The Royal Taster's Eleven Dishes

Synopsis

Iseren Vael, the underfed daughter of an executed apothecary house, begins court service as the royal food-taster for eighteen-year-old King Caelan. Her tongue can identify nineteen named poisons within four heartbeats, but she cannot refuse a dish without condemning her two younger sisters to the frontier brothels under the Crown's indenture contract. During the coronation banquet week, every meal becomes a public execution test: cobalt-bee venom in boar terrine, numbing root in sugared pears, a foreign alkaloid she cannot name, and lily-of-night in the king's private broth — a poison bearing the signature of the queen mother's house. As Iseren keeps Caelan alive plate by plate, the king begins to understand that his survival depends on a girl he is legally permitted to spend. His growing trust is dangerous; his pity is worse. The pilot ends when an unknown chef serves an unknown dish with an unknown poison, and the king breaks centuries of court law by reaching for his taster's hand before the court can decide whether she is dying.

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