Total pages in book: 182
Estimated words: 171176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
My fingers brushed his as I took the vial, electricity sparking in the touch. I gave him a wink as I pulled out the stopper and drank it down. Then winced. I couldn’t place the taste, but it wasn’t great.
“We’ve heard and read several accounts of why you started making drugs,” the queen said. “Based on your earlier conversations with him, Hannon has authenticated those accounts. I’d like to hear it in your own words.”
“I won’t be as reliable as they are,” I told her honestly. “I’ve read over some of my journals, and I’ve remembered some things, but until Weston took me from my village recently, I’d sort of glossed over the trauma from those years. Hidden it in my memory. I can’t tell you why. Survival, maybe? Acclimating to the life as I knew it? Trying to protect myself? I’m not sure, though I am more than willing to tell you what I remember.”
Then I did just that.
The timelines were easy to recall, but some of the details were still fogged over with age. When I started to explain the process I’d used to figure out how to make the actual drugs, though, my mind started to float, the sharpness of my thoughts turning fuzzy.
“I think this elixir is starting to work.” I touched the back of my hand to my warm cheek. “It’s making thought more difficult. Does that clear? Because it’s going to get in the way.”
“That’s the point. It’ll make it hard for you to fabricate stories,” the queen said. So far, no one else in the throne room had uttered a sound.
I furrowed my brow. “That’s faulty logic. It’ll make it impossible for rational, coherent thoughts, and harder to remember my past. Forget about explaining what I know about the coating Granny placed on my product.”
“Your drugs, you mean?”
I sighed. “Sure, my drugs.” Frustrated that she was intentionally missing my point, I shook my head. “I’ll go with this for a bit to see how badly it’ll mess with me, but if it gets much worse, I’m going to stop the effect.”
“Stop the effect?” asked the woman from the garden with poise and gray hair. She must’ve been of high standing to be in this room. I found it odd no one had told me who everyone was, not that it really mattered. Her gaze swung to Weston. “Did you allow her to bring in some other chemical or drug?”
I tensed, not liking that they might try to implicate Weston.
It was Hadriel who spoke up. “She’s got nothing but her knickers. She can render her products ineffective. I’ve seen her do it.”
“You, too, with ‘the product’?” the queen asked Hadriel, her professional and authoritative tone smoothing into longstanding friendliness. It was clear they knew each other well. Hadriel hadn’t been lying.
Hadriel shrugged. “I told you, love, it’s complicated.”
The queen shook her head and refocused on me, her tone hard now as she said, “I want to see you brush off that elixir.”
“Okay, but it’ll stop working, not that it is working very well now. My name is Dermia Foothold, the harbinger of fungus. I am the princess of a distant land with a mermaid for an assistant. I never see the bitch. She’s always in the water. My—”
“Enough.” The queen put up a hand as Hadriel and Vemar both spat out laughs.
“See? She is very creative,” Hadriel said. “It is an absolute treat watching her take her hallucinogens, I’m telling you.”
“Hadriel, quiet!” the king barked, and a wave of fear washed over me. Hadriel shivered, feeling the power, before hunching down.
Ordinarily, that might make me defiant, make me want to stick up for him. When that monster looked at me, though, I just wanted to hunch down with Hadriel and make myself as small as possible.
“Have you seen this before?” the queen asked the poised gardener.
The woman shook her head. “It’s powerful. It should be working.”
Didn’t these people ever sample their products? They should know the effects intimately.
“It’s trying to goad me into telling the truth,” I relayed, “but if I apply a little resistance, it just breaks apart. Meanwhile, my mind is fuzzy and I’m annoyed. I’m going to brush it off. I hadn’t planned on lying, anyway.”
I closed my eyes and shook the effects from my system, much more easily than with my product. When I blinked my eyes back open, the dragons wore scowls and Hadriel was saying, “That’s normal for her. It scared the shit out of us the first time she did it.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “So. Where were we?”
The queen scratched her nose, clearly perplexed. Unlike the wolves, the dragons seemed very expressive. “Right, well . . .” She cleared her throat. “Let’s start with the basics.”
We went through a typical day in the village. I answered questions about making the product and how I’d learned to improve it. I had to pause, feeling my face heat as I tried to think of how best to word my response.