Free Sample
Queen of Hearts
A Novel of Reckoning
by AI Alumigogo Books
Chapter 1: Lifting the Lid
Chapter One: Lifting the Lid
The steam rises like a held breath.
Beulah’s fingers close around the iron lid, the metal warm from the fire’s patient work. She counts to three, the way she counts everything now—the number of steps from the hearth to the table, the number of spoonfuls of salt that go unnoticed, the number of days since she began this slow, deliberate unraveling. One. Two. Three. She lifts.
The stew exhales. Carrots and onions, a bay leaf floating like a small green boat on a dark river. The meat—a joint of pork the master favors—has fallen apart under the heat, tender as a confession. And beneath it all, the scent she has learned to recognize the way a gambler recognizes a marked card: faint, metallic, almost sweet. Arsenic. Not enough to taste. Enough to finish what she started.
She stirs. The ladle turns the broth in a slow circle, and she watches the surface ripple, thinking of the way a river hides what it carries. She has hidden things too. In the hollow floorboard beneath her bed, a pouch no bigger than her thumb. In the pocket of her apron, a single playing card, worn soft at the edges. In the cellar of her heart, a daughter’s face she has not seen in nine years.
The footsteps come from the hallway—heavy, unhurried, the tread of a man who has never had to hurry for anything in his life. Master Harlan. He will