She leaned back against her pillows.
"Come on, doc. I spent half my life at war, fighting on the front lines. Do you really think I haven't encountered such toxins before? That I don't recognize what's happening to me?"
The physician lowered his head, acknowledging the truth of her words. The original Empress Celeste had been a warrior from early childhood—a woman whose life on the battlefield had made encounters with poisons, assassination attempts, and near-death experiences as routine as morning tea.
"You know I was built for poison resistance, correct?" Heena continued. "From age five, my father had me trained. By thirteen, I could survive doses that would kill three grown men. Very few toxins in this world can affect me significantly."
She paused, letting that sink in.
"Yet *this* poison threw me into a three-week coma. What does that tell you?"
