Step 7a: Don't trust him to tell you the truth...

The blood drained from Ivelle's face.

She stared down at the incriminating flier that lay in Eirifold's lap and swallowed down the curl of nausea that was creeping through her gut.

"How did you get this?" Her voice was a croak.

"Furlock... I suppose I should call him Saffron if that's his real name... brought it to me. He also spent an afternoon using sticks to spell out the words 'IVELLE IS EVIL' on my carpet. I had an inkling, when I saw his message, that he might not be a normal dog.

"Your flier doesn't have your name on it, but it has your address. I asked one of the stewards to pull up some property records, and lo and behold, the name Ivelle Delaville was attached to that shop. It seemed too much of a coincidence to just let it slide."

Eirifold shot Ivelle a chilly scowl. "I have to say, this looks awfully suspicious. An incriminating flier gets sent from your address, and then you turn up in the palace, in my room, right around the same time I discover I'm being poisoned by mandragar. And now you admit to doing away with your husband in a most peculiar manner."

Ivelle stared at the ground, feeling sick. Sick at the way Eirifold's eyes hardened as they appraised her, sick at the thought that Lillian might be implicated in this scheme, but most of all, sick because he had just played her. He'd been toying with her, pretending not to know about this ever since the moment he'd knocked on her bedroom door.

Her mother's words replayed in her head.

You cannot trust a man... and especially not a noble. They will spin you sweet tales, they will say exactly what you want to hear... they will fill your head with pretty little lies...

"If you already knew all this," she said, trying to suppress her growing rage, "why did pretend everything was okay, instead of confronting me about this directly? Was it fun for you"–her voice shook–"dicking around for the last half hour, deceiving me, pretending as though you still wanted to be my friend?"

"It's called sleuthing-–"

She barked a laugh. "Clearly you've already concluded that I'm guilty, and you've already decided how you want to handle me, just like Lord Saffron did!"

Ivelle blinked a few times and then shook her head. Dammit, she wasn't going to cry – she wasn't – Aw hell...

She swiped a hand across her stinging eyes.

"I don't know if this is an act or if I should believe you right now." Eirifold threw his hands up in exasperation. "I don't know anything anymore. The reason I'm bringing this up is to hear your explanation so I can decide if you're trustworthy. Also, it's rather hypocritical of you to accuse me of hiding things, when you've been hiding your true purpose in the palace this whole time!"

That stung, because she knew he was right. She was only reacting like this because of the way Eirifold had abruptly turned the tables on her. It had felt like Saffron's betrayal all over again.

But Eirifold wasn't Saffron. He looked genuinely anguished, an expression she could not remember ever seeing on Saffron's proud face. And she had been hiding her true purpose in the palace, and his potential danger, from him this whole time.

"Sorry. I..." She licked dry lips. "Trust issues. I guess you're not the only one who's got them... thanks to all the fucking assholes in our lives."

She shot a pointed glare at the dog crate.

"It's true that I started the business on the flier," she said. "I was desperate for money, and I thought all royals were trash like Lord Saffron. What downside was there to ridding the world of one more?

"And then I met you, and you were... pretty much the opposite of what I expected when I took the job. After I got to know you, I couldn't stand the thought of you getting murdered in cold blood."

"So you decided to turn me into slightly less of a loser, hoping it would make your employer, Lady Lillian, fall in love with me instead of resorting to poison?"

Ivelle stiffened, her head jerking upright. "I never said Lady Lillian was my employer."

Eirifold sighed. "I may not be the brightest torch in the cavern. But your business is, after all, a husband-poisoning business, and Lillian is my future spouse, with a clear motive to poison me. And hearing you emphasize Lillian's virtues twenty or thirty times while doing pushups was a bit of a giveaway. You were hoping we'd fall in love."

"I still hope you'll fall in love."

Eirifold looked away, his dark eyes not meeting hers. "That is never going to happen."

"And why not? She's beautiful and talented. She's got a killer right hook and beneath that timid exterior, she's a whole lot sharper than she lets on–"

"I'm not interested in Lillian, and she'd be mad to be interested in me. Especially after – well, some things I've done just can't be forgiven. I can see why she'd want to poison me." A hint of self-loathing flitted across his expression. He turned back to her. "Anyway, there is another person who's caught my eye, although thus far she's not proven herself particularly trustworthy, and I have to admit, she's annoying the hell out of me right now."

