Private Barracks/Imperial Condos Jungle in a Bell Jar

[Duchess Dusk Rainblade]

The Misanthropy Greenhouse of Deadly Delights, as it had whimsically been named, was said to have originated with Bloodstone, the first Blighted of the Director's Men. It had grown over the years and under the watchful eye of various experts into the Vulpinsula's premier collection of toxic, poisonous, and generally hazardous plants and flowers. Everything from nettles to nightshade, wakes robin to wolfsbane, and every letter beside had found its way into the collection, carried from across the known world into a beautiful botanical garden of death. Of course, visitation was strictly limited, as much for the risk of liability for injury or death on Ministry property as for the dangers of the collection passing into less scrupulous paws.

Dusk was seated at a small table in the middle of the gardens, framed against a dazzling display of desert roses that Paphnutia had brought as tribute when she'd joined Misanthropy. They had started with a single plant and, with time and patience, were well on their way to breeding an even more toxic strain of the plant. The gardeners assured her that within a decade, a single bulb would be able to kill a beast dead. She waited for the strange foreign dignitary to be shown in, toying with the tea set between them. She always enjoyed serving tea in this room; she liked to keep her guests guessing as to what else might be in the mixture. It helped to give her the upper paw in negotiations. I'll have to host Talinn in here someday, she mused.