If you loved how Yelena learns to read a room as keenly as a poison—parrying Commander Ambrose’s rules while unmasking General Brazell’s schemes under Valek’s watch—then Fitz’s apprenticeship to the royal assassin in Assassin’s Apprentice will hit the same nerve. Told in an intimate voice, Fitz is trained by the shadowy Chade to move through Buckkeep’s treacherous halls, where Prince Regal’s plots are as lethal as any toxin. It’s the same knife-edge of loyalty, secrecy, and survival that made Yelena’s days of antidotes and taste-tests so gripping.

Yelena’s journey—from condemned prisoner to the Commander’s food taster, mastering poisons and leverage under Valek—mirrors Ismae’s ascent in Grave Mercy, where a girl marked by Death is trained by a convent of assassins to navigate the Breton court. Like Yelena unraveling Brazell’s plotting and choosing her own moral compass, Ismae weighs sacred orders against her conscience as she infiltrates nobility, with a slow-burn connection to Duval that echoes the trust-and-tension you enjoyed with Valek.

If Yelena’s willingness to make hard, sometimes ruthless choices—and Valek’s icy pragmatism (like dosing her with Butterfly’s Dust to keep her alive and loyal)—hooked you, meet Locke Lamora. In The Lies of Locke Lamora, the Gentleman Bastards run elegant long cons through Camorr’s corrupt elite, only to collide with the Gray King’s bloody coup. It’s the same intoxicating mix of wit, risk, and moral tightrope-walking that defined Yelena’s survival under the Commander’s roof.

The relentless momentum that carried Yelena from the execution block into a life-or-death tasting post—racing for her daily antidote while dodging assassins and exposing Brazell—finds a parallel in An Ember in the Ashes. Laia goes undercover as a spy inside the brutal Blackcliff Academy, while Elias fights to keep his humanity as a Mask. The pacing is nonstop and the stakes as personal as when Yelena had to outthink every cup and conversation in the Commander’s palace.

If the simmering connection between Yelena and Valek—built on competence, trust, and stolen moments amid poison lessons and conspiracies—was your sweet spot, Throne of Glass offers a similar blend. Assassin Celaena Sardothien competes to become the king’s champion while dark forces stalk the palace; her wary rapport with Captain Chaol and Prince Dorian develops in the margins of danger, much like how Yelena’s feelings grew even as she navigated the Commander’s code and Brazell’s treachery.