Ivelle decided to overlook that confession – accusation – whatever-it-was. She put her hands on her hips, her brow furrowed in a frown. "Why are you so against giving Lillian a chance?"

"How did this conversation suddenly turn into a discussion of my love life?" Eirifold threw his hands up in the air. "I'm supposed to be interrogating you, dammit!"

"If I may interrupt..." said a voice filled with snark.

Eirifold and Ivelle both jumped. Their heads swiveled in unison to the corner, where Ash sat, grumpily perched upon the dog crate.

"Forgot I was here, did you?" He snickered. "Easy to overlook the crow who's been chilling in the corner for the last three quarters of a chapter."

"He talks..." said Eirifold faintly.

"Yes, I have human vocal cords, and my sass goes on for days. Get over it."

Ash fluttered moodily onto the nearest chair. "All this romancey bullshit is a moot point," he snapped. He stuck his feathery face in Eirifold's, nearly stabbing Eirifold in the nose with his beak. "Are you, or are you not, marrying Lady Lillian in four days' time?"

"I..." Eirifold stared at his lap and swallowed. "I have to marry her."

"Why?"

"Because," said Eirifold hollowly. "The king said if I didn't marry Lillian, he'd divorce the queen and take Lillian as his bride instead."

Ivelle winced. It wasn't a shocking revelation, but somehow the flat, final way Eirifold spoke the words still managed to startle her.

"What's it to you if Lillian marries the king?" Ash said beadily. "She hired Ivelle to kill you. Why do you care if she's miserable?"

Eirifold hesitated. "I don't love that Lillian hired Ivelle to plot my demise, but... like I said, Lillian has valid reasons to hate me. And I... made a promise once, to keep her safe."

"Great!" said Ash. "Peachy. Glad we've got that cleared up! Ivelle, we're going."

"What?" Ivelle whirled on the crow. "Hang on–"

"I'm not going to sit around and watch your heart get broken over this stupid sod who's already committed to someone else!" Ash snapped. "You've been through enough. Plus it's one-fucking-thirty in the morning, and some of us need our beauty rest."

Ivelle turned to Eirifold, hoping now that he would take her side, stop them from leaving, ask them to stay. They had unfinished business; she still needed to know why Lillian hated him, for one thing.

But Eirifold had turned away, his face framed in shadow.

"Your crow is right," he said softly. He suddenly looked very tired. Hopelessness hung over him like a cloudy sky, gray and foreboding. "You should probably go.."

"Eirifold, I–"

"Ivelle, walk out that door right now before I peck some fucking sense into your skull," Ash barked, clearly over them both. "Eirifold – your royal princeliness – do not, under any circumstances, let that bloody dog escape. I promise you, he's bad news bears. Goodnight and goodbye."

~*~

"You have some explaining to do, young lady!" Ash seethed.

Ivelle was too distracted to remind Ash they were the same age. Her mind was still struggling to process everything that had just happened. She couldn't get her parting view of Eirifold out of her mind. How defeated he'd seemed, how final his voice had sounded, as though he was saying goodbye to her for the very last time.

As though he believed he deserved to be poisoned.

It terrified her.

Unbidden, a memory sprang to her mind: one of Eirifold's offhand comments about being a horrible role model for his brother. She'd thought, at the time, that he was just referring to his drinking, but what if there was more to it than that?

She was missing something. Some unspoken piece to the puzzle...

"I have half a mind to leave the palace this minute, metric fucktons of gold be damned!" Ash ranted, oblivious to her internal angst. "How long have you been canoodling with the prince?"

That was enough to snap Ivelle out of her daze. Her jaw dropped indignantly. "Canoo—I beg your – We are not canoodling!"

"Well there's definitely something going on between the two of you. The UST in that room was unreal. I'm disappointed in you, Ivelle. I never took you for a home wrecker. Besides, the prince is bad news. Did you see how many times he didn't meet your eyes tonight? He's clearly hiding some skeletons in his closet. You're just too enamored to see the red flags."

Ivelle refrained from pointing out that Eirifold's skeletons were hidden in his secret passage, as opposed to his closet. She didn't think Ash would take it well.

"I have no interest in Eirifold," she huffed. "Like you said, he's marrying someone else. I know that. I just want to set things right."

