TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 389

425 Points

CHAPTER 315: THE POISON GAME

EMBER’S POV

“You don’t tell us you can tell life from death,” Penelope says, and she draws a stool up to her side of the counter and lowers herself onto it, slow, folding her hands like a woman settling in to enjoy something. “You show us. It’s the only test we’ve ever set, it’s older than the shop, and we have watched a great many people fail it.” She nods at her husband’s busy hands. “Penny’s going to make you a few things. And then we’ll find out whether you understand what you’ve been asking us to sell, or whether you read a book and got brave.”

The old man works fast. That’s the thing that prickles at me, the speed of it, the way a man who

looks a hundred years old moves like water.

A pinch from this drawer, a measure from that jar, his back half to us so I can’t see his hands clearly, and even craning I can’t track what goes where.

It’s deliberately too quick.

In under a minute he sets three small clay cups on the counter, black–rimmed, identical, in a neat row, and steps back, wiping his hands on his apron with the unhurried calm of a man who’s done this many times and watched it go badly more than once.

“Three cups,” Penelope says. “One carries a poison that will stop your heart inside a minute, and it isn’t a gentle minute. The other two are clean. You drink, here, in front of us, of your own free will, and you find the way to walk away from this counter still breathing. Do that, and you’ll have shown me you can tell what’s safe from what isn’t by something other than a book, and you’ll walk out of here with everything you came for. The grade. The lot. No more questions.” Her pale eyes hold mine, flat and patient. “Refuse, and you’ll have shown me something too, and you won’t care for which. So.” She gestures at the row. “Choose.”

“No.” Queenie’s voice cracks clean down the middle. She steps forward, and every scrap of the deadpan is gone, her face gone white as the dried things on the walls. “No. Absolutely not. You can’t – Ember, you can’t be – we’re leaving. Right now. We’ll find it somewhere else, we’ll find another-”

“There’s nowhere else,” the old man says, mild. “If you must know.”

“I don’t care!” Queenie’s hand closes around my

m, and it’s shaking, properly shaking, her fingers digging in. “Ember. Look at me. This is – these people are insane, this is poison, they want you to

drink poison, I’m not I cannot stand here and

“Queenie, cover her hand with mir

“Queenie.” I cover her hand with mine.

watch you-”

23

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CHAPTER 315 THE POISON GAME

“Don’t Queenie me, don’t you dare use the calm voice-”

“It’s all right.”

+25 Points

“It is the furthest thing from all right that has ever happened!” Her eyes are wet now, bright and panicked, darting between me and the cups and the two old people watching us with the patience of stones. “Knox would never approve of us, and neither would I. You want medicine to save a life and the price is gambling yours, that’s that’s craziness, that’s a trap, please, Ember, please, let’s

just go-

And I’m scared too. I am.

My heart is slamming against my ribs, and one cup in three is a coin toss with my life on the counter, and these two have watched people lose, I can see it in how completely unbothered they

are.

This could kill me. This could actually kill me, and Queenie’s fear is just my own fear with the volume turned all the way up, said out loud in the open where I won’t let mine go.

But Rayana is dying. And there’s nowhere else. Except Hale.

And Hale is abosolutely not an option.

The cold flat part of me that survived so much bullshit with a stubborn, relentless refusal to die has already started turning the thing over in the dark, considering and digging for answers in the books I just read and my own wit.

“I’ll take your test,” I say slowly. “On one condition.”

Both Pennys tilt their heads. The same degree. The same direction.

“Condition,” Penelope repeats.

“I win it my own way.”

A pause. The old man’s mouth twitches.

“Explain.”

“You’re the best at what you do, or I wouldn’t have been sent here.“/

節

the as I’ve got. “Which means

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