Poison Tree

death.

She was pretty sure that would bother her eventually.

“She disappeared within twenty-four hours of your appearance on Onyx’s doorstep,” Kral declared. “Six years later, I hear that you’ve dropped by Onyx, and my daughter calls me within the next twenty-four hours. It is too wild a coincidence for the two to be unrelated.”

“I can see why it seems that way,” Alysia said.

Upon saying it, she realized how incredibly stupid she had been.

No, not stupid—uninformed.

Alysia had never known Sahara. She had seen pictures of the wild, leather-garbed huntress who was princess of the Onyx guild and who, as one novice had described it, had displayed Christian a bit like a fur stole, but she had never seen the tigress in person, never tried to picture what she might look like without the metal and the screw-the-world attitude.

Think it through. Don’t sic Kral on SingleEarth, not on such a crazy theory. Clear- minded, she probably wouldn’t begin to believe that the sweet little mediator could be the same tigress who had left four neat scars in a row across Christian’s chest.

That argument had been the nal straw. He had walked out, taken the job against Maya despite Kral’s forbidding it, and hooked up with Alysia.

Kral slapped her, relatively softly but hard enough to get her attention.

“What did you give me?” Alysia asked. “I can’t think. Can’t answer your questions if I can’t think.”

“It’s an easy question. You know the answer.”

Whether she did or not, she didn’t want to tell him jack until she was able to think through the consequences.

Which was why he had drugged her.

Goddamn.

The impact made her ache enough that it took her a moment to realize she hadn’t been the one hit. Something very large and solid had struck the door from the outside. The door opened and an unconscious guard fell into Kral.

Behind the guard was a slender woman with hair and eyes the color of spilled blood.

Even at this distance, Alysia recognized her, though her hair was now shorn very short in a style that did not look entirely intentional. In fact, it was a little singed, as was the skin on her left hand.

Flatly, she informed Kral, “Your merc blew up my new car.”

“Ravyn, can’t you see I’m busy?”

Ravyn glanced at Alysia, then back at Kral. “Yeah, real busy. And you owe me a Beamer.

Also, Pandora is pissed that you sent her student to the hospital, and I had a chat with your daughter this morning. But you’re busy, so I’ll be on my way.”

She turned around and dodged when Kral reached for her. The knife appeared in her hand like magic as she spat, “Put a hand on me and I will put a hole in you, tiger. Is that clear? I just came to tell you I expect you to replace that car, and I want you to keep your family feud in your own guild. If I hear you’re soliciting underranked Crimson members again—for a hit on SingleEarth, of all the pathetic things—you and I are going to have words and weapons.”

“Um, help?” Alysia managed to ask when it became clear that Ravyn was about to leave and Kral was going to let her walk out.

“Onyx business is not my deal,” Ravyn replied.

Mercenaries, Alysia thought.

Kral’s response was a little less resigned. He turned around with a growl and smacked

Alysia hard enough that the world turned pink, then gray, then white, and then was gone completely.

Alysia tried to run.

Andy fol owed her. She went to the kitchen and grabbed a knife. He was more than afoot tal er than she was, but she thought that once he realized she had a weapon, he would run away. He probably didn’t want to fight.

When he reached for her, she ran again, toward the stairs, shouting for her parents, her mother in the bedroom and her father on an air mattress in the study. She cut her hand when Andy grabbed her ankle. She stumbled, and they tussled on the stairs.

Alysia’s father appeared at the top landing, but not in time to keep them both from fal ing and rol ing down the wooden steps, knife between them. She was vaguely aware of the knife blade sliding into esh, an instant before they reached the bottom and she came to a sudden stop as the back of her skul slammed into flagstone tile.

She woke with a doctor and a police o cer at her side. She did not need to ask what had happened to Andy, because in that nal second, she had felt the knife and the blood and seen the look in his eyes. She looked at the cop and burst into tears. She was a murderer. They would arrest her.

Alysia woke with a start and then moaned as her sudden movement pulled on her chains.

The worst part had been that she had known him.

No, the worst part had been waking up in a hospital and being assured that it was perfectly ne that she had killed a classmate. He had broken into their house, probably looking for something to sell for drug money, and apparently that made it all right that she had murdered him. Everything she did after that, she was assured by her mother’s therapist, was “perfectly normal” and all right because of her parents’ pending divorce and the little issue of a murder no one seemed to care about.

Staying out late. Getting in trouble. Stealing a pair of sneakers. Stealing a Lexus. Hacking into the school network. Hacking into the police network. Breaking into a swanky house in a suburban neighborhood only to nd herself in the middle of a guild of ruthless assassins.

The leader of Frost, a terrifying woman named Sarta, had given her an opportunity to join her guild or go to jail for a long time. Alysia would have joined even without the threat.

Her mother’s therapist probably would have told her that she used contracts from Frost to ll the void left behind by two parents who meant well but were too focused on their own fears and needs to question their daughter further when she assured them she was fine.

You’re not ne now, she reminded herself, struggling to focus and pull her thoughts back to the present. Whatever drugs Kral had given her were obviously still in her system, making her mind wander in all sorts of inconvenient ways, but they were starting to wear o . The evidence of that was the screaming pain running up and down her body like an electric current.

If Kral believed what Ravyn had said about having a “chat” with his daughter, he had probably gone after her for more information. Alysia was alone for the moment, but she didn’t know how long that would last.

Her hands were mostly numb from being above her head for so long. She couldn’t clench her teeth against the pain of trying to lift her head to examine the shackles because her jaw refused to cooperate, so she just breathed shallowly and tried not to wonder how many ribs were broken.

Some people liked metal shackles. They were cruel and cold, and most people feared them. On the plus side, they tended not to be adjustable. Kral no doubt had a variety of sizes—because if you’re prone to chaining people in your greenroom, you would have to, right?—but in the end, the iron rings rarely fit well.

Alysia twisted her right hand, letting the muscles go slack as she forced her thumb out of joint. Someday she wanted to do a survey on how many Bruja members were double-

jointed, especially in their hands; it seemed like a great evolutionary advantage to Alysia, who had wriggled out of more restraints than most people in safer professions ever had to worry about.

Everything went gray as she hit the ground and her legs collapsed under her. It took at least a century, maybe an eon, for the pain to recede. She couldn’t seem to get enough air, and her heart was pounding.

She shouldn’t stand up. If she did, she would faint, and she couldn’t a ord to faint. She used her hands to get closer to the door and reached up to test the knob. Raising her arm so far above her head brought the black patches back to her vision, but it was worth it when she found the door unlocked.

As hell-bent as Kral was on tracking down Sahara, he probably wouldn’t stop to worry that a mere human might have the fortitude to escape. He hadn’t bothered to lock the door.

He probably hadn’t taken the time to replace the guard Ravyn had incapacitated, either.