I don’t know what to think. I don’t like that I’m already on my heels. I’d assumed she’d be a delicate flower, but she’s more like a climbing vine waiting for the chance to choke me.
She cocks her head. “Why didn’t you tell your parents?”
“This alliance is important for my people. I wanted to at least speak to you before I decided how to handle the incident.”
She stares at me for a long moment before turning and continuing down the trail.
I follow her around the corner into a tall, ivy-bracketed pathway.
“Why did you look so relieved when they told you I was a healer?” I ask.
She glances up at me and flutters her lashes. “Who doesn’t want a nurturing husband?”
It’s almost enough to make me forget she’s a murderous little viper.
I try again. “I think you owe me a little honesty.”
She scoffs. “I owe you nothing. Just because my family traded me away doesn’t mean I owe you my mind. You’re standing here looking none the worse for it. You got to feel up a pretty girl and now you’re crying about it. Maybe I should be asking the more compelling question…” She smiles viciously. “Why didn’t you die? I poured poison into you and you drank it down like fine wine.”
“I told you. It was the ring,” I say.
She purses her lips, her gaze raking over my face, looking for a lie. She doesn’t look at all convinced. This is trouble.
Her eyes dart past me just long enough that I pick up wariness in them.
I glance over my shoulder. There’s an offshoot of the maze that I almost missed. The whole walkway is bracketed by climbing white roses.
“What’s down there?” I ask.
“Nothing for you to see.” Her tone is suddenly cold.
“It looks beautiful.” When I turn back to her, there’s a murderous glint in her eyes.
“It’s not for you.”
That makes me certain it most definitely is, but I’ll have to wander the gardens another time when she’s not looking at me like she’s planning my death again.
I trail her around a corner into a wild-looking section of the garden. “Poisonous plants,” a sign at the entrance warns.
“Your favorite spot?”
I want her to say more. To explain how her magic works. To offer me any information at all—but she just stares at me.
“Many poisonous plants are medicinal,” she says matter-of-factly.
“So you just use magic to hurt people.”
She scoffs. “If magic was all that hurt people in this city, we wouldn’t need a city watch.”
I’ve hit on something. “Is that why you do it? The casual kissing murders? To stop violence?”
She looks away.
So that’s it. She does have a soft spot under all those thorns.
“You can tell me, Harlow. I won’t tell anyone.”
When she finally looks back, her eyes are glassy. She hesitates, then leans in close, her breath ghosting over the shell of my ear.
