Free Web NovelChapter 9: The Golden Paranoia
Lysander paced the length of his luxurious private chamber. The thick velvet carpets did nothing to muffle the frantic beating of his own heart.
He walked over to the gilded mirror resting above his vanity and gripped the marble edges until his knuckles turned white. He stared at his reflection. He was the most beautiful man in the Sunless Throne. His golden hair fell in perfect waves and his eyes were the color of a clear summer sky. For two years that beauty had been his shield and his weapon. It had kept him in Queen Ravena’s favor and it had kept his head attached to his neck.
But tonight the reflection staring back at him looked fragile. There were faint dark circles under his eyes. A subtle tremor shook his hands. freeweɓnovel.cøm
He poured himself a goblet of wine and drank it in one desperate swallow.
Silas.
The name tasted like ash in his mouth. Lysander had survived the brutal politics of the harem by reading people. He knew how to spot weakness ambition and fear. When Silas first arrived Lysander had pegged him as a broken poet. A soft noble who would weep for a week and then die.
He had been so incredibly wrong.
Lysander replayed the events of the past three days in his mind. The spilled wine in the atrium. It had not been clumsiness. It had been a calculated move to avoid the sedative without raising suspicion. And the garden. The memory of the garden made Lysander’s stomach twist into cold knots.
He had watched the armored guard lunge. He had anticipated the satisfying sound of Silas falling into the toxic blood lotus thorns. Instead he had seen Silas move with the terrifying fluid grace of a shadow. A simple pivot. A perfectly timed sweep of the leg. Silas had not just survived the assassination attempt. He had used the assassin’s own momentum to execute him.
And then Silas had looked at him.
Lysander shuddered remembering those dark dead eyes. There was no panic in Silas. There was no anger. There was only a cold mechanical calculation. Silas did not look at Lysander like a rival. He looked at him like a math problem that had already been solved.
A heavy knock on the chamber door pulled Lysander from his spiraling thoughts.
He quickly smoothed his tunic and forced his features into a mask of calm authority. He unlocked the door.
Captain Thorne slipped into the room. The commander of the City Guard looked furious. He smelled of cheap ale and sweat.
"You owe me blood money Lysander," Thorne growled stepping close and backing the golden haired consort against the vanity. "My man is dead. His lungs turned to stone because of your little scheme."
"Keep your voice down you absolute fool," Lysander hissed glancing nervously toward the door. "I paid you for a clean assassination. Your man was clumsy. He tripped."
"He did not trip," Thorne snarled grabbing Lysander by the collar of his silk tunic. "He was a veteran of the eastern wars. He does not trip over his own feet. The new boy killed him. And now the Queen is asking questions. If her spies trace this back to me I am a dead man. And I will make sure you die screaming right beside me."
Lysander forced himself to laugh. It was a dry hollow sound but it made Thorne pause.
"If you panic now you will hang yourself Thorne," Lysander said gently prying the captain’s heavy hands off his tunic. "The Queen suspects nothing. She took Silas to her bedchamber tonight. She thinks he is just an amusing new toy."
"He is dangerous," Thorne muttered pacing away. "We need to cut our losses."
"No," Lysander said his voice hardening. "If we stop now he will eventually come for us. He knows we tried to kill him. We cannot use brute force again. He is too fast and the Queen is watching him too closely. We need to use the one thing Ravena hates more than failure."
Thorne looked back at him his thick brows furrowed. "Treason."
"Exactly," Lysander smiled a genuine wicked smile spreading across his face. He walked over to a hidden compartment behind his vanity mirror and pressed a concealed lever. A small wooden box popped open.
Inside the box rested a glass vial filled with a shimmering silver liquid and a folded piece of parchment bearing the wax seal of the Radiant Court. The rival empire.
"What is that?" Thorne asked.
"Tears of the Moon," Lysander whispered holding the vial up to the dim light. "It is a poison so rare and so potent that even possessing it is an act of high treason. And this letter is a forged correspondence promising a massive bounty in gold for the assassination of Queen Ravena."
Thorne stared at the items. "You are going to plant them."
"Silas is with the Queen tonight," Lysander said his blue eyes gleaming with malicious triumph. "His room is completely empty. I will slip in and hide these beneath the floorboards under his bed. Tomorrow morning you will receive an anonymous tip from a concerned servant. You will search his room find the poison and the letter and present them directly to the Queen."
Thorne slowly nodded a cruel grin matching Lysander’s. "Ravena will not even give him a trial. She will have him thrown into the obsidian oubliette to rot for the rest of his short life."
"Exactly," Lysander breathed.
He felt the suffocating weight of paranoia finally lift from his chest. Silas was smart but he was arrogant. He thought he had won the game by securing the Queen’s bed. He did not realize that while he was busy playing the lover Lysander was busy digging his grave.
"Go back to your post Thorne," Lysander commanded slipping the vial and the letter into the deep pockets of his cloak. "Wait for my signal at dawn."
Thorne nodded and slipped out of the room melting back into the shadows of the corridor.
Lysander pulled the dark hood of his cloak over his golden hair. He felt a surge of adrenaline. He was taking back control. He would show this arrogant new consort what true power looked like in the Sunless Throne.
He stepped out of his chamber and moved silently down the hall toward Silas’s room.
The shadows of the Consort Quarters seemed to part for him. For the first time since Silas had arrived Lysander felt like he was finally back in control. He was the golden favorite of the Sunless Throne and he would bury this upstart poet beneath the very floorboards he walked on.