She paced the room. "If Eirifold and Lillian can't stand each other, it makes no sense that they're being forced to marry. At this rate, Lillian will poison Eirifold, and then she'll end up as King Gorlin's wife the next day! The king of Estrella is such an asshole–"

Ash shuddered. "Keep your voice down!"

"I'm just"–she lowered her voice–"I'm sick and tired of everyone in the palace playing by the king's stupid rules." Her pacing grew more harried, her weary feet treading the narrow confines of the bedroom. "I have no clue what shady business Mariel has with the wood fae, but I still think she'd make a competent queen. Except she's being forced to marry someone she's never met, in a country she's never visited. Lillian is trapped here as a political pawn. Queen Ysette's gonna be set aside in favor of a younger woman – it's only a matter of time. And Eirifold is afraid to even visit the practice courts because of his king-related trauma."

"I'm not helping you overthrow the King of Estrella." Ash hopped up and down the bed, more agitated than she'd ever seen him. "Ivelle, I've been spying and snooping for weeks, and you know what I've realized? The wedding between Eirifold and Lillian is bigger than all this does-she-love-him-will-she-poison-him BS. Something bad is coming. Tensions are rising all over the city. Even the wood fae, who've kept to the forest for centuries, are growing restless. The King's nearly doubled the size of his army in the last few months, as though he's preparing for war."

"War? War with who?"

"Unhappy citizens? Castrenian rebels? The wood fae? Who knows? Everyone has some reason to hate the royal family. This whole place is a powder keg, and the wedding might just set it off. A lot of important nobles will be there – even people from beyond the kingdom's borders, like Mariel's future spouse. I have a bad feeling, Ivelle. I really think we should scram."

"If bad stuff is coming, all the more reason to try to help the less-shitty people in the palace." Ivelle racked her brain for a viable plan that did not involve murder. "We could help Lillian escape the palace," she said finally. "Smuggle her back to her homeland. It wouldn't fix everything, but it would at least help her and Eirifold."

Ash stared at the ground. Ivelle suddenly noticed how tired he looked, thin and bedraggled, with an odd sheen to his feathers like he hadn't slept in days. "What makes you think there's a safe place for Lillian to go anymore?" he asked wearily.

Fighting down a surge of worry for her crow, Ivelle tapped her forehead. "Haven't you ever picked up a fantasy book? There's always someone loyal to the old regime! And when the true queen returns, she starts an uprising and brings peace and prosperity to the land."

"I think we've been following different fantasy series. Because in the last one I followed, the queen became a power-hungry tyrant, her dragon burned the land to ashes, and she was quickly deposed."

"Lillian wouldn't do that. Just think, Ash. If we succeed, we'd still end up with a metric fuckton of gold, a happier Lillian, and an un-poisoned prince. It could work." Ivelle shot Ash a winning smile, hoping to dispel the worry in his eyes. "Let me at least talk with her tomorrow and see if she's interested."

~*~

For all Ivelle's newfound enthusiasm, it wasn't until noon the following day that she was finally awake enough to visit her employer. When at last she dragged herself up the staircase to Lillian's chambers, she found the lady's door closed and Alfred the steward lurking outside it.

He jumped as Ivelle rounded the corner.

"You... might not want to go in there right now," he said in a hushed voice. "The queen's visiting."

Ivelle raised an eyebrow. "You were spying on them, weren't you?"

"Just making sure milady is safe..."

Ivelle pressed a finger to her lips. "I won't tell if you won't."

She put her ear to the door. But no sooner had she leaned against it when the sound of approaching footsteps reached her ears.

Alfred grabbed Ivelle's hand, and they both ducked into the servant's wing, seconds before the door to Lillian's door swished open.

Through the rusty keyhole, Ivelle watched Queen Ysette stride into the hallway. Her pale eyes were as difficult to read as ever, but Ivelle couldn't help feeling that she looked satisfied, like a cat who'd just unearthed a particularly rich supply of cream. As she breezed off down the hall with almost ethereal grace, a thought flitted into Ivelle's mind – an odd sense of deja vu. As if in some other setting, the queen would have reminded her very strongly of something otherworldly....

The thought skittered away faster than Ivelle could catch hold of it, leaving her brows knotted with confusion.

"What did you hear? I want all the juicy goss. Ah, hullo, Ivelle!"

It was Anabelle.

