My feet ache from the hours of walking, and my throat is raw from talking, scratchy with all the lies I’ve coughed up.
“The Raja threw me in the dungeon,” I said.
“He has Mani,” I told them.
And this is how I will do it, wrap up the lies in slippery truths so that they will slide down easier. Just like Gopal used to lie to me.
Gita twists a key in the lock and pushes the door open. She wraps her arm around my shoulders and kisses my cheek. “Welcome home, Marinda,” she says.
My stomach is swimming with dread. But I smile at her anyway, because this is the only way to get what I want.
That’s the thing about poison. The deadliest ones always come from the inside.
Story ideas come from all kinds of unlikely places, and Poison’s Kiss is no different. Several years ago, I was listening to a lecture series on espionage and covert operations. In one of the early episodes, the professor discussed different civilizations and their views on and myths about spies and assassins. He mentioned a legendary figure in Indian folklore—the poison damsel, a woman fed poisons from childhood so that she gradually becomes immune but is toxic to any man she lures as her lover.
It was one sentence in an eighteen-hour course, but my mind caught on the idea. Forty minutes later, I realized I hadn’t heard a single word since “poison damsel.” Most assassins and spies are recruited as adults, so I was fascinated by the thought of making such a monumental choice for a child. I wondered what would happen to a girl who was poisoned but wasn’t cut out to be a killer. How would the fact that she was deadly shape her? How would it break her?
The idea wouldn’t leave me alone. I started researching the legends of the visha kanya (Sanskrit for “poison maiden”), as well as mithridatism, which is the process of slowly becoming immune to a poison by ingesting it in ever-increasing doses.
Gradually, the idea for Poison’s Kiss took shape. I knew I wanted the story to take place in a world other than our own, but I also wanted to be true to the origins of the visha kanya and create a setting that looked and felt like the place where the myth was born. So although Sundari is not India, it is influenced by that culture and its mythology.
I read dozens of Indian folktales, and bits of those legends made it into Poison’s Kiss. I knew I needed a mechanism for obtaining the poison that would make Marinda deadly, and I couldn’t think of anything more terrifying than snakes. I had already made the decision that Marinda would be poisoned by snake venom when I stumbled across a mention of the Nagaraja in my research. Anciently, this “king of the serpents” was worshipped as a deity in northern India, while in southern India the serpent cult included worship of live snakes. I thought it would be fascinating to explore how a blend of these two elements—the visha kanya and the Nagaraja—could be shaped into something new that would provide a context for Marinda, a reason she had been turned into an assassin.
I read everything I could find on snake worship and came across numerous references to the Naga. In some stories, the Naga are serpentine beings who live under the sea and are considered deities. Other tales cast the Naga as a human tribe of snake worshipers. My imagination took off as additional pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
Another nod to Indian mythology in Poison’s Kiss is Garuda, a giant birdlike creature (sometimes depicted as half bird, half human) who appears in both Hinduism and Buddhism. Garuda in these myths is always male, but I’ve taken creative license and made my Garuda female.
The other members of the Raksaka (as well as the concept of the Raksaka itself) are my own invention.
Sundari’s belief system differs from those found in India as well. Although reincarnation is a central tenet of Hinduism, and the concept of rebirth is found in Buddhism, the characters in Poison’s Kiss believe in a limit of ten lives, a notion that isn’t found in either religion.
My goal in Poison’s Kiss was to create a unique world, with its own history and culture, while paying homage to the origins of the visha kanya myth. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I loved writing it.
It’s a strange thing to work with words all day and then suddenly be unable to locate the right ones and put them in the correct order for something as important as saying “thank you.”
But I’m told that an acknowledgments page filled with nothing but kisses and hearts isn’t going to cut it, so words it is.
This book would not have been possible without a whole host of amazing people. First, to my brilliant agent, Kathleen Rushall, for believing in this story right from the beginning and for being not only a great advocate but also a great friend.