Onyx Storm (The Empyrean Book 3)

The citizenship test for those wishing to reside in Hedotis reminds me of the entrance exam for the Scribe Quadrant, but our test is designed to measure how much a potential cadet has learned, and theirs reads as though to prove how much one has not.

—Hedotis: Isle of Hedeon by Captain Asher Sorrengail

Chairs screech against the stone floor as Mira, Cat, and I stand. “Get back here!” I shout down the bond, and panic wraps its sharp-nailed hands around my heart and squeezes.

“Already en route,” Tairn replies.

“Is Chradh—”

“Enraged but not suffering the loss of his rider from what I can tell.”

“He just set part of the forest on fire,” Andarna adds.

“Riorson, he’s not—” Aaric starts to repeat.

“I heard you the first time.” Xaden hooks his arms under Garrick’s shoulders and hauls him from his chair, then lays him out on the floor and kneels by his side.

“What did you put in it?” I ask Faris, rounding the table.

His smile shifts from playful to cruel, but he doesn’t answer.

“Get Trager!” Mira orders, and I hear a door open and shut behind me.

Xaden presses his ear to Garrick’s chest. “Sluggish but beating.”

“We need to get him to breathe—” Aaric starts. “He’s fucking blue.”

“Well aware.” Xaden pinches Garrick’s nose shut, then seals his mouth over Garrick’s and exhales.

Garrick’s chest rises.

I rock back on my heels and stand, finding Talia staring at Garrick with horror-stricken eyes. “What was in the cake?” I ask her.

She startles. “Nothing.” Her brow furrows as she looks at Garrick’s slice, then reaches for hers. “It’s just—”

“Not for you, my dear.” Faris takes her plate, then winces, tilting his head as he runs a hand over his stomach.

“What did you do?” Talia pushes back so quickly her chair falls into the wall behind her, leaving a mark on the pristine surface.

“I tested them as you asked,” he tells her with a loving smile. “Here, in the privacy of our home, where they’d be comfortable.”

Nairi and Roslyn both nudge their plates away, exchanging annoyed glances as Mira hovers, ready to strike.

“You poisoned my son?” Talia shrieks.

“Your son was wise enough not to eat it,” Faris replies. “Our isle can be unforgiving. You should be proud, not angry.”

I grab what’s left of Garrick’s cake and lift it to my nose. It smells like chocolate, and sugar, and maybe a hint of vanilla but— There. I breathe deeply, catching a hint of something sickly sweet. Like fruit that’s been left in the sun too long.

“It’s still slowing,” Aaric says, and I glance back to see him lying with his ear against Garrick’s chest as Xaden breathes again for his best friend.

My mind doesn’t race—it flies. It could be anything. Powdered and added to the flour, liquefied and mixed in with the eggs or added to the glaze. It could be indigenous or imported. All I have is Dad’s field guide. We’re so far out of our depths here that I’m not even sure Brennan could help.

“Violet,” Xaden pleads as our gazes collide. The panic in those onyx depths jars me like nothing else can.

I take a deep breath and steady my heartbeat to slow my thoughts. “I’ll find it,” I promise. “I won’t let him die.”

Xaden nods and breathes for Garrick again.

I smell the cake one last time and set it down, finding Faris watching us with rapt curiosity. Talia slowly backs herself against the curved wall, wrapping her arms around her middle as she watches Xaden.

“Is this the part where you draw a weapon?” Faris asks me, shifting in his seat. “Threaten to kill me if I don’t tell you what your hasty friend ingested?”

“No.” I lean my hip against the table where Talia should be sitting. “This is the part where I tell you I’ve already killed you.”

Faris’s smile slips. “And yet I breathe, and your friend does not.” But his body rolls like he’s trying to contain a belch, and he covers his mouth.

“Oh, you’ll breathe just fine.” I glance at the other three. “You all will. It’s the vomiting until your bile turns to blood that will kill you. Should start in about ten minutes. Don’t worry, it only lasts about an hour. Kind of a miserable way to go, but I worked with what I had.”

Nairi lurches out of her chair and drops to her knees, retching onto the floor.

“Shit, my timing’s off,” I say to Mira.

“She had two glasses.” Mira wrinkles her nose and retreats a step as Nairi empties the contents of her stomach.

“You drank and ate everything we did,” Faris says, the blood draining from his face. “I watched.”

“Not before dinner you didn’t.” I drum my fingers on the table. “Before dinner, it was just the six of us. Are you curious what I gave everyone for an appetizer as we walked down the stairs?”

His eyes flare. “You’re lying.”

“You wish.” I glance sideways as Talia slides down the wall, muffling a cry with her fist. “Time for your test. Do you know why arinmint is illegal to export? Why it’s against the rules to take it outside Aretia?”

“The fucking tea,” Faris hisses, shooting a glare at Talia.

I lift his empty goblet and turn it upside down. “And you drank it all.” I tsk at him, then set it back on the table. “I’ll make you a deal. I was saving this for the unlikely event we failed your test and needed leverage, but you give me your antidote and I’ll give you mine.”

