Chapter 68: The Man Still Breathing And The Poison Revealed!
Neve ran as fast as he could.
But Ryker ran faster.
The tiger prince reached the hut first and pushed the straw curtain aside with enough force that it ripped slightly. What he saw inside made him freeze completely.
The young beastman that Neve was speaking to just a few minutes ago was lying on the floor.
His body was convulsing slightly. His eyes were rolled back. His breathing was shallow and getting shallower. He was dying. Not slowly. Fast. The kind of fast that meant minutes at most before his heart stopped.
Neve burst through the entrance right behind Ryker.
He rushed forward immediately, his hands moving to the man’s body, checking for a pulse, for breath, for anything that said he could still be saved.
Ryker grabbed him and held him back.
"Don’t get close to him," Ryker said. His voice was certain. His experience with poisons was clear. "He can’t be saved. Isabella must have poisoned him with golden frog poison."
Neve pushed himself off Ryker.
"I can save him," he said.
He walked toward the dying man and knelt in front of him. His hand reached into his pocket to pull out the blue root, the numb-root he had found at the trench.
The straw curtain burst open.
Isabella and Soren rushed in at the same time.
Isabella’s face was already arranged. Her eyes were wet with tears. Her hand was pointing directly at Neve with the accusation burning behind it.
"Look here!" she yelled. "I told you what I saw was true. Neve killed him!"
Ryker stepped immediately between Neve and Isabella.
"This brat..." Ryker said, his voice hard. "Neve would never hurt anyone. Don’t you dare lie about him!"
"Oh, Ryker!" Isabella wiped the tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand. The motion was performed perfectly. "You are in love with Neve, so you will take his side no matter what!"
"Be quiet!" Ryker yelled.
"Ryker," Neve called his name quietly.
Ryker looked back at him.
Neve shook his head. Just a small motion which was enough to say stop fighting for me, I have this handled.
Ryker’s expression twisted with frustration. "But she’s framing you for murder. Are you just going to watch her do that?"
"Frame me for murder?" Neve asked. He was still kneeling beside the unconscious man. "Whose death?"
Isabella opened her mouth to continue her accusation.
Then she looked down and saw that the man was breathing.
He wasn’t breathing heavily, but he was breathing. His chest was moving up and down. His eyes were still rolled back, but his body had stopped convulsing.
He was alive.
Isabella’s entire expression shifted from triumphant to confused in the span of a single breath.
"How’s that possible?" she whispered.
Soren was standing in the entrance, looking completely lost. He had been with their father when Isabella had stormed in, screaming that Neve had killed someone from the leopard tribe. He had not believed her. But if he did not follow her, she would disturb their father’s rest, which would be worse. So he had come along to see what the drama was about.
What he was seeing now made no sense.
"Bella!" Soren yelled her name.
She flinched and looked back at him.
"How would you explain this?" he demanded. "What exactly did you report to me?"
Isabella’s mouth opened and closed. She clearly wanted to say something, but could not figure out what. The poison should have killed him. The golden frog poison killed beastmen within minutes. He should be dead. But he was not dead, and that meant her entire accusation was crumbling.
"I know what I saw. Neve had tried to kill him with..."
She did not mention the poison. If she did, Soren would know she was the one who had tried to use it. Only four people in the entire village knew where the poison was kept, and she was one of them. As long as no one said the word poison, there was no direct connection to her.
"With golden frog poison!" Neve concluded, finishing her unspoken sentence.
Isabella looked at him and yelled. "What? No!"
Neve walked away from the body.
He was glad he had gotten here on time. While Bella was arguing with Ryker and Soren, with everyone’s attention on the drama and the accusations, Neve had squeezed the numb-root into his own mouth. He had chewed it into a paste. He had worked quickly and carefully, and when the moment was right, he had applied it to the young man’s skin.
The numbing paste had worked immediately.
It had frozen the cell doors shut. It had stopped the poison from travelling to the man’s heart. If Neve had been a few minutes later, if he had taken any longer to run back, the man would be dead.
"How do you know about that poison?" Soren asked, his eyes narrowing.
"I’m a physician," Neve said simply. "Of course, I know about it. I know about most poisons. It’s part of my medical knowledge."
He looked directly at Isabella. "But I do not have it. So how did it get here?"
Soren’s expression grew colder.
"We have it kept safe in this village," he said. His voice was the voice of a chief now, not a sick man’s brother. "Only a handful of people know about its location, and that includes Bella."
"But I would never break the rule and kill someone," Bella said. Her voice was calm and reasonable and completely certain. "Besides, that poison is said to kill a beastman within minutes. And look." She gestured to the young man on the floor. "He’s still alive. There’s no way he could have survived if he had been poisoned with something that deadly."
Soren was this close to believing Isabella when he looked at Neve.
His gaze was sharp and assessing.
"Is this true?" he asked.
"He’s only alive because I cured him," Neve said.
They all stared at him.
"What?" they chorused, their voices overlapping.
"Is it curable?" Soren asked, his tone shifting from sceptical to intensely interested.
Neve shook his head. "It’s something I cannot share. The remedy can spread to our enemies if it becomes common knowledge. If other tribes or outcasts learned how to counter that poison, it would make our village vulnerable."
He walked back to the unconscious man and checked his pulse again.
It was strong and steady, which meant that his condition was definitely improving.
"All I can say," Neve said, looking directly at Isabella, "is that he’s alive because I cured him. And he was poisoned by Bella, who was standing right there when I arrived."