Lord Soren Vael is dying. A slow-acting poison no healer can identify is eating him from the inside, and the noble houses are already circling his lands like vultures. His steward finds a solution in an unlicensed alchemist named Tess — a woman running from the Apothecaries' Guild after she discovered something she shouldn't have. The deal: she lives under his protection as his wife, beyond the Guild's reach, and in return she keeps him alive long enough to find who's poisoning him. She moves into his estate expecting a dying man and a laboratory. What she gets is a patient who won't follow instructions, a household full of people with secrets, and a poison that's far too sophisticated to be the work of any common enemy. Someone with alchemical knowledge *she* recognizes is behind this — which means the Guild didn't just want her silenced. They wanted her nowhere near this man.