Poison Tree

control you.

But she couldn’t seem to find her voice.

Kral looked at Christian. “Are you the one responsible for bringing her home?”

Sarik tensed and was about to protest that she had chosen to return on her own, but

Christian asked his own question instead.

“Where is Alysia?”

Kral paused a moment, seeming contemplative. “If you do not know, then I’m sure I don’t.”

“You tried to frame her for the attack on SingleEarth, and then put a number up on her,”

Christian said.

“Oh, really?” Kral glanced at Sarik. He knew, or guessed, that at least part of the story

Christian told had been her fault, but he had no reason to share that information. He also apparently had no interest in continuing the conversation. “Daughter, there is a rumor going around that you are starting your own tribe. You don’t seriously expect to challenge me, do you?”

“No,” she snapped instinctively. “I mean, yes, but—” Get a hold of yourself! She took a deep breath and drew on the calm, controlled persona she had spent the last half decade cultivating. “I have taken in two cubs, and they will remain under my protection. No challenge is implied. Do you have Alysia or don’t you?”

The question spilled out without her thinking about it. This wasn’t the time or place to ask, not with Kral in this kind of mood, but it was Sarik’s fault that Alysia had been caught up in this in the first place.

“Both of you seem very concerned about the human,” Kral remarked, before again shifting back to the topic he cared about. “You don’t think I should consider your actions a challenge to my authority?”

A day before, she had had an answer to that, hadn’t she? Now she couldn’t seem to nd any words. Standing in his presence, she felt like a child again. She fought to keep herself in Sarik’s mind, but it was hard while in this place.

“Mistari law says—”

A backhanded blow to the face sent her stumbling back into Christian, and then an open-

handed strike made more vicious by claws tore through her shoulder and sent her to her knees.

Her ears ringing and her eyes watering from pain, she looked up at her father.

“You de ed my orders when you went after Cori,” Kral snarled down at her. “You ed into the night without a word, like a coward, and left others to clean up the mess. You allied with strangers and formed your own tribe with children who I guarantee you will have the strength to overthrow you in the next few years. You are the same arrogant, spoiled child who ran away six years ago, but now you think you can quote Mistari law at me and I will forget everything you’ve done?”

The words fell on her like hail. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even lift a hand to put pressure on the wound in her shoulder, from which blood was owing down her arm in a steady stream.

“Saniet, ohne,” she whispered. Mercy, please.

“Get out,” he snapped. “Your room is still as you left it. I will summon you to talk about your ‘tribe’ when I have time. Christian, stay a minute. We should speak about your misplaced partner.”

“You don’t have her,” Christian said as he offered Sarik a hand up.

The ngers she wrapped around his were numb and streaked with blood. When he helped her up, she could feel how many muscles in her shoulder had been torn open by

Kral’s claws.

“Judging by the state of Kevin’s face and how pissed o you are, I’d say you lost her.

That means you have nothing to tell me.”

They had barely made it into the hall before Kral said, “Don’t make me fetch you, boy.”

Christian hesitated, turning to meet Kral’s gaze. “You may be a witch these days, but that doesn’t mean I can’t smell the stink of exhaustion on you. You’re in no condition to ght me.”

Christian went rigid for a moment, then pointedly stepped away from Sarik. “I’ll meet you in your room,” he said before stepping into Kral’s o ce and closing the door behind him.

White noise. Sarik’s head was full of static, like a radio station fading in the distance.

There were no words, no thoughts. She leaned against the wall outside Kral’s o ce and was vaguely aware of Kevin as he tended to her shoulder.

Shapeshifters healed fast. Wounds made by another shapeshifter, especially a blood relative, healed a little more slowly, but she still didn’t have to worry about permanent scarring or muscle damage. Her father had done worse than this to her.

An outraged voice tried to speak up in her mind, to say This isn’t okay, but then the voice was muffled.

Her old room. It was cleaner than she’d left it, and someone had xed the holes she had punched in the black walls, but it still held the attitude of the scared sixteen-year-old brat who had lived there. The antique leather- topped vanity had been stained by a half-dozen colors of nail polish. The elaborately carved handmade ebony headboard had been slashed by an angry adolescent tiger’s claws.

The cubs were safe for the moment, and there was nothing more she could do for Alysia unless Christian learned something new from Kral. There were no old friends waiting in the next room for her to say hi to. There was no part of Sahara’s life that she wanted to reclaim.

There was only exhaustion and despair. Whatever Christian had done to her earlier had taken its toll, as had the new wounds from her father.

There was nothing to do but wait, so she lay down on the bed. There were no sheets beneath the fuchsia goose-down comforter, but that was ne, because she wasn’t in the mood to get that comfortable.

She had barely closed her eyes before she heard the whisper of the door opening and closing, followed by the snick of the lock. She didn’t need to look to know it was Christian.

She could recognize his scent and the fatigued tread of his steps. Besides, who else would bother her here?

“What now?” she asked, staring at the ceiling.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

She started to push herself up but stopped when he climbed into the bed next to her, hooked an arm over her waist, and spooned against her back.

“What did he want?” she asked, almost afraid to know.

“As always, he wants too much,” Christian answered, “but I can’t do anything about that right now. I need rest.”

“Here?”

“No one is going to bother me here, and you’re not going to kick me out.”

He was right. They wouldn’t, couldn’t, didn’t want to go back to who they had been to each other six years earlier, but at that exact moment, neither of them could be with the person they did want to be with.

So she closed her eyes and leaned back against him.

It took her another ten seconds before she thought to ask, “Are you feeding on me?”

“Yes. But I won’t hurt you. Go to sleep.”

And that’s the story of Sahara’s life, she thought. Give with one hand, take with the other.

As she fell asleep, she realized that for the rst time, she understood Jason’s refusal to ever feed on her. It didn’t matter that it was safe and she was willing. Their relationship hadn’t been about use and be used, move ahead and survive at all costs. It had been about more.

I miss you, Jason, she thought.

CHAPTER 19

THE NEXT TIME Alysia woke, she was in a bed, in a nondescript room lit by a basic