Yet for all his embarrassment and contact with the poor (he’d had his clothes burnt upon his return), the purchase had turned out to be invaluable. The finest practitioners in Casoria hadn’t succeeded in curing Ranald. 

         Elymas chuckled. He’d stood before them all and handed the King his nightly draught of poison, reducing Ranald to skin and bones.

         Tonight had been time to stop.

         His fury at Ranald’s acceptance of the Whitehair’s announcement had prompted him, but he was also weary of prolonging the inevitable.  He was bored with Ranald’s growing list of complaints. Death was tiresome, particularly the King’s, and it had been time to end the charade. 

         Elymas knew Ranald’s passing, coupled with Fulcruchen’s death, would be viewed as coincidental. 

         The Warrior King was sick and Fulcruchen was old.

         Elymas dropped the second bottle on the dais. It, too, rolled but stopped short of the drop. He uncorked a third, breaking the taut silence of the Throne Room with a loud pop. The shadows were swimming furiously now. Was it his imagination or had the fish grown larger? One looked to be long as an eel.

         Imagination, he told himself, and drank directly from the bottle.

         He’d not handed the King his final dosage but sent it by a servant, shortly after Ranald had dismissed the crowd to the Banquet Hall. He knew Ranald’s death had been relatively painless. There was already enough poison in his system to lessen the shock of a fatal dose – only a moment’s vise-like grip around the heart.

         Not so for Fulcruchen. His nemesis had suffered. 

         Elymas had watched his struggles from the foot of his bed, enjoying the sight of the dignified councilor working his mouth like a flopping fish as he gasped for air. That’s the way it always ended, a struggle for air before the heart stops. Fulcruchen’s nightly cordial had been laced with enough poison to kill him, but not enough to make it easy. Elymas knew how his heart would hammer, how hard his lungs would work to take in air as they squeezed shut. He felt a thrill.

         “Fulcruchen,” he’d spoken softly from the foot of the bed. 

         The old man ceased his struggles, his hollowed eyes casting about for the source. Elymas obliged him by stepping closer, setting down a second bedside candle.

         “Good evening,” he’d said, and grinned.