Vol. 2 The Poisoned Pears

The pears arrived beneath a crown of spun sugar.

That was the first thing Riyah noticed.

Not the envoys in their stiff embroidered collars, not the royal standard draped in ceremonial gold from the western balcony, not even the queen’s smile, which had the perfect, polished stillness of a blade that had never needed to be drawn to be feared.

The pears.

They were carried in on long silver trays by six servants in pale green livery, each tray held at shoulder height so the fruit seemed to float through the sunlight. The pears had been poached whole and glazed until their skins shone like captured afternoon, their stems wrapped in delicate threads of edible gold. Honey clung to them in slow amber tears. Slivers of sugared almond had been pressed along their sides like little white scales, and the steam rising from them carried cinnamon, wine, and something floral Riyah could not place.

Orange blossom, perhaps.

Or rose.

Or some other courtly thing made beautiful enough that no one would think to mistrust it.

Around the luncheon hall, conversations softened in appreciation. Even nobles who had spent the first half of the meal pretending not to be impressed by anything allowed themselves the smallest pause. Forks lowered. Rings flashed against crystal stems. Someone near the envoy’s table gave a delighted murmur, and the sound moved through the room like permission.

Admire this.

Be charmed.

Forget that diplomacy was only hunger with better manners.

Riyah watched the servants set the trays down between arrangements of white lilies and trailing ivy. The hall had been dressed for negotiation, which apparently meant it had to look as though a garden had been strangled in silk and instructed to behave. Flowers climbed the marble columns. Ribboned garlands hung from the backs of chairs. Bowls of crushed ice held glass pitchers of chilled wine, their sides fogged with cold. Every plate had been placed precisely. Every napkin folded into the shape of a swan or a flame, depending on one’s rank.

It was beautiful.

It was absurd.

It was a great deal of effort to make a roomful of people pretend they had not come to measure one another’s weaknesses over soup.

Riyah sat two places below Lady Veyra and across from a minor lord whose name she had been told twice and had already lost to the general noise of court titles. She had learned, since arriving at the palace, that rank had a way of multiplying a person’s name until it no longer seemed polite to call anyone anything at all. Lord This of House That. Lady So-and-So of the Western Branch. Envoy, Minister, Keeper, Counselor, Master of Seals, Mistress of Tables, all layered over human beings who still chewed too loudly or laughed through their noses.

She had also learned that everyone noticed when she noticed.

So Riyah kept her gaze soft. Interested, but not sharp. Present, but not searching too visibly. A proper apprentice Watcher was meant to observe everything and disturb nothing until asked. She was meant to be useful, but not eager. Intelligent, but not presumptuous. Grateful for instruction, but not so grateful that she appeared desperate for approval.

It was a difficult balance.

Riyah had spent much of her life trying to find balances other people seemed to expect from her without explaining where the center was. At home, usefulness had meant smoothing herself into the shape her mother preferred: quiet, composed, helpful, never making a mess larger than she could clean before anyone important saw it. At court, usefulness had become something colder. A skill. A weapon. A position she had not earned fully and yet felt terrified to waste.

Master Halvard had told her once that a Watcher survived court by looking as if she were admiring the embroidery while listening to the knife being drawn beneath the table.

Riyah had thought he was being dramatic.

She had since decided he had been understating the matter.

At the high table, King Theron sat beneath a canopy of gold-threaded velvet, his face composed but faintly tired in a way the court pretended not to see. Age had not made him small. He was still broad-shouldered, still handsome in a worn, weathered way that made the stories about his youth easy to believe: the devilish king, the charming king, the reckless king who had once made half the court adore him and the other half fear what he might do next. But the brightness had thinned. A grayness lived beneath his skin now, subtle as dust beneath varnish.

Queen Seraphine sat beside him in pale blue silk and moonstones, serene enough to make serenity seem like an accusation. She did not watch the room with obvious hunger. She did not need to. The room arranged itself as if aware of her even when her eyes were elsewhere.

