The Foxglove King

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.Copyright © 2023 by Hannah WhittenCover design by Lisa Marie PompilioCover illustration by Mike Heath | Magnus CreativeCover background image by ShutterstockCover copyright © 2023 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.Map by Charis LokeHachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.OrbitHachette Book Group1290 Avenue of the AmericasNew York, NY 10104orbitbooks.netFirst Edition: March 2023Simultaneously published in Great Britain by OrbitOrbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group.The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to hachettespeakersbureau.com or email [email protected] books may be purchased in bulk for business, educational, or promotional use. For information, please contact your local bookseller or the Hachette Book Group Special Markets Department at [email protected] of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Whitten, Hannah, author.Title: The foxglove king / Hannah Whitten.Description: First Edition. | New York, NY : Orbit, 2023. | Series: The nightshade crown ; book 1Identifiers: LCCN 2022034979 | ISBN 9780316434997 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316435192 (ebook)Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.Classification: LCC PS3623.H5864 F68 2023 | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20220721LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022034979ISBNs: 9780316434997 (hardcover), 9780316435192 (ebook)E3-20230114-JV-NF-ORI Contents CoverTitle PageCopyrightDedicationMapEpigraphChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty-OneChapter Twenty-TwoChapter Twenty-ThreeChapter Twenty-FourChapter Twenty-FiveChapter Twenty-SixChapter Twenty-SevenChapter Twenty-EightChapter Twenty-NineChapter ThirtyChapter Thirty-OneChapter Thirty-TwoChapter Thirty-ThreeChapter Thirty-FourChapter Thirty-FiveChapter Thirty-SixChapter Thirty-SevenChapter Thirty-EightChapter Thirty-NineChapter FortyChapter Forty-OneEpilogueAcknowledgmentsDiscover MoreAlso by Hannah Whitten To anyone who chose themselves. Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.Tap here to learn more. The world is too much with us; late and soon,Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:Little we see in nature that is ours;We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;The Winds that will be howling at all hoursAnd are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;It moves us not.—William Wordsworth CHAPTER ONENo one is more patient than the dead.—Auverrani proverbEvery month, Michal claimed he’d struck a deal with the landlord, and every month, Nicolas sent one of his sons to collect anyway. The sons must’ve drawn straws—this month’s unfortunate was Pierre, the youngest and spottiest of the bunch, and he trudged up the street of Dellaire’s Harbor District with the air of one approaching a guillotine.Lore could work with that.A dressing gown that had seen better days dripped off one shoulder as Lore leaned against the doorframe and watched him approach. Pierre’s eyes kept drifting to where the fabric gaped, and she kept having to bite the inside of her cheek so she didn’t laugh. Apparently, a crosshatch of silvery scars from back-alley knife fights didn’t deter the man when presented with bare skin.She had other, more interesting scars. But she kept her palm closed tight.A cool breeze blew off the ocean, and Lore suppressed a shiver. Pierre didn’t seem to spare any thought for why she’d exited the house barely dressed when mornings near the harbor always carried a chill, even in summer. An easy mark in more ways than one.“Pierre!” Lore shot him a dazzling grin, the same one that made Michal’s eyes simultaneously go heated and then narrow before he asked what she wanted. Another twist against the doorframe, another seemingly casual pose, another bite of wind that made a curse bubble behind her teeth. “It’s the end of the month already?”Michal should be dealing with this. It was his damn row house. But the drop he’d made for Gilbert last night had been all the way in the Northwest Ward, so Lore let him sleep.Besides, waking up early had given her time to go through Michal’s pockets for the drop coordinates. She’d taken them to the tavern on the corner and left them with Frederick the bartender, who’d been on Val’s payroll for as long as Lore could remember. Val would be sending someone to pick them up before the sun fully rose, and someone else to grab Gilbert’s poison drop before his client could.Lore was good at her job.Right now, her job was making sure the man she’d been living with for a year so she could spy on his boss didn’t get evicted.“I—um—yes, yes it is.” Pierre managed to fix his eyes to her own, through obviously conscious effort. “My father… um, he said this time he means it, and…”Lore let her expression fall by careful degrees, first into confusion, then shock, then sorrow. “Oh,” she murmured, wrapping her arms around herself and turning her face away to show a length of pale white neck. “This month, of all months.”She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t need to. If there was anything Lore had learned in twenty-three years alive, ten spent on the streets of Dellaire, it was that men generally preferred you to be a set piece in the story they made up, rather than an active player.From the corner of her eye, she saw Pierre’s pale brows draw together, a deepening blush lighting the skin beneath his freckles. They were all moon-pale, Nicolas’s boys. It made their blushes look like something viral.His gaze went past her to the depths of the dilapidated row house beyond. Sunrise shadows hid everything but the dust motes twisting in light shards. Not that there was much to see back there,