pening the curtains so ha

in this palace, which means you're fi

ghtgown softer than anything I had ever owned, and I said the first hon

met there was something almost gentle under the iron.

op. Mara was forty-something, silver-haired, with the forearms of a woman who ha

Now." She drew a circle in the flour. "The king. He cannot be touched, cannot be approached without invitation, and cannot, as of two nights ago, be *poisoned* - because his curse burns through anything mortal. His food is safe the mom

to move against the king, they don't aim at the m

pproval in them, cold and thin as frost. "

butes were th

chamber, plus six priestesses in the years before. They have learned that the curse always wins. What they have *not* learned is that the curse lost this week. Some of them are hoping. And

other,"

erted their eyes at the mention of Prince Aldric, the way Kairos had said *I do not

enerous, patient, and I have watched him smile at his brother's suffering the way other men watch festivals. I cannot prove one word against him. Which is

ct I'm the prac

have served a dying god are about to serve a recovering one, and in every palace i

ed. Mar

everything that touches him. It burned a

nce, even briefly, even if the curse saves him by dawn - then every soul in this palace learns that the curse is failing after all. And forty frightened servants with

reat feast: forty candles, forty faces, one long tabl

bound back. Three years of starvation had carved him out of stone, and the room couldn'

the kingdom, wearing a borrowed gown of deep green, an

old me later had not left the cellar since the coronation. A toast to the king's recovery. Aldric stood to give it, warm and eloquent, his voice wrapping the room like a b

ng's cup, filled from the same decanter,

s cup, and the r

who carried, the one whose cup was never watched - I reached across for the king's cup by mistake

dr

n my hand. And the taste of cloves and iron went down m

rt forgot h

t. The candlelight went white at the edges. I heard Mara's breath

tom of the table, in a voice silked over

ll. How unfortunate

e hand cradling the back of my head, the other pressed flat over my heart, and I watched his gold eyes go from me to the c

er. Dregs on white l

gone grey. "Spiced to hid

ad just changed - because the poison meant for the myth had missed and killed nothing, and t

hat my grandmother's blood had always done, reaching, mending, burning the coal

Ayra. Look at me and breathe with me. You are

anaged, "don't

reed. "But

d and pressed h

the foxglove in my blood, and *unmaking* it. My heart caught, stumbled, caught - and found its count. Wa

two things at once: that the king had poisoned-proofed his own cup and taken the

urning, without raising his voic

ter stood open in the hall all day. Anyone could have reached it. I drank the same wine - see?" He raised his ow

Only a lesson, in flour and candlelight:

er," Kairos said to Mara, sof

my k

ing enters this hall fr

ried me - in front of the entire court, second-in-rank, foxglov

yed a moment at my jaw, and his eyes were still furnace-

k my cup,

said. "There's a differenc

moved once along my cheekbone, careful, the most dangerous tou

e other

ack up, and his voice dropped to ruin. "Get some sleep, Ayra. Tomorrow you start healing me properly. Tonight-" he stepped back,

ht with my heart beating even and whole,

burn me. It neve

t feels less like protectio