot.

“That was one of the local hospitals,” she explained. “They called us to say they had someone in who was healing unusually and might be more our kind of patient. I can’t tell for sure from the description, but I think it’s Christian. The doctor said there was a young woman with him, apparently human, also severely hurt and unconscious. Pandora probably already knows if her student is in danger, but I’m not sure she’ll bother to help

Alysia, so I’m going. Jason is scheduling a meeting with Maya.” Her phone rang. She glanced down and said, “That’s Diana. I called her in case I need help at the hospital.