Lessons in Poison
The poison needle slipped between Yuna's fingers, and she caught it before it could clatter against the marble floor.
Empress Lirien Seo smiled. "Again."
Yuna's left hand wove the needle into her braid—third position, between the sections that would frame her face when she bowed—while her right hand reached for the fourth needle on the lacquered tray. Blood welled from her fingertip where the previous needle had pricked her. She didn't look down.
"The Crimson Court," Yuna said, her voice steady despite the way her shoulders wanted to curl inward, away from the Empress's circling footsteps. "Founded by Emperor Kaelen the First in the Year of the Iron Dragon. His son, Kaelen the Second, married Lady Ashara of House Vex. Their children—"
"Backward," the Empress murmured. She stopped behind Yuna, close enough that her silk robes whispered against Yuna's bare shoulders. "I said backward, yes?"
Yuna's fingers paused. The fourth needle hovered an inch from her scalp.
"Prince Kaelen the Seventh," she began again, forcing her hands to continue their work even as her mind raced through the genealogy in reverse. "Son of Emperor Daveth the Third and Empress Consort Mira of the Jade Isles. His sister, Princess Selene, married to Duke Corvin of House Thorne—"
The Empress's hand shot out and gripped Yuna's wrist.
Not hard. That was the worst part. The touch was gentle, almost maternal, as if she were simply steadying a daughter's nervous hands. But Yuna felt the threat in it, the way a rabbit feels the shadow of a hawk.
"You hesitated." The Empress released her and resumed her circling. "In the Winter Palace, hesitation is confession. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Do you?" The Empress picked up the fifth needle from the tray, held it up to the candlelight. The poison coating its tip gleamed black. "Because I have sent twelve girls to the Crimson Court in the past three years. Only four are still alive. The others hesitated."
Yuna's fingers didn't shake as she wove the fourth needle into place. She recited the genealogy backward, each name a stone she laid between herself and the fear that wanted to crack her voice open. When she reached for the fifth needle, the Empress placed it in her palm.
"Good." The Empress's voice dropped to something softer, more dangerous. "Now tell me what you will do when Prince Kaelen asks you to his bed."
"I will go."
"And when he asks you about your family?"
"I will tell him my father was a silk merchant who lost everything in the trade wars. That my mother died of fever when I was twelve. That I have no siblings." The lies came easily now, after six years of practice. Yuna secured the fifth needle and reached for the sixth. "I will cry when I speak of them, but not too much. Grief that lingers is suspicious."
"And when he asks you to prove your loyalty to the Crimson Court?"
Yuna's hand stopped. The sixth needle rested against her scalp, ready to be woven into the final position.
"I will prove it," she said.
"How?"
The question hung in the air between them. Yuna knew what the Empress wanted to hear—that she would betray another Jade spy, that she would kill a servant who saw too much, that she would do whatever violence the Crimson Court demanded to prove she was one of them now. But the Empress had taught her better than to give the expected answer.
"However he needs me to," Yuna said, and slid the sixth needle home.
The Empress laughed. It was a beautiful sound, like wind chimes in a garden where nothing good grew.
"Perfect." She moved to the brazier in the corner of the chamber, where an iron brand rested among the coals. "Come here."
Yuna's legs carried her forward even as her mind catalogued the exits—one door behind her, locked from the outside; two windows, but they were four stories up and the drop would shatter her ankles. The Empress lifted the brand from the coals. The chrysanthemum shape at its end glowed red.
"Turn around."
Yuna turned. She fixed her eyes on the wall, on the tapestry that depicted the Jade Empress's coronation fifteen years ago, and tried not to think about the smell of heating metal.
"This will hurt," the Empress said, and pressed the brand against Yuna's left shoulder blade.
The pain was a white-hot flower blooming beneath her skin. Yuna's teeth cut into her bottom lip hard enough to draw blood, but she didn't scream. She counted—one, two, three, four, five—and when the Empress finally lifted the brand away, Yuna's knees didn't buckle.
"The mark of a concubine-spy," the Empress said. She set the brand back in the coals and turned to face Yuna, who was still staring at the tapestry because if she looked down she would see the smoke rising from her own flesh. "You have six weeks to seduce Prince Kaelen and obtain the invasion routes. If you fail—"
"The poison in the needles will be used on me." Yuna's voice came out steady. She was proud of that.
