This is a true story of an almost-assassination: mine. When I was just setting out on my journey, I apprenticed myself to a professional king-killer. For someone purported to move unseen in the shadows, she had a glamorous air about her. But since she used the same black ink for a weapon that I did, we got along rather well and I learned much about the trade from her.
Early on in my apprenticeship, I (perhaps foolishly) revealed to her my weakness: a nut allergy. I’m not sure if it was before or after that when she regaled me with a story of how she had impersonated a king’s wife—hired because the queen in question wanted to be freed of her dreadful husband. He too had a nut allergy and the assassin proceeded to poison him with airline peanuts in his chocolate cake.
It was a clever execution, I thought, and a fate which I took steps to avoid.
But time passed after I completed my training with her. Many years later, she invited me back to her home kingdom, to attend her second wedding to the only king who could ever hold her heart (and remain alive). I was standing right next to her as I munched on the wedding cake after the ceremony and it was only when my teeth crunched down on a tree nut that I realized my mistake.
I spluttered and choked in surprise. With a single raised eyebrow, she slipped me the antidote to her poison, one she had taught me how to make. One I should have been carrying with me all along.
As I took a swallow of the life-saving liquid, I asked, “Was this a test?”
Smiling, she leaned close to me and whispered, “You still have a lot to learn.
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