Poison Princess

But not Evie. She chokes out one word: “No.”

The other girls whimper, the youngest crying for her mother as usual.

“No?” With a flick of my wrist, my scalpel will bring my new subject to heel. “Just for saying that to me, I’ll cut out your tongue and put it in a jar for you to see every day.” I advance on her, rage clouding my vision.

To herself she whispers, “Ah, God. I’m lost.”

“Utterly lost! This is the last time you will ever disobey me.” I reach for her with one hand, my scalpel raised in the other—

“Come, Arthur,” I dimly hear her murmur. “Touch.”

What’s this? She’s recited those words before, in her timid girl’s voice, but hearing them in this new sultry tone rocks me.

She finishes, “But you’ll pay a price.” A streak of movement between us.

Just as I perceive her irresistible rose scent, four parallel slashes appear across my torso.

I gape down, dropping my scalpel. Hot blood gushes from me. My flesh is a curtain, one opened to my probing gaze. “H-how?”

Evie straightens, unaffected by any drugs. Her eyes are alert and bright . . . green. A line of vine appears over her cheek and down her neck, blazing across her pale skin like a glowing green brand. Locks of her hair are turning red.

Tipping each finger is a razor-sharp thorn, now dripping with my blood.

She hadn’t been hallucinating. Evangeline is filled with power, thrumming with it.

I clasp my palms over my wounds; blood spills between my fingers. “Y-you made me believe you were lying —or delusional!”

“I told you not all of my tale was true. For instance, I left out the parts concerning you.”

“Me?”

“I didn’t want to have to hurt you, Arthur. But you left me no choice!” She is visibly shaking, seething. “Not after you struck out at me. Just like Jackson said, I am DONE!” The entire house begins to quake, plaster raining from the ceiling. “I am sick of this world, sick of being attacked and kidnapped!”

Blood loss is making me cold—just as she said.

“All I ever wanted was to be normal. But tonight I’ve accepted that’s not possible. Even without Death and the Arcana, I now know that I have no hope of it. As soon as I saw these girls chained down here, it suddenly hit me—I’m not like them. I’m not normal. I don’t have to be trapped. I just have to become the vicious Empress I was born to be. And as you pointed out, the one thing holding me back—Jackson—is gone.”

She stalks closer. I stumble back toward the lab. I have tonics to heal myself. This isn’t over!

“During the last two days, I had a lot of time to consider my choices. I thought about my fierce mother. She would have embraced these powers. I thought of Clotile—what she wouldn’t have given for them in her final moments! And then telling you my story solidified my feelings.”

I’m almost to the plastic sheets. If I can reach my workbench . . .

“I’m ashamed that I thought about surrendering, burying myself in the earth to hide from men like you. But no longer. The Empress doesn’t get collared, or caged, or tortured. How artfully she beckons, how perfectly she punishes. I punish.” Evie’s fury begins to ebb, the house settling. “I’m not going to get mad at you for poisoning me. I’m simply going to make you pay a price.”

“How . . . how did you know?”

She makes a tsking sound. “Using a plant-based toxin in the chocolate? I could smell it, could sense what it’d do. Remember my titles? I don’t get poisoned, I do the poisoning. I’m the Princess of it.” Leaves are now tangled through her wild red hair, those spellbinding glyphs winding along her arms as well. She’s a pale, terrible goddess. “I poured out my mug when you took the tray away. Probably wouldn’t have affected me anyway. Oh, but you? You’re definitely poisoned from my claws. Dying right now.”

“No. Not possible,” I bite out, though I already perceive her volatile toxin racing through my veins. Now I feel the betrayal and terror I’d only been able to imagine before. “Why visit this upon me? Why come here?”

“As I drove north, I began hearing a new voice. Yours.” She taps her chin with a sinister claw, saying, “I might have forgotten to mention that one tiny detail. In any case, yours grew louder, above all the others, above even Death’s—who was quite chatty once I was alone at last.” She frowns, shrugs. “But your voice was drawing me near. A wise man in the guise of a boy. Does that sound familiar?”

I make a strangled sound. “You couldn’t have heard me.”

“You’re one of the Arcana, Arthur. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out which one, couldn’t remember my grandmother’s cards well enough to match one to your tableau. Not until I saw your experiments down here in your creepy little lair. You’re the Hermit. The old man holding a lantern.”

“One among your number?” I draw my lips back from my teeth. “Never!”

“You’re denying it, just like I did. No wonder Matthew grew so frustrated with me.”

“If you believe I’m one of you, then you came here intending to do me ill!”

“No, I sought you out, hoping you knew your destiny as one of the Arcana and could teach me mine, hoping that you’d actually be good—unlike most everyone else I continue to encounter. But I was prepared to defend myself if you weren’t.”

One of my knees gives way; I reel and catch myself on the operating table. I spy my reflection in the stainless steel. I am . . . transformed. I see an aged man, holding a lamp in the dark. My own tableau? Then my appearance returns to normal.

“Arthur, you are the Hermit, also known as the Alchemist.”

“Alchemist?” A dull roar begins in my head. The Alchemist. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be!

Yes. That is who I’ve always been. Never has it been clearer to me.

Of course Evie looked special to me when I first encountered her—because I’d seen her card. I hadn’t envisioned her with open arms in my bed; I’d seen the Empress’s tableau—the one with her beckoning.

“I kept dropping hints, waiting for you to recognize some aspect of my story, for you to make a move.” She tilts her head, and that length of silken hair sweeps over her shoulder, drowning me in her luscious rose scent, threatening to subdue me even now. “My guess? You’re so high from your wacky concoctions that you haven’t been hearing the voices.” She leans down, tells me in a confiding tone, “Drugged till your brain is soup? I’ve been there, buddy.”

“High? I wanted focus!” Bloody saliva flies from my mouth. “The voices . . .” Suddenly I remember that hated cacophony, those useless repetitions. “They distracted me!”

“It’s like Matthew said. If you don’t listen to the voices, then you’ll die with their gloating whispers in your ear.”

Just as the other Arcana have supernatural abilities, so do I. Reminded of that, of the powers I wield, I lurch toward my lab.

Behind me, the girls beg Evie to free them, though they sound as petrified of her as they’ve ever been of me.

As Evie stupidly obliges them, I hunch over my workbench, grasping for every vial I can reach. I guzzle their colored contents, one after the other.

Black to counteract her poison. Blue to make me stronger, more aggressive, faster. Red to heal my wounds.

I have underestimated her; she’s done the same with me. If I can get upstairs, I can reach the weapons strategically stockpiled throughout my home.

I will sear her to a puddle, just like Father.

Though she must hear me slamming through my potions, she has no fear, patiently telling my subjects—