"No." The Empress smiled again, and this time there was something almost fond in it. "If you fail, the poison will be used on Instructor Mei. And then on every girl in your training cohort. And then on the silk merchant's family in the southern provinces—the ones you think I don't know you send half your stipend to every month."
Yuna's hands curled into fists at her sides. The crescents her nails left in her palms were nothing compared to the burn on her shoulder blade, but they gave her something to focus on besides the way her chest had gone tight.
"I will not fail," she said.
"I know you won't, yes?" The Empress reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind Yuna's ear, her fingers careful to avoid the poison needles. "Because you are my best student. My perfect weapon. And weapons do not hesitate."
Instructor Mei was waiting in the garden when Yuna finally escaped the test chamber.
She didn't ask about the burn—she would have smelled it on Yuna's skin, the sickly-sweet scent of seared flesh that no amount of perfume could cover. Instead, she handed Yuna a jade hairpin.
"For luck," Mei said.
Yuna turned the hairpin over in her hands. It was beautiful, carved in the shape of a lotus blossom with petals so delicate they seemed ready to fall apart at the slightest pressure. But when she pressed her thumb against the base, a tiny compartment opened. Inside was a hollow space just large enough for a rolled message.
"The Crimson Court has already executed two Jade spies this year," Mei said. She walked deeper into the garden, and Yuna followed, her feet silent on the stone path. "One was caught passing information to a merchant. The other was found with a message capsule hidden in her quarters."
"Then why give me this?"
"Because you are smarter than they were." Mei stopped beside the koi pond and stared down at the fish, their scales flashing gold and white beneath the surface. "You will not get caught."
Yuna wanted to ask what the difference was between not getting caught and coming back alive, but she already knew. Mei had taught her that lesson in her first year at the Shadow Academy, when a girl named Hana had tried to run away and made it as far as the outer wall before the guards brought her back. They'd made the whole cohort watch what happened next.
"How long do I have?" Yuna asked instead.
"The carriage leaves at dawn." Mei reached into her sleeve and pulled out a small silk pouch. "Antidote. For the poison on your needles. One drop on your tongue every three days, or the proximity alone will kill you in a month."
Yuna took the pouch. It was heavier than she expected.
"There is enough for eight weeks," Mei said. "After that—"
"After that, I will have succeeded or I will be dead."
Mei's expression didn't change, but something in her eyes went soft for just a moment before hardening again. "Don't get caught."
She turned and walked away, her robes whispering against the stone like a secret being kept. Yuna stood alone beside the koi pond and watched the fish circle each other in patterns that looked random but weren't. Everything in the Shadow Academy was a lesson. Even goodbye.
The carriage smelled like fear and cheap perfume.
Yuna sat in the corner, her hands folded in her lap, and watched the other five girls cry. They were tribute concubines—daughters sold by families who needed the Empress's gold more than they needed another mouth to feed. One of them, a girl with red-rimmed eyes and a bruise on her cheek, kept trying to open the carriage door even though it was locked from the outside.
"Please," the girl sobbed, pulling at the handle. "Please, I don't want to go. I don't want—"
"Sit down," Yuna said.
The girl turned to stare at her. So did the others. Yuna met their gazes one by one, cataloguing details—the girl with the bruise had a nervous habit of picking at her cuticles; the one in the blue silk dress was pregnant, maybe two months along; the twins in the back corner held hands so tightly their knuckles had gone white.
"Sit down," Yuna repeated. "You are making it worse."
"How could it possibly be worse?" The girl with the bruise laughed, high and brittle. "We are being sold to the Crimson Court. We will be used and discarded and—"
"And if you arrive looking like you have been crying for three days, you will be discarded immediately." Yuna kept her voice flat, matter-of-fact. "The Winter Palace has no use for girls who cannot control themselves."
The girl's face crumpled. She sank back onto the bench and buried her face in her hands.
One of the twins leaned forward. "You are not afraid?"
"No," Yuna lied.
"Why not?"
Because I have been trained for this since I was twelve years old. Because I have six poison needles in my hair and a brand on my shoulder blade and a mission that will either save my country or kill me. Because fear is a luxury I cannot afford.
