A Kiss of Venom (An Araneae Nation Novella) (8 page)

“—don’t speak her name,” Armand warned him. “
She is dead.
Dead.
Her blood is on my hands as much as it ever was on Lourdes’s.”

Henri raised his hands and gave his brother space.

Grasping my shoulders, Armand searched my face. “Who are you?”

“Nicolette.”

“Liar.” He punched the wall behind my head. “Why are you here?”

“Took a nasty fall.” If my aches were any indication.

“I know why you are in the laboratory. I carried you in here myself.” His chest heaved. “Why are you in Erania? Did you come to kill my sister?”

I wet my lips.
“Yes.”

“And the girl?”
Armand shook me. “How are her eyes that color?”

Pain ricocheted through me, forcing a whimper past my lips.

“How are any of our eyes their color?” I snapped.

He shook me harder. “She is not my daughter.”

“No she bloody well isn’t,” I snarled at him. “She’s
mine
.”

“Look at
this.” Henri lifted a lock of my hair. “The roots. They’re blonde.”

I had taken care to dye my hair before arriving. There was no way my roots were showing yet.

Cold sweat broke over my skin. “How long have I been here?”

“Two weeks.” Henri ran his fingers through my hair, studying me.

It was too much. All this was too much. My thin thread of composure broke.

“Where is she?” I demanded.

“With my sister—” Armand sneered, “—the one you failed to murder.”

My laughter was too high, too sharp. “I didn’t come for Lourdes.”

The brothers shared a look. “Pascale,” they said in unison.

Henri rubbed his chin. “It would explain the Theridiidae venom in her system, though not how it got there.” He walked a slow circle around the room
, I could tell by how his voice traveled. “Do you think she meant to kill herself? No. There’s the girl to consider. Sympathy? That seems a better bet.”

“She stabbed herself in the shoulder blade with a dart?” Armand sounded skeptical.

Henri frowned. “We don’t know for certain that was the entry point.”

“The skin was necrotic by the time we carried her down to the lab,” Armand reminded him.

“True.” Henri conceded the point.

“Can I see my daughter?”

Both males narrowed their gazes on me.

“Not until we get some answers.” Armand looked to his brother. “Give us a few minutes.”

Henri folded his arms. “I don’t think that’s wise.”

“I don’t care.” Armand’s gaze sliced through me. “I want answers, and I’m going to get them.”

“Ten minutes.” Henri pointed a warning finger. “Then I’m fetching Lourdes and Rhys.”

At the paladin’s name, I shuddered. If he thought I was here for his wife…

“Focus.” Armand shook me a third time.

My eyes crossed. “I can’
t when you’re rattling my brain.”

“
Tell me who you are. I want to hear you say it.”

“
I don’t owe you anything.” Stubborn tears stung my eyes and spilled hotly onto my cheeks. I wiped them dry with the back of my shaking hand. All those years I wasted hating him, missing him, waking in the night to an empty bed and emptier life, aching for his touch, his kisses and his warmth. “It doesn’t matter who I am.”

“
It matters,” he assured me. “If not to you, then it does to the little girl pleading with my sister to spare your life.”

“Let me go.” I struggled, but it hurt too much to last long or to accomplish much.

“Answer me.” His fingers tensed, no doubt preparing to shake me again.

I dared him with my smile. “Check behind my ear.”

“What did you say?” His grip loosened.

I took great pains to enunciate for him. “Check. Behind. My. Ear.”

He didn’t have to ask which one. He released my shoulders, cupping my face in one hand while he turned it to the left. He folded down the tip of my right ear
, and his breath hitched. He ran a thumb over the ridge there, feeling the scar he had given me when we were children, the one that I’d turned into his brand. It was an old Salticidae custom few remembered. The delicate layering of scarred tissue made a tattoo from old wounds. My marks were faded, but the slight tremble in his fingers said he understood.

He pulled back, staring into my face, really looking at me, and he cursed.

“Astrid.” The name hung between us.

“Astrid died a long time ago.” That poor girl had been laid to rest as necessity demanded.

“I gave her that scar when we were twelve.” He stared at the marking. “I wanted to impress her, so I stole Lourdes’s bow and an arrow, but it was strung too tight. When I aimed at her toy bear, I…”

“Missed the mark by a few feet
.” I helped him remember. “The arrow hit the ceiling right over my head and ricocheted. It almost sliced my ear off on its way down. Our fathers were furious.”

“When the wound healed
…” he finished the story, “…the scar was shaped like an
A
.”

Males
. So delusional. “Only if you stood on your head and closed your right eye.”

That story, our story, was the reason why I had painfully branded the actual letter behind my ear after the first time we made love. What a thrill it had been, wearing his mark where no one could see
.

His voice was thick. “It can’t be.”

“I assure you,” I said with regret, “it is.”

He was nodding, as though he agreed with me, but he kept a hand to that ear, to that scar.
His breaths came faster. “Her parents told me she died.”

“As far as they’re concerned, I did.”

“They said…” He swallowed hard. “But here you are.”

I spread my hands. “Here I am.”

He sank onto the edge of the bed. “I don’t understand.”

“Here’s the short version.” I scooted away while I had the chance. “I fell in love with the second heir to the Araneidae clan. I broke the law of my mother’s people by sharing his bed before we were mar
ried. When his sister caught us and turned us in to his parents, they made their positions known. I wasn’t good enough for him. I wasn’t what his clan needed. I was a youthful mistake. I was also no longer welcome in their clan home.”