Crowned Prince Eryndor listened attentively to the chief envoy from Merrowen, his posture open, his expression warm. He had the rare gift of making attention seem like generosity rather than strategy. Riyah liked that about him. She also thought it made the court lean too heavily on him, as if his goodness were another public resource to be consumed.

And Prince Soren—

Riyah found him before she meant to.

He sat lower than his brother but still near enough the royal table that every careless movement of his carried consequence. He had come dressed in dark green today, a shade deep enough to look almost black where the sunlight did not catch it. The color made him seem less like a prince designed for portraits and more like a secret someone had accidentally allowed into a formal room.

His hair, longer than court fashion strictly preferred and therefore all the more deliberately his, had been tied half back with a dark ribbon, leaving loose strands around his face. One lock fell near his cheekbone as he turned toward the woman on his left, a visiting diplomat’s daughter with coral beads braided into her hair. He looked amused. Of course he did. Soren almost always looked amused, as if the entire court were a play staged for his private entertainment and he had been the only one rude enough to read the ending in advance.

Then his eyes lifted.

Across lilies and silver and the bright ruin of sunlight, he found Riyah looking.

His mouth curved.

Not fully. Not enough to be called a smile by anyone who did not know how precise he could be with the smallest movements of his face. But it was enough to send a foolish warmth through Riyah’s chest, quick and bright as a struck match.

She looked away at once.

Too quickly.

Lady Veyra made a soft sound beside her.

“Do take care, Riyah,” she murmured, dipping her spoon into a custard so pale it looked nearly translucent. “The prince has a habit of noticing people exactly long enough to make them believe themselves interesting.”

Riyah did not turn. “How generous of him. Some people never manage it at all.”

The lord across from her choked delicately on his wine.

Lady Veyra’s smile sharpened. “You are learning.”

“I hope not too quickly,” Riyah said. “I would hate to deprive everyone of the pleasure of correcting me.”

Veyra laughed, light and lovely and false enough to frost the rim of Riyah’s glass.

This, Riyah was discovering, was how court women fought when no one had given them swords. They smiled. They praised. They set words down like pins and waited to see who bled first.

The luncheon had begun with prayers, then progressed through chilled cucumber soup, river fish in almond cream, peacock arranged more for display than appetite, and a salad of bitter greens that no one seemed to enjoy but everyone praised. Between courses, the Merrowen delegation made careful conversation about roads, tariffs, water rights, and the stability of the northern passes. None of it sounded especially thrilling, but the way Eryndor listened made Riyah understand it mattered.

A treaty, then.

Not one that would crown kings or end wars, perhaps, but one that would determine which merchants were taxed, which villages received protection, which border guards could search wagons, which noble houses gained leverage from the arrangement.

Small enough to be boring.

Important enough to be dangerous.

The chief envoy, Lord Fausten, was an elderly man with a snowy beard and a habit of touching his signet ring whenever anyone said the word guarantee. Beside him sat a younger treaty clerk with ink-stained fingers and the exhausted focus of a man who had memorized too many clauses and trusted none of them to stay where he put them. Riyah had noticed him because he had corrected one of the Merrowen nobles twice under his breath before remembering he was not supposed to speak unless invited.

The clerk’s name, she thought, was Orell.

Or Orrel.

Something close to that.

He had eaten little through the meal, though he drank water often and watched every document placed near the royal table as if paper might attempt escape.

When the honeyed pears were served, however, he accepted one.

So did Fausten. So did three of the lesser envoys. So did several courtiers seated close to them, including a baroness Riyah had heard complaining all morning about the dampness of the eastern road. Servants moved with choreographed grace, placing the fruit into shallow bowls and pouring a ribbon of spiced syrup over each one.

One servant came to Riyah’s place with a pear balanced in silver tongs.

Up close, the scent was almost too sweet.

Honey. Wine. Cinnamon. Orange blossom.

And beneath it, something green and faintly bitter.

Riyah looked up.

