TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 392

CHAPTER 230H

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CHAPTER 318: THE WRONG CUP

EMBER’S POV

I bring it down against the edge of the counter hard enough to shatter it, clay and brew and a dark wet smear spraying across the wood.

And into the ringing silence that follows, I start to laugh, because it is funny, it’s the most elaborate murder I’ve ever nearly walked myself into, and I can’t help it.

For a long moment, nobody says a word.

“Well.” I set the surviving cup down, gentle, and look between the two of them. “That was very good. Truly. I almost drank it.”

“How,” the old man breathes. He’s leaning both hands on the counter now, his eyes bright as a boy’s. “How

did you see it. Forty-one years I’ve run that game, and I’ve watched Alphas and Gammas and a sitting Luna lift the wrong cup with my face doing the very thing it just did. How did you see it?”

“I didn’t. Not at first.” I lean a hip against the counter, because my legs have decided they’ve had enough, and because if I’m going to explain this I may as well be comfortable while I do. “At first I did exactly what you wanted. I watched you, sir, going to pieces over your wife, and I thought, there it is, he’ll never let her drink the bad one, so the cup he’s frightened of is the killer. I had my hand halfway to the other one.”

“And?”

“And then I remembered who I was dealing with.” I tick it off on my fingers, because they’re the kind of people who’ll appreciate the working shown. “One. You drank.” I look at Penelope. “Cup after cup, right alongside me, steady as a clock, and you didn’t so much as flinch. Now, if the poison were in the brew, then watering it thin across eight cups would have made every sip a gamble- and you would sooner shut this shop forever than leave your own life to a coin toss. You’re far too proud for that. We drank six cups and didn’t die. So the brew was never the danger. It was a cleɣer lie from the beginning. The poison was never in the brew. The mixing, the roulette, the whole grand game I thought I’d invented-” I shake my head, almost admiring it. “You let me build my own distraction. You handed me a clever little puzzle to keep my eyes busy while the real thing sat somewhere I wasn’t looking.”

“Two.” I hold up my thumb, the faint dark smudge still riding the pad of it. “If the poison wasn’t in the cup. then it was on the cup. And there’s only one part of a cup that touches your mouth whether you mean it to or not. The rim. So I checked the rims.” I show them the smudge. “You painted every cup’s rim black, so they’d all look the same. And they did. But here’s what gave you away. Dry paint doesn’t move. You can touch it, drink off it, rub it, and it stays exactly where it is. The poison doesn’t. The poison stays a little wet. A little sticky.” I nod at the wreckage on the counter. “Seven rims were dry. One was sticky. That was the one with the poison.”

And that was the moment I’d known, really known, with my thumb still resting on that one tacky rim and my face arranged into a frightened girl’s dithering.

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CHAPTER 314THE WRONG CUP

The quiet, vicious satisfaction of it. Because the paint had told me everything the second I felt it. Penelope’s pale eyes have not left my face this entire time.

*25 Points

“And him.” A flick of her eyes at the old man, almost fond. “He’s very good, isn’t he. That face has never once failed us. What made you see through it?”

“Oh, that was the cleverest part of the whole thing, and I want you to know I almost fell for it completely.” I turn to the old man, and I can’t quite keep the admiration out of my voice, because it was beautiful. “You didn’t lie to me with your words. You lied to me with the truest thing in this entire shop. Anyone can see the two of you adore each other. It’s nauseating. It’s lovely. It’s real and that’s exactly why it was the perfect place to hide a knife. Who on earth doubts a man who loves his wife that much? You knew I’d trust

your terror for her over anything you could’ve said out loud. So you spent forty-one years of devotion as

bait.” I shrug. “I just decided, at the very last second, that I wasn’t going to let the most beautiful thing in

the room be the thing that killed me. I’ve made that mistake before.”

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