TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 393

CHAPTER 319: BATSHIT CRAZY

EMBER’S POV

And oh, the satisfaction of it nearly makes me laugh out loud right there at the counter. I keep my face stupid, thumb resting on that one sticky rim, but inside I am grinning like a fool.

Because they’d been so good. So patient, so smug, so certain. And they’d handed themselves to me with the thing they were proudest of.

The paint was the proof. But the paint only told me what the old man’s face had been screaming at me the whole time, if I’d only thought to ask the right question.

Which was: why on earth is he afraid?

A man who’s run this exact con a thousand times, married to the finest hand with a poison I’ll ever meet, and I’m supposed to believe he’s quaking that she’ll drink the wrong cup?

She can’t drink the wrong cup. She’d sooner forget.her own name. So the fear was a performance.

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And here’s the part that delighted me, the part I almost admired out loud: these two go cold as stone the second a stranger crosses the threshold.

They keep everything tucked away, soft only for each other. And then, all at once, the old man lets me see

all of it, the terror, the devotion, wide open on his face like a window thrown up.

People don’t spill the truest thing they’ve got by

Accident. He showed me. On purpose.

And the only reason in this world to show someone/something that real is to sell them something false.

For a long, long moment the two of them only stare at me.

And then they drop it. All of it, all at once the chill, the menace, the cold sly theatre – it falls off both their faces in the same breath, and what’s under is the last thing I expect, which is delight.

Deep, open, boyish delight, two ancient tricksters looking at me like I’ve handed them a gift they’d long

[ since stopped hoping anyone would.

“I do have one question, though.” I look between them. “One that’s bothered me from the moment you set this whole trick in motion.” I nod at the shattered cup, the dark smear drying on the counter. “What exactly would have happened if I’d drunk the poisoned one?”

And the two of them burst out laughing.

They look at each other and laugh harder, and Penelope presses a hand to her chest.

“Wonderful,” she says, wiping at the corner of one eye. “Oh, she’s wonderful, Penny. Perhaps this new generation isn’t quite the pack of fools the news would have us believe.”

“First,” the old man says, still grinning, holding up a finger, “no poison on this earth holds the power to kill in under a minute. Not one. The very highest grade we keep, the worst thing in this shop, takes a minute

CHAPTER 31RATSUT

and twenty seconds at its fastest. Never sixty.”

“Never sixty,” Penelope echoes, fond.

+25 Points

“But you,” the old man goes on, pointing the finger at me now, “you are one brilliant young woman. The first I’ve had the pleasure of in years. And certainly the first not currently clutching her own throat and dying on my lovely rug.” He shrugs, and reaches under the counter, and produces a small dark bottle, holding it up

to the light like a magician revealing the coin was behind your ear the whole time. “And to those who do lift the wrong cup, we simply give them this. The antidote. Any alchemist worth their penny keeps the cure

within arm’s reach of the poison. We’re tricksters, girl. Not murderers,”

–

“You-” Queenie’s voice has been climbing this entire time and now it breaks loose entirely, somewhere between fury and disbelief. “You’re telling me all of that the poison, the roulette, my entire life flashing before my eyes – was a game where nobody was ever actually going to die?” She rounds on me, then on them, then on me again, hands flung wide. “You two are batshit. You are out of your minds. And you’re not excluded, Ember! All of that, all of it, just to hide the poison somewhere clever and watch her squirm-”

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