King of Ravens (Upon a Broken Throne #1)
Chapter 1
SUNSHINE. SEA AIR. The fresh scent of peppermint as I harvest its leaves from within the safety of our garden walls. Life is good.
Except, that is, for the part where I’m slowly but surely dying.
No pity, please.
It’s just a fact of nature, like the tides or the start of spring, which is happening all around me, clear in the nodding hellebore blooms and the buds stuffed full of furled petals on the cusp of bursting open.
Besides, it’s not as though I’ll die today or tomorrow. This creeping sickness has been my companion for a long time, and deep in my aching bones, I know it’s winning. I hold on from a sort of cheerful stubbornness, but it would take a miracle for me to get well.
In fact, tomorrow marks what I call the tipping point. The moment when I go from having been healthy for more years of my life than I’ve been ill to… well, the opposite.
Happy thirty-third birthday, Rhiannon.
I dislodge a weed and throw it over the wall that surrounds my family’s cottage.
The sun warms my skin, white winter honeysuckle scents the air with lemony sweetness, and these small pleasures are reason enough to smile.
With a little luck, we’ll have a good crop of peas in the summer, with a surplus for drying, and tonight we’ll eat leafy chard alongside the catch my father will bring home.
With a nod, I throw another spindly weed into the wind.
Beyond the wall, the sea roars against the cliffs encircling our home.
Every so often a great wave hits, and I swear I feel it vibrating through the ground I’m sitting on.
I once read a book that said the sea eroded headlands over time, forming natural archways like the one leading to our cottage on its rock.
The sea just might be more determined than I am.
I drag myself to my feet, using the drystone wall for support, careful not to dislodge any of the rocks, even though my head spins.
The sea stretches before me, wide, endless, churning blue-gray and capped with white waves.
Down in the bay, a small boat approaches the village docks.
A quick squint confirms it—yes, my father’s.
But my head doesn’t stop spinning. Long seconds open up between heartbeats, feeling like eons.
“Oh, shit.” Another episode.
I clutch the trug of mint and set my gaze on the glinting hatchet Pa uses to cut firewood, sitting on a log by the oak door of our little stone cottage.
Eyes fixed, I focus the rest of my being on placing one foot in front of the other in front of the other.
I need to get inside. Walking should be a simple thing, but I weave and stumble.
Still, as I make it inside, I spread a smile on my face for my mother—my annem—even though my vision narrows to the kettle that’s already on the stove.
“You look pale, sweetheart.” Her voice cuts through the fogginess following me. “Did you take your pills this morning?” The bottle of red tablets rattles—I guess she’s shaking it, but I’m too focused on the kettle to turn and look.
The pills leave a bitter taste in my mouth, but the medicine keeps me alive, so each morning, I swallow it down gratefully.
Nodding, I grope for a cup. “Tea.” It clatters on the side as the world dims, forcing me to catch the counter top.
“Oh, Annon!” Annem rushes in and takes over, ushering me to a chair at the worn old table before pouring me a tea. “You should’ve said you weren’t feeling well. I could’ve done that.”
“I’m fine.” I smile up at her as I fish for the deep blue bottle I keep in my pocket and unscrew the lid, revealing a tiny scoop. “You already do enough.”
When I first started taking it, I’d told her it was just a mixture of herbs to give me energy.
Technically, that is true. But the main ingredient in the powder I carefully measure out and stir into my tea is belladonna leaves.
Grown in the garden and dried in the rafters of my attic bedroom, then crushed and sifted.
The tea scalds my mouth, but I gulp it down, and soon the belladonna numbs my tongue.
Poisonous—deadly, if you take too much—but just the right dose…
Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.
My heart surges; no more long gaps between each beat. A fresh wave of dizziness washes over me, but this is more akin to giddy excitement than my body slowly shutting down. It warms me, spreading, thrilling, and I feel like laughing for no reason at all.
The world opens back up, with bright sunlight spilling through the kitchen windows and the door I’ve left open. Gulls wheel outside, their cries jarring but lively.
