He wanted. He burned.
Where was he?
***
Dalatteya’il’zaver didn’t like it when things didn’t go according to her plans.
She had been promised that the plan would be carried out without a hitch and her son wouldn’t be affected. So much for that.
Uriel had a lot of explaining to do.
Dalatteya grimaced as she glanced at her son. Samir’s eyes were glassy, his face flushed and his lips bitten red as he struggled to get up from the examination table he was restrained against. Warrehn was outright growling, trying to free himself from his restraints and get to Samir, acting little better than a mindless beast. Their conditions had deteriorated alarmingly fast.
This was all wrong. The drug shouldn’t have affected Warrehn this visibly, and definitely not so soon after he had inhaled it. Something had gone wrong.
“His Majesty and His Highness were drugged with an alien gaseous substance X137-1276,” Doctor Jihan said, frowning at his medical scanner.
Dalatteya frowned, too. That definitely wasn’t the drug Uriel had been supposed to use.
“It’s a very rare substance outlawed on all the planets of the Union,” the doctor said. “It’s made primarily from the secondary mating glands of the primates from Planet Shoma. Those primates are near extinction and hunting them is forbidden—”
“I don’t care what it’s made from,” Dalatteya snapped. “I want to know how anyone managed to infiltrate the palace!” Of course she knew perfectly well how that had been done, but she had to keep up appearances even here, in her own palace. There were ears everywhere. Although she preferred employing droids, unfortunately, medical droids weren’t as good as real medical personnel. What she really wanted to know was how Uriel had ended up using the wrong drug—and drugging her son too. While Samir had been asleep, she had personally administered the antidote to the drug Uriel had been supposed to use. The drug shouldn’t have affected him at all.
“That’s not my area of expertise, my lady,” the doctor said. “I can only give you my personal opinion. Historically, this drug was often used to incapacitate high-ranking political figures. While under its influence, a person cannot focus on anything but the object of his fixation. I suppose someone wanted the king to be unable to fulfill his duties.”
That was a good potential motive she could use if the incident ever became known to the public. Warrehn hadn’t exactly made many friends. Any disgruntled noble could be blamed for this mess. The fact that her own son was affected too would divert the suspicion from her. That was a silver lining, she supposed.
“You still haven’t told me in clear terms what the drug does.”
Doctor Jihan was one of the best medical minds of the planet, but he blushed like a little boy at her question. “It… It makes the target fall into a dazed state of obsessive, uncontrollable lust for the person they had been with when they were dosed with the substance.” He glanced at Samir. “Unfortunately, that was His Highness.”
Samir didn’t even seem to hear him, his gaze fixated longingly on Emyr’s spawn, who was looking back at him just as transfixed, Warrehn’s muscles flexing against the restraints, his nostrils flaring like that of a beast. It was utterly disgusting.
“… Prince Samir was dosed too, but the concentration of the substance is a little lower in his blood—it seems Prince Warrehn was the one closer to the ventilation shaft that was used to poison the air. Your son should be slightly more lucid and aware.”
“He doesn’t seem lucid at all,” Dalatteya said, beyond frustrated. This was all wrong. The drug she had chosen was a slow-acting one. If everything had gone according to her plan, Warrehn wouldn’t have even known that he had been drugged. He and Samir would have departed for the publicity tour utterly oblivious that Warrehn was a ticking bomb that was supposed to go off at a very precise time—the time Dalatteya would have arranged for someone to walk in on them as Warrehn attempted to force his lustful attentions on the unwilling Samir. An attempted sexual assault on a member of royalty was the sort of offense even a king wouldn’t recover from, especially one who was so unpopular and who was already suspected of similar inclinations toward his younger brother—the rumor Dalatteya had carefully cultivated. If everything had come to pass, Warrehn would have been declared unfit to rule and removed from the throne by the decision of the Council. It had been such a simple plan—in theory.
Having her son compromised too hadn’t been part of the plan. As Emyr would say, she had fucked up. The thought was extremely aggravating.
“If you pay attention, you will notice that he seems slightly aware of us while King Warrehn is completely transfixed by him.” The doctor frowned at his medical scanner. “Right now the king is producing so many hormones I’m frankly amazed he hasn’t passed out. His blood pressure is extremely concerning, despite the stabilizers he’s on. It’s quite literally life-threatening, as it can restrict blood flow to the heart, which may eventually lead to a heart attack.”