"Queen's up to no good, as usual." Alfred shook his head. "I just caught her threatening poor Lady Lillian."

"Does she do that often?" Ivelle asked, unsettled.

Alfred and Anabelle exchanged telling looks. "Often enough," said Anabelle darkly. "The king makes our poor lass's life miserable, and the queen always does whatever he commands. Some tea, Ivelle? You look like you didn't sleep twenty winks."

Ivelle, who had, in fact, spent the night tossing and turning as her brain conjured Saffron-filled nightmares, gratefully accepted the tea. "Is your twin doing better?" she asked Alfred. It had been almost three weeks since Wilfred's fall, and she had not seen him once.

"I – ah, yes. Wilfred hit his head harder than we thought when he fell down those stairs. He's still convalescing in the countryside," said Alfred, a little too smoothly.

Ivelle's eyes narrowed in thought.

Before she could probe Alfred with more questions, the door to the servant's wing snicked open, and Lillian glided in. She looked wan, as though she had also suffered from a sleepless night, but she managed a smile for the servants and Ivelle. "Do you think I might be able to trouble you for some tea?" she said weakly. "Oh, hello, Ivelle, I didn't realize you'd be here. Do you want to come to my room?"

"Are you all right?" Ivelle asked, as she followed Lillian back to her chambers, teacup still in hand. "Alfred told me the queen was just here. Did she hurt you at all?"

"She... no." For a moment, Lillian's eyes seemed almost foggy, as though the lady had lost her train of thought. She blinked rapidly, as though to clear them. "She wanted to discuss the decorations for the wedding and make sure my dress was ready."

She gestured toward the center of the room. For the first time, Ivelle noticed the wedding dress that sat atop a tailor's dummy. It without a doubt, the most expensive dress Ivelle had ever seen, though – as with all of Lillian's belongings – it somehow managed to appear tasteful instead of gaudy. Silver flowers curled about its edges in sweeping swirls. It looked –

Like a dress meant for a queen.

"The dressmaker delivered it yesterday," Lillian said. "The queen doesn't approve of how ostentatious it is. I suppose I got a bit carried away. I just thought... it's easier going in front of a crowd if you're dressed for the occasion, you know? And the wedding will be very well-attended. Even Mariel's betrothed will be there."

"It's beautiful," said Ivelle, because what else could she say?

"All thanks to the dressmaker, really."

There was a pause, during which Ivelle tried to determine how best to approach the topic she needed to broach, and then, in usual Ivelle fashion, decided, To hell with it.

"You know you don't have to go through with the wedding, right?"

Lillian shot her a look that could only be described as serene. "Don't worry. Thanks to you, I am prepared."

"But I mean, you have other options. You could... run away. Back to Castrena. Raise an army. Start a rebellion."

Lillian lay a hand on top of Ivelle's. "It's sweet of you to worry about me. But even if I ran, I could not take the servants I am responsible for. I could never abandon them like that. Trust me, Ivelle. I've thought about this carefully and made my peace with what's coming."

"If... you won't consider running away, please at least consider talking to Eirifold."

A chilly note entered Lillian's voice. "I've already told you, Ivelle. I don't want to talk to him. He has done things I cannot forgive."

"What things?" Ivelle spread her hands wide. "You allude to terrible things that Eirifold's done, but no one will tell me what they are."

"They are not a topic I wish to revisit."

"With all due respect," said Ivelle, finally losing her patience, "if I'm going to be an accessory to murder, I think I at least deserve to know what the man I'm helping to murder has done to deserve it."

Lillian stared at her, stared at her long and hard, until Ivelle felt like she wanted to flinch away, anything to interrupt that piercing stare and turn it into something less awful.

"Do you remember when I told you my brother and parents traveled to the capitol to negotiate for peace? And how my parents were killed in a carriage accident along the way?"

Ivelle nodded.

"I lied about my brother's fate. He didn't die from injuries he suffered in the carriage accident. Nor did he die of infection, or by the king's hand."

Ivelle swallowed, unsure she still wanted to hear what Lillian was about to say, but too invested now to turn away.

"My brother was murdered in cold blood by the last person he expected. By a friend he had known since childhood, a friend he'd grown to trust."

Lillian met Ivelle's gaze, her eyes filled with pain.

"Eirifold killed my brother. He murdered my brother when he was defenseless, and he didn't even shed a tear."

~*~

Word count: 34,716