Poison Study

Yelena is days from execution for murder in Ixia when she is offered a way out. If she agrees to work as food taster for the Commander, she gets palace rooms and the best meals of her life. The price is that she will be the first to die if anyone tries to poison him.

She takes the job, and the chief of security makes sure she cannot walk away from it. He feeds her Butterfly's Dust, a poison that can only be held off by reporting for an antidote every day. Miss a dose and the death is slow and painful.

Trapped in that arrangement, Yelena looks for a way out, but the trouble around her grows. Rebels are planning to seize Ixia from the Commander, and she discovers magical powers that she cannot control. Each new danger forces a decision, and the consequences of those decisions become harder to read.

This is fantasy built around court intrigue and survival, told from Yelena's point of view. The tension comes from the poison clock and the threat of assassination, with plots closing in from several directions at once.