The Rebel Prince (The Season Series #3)

Chapter 16 - Part 2

**A/N: Warning! Major spoilers for The Heiress Queen ahead!!**

"How did you-?" Ana-Cristina began, her hands balling into fists.

"The key, Ana," Frederico interrupted, his fingers calmly knitted behind his back as he surveyed the glowing wall of glass bottles.

"It's not yours," Ana-Cristina snapped. Frederico turned, slowly.

"And it's not yours. Nor is it Dulciana's," he said, extending his hand. Something slithered along my spine at the aborted glance Ana-Cristina had almost darted my way. She gave up the key with no more protest than a sour look, crossing her arms.

No, she most certainly had not been about to gift me with me some panacea.

"That will be all," Frederico said, with a pointed look towards the spiralling passage through which we'd come, slipping the key into his pocket. This time, Ana's eyes did dart my way before she huffed and turned on her heel.

"Let me guess, she should not have brought me here?" I said, when the silence stretched between us.

"Did she warn you not to touch anything?" he asked, his eyes still slowly running over the backlit vials and jugs.

No, she most certainly had not, I thought, sliding my hands into my pockets. The prince's lips twitched upwards in the ghost of a smile.

"I'd said we should take a walk, though I didn't imagine I'd find you here," he said, sauntering deeper into the poison-lined room. "Interesting that you'd dare to venture so close to what almost killed you last night."

"I was told there was something down here that should interest me," I said, pulling the empty vial from my pocket as I caught up to him. Frederico glanced over at it, the corner of his lip twitching again.

"Such a precious thing, antidotes like that. Don't believe all you hear, though," he said. "There is no such thing as a cure for all poisons."

He stopped as we approached the back wall, at least twice as high as the others. An ornate golden grate protected these glass bottles, a lock the size of my face in the center.

"La Muerta Friga," Frederico said, tipping his head towards a decidedly empty cubby behind the golden gate. "I believe your family is all-too-well acquainted with its effects. And its resistance to panacea."

I stared at the backlit hollow, quickly assessing what the prince had just revealed. Panacea was not, then, the cure to all poisons, which would explain how La Muerta Friga - the frozen death - had killed my maternal grandfather, even despite Hadrian Amberly's cache of the cure-all.

King Leopold of Germania had been the one to steal the famed poison from the Ardalonians when he was but a crown prince, somehow making off with it during King Felipe's wedding to the late queen, Frederico's mother. It had been meant to force my mother into a marriage to thus cede her territory to Germania. But rather than allow that to happen, my mother had chosen to sacrifice her father to save her people and herself. The theft of the poison and its use on a Pretanian noble had effectively ostracized Germania from the rest of the continental countries, news of Leopold's actions spreading far and wide thanks to a peace treaty my father had forced him to sign in exchange for his release.

I was keenly aware of Prince Frederico watching for my reaction out of the corner of his eye, his calm gaze still on the empty poison cubby. Deciding that the time had come to feel out my potential ally, I spoke.

"I suspect that Ana-Cristina's intentions were to familiarize me with all the ways Dulciana could make my brother suffer for spurning her?" I said.

Frederico stilled.