Hemlock & Silver

Hemlock & Silver (2025) is a fantasy mystery novel by T. Kingfisher, the pen name of Ursula Vernon. Vernon is an acclaimed author of fantasy and horror for adults, as well as award-winning children’s literature; her novel Nettle & Bone won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Drawing on historical toxicology, Hemlock & Silver follows Anja, a scholar of poisons, who is summoned by a king to diagnose his daughter’s mysterious illness. The investigation leads her to a secret world within mirrors, forcing her to confront the limits of her empirical worldview. The novel explores themes of Questioning Scientific Authority and the Pursuit of Truth, The Ambiguity of Morality Beyond Fairy-Tale Binaries, and The Unstable Nature of Identity.

This guide is based on the 2025 Tor Publishing Group edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of graphic violence, illness, death, child death, substance use, sexual content, animal death, animal cruelty, mental illness, gender discrimination, self-harm, emotional abuse, and addiction.

Plot Summary

Anja, a scholar specializing in poisons and antidotes, is in her stillroom when she receives an unexpected visit from the widowed king. He confesses to murdering his wife, explaining that he found her cutting out the heart of their daughter, Rose. The king reveals that his surviving daughter, 12-year-old Snow, now has a mysterious wasting illness that his physicians cannot diagnose. Suspecting a slow-acting poison, he asks Anja to travel to his country estate, Witherleaf, to investigate. Anja reluctantly agrees after the king promises that her family will not face repercussions if she fails.

In a flashback, Anja recalls the origin of her obsession with poisons. When Anja was 11, her cousin Anthony died after eating poison hemlock that he mistook for a wild carrot. The lack of a cure drove Anja to begin a rigorous study of toxicology, supported by her tutor, Scand, who encouraged her to question classical scholarship and develop a scientific approach.

As Anja prepares for her journey, the king assigns two guards, Aaron and Javier, to protect her. When Anja and her guards join the king’s large retinue for the three-day journey to Witherleaf, the king summons Anja to ride at his side, where they discuss her work, and she navigates court gossip arising from his attention.

Upon arriving at Witherleaf, Anja begins her investigation. She examines Snow but finds no definitive symptoms of any common poison, though the princess is pale, weak, and experiences bouts of vomiting. The king introduces Anja to Madame Sorrel, his late uncle’s former mistress, who now resides at the estate. Anja observes Snow’s daily routine, collecting samples of her makeup and the violet pastilles she eats. She learns from Snow’s nurse that Snow’s deceased sister, Rose, had begun showing strange cognitive difficulties, such as clumsiness and an inability to read, just before her death. Nurse reveals that she reported this to the queen shortly before the tragedy.

Anja’s investigation takes a turn when she observes Snow secretly retrieving a strange, silvery apple from a hiding place in a garden. After a struggle, Anja confiscates the apple, enraging Snow, who refuses to say where she got it. Anja tests the apple on a rooster, which shows no ill effects. Believing the poison may be cumulative, she eats a piece herself and finds that it tastes unnaturally cold.

Later, while chasing a one-eyed cat, Anja stumbles and falls through the large mirror in her bedroom, landing in a cold, silent, and largely colorless replica of the real world. The cat (who later introduces himself as “Grayling”) reveals that he can talk and is a “mirror-cat.” He explains that the apple Anja ate was “mirror-food,” which now allows her to pass through the mirror’s silver. Anja experiments with the mirror-world’s properties, discovering that objects brought from it into the real world eventually dissolve. That night, Anja becomes violently ill, confirming that the apple is the source of Snow’s sickness.

Anja continues to explore the mirror-world. Javier, concerned for Anja’s well-being, enters her room just as she steps out of the mirror. Anja explains the situation and has him eat a “mirror-potato,” which allows him to pass through the silver with her. As they explore the mirror-villa, Javier finds a violet pastille in the mirror version of Anja’s room, revealing that Snow has been using the mirror to spy on her.

Anja confronts Snow, who confesses that she eats the apples because an unnamed woman is holding her sister, Rose, captive and has promised to return her. The next time Anja and Javier go to the mirror-world, they encounter hostile, moving reflections of armored guards and are forced to flee. Meanwhile, Snow’s condition worsens; Anja presses her, and Snow says that the queen is the person forcing her to consume apples. Soon after, someone drops a mirror over Anja’s head to trap her in the mirror-world. She is brought before the Mirror Queen, the awakened reflection of the king’s dead wife, who holds Snow at her side. The Mirror Queen explains her history: the real queen “woke” her reflection when she accidentally dripped blood on her mirror, and the reflection grew to covet the real world. Javier enters the mirror-world to find Anja and is also captured.

Grayling manages to undo the bolt on the door to the room where Anja and Javier are being held. He explains that the Queen uses real-world blood to “wake” other reflections to serve as her guards. Anja and Javier take refuge in the rooms of Mirror Sorrel, who is also awake but opposes the Queen. Mirror Sorrel reveals the final piece of the puzzle: For a reflection to exist permanently in the real world, it must consume its real-world counterpart’s heart. Anja realizes the full truth: the Mirror Queen killed the real Rose and fed her heart to Mirror Rose. The real queen discovered the changeling and tried to cut out Mirror Rose’s heart, leading to her own death at the king’s hand. With the help of giant, mysterious creatures called mirror-gelds (beings formed from fragmented reflections), Anja and Javier escape back to the real world.

Soon after returning, however, Anja and Javier discover that Snow is missing and find five apple cores in her privy. Anja deduces that Snow has taken a massive dose of mirror-food to gain the strength needed to push a person from the mirror-world into the real world. This will destroy the Mirror Queen permanently, as her real-world counterpart is dead. Aided by a large mirror-geld, Anja and Javier storm the Mirror Queen’s chambers. The Queen takes Snow hostage, but using two mirrors, Anja and the mirror-geld create a reflection of the Queen between them, fracturing her into pieces. Snow tackles the fragmented Queen, pushing her through the mirror into the real world, where she dissolves into dust. Snow immediately collapses into a deathlike coma from the overdose.

Back in the real world, Anja successfully revives Snow by administering her an antidote she has made from adder venom. With the crisis over, Anja and Javier acknowledge their love for each other. Anja then confronts Nurse, who confesses to being the Queen’s accomplice. She was manipulated by the Mirror Queen’s lies that the current Snow was a mirror-reflection who needed mirror-food to survive, as well as guilt over Rose’s death (it was Nurse who told the girls’ mother that Rose was behaving strangely). Anja arranges for her to quietly leave the estate.

Anja says goodbye to Mirror Sorrel and Grayling, leaving the mirror-world and its secrets behind for now. She and Javier decide to return to Four Saints together, where he will leave the king’s service to become her personal guard and partner.