The Poison Master Knocks Every Night With the Antidote novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Knock
The plum trees bloomed in the third month.
The lord of Cheongrim had learned to sleep, and he did not hear the door.
He heard the window.
Three soft taps on the frame, at the hour of the rat.
Jae-ryeong opened his eyes in the dark and lay there smiling at the ceiling.
Then he got up, crossed the floor in his shirt, and unlatched the shutter.
Seol stood on the roof tile in the moonlight.
He had a small white cup in both hands, and plum petals in his hair.
"You have a door," Jae-ryeong said.
"It was shut."
"It has never once been locked."
"Habit," Seol said, with great dignity, and stepped over the sill like a cat.
He had been gone since morning.
In the winter the Alliance had sent him an apology and a license to practice.
In the spring he had opened a small stall of antidotes at the foot of the mountain.
Villagers came from three valleys to be cured of their grandmothers' recipes.
He charged them in rice and eggs.
He came home most nights smelling of woodsmoke and herbs and other people's children.
He put the cup in Jae-ryeong's hand.
"Drink," he said.
"What is it?"
"Ginger and honey. It's nothing. I made it on the roof."
Jae-ryeong drank.
It was warm and sweet, and there was nothing in it but what Seol had said.
It was the best cup he had ever had.
"There was a time," Jae-ryeong said, "when I'd have asked you to taste it first."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Poison Master Knocks Every Night With the Antidote are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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