“You don’t get to beat me.” He shakes his head.

Anger prickles along my skin.

“And you don’t get to poison my friend with impunity.” I tilt my head, refusing to let any of the panic curdling in my stomach show on my face.

“Your friend will be dead in the next twenty minutes, and I will still have forty to see you slaughtered by my guards. You think we won’t find the antidote in your room?” His voice rises.

The house shudders, and an ear-splitting roar rattles the forks against their plates.

“I wish you the best of luck.” I manage to keep my voice level. “You have mediocre guards. I have ten lethally trained riders and fliers, four gryphons, and seven pissed-off dragons. The odds are in my favor.”

Faris blanches. “How do I know you’re not bluffing? That what you’ve given us is deadly?”

“You don’t.” I shrug. “But as soon as you or your wife starts vomiting blood, I’m afraid the antidote won’t do you any good. Time’s ticking.”

The door swings open behind us, slamming into the wall.

“Oh fuck.” Drake immediately sidesteps out of the doorway and Trager rushes in, the others close behind.

“What did they give him?” the flier asks, dropping to his knees opposite Xaden.

“Working on that,” I tell him. And I’m failing.

Faris isn’t responding to a threat to his own life, or even his wife’s. It goes against every base instinct I have. I would have forked over the antidote as soon as I’d realized Xaden was in trouble.

“Stop thinking like you,” Tairn orders. “Think like him.”

“He’d rather die than lose.” Fear drips off the edges of every word. “He’s not going to tell me.”

“Then stop asking him.”

“Violet!” Xaden shouts.

“We have to get his heart beating stronger.” Trager puts one hand on top of the other on Garrick’s sternum, then forces all his weight down. “Keep breathing for him.”

The door opens behind Faris, and a servant gasps, then slams the door shut and screams.

My gaze swings to Mira. “I need you to handle everything else in this house that can kill us.” Then I look toward the doorway and find Dain standing behind Cat and Ridoc. “Get my dad’s book on Hedotis. It’s in my pack on the right side of my bed.”

Dain nods and takes off running.

“We seal the house now,” Mira orders. “There are three doors on this level. Cordella, take the front. Cat and Maren, handle the back by the patio. I’ll go for the side. Ridoc and Aaric, stay with Violet.” She draws her daggers and charges past the two sick women and through the servants’ entrance to the kitchen.

The cook.

“Ridoc, with me!” I call back over my shoulder, then race through the door Mira left open and into the kitchen.

Five servants stand around a large, cluttered table, their hands up at their shoulders, palms facing outward. There are two more at the hearth, one at the wash basin, and two by a stone oven.

“Where is the cook?”

They stare back at me.

“Where is the cook,” I repeat, switching to Hedotic.

The female servant who just found us trembles as she points to a doorway on her right. I draw two blades and trust Ridoc to watch my back as I storm past the workers and into— It’s a pantry.

Shelves with jars and baskets of fruits line the walls.

The spindly man startles and nearly drops what looks to be a jar of pickled eggs.

“What did you put in the cake?” I ask in Hedotic.

“What I was instructed to.” He slides the jar back onto the shelf, then reaches below and draws a knife from the block.

“Don’t do that.” I lift my blades. “Just tell me what’s killing my friend and you live.”

He charges me and I throw my daggers in quick succession, embedding them deep within both his forearms. Blood streams to his elbows and he drops the kitchen knife, then bellows, staring down at his arms as his hands shake.

“I told you not to do that!” I take three steps, then yank out both of my daggers by their hilts and kick him square in the stomach.

He stumbles backward into the shelves.

Debilitating pain explodes in my side, and I gasp, tensing every muscle like that might somehow rewind the last thirty seconds and spare my broken rib. Fuck, I did not think that through.

The cook brings his trembling hands together in a plea, revealing blue half-moons under his nails. “Please. No. I have a wife. And two children.”

Blue.

He hadn’t been using a blue-edged towel. He’d been scrubbing the blue off his hands.

I back out of the pantry slowly and find Ridoc guarding the door, flight jacket unbuttoned, sword drawn. “We’re looking for something blue.”

“You telling me there’s actually something colorful on this isle?” We both stare at the pots, pans, and dishes covering the newly deserted worktable, then move toward it. Ridoc sheathes his sword, picks up a pot, checks its cream-colored contents, and sets it back down. “Even the freaking birds are white—”

Errisbirds.

Blue nails. The scent of overripe fruit.

That’s it. “I know what it—”

The cook yells as he storms out of the pantry, and both Ridoc and I whirl.

My heart seizes as I catch sight of the cook’s kitchen knife mid-flight. I dodge right, then surge forward toward the cook, walling off the pain like it belongs to someone else, and pull a move from Courtlyn’s book. I throw the dagger with a snap of my wrist and pin the cook’s bloodied hand to the fucking doorframe.

He has the nerve to howl like he doesn’t deserve it.

“Stay there,” I order in Hedotic, then turn back toward Ridoc.

Air gushes from my lungs as Ridoc looks down.

The cook’s knife is lodged in his side.