The servant holding the tongs was young, no older than sixteen or seventeen, with a pale, freckled face and a tightness around her eyes that did not match the calm of her hands. A kitchen girl, perhaps, temporarily dressed for service. Her cap sat slightly crooked over brown hair pinned too hastily at the nape.

For half a heartbeat, their eyes met.

The girl looked away first.

Not rudely.

Carefully.

As if looking too long at anyone seated at the table might be taken as accusation, longing, insolence, or all three depending on who wished to be offended.

“Thank you,” Riyah said softly.

The girl’s fingers tightened around the tongs.

Then she moved on.

Riyah looked down at the pear in her bowl.

It was lovely. It was too lovely. The syrup pooled around it like melted amber, catching tiny flakes of gold leaf. She touched her spoon to the side. The flesh gave way easily.

Around her, the course had already become theater.

“My compliments to the kitchen,” said Lord Fausten, with the ponderous gravity of a man granting mercy to fruit.

“Merrowen pears are finer, of course,” said one of his companions.

“Naturally,” said Eryndor, smiling. “But ours are more obedient. They consent to being cooked.”

Even Queen Seraphine allowed the faintest curve of amusement.

Soren, Riyah noticed despite herself, was not eating his.

He had turned the pear gently in its syrup with the side of his spoon and was watching the room instead. Watching the envoys, the servants, the queen’s attendants stationed along the walls. There was nothing theatrical about his attention now. Nothing lazy. He looked, for one unguarded instant, less like a prince bored by ceremony and more like someone accustomed to noting exits before admiring the meal.

Then, as if he felt Riyah’s gaze again, he looked at her.

This time, he lifted one brow.

Are you suspicious of dessert, Watcher?

She did not know how he managed to say it without speaking. His face barely changed. Only his eyes warmed with the private shape of the tease.

Riyah lowered her gaze to her bowl and took the smallest bite of pear.

Sweetness bloomed over her tongue, rich and floral, followed by the soft warmth of spice. The bitter note came after, so faint she might have imagined it. Not unpleasant. Almost medicinal, but hidden beneath honey.

She swallowed.

Across the hall, Lord Fausten coughed.

No one noticed at first. The luncheon had been full of small coughs, discreet throat clearings, the tiny bodily rebellions of people trapped in formal clothing. But then he coughed again, harder, one hand rising to his chest.

The treaty clerk beside him turned.

“My lord?”

Fausten reached for his wine. His fingers struck the stem of the glass instead of closing around it. Crystal tipped. Red wine spilled across the white linen like a wound opening.

Conversation faltered.

Fausten tried to stand.

He did not manage it.

His chair scraped violently backward, and his hand clamped around the edge of the table. The snowy dignity of his beard did nothing to soften the sudden grayness of his face. Sweat sprang along his brow. His mouth opened, but no words came out.

Then the treaty clerk doubled over beside him.

The sound that left him was not courtly at all.

It tore through the hall.

Everything moved at once.

“My lord!”

“Physician!”

“Do not touch the plates—”

“Water, bring water—”

A woman screamed, then pressed both hands over her mouth as if ashamed of the sound. Servants rushed forward and then froze because nobles were standing and nobles were shouting and no one wanted to be the first hand blamed for touching the wrong thing. Lord Fausten sagged into the arms of a guard. The treaty clerk retched against a napkin, shaking violently. Two courtiers farther down the table clutched their stomachs. The baroness who had complained about the eastern road went white, then green, then slid sideways in her chair with a strangled moan.

Riyah stood without remembering that she meant to.

Her own stomach tightened in fear, but not illness. Not yet.

She looked at her pear.

One bite.

A small one.

The bitter green note lingered at the back of her throat.

Beside her, Lady Veyra had not touched her dessert. Her spoon rested perfectly clean against the rim of her bowl.

That meant nothing, Riyah told herself.

People avoided courses all the time.

