[BL] The Ice Prince and his Fairy

Lessons

AN: I'll be honest, I had a hard time thinking of an ending to this chapter.  Still, I'm happy I got it done. Yay!

*****

Silence fell between the two, the child staring at Qin Rong in horror. Poison? Obviously, Xander knew what poison was but to think it might have been used on them was...

Was there someone so cruel?

"W-what?!" The child tried to understand the words being spoken but he felt distant and detached as he spoke.

Qin Rong, however, was surprisingly casual about the matter.

"Yeah, I can't really be sure until I read up on the natural toxins in this world." He said with a shrug, looking over the book he'd been reading with Xander. "A lot of stuff is similar to things I'm familiar with but-"

"Nik has been poisoned?!" He cried, his hand clenching hard enough to get the faerie's attention again.

"Eh?" Qin Rong was confused for a moment before recalling he was talking to a child about this. "Oh, yeah did I forget to mention it? My bad."

Then again, he'd only realized this recently. He'd suspected Nik had been poisoned the night he'd arrived since his symptoms were strange for a child his age. But he had originally assumed the kid had just put something in his mouth that he shouldn't have.

Kids were like that after all.

But seeing the food in the fridge had ended that assumption. To blatantly place poisonous plants among the edibles, the person had clearly wanted the boys to get sick and die.

The only question was why.

"Is that why you said you'd provide us food?" The child pulled Qin Rong from his thoughts.

"Partially. Honestly, I just didn't trust that old hag." He admitted, looking away. "That and I spotted some Liferoot in the basket of vegetables. Those are generally bad but on kids, it's lethal."

"But I read that Liferoot was a kind of medicine."

"It is, at least the roots are. Everything else toxic." He explained, smirking at the child's trust. And at that old hags deceit. "Nice touch on her part giving you the whole plant and mixing it in with everything else. Most can't tell the difference between roots and stems."

[AN: This is not actually true but I'll explain at the end why I chose this plant.]

Really, the only reason Qin Rong was so familiar with herbs was that in his line of work, such knowledge was critical. He'd been poisoned once and never wanted to suffer such a fate again.

He studied the subject extensively, even going through the harrowing ordeal of poisoning himself to develop an immunity to most poisons. This took years and in that time, he learned to recognize the signs of poisoning at a glance.

But he needed more information if he was going to treat them.

"How long has Nik been sick?"

"A few weeks."

"Really?" Qin Rong felt suddenly curious about the children he'd been living with. "Then what are you doing here?"

"Father thought Nik would fare better away from others." Xander explained, running his hand over his brother's head. "I was worried he'd be lonely, so I offered to accompany him."

"And then he left ya'll to die here." He concluded, seeing the ending clearly. Their dad just wanted them away from his sight when they died, hence the poison food and the lack of care.