How to Poison Your Husband || ONC 2024

Step 5c: ...and do not, under any circumstance, kiss your target

By his second week of training, Eirifold was no longer gasping like a fish when he tried to do a pushup. By week three, he was actually starting to show some muscle, helped along by one of Ivelle's Buffening Up potions (basically a glorified protein shake with a sprinkle of magic and some electrolytes).

Appearance-wise, he was still far from a romance-novel hero.

But it was a start.

Far more important than Eirifold's physical gains was the fact that, in two weeks, he'd somehow managed to become completely sober. Ivelle might have helped a little. She'd snuck into his bedroom one morning while he was asleep and thrown away the wine and whiskey stashed around his chambers. She'd expected some repercussions, or at least an annoyed protest, but to her surprise, Eirifold had said nothing about his alcohol going missing. Perhaps he was secretly glad she had confiscated it. Or maybe he just didn't care. Ivelle supposed that, as a prince, he could simply summon servants to bring him new bottles of wine whenever he wanted.

But he hadn't.

He still gave her infinite amounts of grief during their practice sessions though. Take, for instance, the most recent practice session. During which he'd had the gall to suggest she didn't look her best. (Or, as he put it, "The bags under your eyes are bigger than the bags the king uses to hold his gold. And it's a lot of gold.")

"I'm fucking tired," Ivelle had snapped, yawning. "You try getting four hours of sleep a night for two straight weeks and see how it makes you look!"

"Why," Eirifold had said after a brief pause, "have you only been getting four hours of sleep?"

"Not all of us have the luxury of sleeping until noon every morning, dimwit!"

He'd gone quiet after that, and Ivelle had thought the topic was closed, until, while he was on his twentieth pushup, he paused and said suddenly, "I think–and this is not just me trying to get out of training–you should take a break tomorrow night and sleep."

"Out of the question."

"What if we shift our training to the evenings?"

"I thought you didn't want King Gorlin to see you getting in shape."

He snapped his fingers. "I've got a plan. I know someone who owns a courtyard. They live on the other side of the city. We can sneak out of the palace and train there."

Ivelle knew she should probably protest. What if someone spotted her training Eirifold and told Lillian? But she was too tired to care. "Fine," she yawned. "If you can guarantee we won't be seen, we can switch our training to the evenings."

~*~

Given how heavily guarded the prince was, Ivelle had thought it would be hard for him to sneak into the city without being noticed.

She had reckoned without the secret passage hidden behind one of Eirifold's bookshelves.

"And you gave that whole song and dance about needing me to go to the city to buy your nasal spray!" Ivelle fumed. "I can't believe you had access to the city all this time!"

"I can only sneak out so many times before my mother notices my disappearance and sends guards searching for me. She's frightfully perceptive." Eirifold pushed aside the end table abutting his elaborate four-poster and slid aside a piece of wall to reveal a darkened passage about one person wide. "Anyway, this isn't exactly my favorite route to take. There's a human skeleton just inside."

"What."

Ivelle stuck her head inside the passage. Almost immediately, she leaped back in horror. There was, indeed, a skeleton inside the secret passage. A rather large skeleton, in fact. A crown was askew on its head, and its white teeth were bared in a grimace.