Across the hall, a young lord who had eaten nearly all of his pear sat blinking in confusion, apparently well. A woman who had only tasted the syrup had begun to tremble, her skin shining with sweat. One of the Merrowen attendants who had refused dessert entirely was shouting for their own physician.

Not everyone who ate was sick.

Some who barely tasted it seemed worse.

Riyah’s heartbeat quickened.

There was a pattern here. Not a full one. Not yet. But enough that her Watcher senses stirred beneath her skin, not as vision, not as certainty, but as a tightening awareness that something in the room had been arranged to seem more chaotic than it was.

She looked at the servants.

The girl with the crooked cap had gone still near the sideboard, face drained of color. Another servant seized her by the elbow and dragged her back before she could move toward the fallen envoy.

At the high table, King Theron was on his feet. Eryndor had already come down from the dais, calm but pale, giving orders to clear space. Royal physicians entered through the eastern doors in a rush of dark robes and metal cases.

Queen Seraphine remained seated for one breath longer than everyone else.

Only one.

It should not have mattered.

And yet Riyah saw it.

The queen did not look at Lord Fausten first. Nor at the treaty clerk. Nor at the pears.

She looked toward the line of her attendants.

A woman in blue-gray silk inclined her head almost imperceptibly and moved to the western doors. Another slipped toward the servants’ entrance. A third crossed to speak with the captain of the palace guard.

Efficient.

Too efficient.

The room was still becoming chaos, and Queen Seraphine’s people had already decided where chaos would be permitted to go.

“Riyah.”

The voice came close beside her, low enough that she almost mistook it for the rush of blood in her ears.

Soren had appeared at her shoulder.

She startled, turning too quickly.

He stood nearer than propriety required and farther than danger invited. The scent of him, cedar and cold air and something faintly metallic from the clasp at his throat, cut strangely through the sugar and sickness in the room.

“You ate?” he asked.

“One bite.”

His gaze flicked down her face, assessing with such swift intensity that the air between them seemed to narrow. For once, there was no obvious jest in him.

“Dizzy?”

“No.”

“Pain?”

“No.”

“Nausea?”

“Only from watching everyone decide the truth before anyone has looked for it.”

There.

His mouth changed. Not a smile, quite. Something more private. More approving. More dangerous to her peace.

“Good,” he said. “You are still yourself.”

The foolish warmth came again, horribly timed and immediately unwelcome. Riyah forced her attention back to the hall.

“They’re closing the servant doors,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Already.”

“Yes.”

“You noticed?”

“I make a hobby of noticing doors before they are locked.”

She glanced at him.

His tone was light, but his eyes were not. He watched the guards moving toward the service archways with a concentration that made his beauty feel suddenly irrelevant, like silk thrown over a drawn bow.

At the far end of the hall, two kitchen boys were being stopped. One protested, stumbling over his words. A guard shoved him back hard enough that he nearly fell against the wall. The girl with the crooked cap jerked forward as if to help him, then froze when another servant caught her sleeve.

Riyah’s hands curled around the edge of the table.

“This cannot already be their fault.”

Soren followed her gaze.

“The palace prefers a swift answer.”

“It has no answer.”

“It has servants.” His voice softened in a way that made the words worse. “For many people here, that will seem close enough.”

Riyah turned fully toward him.

The luncheon hall blurred behind his shoulder — gold, glass, lilies, sweat, spilled wine. For a heartbeat, it felt like there were only the two of them standing in the middle of a room pretending not to panic.

“You sound as if you expected this.”

“No.” His eyes came back to hers. “I sound as if I recognize the shape of it.”

Before she could ask what that meant, a sharp voice rang above the noise.

“No one from the kitchens is to leave.”

The captain of the guard stood near the eastern service entrance, one hand on the hilt of his sword. The announcement struck the hall with official force. Conversations splintered around it. Servants went rigid. Nobles, Riyah noticed, relaxed.

Not fully.

But enough.

There was comfort, apparently, in hearing that someone else had already been placed beneath suspicion.

“The kitchen?” Riyah said. “All of them?”