"Because fear will not change what happens next," Yuna said instead.
The twin sat back, unsatisfied. Her sister whispered something in her ear, and they both looked away.
The girl in the blue silk dress—Lila, Yuna remembered from the roster she'd memorized—shifted closer. "What is your name?"
"Yuna."
"I am Lila." She smiled, tentative and hopeful in a way that made Yuna's chest ache. "Perhaps we can be friends. It would be nice to have a friend in the Winter Palace, yes?"
Yuna looked at Lila's smile, at the way her hands rested protectively over her stomach, at the desperate hope in her eyes. She calculated the probability that Lila would become a liability—seventy percent, maybe higher if the pregnancy showed before she could hide it. She calculated the probability that she would need to kill her—forty percent, rising to ninety if Lila discovered Yuna's true purpose.
"Perhaps," Yuna said, and returned her attention to the window.
The carriage rattled over a rough patch of road, and Yuna counted the guard rotations at the checkpoint they'd just passed. Four guards, rotating every two hours. The mountain pass was narrow enough that a single fallen tree could block it for days. She filed the information away and moved on to the next checkpoint.
Lila kept trying to talk to her. Yuna answered in monosyllables and kept counting.
The Winter Palace rose from the mountainside like a crown of ice and stone.
Yuna had seen paintings of it in the Shadow Academy, but they hadn't captured the sheer scale of it—the towers that pierced the clouds, the walls that seemed to go on forever, the gates carved with dragons that looked ready to leap from the stone and devour anyone foolish enough to approach. The carriage rolled through those gates, and Yuna felt the weight of them closing behind her like a trap snapping shut.
The Chief Eunuch was waiting in the courtyard.
He was a small man, barely taller than Yuna, with a face like a dried apple and eyes that missed nothing. When the carriage door opened and the girls stumbled out, he looked them over with the expression of someone inspecting livestock at market.
"Names," he said.
The girl with the bruise gave hers first, her voice shaking. Then the twins, speaking in unison. Then Lila, who tried to curtsy and nearly fell. The Chief Eunuch's expression didn't change.
When it was Yuna's turn, she met his eyes and said, "Yuna Seo."
Something flickered across his face—recognition, maybe, or suspicion. But it was gone before she could be sure.
"You will be taken to your quarters," he said, addressing all of them now. "You will bathe. You will dress in the robes provided. You will not speak unless spoken to. You will not leave your quarters without permission. You will not—"
A door slammed open somewhere above them.
Yuna's head snapped up in time to see a man stumble onto one of the balconies, his shirt half-unbuttoned and his dark hair falling into his eyes. He was laughing at something someone inside had said, his voice carrying across the courtyard in a way that suggested he was either drunk or didn't care who heard him.
"—not my problem if he doesn't like it," the man was saying. He leaned against the balcony railing, and Yuna saw the way his shoulders were too tense for someone who was actually relaxed, the way his hands gripped the stone like he was holding himself upright through sheer will. "Tell him I'll attend his damned council meeting when I'm good and ready, and not a moment—"
He stopped mid-sentence. His gaze had found the courtyard below, found the six girls standing beside the carriage, found Yuna.
Their eyes met.
Yuna felt something shift in her chest, like a lock turning over. The man's expression changed—the lazy amusement sliding away to reveal something sharper, more dangerous. He straightened, and for a moment she thought he was going to say something. But then someone called his name from inside, and he turned away.
The door slammed shut behind him.
"That," the Chief Eunuch said, his voice dry as dust, "was Lord Davos Kael. The Emperor's bastard half-brother and the Winter Palace's resident disappointment. You will stay away from him."
Yuna filed the name away and said nothing.
But as the Chief Eunuch led them into the palace, she found herself looking back at the balcony. The door remained closed. The man—Davos Kael—did not reappear.
Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that he was watching.
The quarters they were given were more luxurious than anything Yuna had ever seen.
Silk sheets on the beds. Carpets so thick her feet sank into them. A bathing room with a pool large enough to swim in, steam rising from water that smelled of jasmine and honey. The other girls gasped and exclaimed, running their hands over the furniture like they couldn't believe it was real.
Yuna set her bag down and began to search the room.
