Shadows Of Throne

Chapter 2: The poisoner's bargain

The room they gave her was a cage with velvet walls.

Lyra sat on the edge of a bed wide enough for four, staring at a window too small to escape through, silk sheets, warm fire, and a wardrobe of dresses in colors she'd never been allowed to wear as a prisoner's daughter.

Gilded chains are still chains.

The door opened without a knock. Prince Kaelen entered like smoke silently, he carried a silver tray bearing a single cup.

"Drink," he said.

Lyra didn't move. "Poison?"

"Test." He set the tray on a table carved with screaming faces. "If you can identify what's in that cup, you live another day, if you can't..." He shrugged. "The castle needs fewer mouths to feed."

She approached slowly, the goblet was warm, wine dark as old blood swirling inside, with no scent of bitter almonds or rotting flowers.

She dipped her smallest finger and touched it to her tongue, it was sweet, honey, yes, but something beneath it, something that coated her tongue like oil. A warmth spreading, not from the wine but from the reaction, her saliva tingled, familiar and dangerous.

"Nightshade and bloodroot," she said. "Diluted enough to sicken, not kill. The honey masks the bitterness, but bloodroot always leaves that oily residue, you'd know if you ever cooked with it."

Kaelen's expression didn't change. "And the third ingredient?"

Lyra hesitated, there was something else. Something subtle, working beneath the other two...

Her eyes widened. "Dragon's breath, ember pepper." She set the goblet down with exaggerated care. "You want to know if I can detect heat in a cold poison. Clever."

For the first time, he smiled, it was worse than his silence.

"Your father trained you well." He took the goblet and drained it himself. "The last poisoner missed the ember pepper. She's buried in the garden now, fertilizer for the king's roses."

"You drank it."

"I built my immunity over fifteen years." He set the empty goblet down with a ring of finality. "You have six months to match me, after that, the King hosts a banquet for the High Lords of the Southern Reach. Someone will die at that table, it might be a lord, it might be you." He moved toward the door, then paused. "It might be me."

"Why?" The word escaped before she could catch it. "Why save me? Why train me? There are a hundred poisoners in the kingdom."

Kaelen's hand on the doorframe tightened, she saw his knuckles whiten.

"Because," he said, not turning, "you're the only one who looked at the executioner and smiled."

Then he was gone, and Lyra was alone with her gilded cage and her racing heart.

She didn't sleep that night, she sat by the window and watched the moon trace silver patterns on the Black Mountains, and she remembered.

Remembered her father's last words, whispered through smoke and flame: "The throne is poison, little bird, don't let them make you drink."

She remembered the night the king's soldiers came, how her mother had hidden her in the cellar, and how she'd pressed a vial into Lyra's hand.

Remembered the vial, still hidden, still sealed.

Remembered what her mother said: "When you have nothing, give them what they want, when you have everything, take what they need."

Lyra touched the hollow space beneath her mattress where the vial waited, she had not used it, had not even opened it, but she would.

Not for Kaelen, not for the King, but for herself.