“But you did something to the King, something from which the court doctors said he’d never recover. What was it?” “Poison.” “Surely it could have been traced.” “Not this. I designed it myself. If given in small enough doses over a long enough time, the symptoms are mild.” “A vegetable alkaloid?” asked David. She nodded. “Once it builds up in the victim’s system, a threshold is reached, the organs begin to fail, and the degeneration is irreversible. It’s not a killer. It’s a thief. It steals years. And he will never get them back.”
