Haydn grasped Meilyr’s other hand. ‘You have to believe me, I only ever did anything because I care about you, because I genuinely believed they could help. But I was wrong. I made a mistake, and I have to tell you before they realise I’m telling you.’
Fear twisted Meilyr’s already-threadbare nerves. ‘What are you talking about?’
Haydn hesitated, a catch of soul-deep regret framing his face and his ever-so-familiar eyes. He damned himself, and said, ‘The plant used to poison the prince – I’m the one who put it in their hands. I told them how to use it. I’m the one responsible.’
Yet again that day, horror pried open Meilyr’s chest. He backed away. ‘What?’
‘I should never have done it, but I thought he was hurting you. I thought it was the only way to save you, and I was wrong. That isn’t the point – Meilyr, these people—’
‘What people, Haydn? What people?’
The lacecap hydrangeas bristled.
Haydn bit his lip. ‘High-up people. People who made promises only high-up people could make. But I think they’re trying to frame Celyn, and one of them—’
The brief scuffle of feet on grass was the only warning.
Meilyr spun in time to see a hooded figure stab Pedr in the stomach.
‘No!’
He rushed forward – but Haydn grabbed his arms, as someone else detached from the hedges towards them both.
Haydn – idiot, foolhardy Haydn – stepped out to meet them, and they collided. He received a blow to the head and a crippling punch to the gut that bent him in half.
Someone else tried to grab Meilyr from behind, and something noxious passed over his face – a strip of dark cloth, bathed in something sweetly awful. The suffocating reek of poppy, hemlock, henbane, vinegar—
He aborted the instinct to gasp and shoved his arms outward, swift and unflinching as Celyn had taught him. He swung around, aiming to strike their head – but not fast enough. His attacker wasfarbetter trained. They grabbed his arm and shouldered him so hard in the chest his lungs burst, his body shoved to the ground, head cracking against the earth.
‘Meilyr!’
Something muffled Haydn’s cry. The cloy burned as Meilyr’s attacker bore down on him, trying to shove the cloth into his mouth. He fought – kneed and kicked and grabbed at those thick arms, forcing them away. He got a knee in the stomach for his efforts, but locked his elbows and refused to give in.
A flash of pale beneath the unremarkable cloak.
Crownsworn colours.
Terror drenched him. His attacker wore a plain dark mask beneath their hood, but there was no mistaking it. They pushed with their full weight, their far superior strength laughable. Meilyr’s blood lunged to a gale, uselessly. Whoever this was, he had no woven connection to them. His boots scraped the ground, trying to find leverage. Nothing.
Leaves and petals and shoots and stems hissed, as from the wind. The cloth inched closer, his arms and neck near-spasming from the strain of keeping it away.
‘Hurry up!’ barked the one who had wrested Haydn to the ground.
The hooded, masked crownsworn above Meilyr spat a curse in Khaimlic and pushed harder. As their ally stepped forward to help, they took that instant of distraction to force Meilyr’s arms wide, dissipating his pent-up force into nothing, and shoved the cloth over his mouth.
The terrible concoction leapt down his throat. Black pulsed. Numbness pooled.
Pedr—Haydn—
Osian—
Darkness devoured him.
THIRTY-EIGHT
‘Help me,’ the Fox tried to shout.
But their mouth had returned to a maw,