Salvage ~ V1: Nuts and Bolts (Steampunk/ Gaslamp Romantasy ~ F/M, M/M)

Chapter 20: Is That Why You Hate Me?

"Well?" Abrizhen asked curtly. "Let's have it."

"Thank you," Kazia said to him with sincerity. "And thank you, Your Majesty. I'll try to be brief."

She swept a gaze over those who remained.

"Mistress Amelys, Master Ilianus, and Lord Meratha are all very accomplished Alchemists. Madame Brandra Giris is quite accomplished in the field of Herbalism. I should like to ask them – if a person presented the symptoms of a flu, later developing darkened fingertips and toes, then blindness and bleeding from the eyes, all persisting for several weeks before they finally expired, what illness would you say they had suffered?"

Abrizhen narrowed his eyes, staring at Kazia as his jaw clenched and his face went ashen.

Everyone in the Hall looked at each other in bewilderment.

"What is the relevance of this?" Sir Aleryl exclaimed. "Your Majesty...?"

"That's not an illness," Madame Brandra's voice rang clearly. "That person was poisoned. Right, Mistress Amelys? Trecine mushroom, grows in Mitria. Quite rare, but that's how it works."

Everyone turned to look at her, except for Kazia and Abrizhen who continued to stare heatedly at one another.

"Lady Kazia?" Tamyn whispered, but she waved him off.

"Abrizhen, do you know that Gorvan killed my mother?" Kazia said quietly.

The Hall went deathly silent.

"Back then, did you know?"

Abrizhen swallowed, keeping still as a statue.

"Your mother wasn't poisoned," he said through his clenched teeth.

"No," Kazia said. "She was strangled, by Gorvan's own hands, while I watched from a cupboard."

Her voice trailed off into almost a whisper. She could feel everyone's eyes on her, taste their astonishment, their apprehension, their curiosity.

"I was still small enough to fit into a cupboard then. I used to hide in them and listen to the servants gossiping. Many of them remembered your mother fondly. They would talk about her last days often. The horror of her last days."

Abrizhen stood suddenly.

"Kazia, what is this?" he growled.

"In my struggles with finding a path in Alchemy, I have sampled and explored many branches of the art. When I was on the farm, I tried to study a bit of medicine, and came across some books on the symptoms of various poisons. Strangely enough, one of them seemed to match to the servants' gossip about your mother."

"Your Majesty," Sir Aleryl said, "she's talking nonsense. Lord Devratha, is this a part of her condition?"

"Quiet," the Queen said sternly.

Abrizhen, on the verge of losing control of his anger, was reminded of the setting and forced a smile at Kazia.

"You have no boundaries, do you?" he asked.

"Do you?" Kazia replied. "You were once one of the few dependable people I knew. I loved you so much, and you seemed to love me. I have never been able to discover what changed."

Kazia's eyes were filling with tears, but she pressed on as her voice broke.

"Is this what changed? Did you discover that your mother was murdered so that Gorvan could marry my mother? Is that why you hate me now?"

She felt Tamyn place a hand on her shoulder and Abrizhen's eyes shifted to him. After a very long time gazing at him, his shoulders heaved and he seemed to relax just a bit. His eyes flicked away to the floor, and he appeared lost in his own thoughts now.