Kept by the Zandian (Zandian Brides 5)

I won’t cry, because that doesn’t help, but I sag in my chair.

Leylah clucks her tongue. “You’re stronger than that. Don’t you feel sorry for yourself.”

I straighten. “Suggestions on what to do instead?” I raise my eyebrows and try to smile, but it comes out crooked.

She smiles. “You come here and help me with this.” She glances around, as if to make sure we’re alone, then pulls out a small metal box. From her expression, I can tell this is something new.

Secret.

“What is that?” My voice is hushed, and I glance around, too, as if there are faces lurking in the firelight.

“This is a microsyringe.” Leylah puts the gloves back on and points to the cabinet. “Put on the other pair and come here. We’re going to load the venom into the syringes.”

“You are making a toxin.” I raise my brows. Stop in my tracks, the gloves in one hand. “Just like Rannah suggested.”

“Bring the other small bottle too.” Leylah points. “And yes. I am.”

I fetch the item. “What’s in here?”

Leylah uses a small dropper to transfer fluid from the second bottle to the syringe. She coughs. “Remember this.” She lowers her voice. “I used equal parts of the venom of the two asps you’ve gathered; one I altered with heat, one with a substance I distilled from the sour fruit of the wall-eck trees.”

She points to her little burner, set up with three coals. “The heat from this, you see?” She coughs. “It’s told that this combination”—she holds up a loaded syringe and examines it in the light—“can kill a full-grown Ocretion in three seconds. Just one dro

p.”

I whistle softly. “Wow.”

“That’s right. Of course, it will kill us even faster. So don’t let it touch your skin.”

“I’m not planning on it.” I draw away, still transfixed. “How do you know it works?”

Leylah clucks her tongue. “When you girls come back wounded”—she flinches and her eyes glisten—“there is sometimes”—her voice cracks—“Ocretion residue under the fingernails. In your core. I take that.” Her tone becomes hard. “And I test my serums. When I created a mix that made their blood dissolve and turn clear, I knew I had it. That is the way we tell. According to my information.”

I have learned that one does not ask Leylah from where she obtains her information. She tells if she wishes it, and even so, her answers are sometimes too cryptic to understand, involving augers and visions and whispers that only she can hear. Stories she was told as a child that she locked into her brain and saved until now, some of them.

I’m horrified and fascinated at once. “In their cruelty, they gave us the very thing we need to destroy them.” I reach out but don’t touch the bottle. “They would kill us all if they knew.”

“They will not know.” She sounds absolutely certain. In the moment, I believe her.

“Is that why you haven’t told the others?” I pause. “Or have you?” Leylah has a different bond with all of us. It’s not clear what she tells to whom. “You’ll tell Keerah… right?”

Leylah’s quiet for a second. “Something came to me in a dream, about you and the toxin.”

I nod. Leylah has dreams regularly that mean things to her. If the rest of us think some of them sound like nonsense, we don’t tell her, because the truth is that we all want to believe there is something bigger than this world we inhabit. We want to believe in a future beyond slavery.

“And in this dream, what did I do with the toxin?” I smile, like it’s a story, a joke.

But Leylah doesn’t smile.

She puts down her tools and looks at me. “Tomorrow afternoon,” she says, her voice soft and earnest, “I am going to die.”

I gasp, horrified, but she’s still talking. “In the middle of the market I am going to die, right near the river, when you and Rannah are with me to gather supplies for barracks. The Ocretion visitors are here, and so are other traders. When I fall, you are going to slip away and hide on a trade ship. You will use the venom as you need to fell anyone who stops you. No Ocretions know this poison exists, and they will think the being died from a heart attack. Nobody will suspect poison.”

I stare at her, hand over my mouth, eyes wide. Heart frantic. “I-I…”

“You will hide on a specific ship, and once you are out in free air space, you will come out and petition for asylum.”

“I…” I shake my head. “Leylah.”