The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)

by Samantha Shannon

Glorian the First had drunk from a poisoned cup of wine. Jillian the Third had ruled for only a year before being stabbed in the heart by one of her own servants. Sabran’s own mother, Rosarian the Fourth, had been slain by a gown laced with basilisk venom.

‘All stories grow from a seed of truth,’ Truyde said. ‘They are knowledge after figuration.’

The dragons watched her. It was said they could see the deepest secrets of a soul, for human beings were made of water, and all water was theirs.