Elara_Blake
They call her the saviour of the North. But legends are forged in blood and lies.
Seven years ago, fifteen-year-old Talia fled the smoking ruins of her village, bearing vicious scars and a blade whispered to have felled the Varek King. Now the feared Grand Duchess of the North, she answers a desperate summons to the southern capital of Greodour.
The King is dying. A slow, untraceable poison is rotting him from within, and the royal court is a nest of smiling nobles waiting to carve up the throne.
In a court where steel cannot be drawn, Talia must pick up unfamiliar weapons: corsets, painted fans, and delicate smiles. To move among the conspirators without raising alarm, she concocts a reckless ruse, declaring that the battle-hardened Grand Duchess has finally arrived to choose a husband.
While ambitious lords swarm to win her hand, only Prince Dorian, cynical, sharp-tongued, and impossibly observant, sees through her clumsy masquerade. But Dorian is playing his own dangerous game; he edges closer to an even darker mystery: the bloodstained secret of what Talia actually did at Blackfrost Castle.
With the King's breath failing and the Spring Ball fast approaching, Talia must outplay a court of assassins before the poison takes the crown, and the past she buried rises to claim her.
POISONED - BOOK ONE OF THE ALADOR SERIES - WORLD OF VALDRIS
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