Soren’s gaze had gone back to the servants. Something closed in his expression, swift and practiced.

“The palace has two skeletons, Watcher,” he said quietly. “The pretty one everyone sees, and the second one that carries all the rot away.”

Riyah looked at him sharply.

“What does that mean?”

He smiled.

This time it was the familiar smile — bright, evasive, beautiful enough to be a locked door with sunlight painted on it.

But it did not reach his eyes.

“Careful,” he said. “If I tell you that too early, you’ll start looking in the walls.”

The words should have annoyed her.

They did annoy her.

They also lodged somewhere beneath her ribs with the strange certainty of a key finding the edge of a hidden lock.

“Soren.”

His name felt too direct in her mouth here, amid all this public fear. Too intimate without the title. She realized it a heartbeat too late.

Her face warmed.

“Prince Soren,” she corrected quickly.

His gaze flicked to her lips and away so quickly she might have imagined it, except that her pulse noticed.

Then his smile changed.

Softened.

Only a little.

“Just Soren is not a crime yet,” he murmured.

The wordyetshould have made it lighter.

It did not.

Riyah’s breath caught before she could discipline it.

“Soren,” he repeated, as if testing how it sounded between them. “If you like.”

The room tilted in a way poison had not managed.

Then Lord Fausten groaned, and the spell shattered.

The physicians had brought him to the floor on a folded tablecloth. One knelt beside him, pressing fingers to his throat, while another sniffed the syrup in his bowl and recoiled. The treaty clerk was being carried toward a side chamber, shaking so badly his ink-stained fingers scraped at the air.

“Poison,” someone whispered.

The word moved with obscene speed.

Poison.

Poison in the pears.

Poison in the royal kitchen.

Poison at the king’s table.

The hall changed when the word found it. Fear sharpened into accusation. Courtiers stepped back from their plates as if porcelain itself had become treacherous. Several nobles began speaking at once, each trying to sound calmer than the others and therefore sounding worse.

“Who prepared the course?”

“Who had access?”

“The kitchen must be sealed.”

“It is an attack on Merrowen.”

“It is an attack on the crown.”

“Where is the Master of Stores?”

“Find the fruit handlers.”

“Question the servers.”

The girl with the crooked cap had gone white to the lips.

Riyah saw her try to move again, this time toward the service arch where guards had begun forcing kitchen staff into a line. Her eyes were fixed on someone beyond the arch, someone Riyah could not see.

A boy? A man? A brother?

The girl’s fear had a direction.

That made it worse.

Riyah took one step forward.

Soren caught her wrist.

Not hard. Barely enough to stop her.

But the touch went through her like a struck bell.

She looked down at his hand. Long fingers. Warm skin. A prince’s ring dark against the inside of her wrist.

He let go at once.

“Not that way,” he murmured.

Riyah should have objected. She did object, internally and with considerable force. But she understood him before she wanted to. If she crossed the room now, visibly, impulsively, every eye searching for guilt might turn toward the servant she approached.

Tamsin, though Riyah did not yet know her name, had already understood that too. The girl stopped herself at the edge of movement, trembling with the effort of stillness.

Riyah hated the lesson.

She hated that Soren had known it first.

“How many ways are there?” Riyah asked under her breath.

His gaze slid briefly toward the wall behind the royal dais.

Then back to her.

“More than the architects admitted to.”

The answer was gone as soon as it came, covered again by the easy mask. He stepped away before anyone could decide they had been speaking too closely.

“Stay well, Watcher,” he said, lightly enough for others to hear. “I would hate to discover you were felled by dessert. It would ruin my faith in your dramatic potential.”

“Your concern overwhelms me.”

“As it should.”

He left her with that, moving toward Eryndor and the physicians with an expression of polished indolence so complete Riyah might have believed the previous minute had been imagined.

Except her wrist still remembered his hand.

And her mind remembered his glance toward the wall.

More than the architects admitted to.

The hall continued to unravel in controlled increments.

