The last thing she thought of, before the poison and the darkness took her, was, of course, Persephone.
When Elswyth woke, she lay in her bed. The first threads of dawn shone through the glass in the balcony doors, spreading across herbedroom floor in patterns of light. Her head throbbed, and it took a moment to remember the night before: the moonlit garden, the poisoned tea, and Kehinde standing over her. She pushed herself up from bed, but her head swam and she collapsed again. Then, from the dark corner of the room, a shape moved.
Kehinde sat in a chair by the window, obscured in shadow. “You’re awake,” he said. “I’ll admit, I would have given it a few more hours.”
“What did you do to me?”
“As I said I would. I taught you.”
“You poisoned me,” she said.
“And you lived. Now you have learned that you can survive a poisoning. That seems a valuable thing to know.”
Elswyth’s mouth was painfully dry. “Why aren’t I dead?”
“For one thing, all floromancers have a certain natural immunity to plant toxins. That kept you from dying much sooner. That, and I gave you an antidote as soon as you were unconscious.”
“A natural immunity,” Elswyth said.
“Not enough to save you, if the dose is substantial. But enough that you will be able to learn poisons by consuming them, without succumbing to them too easily.”
Elswyth looked at her hand. It no longer trembled, although she felt weak, and her skin was still eerily pale. “What antidote?”
“The essence of a hybridized plant, one specifically created to counteract both the poison and the symptoms of the poison.Antinerium oleandris.”
“Antinerium.Then the poison you administered…”
“Yes.Nerium oleander.A common varietal of the oleander flower that can be found in any garden in England, and a favorite poison at court. Now you know it. Can you feel it inside you? In your blood?”
Elswyth reached into herself with her floromantic sense, searching for remnants of the poison. In her mind’s eye, she saw the constellations of vitæ that had caused her illness, as well as the essences that made up the antidote. It all seemed so clear to her now, like her body remembered the plant only because it had nearly killed her.
“Yes. That’s remarkable. Its shape is so clear…” Elswyth lifted her hand to the air. From the veins at her wrist, she produced a stalk of green. It grew into her hand and then ended with a five-petaled white flower. She smelled it, trying to link the scent to the feeling of poison in her veins.
“And the symptoms ofNerium oleanderpoisoning?”
Elswyth thought for a moment, fighting through the haze of her mind. “Internal bleeding. Irregular heartbeat. Vomiting. Coma… and death, I imagine, if untreated.”
“And are you likely to forget any of those symptoms soon?”
“No, but I am not daft, Kehinde. I would remember them even if I had learned them from a book.”
“Anyone can know things,” Kehinde said, waving his hand, “but so few understand. Now, if you choose to poison someone with oleander, then you will actually understand, in practice, the pain you intend to cause.”
Elswyth looked at the flower sprouting from her fingertip. She pruned it, drawing vitæ back into herself and watching it wilt and then fall to the bed, crumbling into ash.
“I suppose this is as ethical as one can make the instruction of poisoning,” Elswyth said.
“This is the way I was taught the poisoner’s art by the vishakanya, Elswyth,” Kehinde said, “and if you continue learning from me,this is the way I will teach you combat as well. Any pain you learn to inflict, you must first endure. Do you understand?”
Elswyth nodded. A thought occurred to her. The Reaper—whether he was the one who took Persephone or not—was a floromancer, if the warping on his victims was any indication. And Inspector Reed had said that a single red grape was found in the stomach of each of the victims. Was that how the Reaper subdued the women he killed? By lacing their food with poison?
“We do not have much time. But now that you understand the process, we can begin moving through the poisons of the world. I must warn you, Elswyth: It will not be easy. Yet it may give you a chance to defend yourself, if the need arises. But you must decide quickly.”
Kehinde extended a hand. From his palm a single flower bloomed: bone white, with curling red filaments that dripped with bloody sap. It smelled both sweet and foul in the morning air. He offered it to her and then nodded.
Elswyth reached out, hesitantly at first, and plucked the flower from his palm.
Then she opened her mouth, placed the poison on her tongue, and began.