She found the first listening device behind the mirror—a small hole drilled through the wall, covered with gauze thin enough to hear through. The second was in the ceiling above the bed, disguised as a knot in the wood. The third was in the bathing room, hidden in the drain.
She left them all in place and smiled.
The Shadow Academy had taught her well. A room without surveillance was a room where you could be killed without witnesses. A room with surveillance was a room where you could control what your watchers heard.
"Yuna?" Lila appeared in the doorway, her hair damp from the bath. "Are you not going to wash? The water is wonderful."
"In a moment."
Lila hesitated, then came closer. She lowered her voice. "Are you truly not afraid?"
Yuna looked at her—at the hope still clinging to her face despite everything, at the way her hand kept drifting to her stomach, at the vulnerability that would get her killed within a month if she didn't learn to hide it.
"I am terrified," Yuna said, because it was true and because the listeners would expect her to admit it eventually. "But terror will not save us. Only cunning will."
Lila's she stared. "You have a plan?"
"I have the beginning of one." Yuna turned back to her bag and began unpacking, her movements careful and deliberate. "But I will need your help."
"Anything."
The word came too quickly, too eagerly. Yuna felt the weight of it settle over her shoulders like a cloak. She had not wanted an ally—allies were liabilities, people who could betray you or be used against you. But Lila was offering herself up like a gift, and Yuna was practical enough to know that gifts should not be wasted.
"Then listen carefully," Yuna said, and began to explain.
She told Lila about the listening devices. She told her about the importance of controlling what the palace heard. She told her about the need to appear harmless, grateful, eager to please. She did not tell her about the poison needles in her hair, or the brand on her shoulder blade, or the mission that would require her to betray everyone in this room if necessary.
Lila listened with the intensity of someone memorizing scripture. When Yuna finished, she nodded.
"I understand," she said. "We will survive this together."
Yuna wanted to tell her that survival was not guaranteed, that together was a word that meant nothing in a place like this. But Lila was smiling now, some of the fear gone from her eyes, and Yuna found she didn't have the heart to take that away from her.
"Yes," she said instead. "Together."
The summons came three days later.
Yuna was in the garden—a smaller, more private space than the one at the Shadow Academy, but beautiful in its own way—when a servant found her. The girl couldn't have been more than fourteen, her eyes downcast as she delivered the message.
"Lord Davos Kael requests your presence in the eastern tower."
Yuna's hands stilled on the embroidery she'd been pretending to work on. "Why?"
"He did not say, my lady."
The Chief Eunuch had told them to stay away from Davos Kael. This was either a test or a trap, and Yuna couldn't afford to fail either one.
"Tell him I will come," she said.
The servant bowed and hurried away. Yuna set down her embroidery and checked her reflection in the garden pool—hair neat, poison needles hidden, expression calm. Then she followed the path the servant had taken, her feet silent on the stone.
The eastern tower was older than the rest of the palace, its walls covered in ivy and its windows dark. Yuna climbed the spiral staircase, counting steps out of habit, and found the door at the top already open.
Davos Kael was standing by the window.
He didn't turn when she entered, but she saw the way his shoulders tensed, the way his hand tightened on the wine glass he was holding. Up close, she could see the details the distance had hidden—the scar that cut through his left eyebrow, the calluses on his hands that suggested he knew how to use a sword, the exhaustion that clung to him like a second skin.
"You came," he said. His voice was different than it had been in the courtyard—rougher, with an edge that suggested he was either very tired or very drunk. "I wasn't sure you would."
"You summoned me."
"I requested." He finally turned to face her, and Yuna saw that his eyes were gray, the color of storm clouds. "There is a difference."
"Is there?"
He laughed, short and bitter. "In this palace? No. I suppose there is not." He took a drink from his wine glass, then set it down on the windowsill. "What is your name?"
"Yuna Seo."
"Yuna." He said it like he was testing the weight of it. "The Chief Eunuch told you to stay away from me."
"He did."
"And yet here you are."
"You requested my presence," Yuna said. "To refuse would have been—"
"Suspicious." Davos smiled, but there was no humor in it. "Yes. Everything in this palace is suspicious. Every word, every gesture, every breath." He moved closer, and Yuna forced herself not to step back. "Tell me, Yuna Seo.