No one was allowed to leave without permission. The Merrowen delegation protested, then protested more loudly when palace guards insisted it was for their protection. King Theron spoke with Lord Fausten’s remaining attendants, his face grave and older than it had looked at the beginning of the meal. Eryndor bent over the treaty clerk, listening to the physician’s report with the strained attention of someone trying to hold dignity and panic in the same hands.

Queen Seraphine rose at last and became the still point around which the panic arranged itself.

She did not raise her voice.

She did not need to.

“Until the source of this attack is found,” she said, “the royal kitchens will be secured. All staff connected to the preparation, movement, or service of this course will be questioned. No one is to destroy, remove, or alter any dish, vessel, cloth, or utensil involved.”

It was sensible.

It was exactly what should be done.

And still, Riyah felt something cold pass through her.

Because the queen did not sayifthis was an attack.

She did not sayillness.

She did not sayaccident.

The story had already been given a spine.

Now it only needed flesh.

Lady Veyra leaned close, her perfume cloying over the fading sweetness of the pears. “What a terrible business.”

Riyah watched a guard seize an older kitchen woman by the arm when she tried to speak to one of the servers.

“Yes,” Riyah said. “Terrible.”

“They do say kitchen staff can be terribly resentful.” Veyra sighed, as if this grieved her personally. “All that heat and labor. One cannot wonder that bitterness grows in such conditions.”

Riyah turned her head slowly.

Lady Veyra’s expression was delicate, sympathetic, poisonous in the way only sympathy could be when sharpened properly.

“One might wonder,” Riyah said, “why those who benefit from the labor are always so surprised by the bitterness.”

Veyra’s eyes flashed.

Before she could answer, a physician called for more water, and the room’s attention surged away from them.

Riyah used the distraction to look again for the kitchen girl.

There.

Near the west service arch.

She had escaped the first line of servants somehow and now stood half-hidden behind a column wrapped in ivy. Her face was still bloodless, but no longer blank with fear. Her eyes moved frantically over the room, searching, searching, until they caught on Riyah.

The force of that look nearly made Riyah step back.

It was not recognition. Not exactly.

It was desperation discovering a possible shape for itself.

The girl looked at Riyah as if Riyah were a door that might open or a wall that might crush her. As if she knew enough to be afraid of asking and was already more afraid of silence.

Riyah felt the old, familiar pressure rise inside her.

Be useful.

Do something.

Do not stand there while something breaks.

Her mother’s house had taught that instinct into her so deeply she sometimes mistook it for virtue. If a room was tense, smooth it. If a voice went cold, soften yours. If something was wrong, fix what could be fixed before anyone could look at you and decide you had failed.

But this was not a spilled cup or an unhappy guest or a mother’s displeasure.

This was a girl with terror in her eyes and guards closing doors.

This was a wrongness too large to mend with good behavior.

Then a guard turned.

The girl vanished behind the column, but not quickly enough. The guard saw movement and started toward her.

Riyah moved before she could think better of it.

Not toward the girl.

Toward the guard.

She crossed two steps into his path and let her sleeve catch on the thorned edge of the decorative ivy. The snag was small, but she made her startled intake of breath just sharp enough.

“Oh.”

The guard stopped at once. “My lady?”

Not my lady, Riyah thought.

But she gave him the helpless look court men seemed to find reassuring when it came from women they believed decorative.

“My sleeve,” she said.

The guard hesitated, torn between suspicion and etiquette.

Riyah lifted her arm slightly. The embroidered cuff had caught on a hidden wire beneath the ivy. It actually had snagged, which was helpful. Painfully helpful, as the thread pulled tight at her wrist.

“Forgive me,” she said, making herself sound embarrassed. “I did not realize the arrangement was so…”

“Hostile?” said a voice behind the guard.

Soren again.

Of course.

The guard turned and bowed so fast he nearly struck his forehead against the column.

“Your Highness.”

Soren looked at Riyah’s trapped sleeve, then at her face. The corner of his mouth twitched.

