Poison Priestess by Lana Popovic (some good books to read TXT) 📗

There is a rancor to Adam’s voice, a bitterness even beyond that warranted by the arbitrary cruelties of the beau monde’s glittering world.

“You hate them, too, don’t you?” I remark with sudden understanding. “The noblesse. Perhaps even more than I do.”

“I do, because why should they have it all?” he demands, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Glory, luxury, even infamy. When they’ve earned it through neither talent nor perseverance, but only through a fortunate accident of birth. I deserve wealth and renown more than the lot of them—and I mean to have it, Catherine. And if I must struggle and claw my way to what should be mine, then so be it. People like us … we are never promised clean hands. Not if we wish to leave any sort of mark.”

For a moment I can feel the wellspring of his throbbing need, the force that propels him forward. It kicks loose a fragment of a vision—an image of a woman’s lovely face, her eyes long and narrow as Adam’s but an even truer black, with a frank luster to them like freshwater pearls.

Then her smooth cheeks grow purple and mottled, her eyes blowing open wide and horrified even as her mouth gapes in a scream.

The meaning of this snippet is clear to me; this woman met her death by murder. And though I cannot grasp exactly what befell her, I think, with a sweeping sadness, that I understand who she might have been.

“What is it?” Adam says sharply, jerking me out of my reverie. A thread of tension pulls taut between us again. He stares suspiciously at me, his face tightening with sudden mistrust. “Why are you looking at me so, Catherine?”

His eyes flick between mine, leery and searching—as if he suspects what I was doing, and without his consent. But I know better than to admit to such an intrusion, even if unintentional, when our partnership is still so new.

“I am only thinking,” I say instead, “how much all those heathens at Versailles deserve to be knocked down a peg.”

His forbidding mien loosens at that, softening into something more inviting.

“I could not agree more,” he says, setting the slide aside to reach for my hands and thread our fingers loosely together. When he speaks again, we have drawn so close, nearly mouth to mouth, that I can feel his next words carried on the heat of his breath. “And who better to cut them down than you and I?”

Adam and I decide to make Louis Guihelm de Castelnau, the Marquis de Cessac and the king’s own Master of the Wardrobe, our first mark.

Four days later, the marquis sits across from me in the pavilion, having responded to my urgent summons with agreeable alacrity. I wrote to him only that morning that I’d had a vision, sent to me by our shared master—presuming he could read between the lines enough to surmise whom I meant, without me committing to paper any outright mention of the devil—and that I needed to speak with him forthwith.

Now the chill September breeze stirs his elaborate russet wig, one of his ludicrous affectations. Only the king himself boasts a more boisterous head of hair, though his curls are said to be au naturel. The marquis grits his teeth against the prickle of cold, chilled even under his rich port-wine velvet.

“While I am eager to hear what you might have to share with me, madame, might I ask that we retire inside? It is becoming blasted frigid, even this early into fall.”

“Of course, if that is what you wish, messire. But out here, I can ensure privacy.” I sweep out a hand to gesture at the still garden around us, the last of the roses bobbing their heads in rhythm with the wind. I have dispensed with Pascal’s music for tonight, wishing to underscore the need for both discretion and urgency. “Whereas inside, as they say, even the walls have ears.”

Interest sparks in his shrewd, pale eyes. “And what you have to tell me … it is of a very delicate nature?”

“Exceedingly delicate.” I take a deep breath, as if to calm myself, and drop my tone urgently low. “As I said, I have been visited by a vision. As his devoted servant, sometimes the daystar communicates this way with me. And I saw you, messire … and not just you, but your brother. And his very charming wife, Gisele.”

The marquis sucks in air, his palms flattening on the table, eyes roving between mine. I can see the frantic turning of the gears behind his eyes as he considers what I’ve said. While the wish he professed during my first Messe was to steal away his brother’s wife, it was written in such oblique fashion that its essence only became clear after hours of my scrying and some subtle research on Adam’s part, discreet delving into the marquis’s private life.

Now he wonders how I could possibly know what he had meant without having truly been visited by the devil. I can see the precise moment he dismisses any doubts he may yet have held about my powers, any lingering skepticism quelled.

“And what … what did you see?” he asks, his voice a rusty croak.

“I saw how you yearn for her, messire, and how very unhappy she is with your brother. Were he not there, there is no reason to think her affection would not fall on you. Does she not steal glances at you when his attention is otherwise occupied? Has she not always been unusually kind in your exchanges?”

“Yes, perhaps—but the scoundrel does stand between us,” the marquis mutters. “Though he knew I favored her long before he did. I would not even put it past him to have married her largely out of spite for me.”

The animosity between the brothers is a well-documented affair. Moreover, the younger de Castelnau’s reputation for malfeasance is so prominent, even in the cesspool of the court, that few of the noblesse