I had just taken poison when the king arrived to inform me that he had murdered his wife.

The poison was a distillate of chime-adder venom, which burned my sinuses when I took it off my wrist the way some people take snuff. The king was a tired man of medium height, with sandy hair and deep grooves worn into the sides of his face. I hadn’t recognized him at first when he stepped through the door of the stillroom. Well, why would I? The king was someone that I had seen far off, at the head of a long table or perched on a throne. Without context, he was simply a well-dressed man who had come in without even knocking.

Still, he had looked naggingly familiar, and I thought perhaps he was one of my father’s friends, so I simply said, “Wait a moment, please,” and turned back to stripping rosemary leaves off thin wooden stems. (I always process rosemary after snorting adder venom. The fragrance of the rosemary helps to clear out the awful burnt smell of the venom.)

Then the little voice in my head whispered, One moment please, Your Majesty, and recognition crashed over me like cold water.

I spun back toward the man in the doorway. He wasn’t standing in profile, so I couldn’t see if his face was the same one that was stamped on coins, but Saints help me, he was wearing a circlet, a thin little silver thing, and surely no one would wear that except royalty. Which meant he really was the king after all, except that he was standing in my workroom, where he had no business being. And I had just ordered him to wait.