Checking to make sure I held his attention, I continued. “When my parents were escorted to the edge of Erania and asked politely never to return, they had only one choice. Since Father’s clan had turned us out, our family sought refuge with Mother’s clan. Though I had broken their law, the Salticidae are a forgiving people—within reason—and they allowed me to live on a parcel of land outside their village. I might still live there today if I hadn’t become violently ill
a month after our arrival.” His dawning realization tightened my throat. I cleared it. “Forgiveness only extends so far. A sullied female was one thing, but a sullied female and her bastard daughter…”

His jaw clenched at that. Good. I hoped it hurt him twice as much to hear as it did for me to say.

He shoved from the bed. “You should have told me.”

“Told you how?” I sized him up. “My parents gave me to the Maratus. They gave
us
away.”

The Maratus were, as far as the Salticidae were concerned,
lepers. They were little more than a band of outcast Salticidae, those who had broken The One Law or shamed themselves in other ways.

Other clans used more colorful names for us. Thieves. Whores. Liars. Murderers.

I preferred to think of us as survivalists.

He paled. “
You announced yourselves as Ctenidae.”

“In case you haven’t realized,
I lied
.”

H
e shoved from the bed and paced. “You really are a Maratus.”

“They are my people. They are all we have in this world. They took me in. They took care of me and taught me how to care for Maisy. They provided for us until I could be trained and put to use.” I watched him absorb that. “The Maratus have One Law too.
Faith bound one to each other
. We break all ties with family if we have any left and cleave only to our clansmen, those who understand what it’s like to make one mistake that costs you everything and to have to pay for that every single day.”

“Your new family taught you hatred,” he said softly.

“No.” I told him the truth. “You did that.”

“I did what I thought was right,” he yelled. “
I had to send you away. I had no choice.”

“Neither did I.” Those had all been taken from me.

He spun on his heel, snarling, “You came to kill my sister.”

I leaned forward. “Who told you that?”

“Are you denying it?”

“No.” I was caught well and good. The truth was refreshing for a change. “I’m curious.”

He glared at me. “One of our guests came forward with the information.”

I snorted. “And you believed him, of course.”

“After what you did to that guard? What you did to me?” He shook his head. “Of course I did.”

Thinking back to Henri’s remark
about an accomplice, I surmised, “He neglected to mention which sister, I take it?”

“He led us to believe Lourdes was the target.”

“When did he come to you?” It would help me frame out those final moments.

“He stopped me just inside the city. He told me his friend had overheard a plot to assassinate the maven. When the friend confronted the would-be assassin, she stabbed him in…a delicate place. The male who stopped me was well-dressed, well-spoken, and though I didn’t know him I had no reason to disbelieve his story given the fact my head still rang from my own interlude with the assassin.” He seemed at a loss. “At least with Lourdes, I can understand. She’s the maven and accepted those risks. Pascale is…” He stopped before saying more. His steps slowed. “Colleen is behind this,
isn’t she?”

He sank into a chair near the door and put his head in his hands.

Because it no longer mattered, I armed him with that knowledge. “She is.”

“That stupid, stupid girl,” he muttered. “She might be the death of us all.”

He must have meant Pascale. Colleen was well past the blush of maidenhood.

“Maven Colleen won’t stop until Pascale is dead, or she is.” Her bevy of assassins proved that.

“How much did she offer you?” He lifted his head. “How much is Pascale’s life worth to her?”

“Enough gold I could start over
.” I grimaced. “She offered me a small fortune.”

“Pascale is my sister
.” He shook his head. “You could have killed her so easily?”

“Her life was not the
only one in the balance. I would have killed her, you, anyone.”

“Colleen threatened Maisy.” The way he said it told me he was working through the
problem.

“Why else would I have risked bringing her here
, of all the godsforsaken places?”

“You had no choice.” He sounded heartened by the fact.

“I had a choice.” I could have taken her and run, but revenge lured me here. “I made it.”

Raking
a hand through his hair, Armand blew out a sigh. “Are you a threat to my family?”

“No,” I told him truthfully. “I broke my contract with Colleen. That’s why I was caught.”

His arms dropped. “What changed your mind?”

“She knew Maisy was my daughter. Only a handful of people knew that, and I trusted them with our lives. More than that,
Colleen knew you were Maisy’s father when no one knew that for certain.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Who could have told her?”

“My parents, a clan elder, someone eager to deny a connection to me—take your pick.” The fact was, “I was raised Salticidae, with their beliefs, and my pregnancy was common knowledge when I lived there. I’m sure gossip was plentiful in Beltania after my family left. People would have known I had been caught with you. If they asked the right questions of the right people and learned why the Salticidae shunned me, it wouldn’t have been a great leap to realize you were Maisy’s father. Who else could it have been?”

He didn’t ask if I had been with anyone else. I was glad. It spared me from admitting I hadn’t.

Armand lowered his head. His brow puckered and his expression drifted miles away from here.

“The point is,” I continued, “that Maven Colleen
held that knowledge over my head, but a secret is only powerful until it’s been told. When she gave that information to my competition, she ensured that others could learn the truth. If I couldn’t trust her to protect Maisy’s identity, then she wouldn’t hesitate to endanger her in other ways. The male you spoke with? The one who ratted me out? I told him the deal was off. That’s why he came after me. The maven had told him if I failed to get revenge for her son, then she wished the same fate on me as the one she endured—the death of my child.”