“Attacked by foliage,” he said. “How the mighty tremble.”

Riyah smiled sweetly. “I was hoping no one would witness my defeat.”

“I regret to inform you that I intend to compose a ballad.”

“I intend to deny everything.”

“Too late. The ivy has already confessed.”

The guard looked between them with the strained patience of a man who had not been trained for flirtation as a security complication.

Soren stepped close enough to free the caught thread himself. His fingers brushed the embroidered cuff, careful not to touch her skin this time. Somehow the care felt worse.

“There,” he said quietly.

His eyes met hers for the briefest instant.

He knew.

Of course he knew.

The girl was gone.

The guard’s attention had been broken long enough for her to disappear into whatever narrow mercy the palace had left.

Riyah let out a breath.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Do not thank me. I was defending the honor of greenery everywhere.”

“I am sure the greenery is relieved.”

He leaned a fraction closer, still apparently examining the rescued sleeve. “Next time you create a diversion, Watcher, try not to choose an opponent with thorns.”

Her pulse leapt.

“Next time?”

His gaze lifted.

There was amusement in it now. Real amusement. But beneath that, something brighter and more assessing, as if she had confirmed a suspicion he was pleased to have and worried to keep.

“Oh,” he said softly. “I suspect there will be a next time.”

Then he stepped away again, leaving no proof of conspiracy except the faint warmth of his nearness and a single loosened thread at her cuff.

The luncheon hall emptied slowly.

The sick were carried out first. Lord Fausten lived, according to the physician’s tight expression, though he was in significant distress. The treaty clerk had stopped retching but remained pale and shaking. Others were led away to be examined. Plates were covered. Bowls were marked. Servants were counted like silver.

Riyah remained because no one had told her where to go and because leaving felt like abandoning the room to its chosen lie.

She watched the royal steward question the head server. She watched the captain order the kitchen sealed. She watched the crooked-cap girl reappear only once, far across the hall, half-shielded by an older maid. Her eyes were red now. Her hands were clenched at her sides.

Someone beyond the service arch shouted.

The sound cut through the hall.

A male voice. Young or youngish. Angry with fear.

“I did nothing! I only brought them up from stores!”

A blow followed. Not loud. Not dramatic.

Just the unmistakable sound of a body being made quieter.

The kitchen girl flinched as if struck herself.

Riyah’s throat tightened.

I only brought them up from stores.

Fruit handler, then.

Or pantry worker.

Someone close to the pears.

Someone close to blame.

Queen Seraphine turned her head toward the sound, expression unchanged.

“Ensure he is held separately,” she said to the captain. “If he is innocent, questioning will prove it.”

If he is innocent.

Riyah felt those words settle over the room like ash.

Notuntil guilt is proven.

Notuntil truth is known.

If.

At the high table, Eryndor looked troubled. Soren had gone very still.

Only for a moment.

Only long enough for Riyah to notice that stillness on him did not look like calm.

It looked like something trained.

Then the mask returned. His mouth curved as one of the physicians spoke to him, but the smile was wrong now, bright over something shuttered.

And Riyah understood, with a clarity that made the sweetness of pear turn sour in her stomach, that the palace had already begun deciding whose life could be spent to make the room feel safe again.

The kitchen girl looked once more across the hall.

This time, Riyah held her gaze.

She did not know the girl’s name yet.

She did not know the accused servant’s name. She did not know whether the pears had been poisoned in the kitchen, in the corridor, at the table, by malice, by politics, by some accident everyone would rather turn into a crime because accidents were harder to punish.

But she knew the girl was afraid.

She knew the queen’s attendants had moved too quickly.

She knew Soren had spoken of skeletons and walls and doors that were locked before anyone admitted they existed.

And she knew, with a feeling that was half dread and half the dangerous beginning of purpose, that the honeyed pears had not finished their work.

Not when the sick were carried out.

Not when the plates were covered.

Not when the kitchen was sealed.

The real poison was only beginning to move.