Chapter 14

Cassandra paced the ivory-tiled antechamber outside her rooms, the midnight oil guttering in the sconces and painting her silhouette in twitching shadows. The palace slept—or pretended to—but her mind surged with cold, bright purpose. Tomorrow’s Combat of the Courts would spill every rival talent onto the Sapphire Arena, and one well-timed stroke there could turn rumor into obituary. Elianna would enter veiled, guarded, distracted by ceremony; Cassandra would enter armed with secrets.

She unrolled the parchment the apothecary had slipped beneath her door. Venin d’Aube—a dawn-coloured tincture that sealed itself in flesh like liquid fire, paralyzing the lungs beneath a perfume of roses. A single drop on the barbs of a training javelin would finish a dragon, the chemist had sworn. Cassandra would need only to nick Elianna’s skin. In the chaos of choreographed combat, who would notice a scratch that never bled?

Yet poison alone was not enough; suspicion had teeth. She needed Elianna isola