Twenty-three names. One volunteer. She traded her freedom for her sister’s life — and the Unseelie King noticed.
✦ ✦ ✦
“She’s seventeen. I’m twenty-three. I’m older, stronger. And I know the lists. My father taught me to make them before he let me walk. I’m the Taster for my family’s spoiled preserves. I’m qualified.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Liora Kervain grew up counting names for the Harvest — the yearly tithe of human tributes claimed by the Fae courts beneath the earth. She learned to map exits before she learned to hope. When her seventeen-year-old sister’s name is called, Liora steps forward and offers the only thing she has left: herself.
She descends into the Root Palace expecting to die quietly. She finds something worse. A court of ancient Houses locked in venomous politics, where every meal might be her last and every alliance hides a blade. And at the center of it all, the Unseelie King — a morally grey sovereign who watches her the way a mind watches an unsolved equation. Not with curiosity. With the attention of someone who always finds solutions.
✦ ✦ ✦
“You counted the guards.”
She didn’t deny it.
“And the distances. And the seconds required to reach the side doors from my position. Yes.”
“Useful.”
“Or fatal, depending on the room.”
✦ ✦ ✦
In the Venom Gardens, she trains under a man who gives her six months — half for her body to become useful, half before the cumulative poison load becomes unpredictable. In the Chalice Hall, she tastes what she’s told to taste and survives what she can. In the corridors between, she maps the distances, counts the guards, and catalogs every crack in every wall.
Including his.
Because the king who terrifies a court of immortals is hiding something beneath the control. Something the Five Houses would kill to confirm. Something that Liora, with every poison she swallows, is being drawn dangerously close to uncovering.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Six months. Is that my estimated lifespan or the length of the program?”
“Same thing in your case.”
✦ ✦ ✦
This dark romantasy of forced proximity and obsessive devotion plunges a defiant human woman into the heart of an Unseelie court where fae bargains are sealed in blood and the king’s deadly fascination might consume them both. A slow burn enemies-to-lovers fantasy romance where every sip is a gamble, every touch is a confession, and the poison taster holds the king’s fate on her tongue.
Sip of Ruin is Book 1 of a completed dark romantasy trilogy. HFN ending. The series concludes with a guaranteed HEA.
Content note: captivity within a fantasy setting, power imbalance, explicit scenes, court violence, body transformation. Intended for readers 18+.
