Kingdom of Silver

The guard on the cot is called Corin. Rosamund Harrow has known him since childhood, and he is dying in front of her, teeth chattering, skin the colour of spoiled milk, marsh-viper venom climbing his arm in thin luminous lines that branch outward like a map of poison. Her antidote fails. So she does the thing she has spent fifteen years learning to hide. She places her bare hand flat against the wound, fingers spread, and opens. The green light comes from deep in her bones, and the venom drains out of him and into her, where it will burn for hours before she sweats it out through her palms and the soles of her feet. Corin lives. And from the doorway, a voice she did not hear arrive says: *That was beautiful.* Lenore Whitethorn makes no sound on stone floors. The Spymistress has a silver monocle, one pale grey eye, and one dark as pitch, and she has been watching Rosamund for years. She also has a conscription notice with Rosamund's brother's name on it. Aldric is a scribe apprentice with ink-stained fingers who has never held a sword, and the mortality rate for new conscripts is one in three. Lenore will have the notice rescinded, permanently. The price is Alistair Vane. The Warden of the Venom Court has crossed the canal for the Festival, auburn-haired, an iron ring in his left ear, the son of a woman the council convicted. He is making inquiries. He wants a healer with experience treating rare toxins, someone with green hands, as the rumour phrases it. Rosamund's instructions are simple: take whatever position he offers, place a listening locket where he keeps his correspondence, report every letter he writes. What she does not expect is the distillery. Copper vats, glass alembics, and a court that refines poison in order to counter it. Or the Warden looking at her across it and saying that her spymistress and his poisoner might be the same person. Or an assassin, and the question of who paid for him. When Rosamund finally tells Alistair the truth, he does not have her punished. He rides out at first light with three horses, no escort, rations for a week and a map of the Thornwall approach, and leaves behind a letter on cream vellum sealed in black wax: *You were sent to destroy me. But you chose to save me. That is the only truth that matters.* A fantasy romance of court poison, coerced loyalty and two people raised to be each other's enemy, ending in a cottage with mismatched coffee cups and a knock at the door; closed-door.