Annem bumps the back door shut with the basket of washing on her hip, giving me a worried look as she rubs her head. “Are you sure—?”
“You’ve got a headache?” After another beat of my body and brain catching up, I’m on my feet, dizziness fading as I grab the jar of willow bark from the shelf.
I harvested it earlier in the month from the stalks we keep coppiced in one corner of the garden.
Along with our apple tree, they’re the only things that grow straight around here—all the shrubs and trees clinging to this rock and the rest of the coast are stunted and bent, whipped into submission by the sea wind and salty air.
“Don’t you worry about me.” She shakes her head with a faint laugh, though this light shows new lines in her deep olive-brown skin and she wrings her hands before easing me back into my seat. “That’s my job, especially when you work too hard in that garden.”
She fusses around me until it’s clear I’m not about to collapse and comments that I’m looking a healthier color—thank you, belladonna—before finally taking the basket of washing outside.
Only once I’m alone do I let myself slump over the table.
When I read about belladonna years ago, I’d noted that it could increase the heart rate and thought it could be a solution for my fainting spells.
I’d written down all the information I could find about it and started an experiment to find an effective dose—cautiously, of course, since its other name, deadly nightshade, is no exaggeration.
I was careful, so I hadn’t been too concerned. But that was when I’d only taken it once every couple of weeks.
Now I need it every other day. And despite my search, none of the books have told me anything about the long-term effects or whether it can accumulate in the system, a slow creeping death.
Just as I tuck away the blue bottle, the door flies open and in sweeps my brother.
Tall and dark-haired, he takes after Annem, while my hair is blond like Pa’s.
He pants, beaming at me as though he’s run all the way across the stone arch, between the spiky gorse bushes that line the path and through the garden gate.
“I’ve got something for you,” he huffs like he can’t wait to get the words out.
I sit up. He promised to bring me another book borrowed from his employer’s library, so I can add to my notes.
If anyone asks, my notebook is a collection of information on medicinal herbs, but there’s another section at the back, compiled from Lowen smuggling me books on anatomy and disease.
Annem and Pa told me there was no cure for my illness, but in all my years of research I still haven’t found a name for it.
I’ve written to professors at universities and visited a doctor in the village.
Herbalists have examined my tongue and prodded my cheeks.
Once I even threw logic to the wind and went to a traveling fortune teller passing through the area.
He’d turned over a strange card that showed a woman bound, blindfolded and hemmed in by swords.
From that one image, he’d spoken for a long while but explained nothing of my illness.
As I tried to leave, wearing a polite smile despite my frustration, he’d grabbed my hand, pointed at a line across my palm and declared I would never find love in this world.
Superstition and nonsense—nothing of use.
No one has been able to give me a proper diagnosis. And in that unknown, I guard a tiny flicker of hope.
So I trawl through the medical books Lowen borrows for me, searching for a diagnosis… and a cure.
Everything I discover goes in that notebook, carefully copied out in sharp pencil. It hasn’t saved me yet, and time is running out, but as long as I breathe, there’s a chance.
When Lowen’s caught his breath, he goes on, “I know it isn’t your birthday quite yet, but no harm, right?” His cheeks are flushed, his eyes bright.
Not the book, then. But either the belladonna is still buzzing through my system or his feverish excitement is infectious. Probably both. I can’t help laughing as he checks the door is shut and hurries to the table, carrying something under his jacket.
Gifts could definitely soften the blow of this tipping-point birthday. “Do I get to guess what it is that has you so excited?” I crane to look at him as he circles behind me.
“’Fraid not. I haven’t had a chance to wrap it, so…” With one hand, he covers my eyes, and something clunks on to the table, a finality to the sound. “Ready?”
The bright world cuts back in, revealing a round mirror. Birds and moths cover its gilded frame, their wings layering over each other and punctuated by pointed spears. The birds have fierce, thick beaks, ruffed throats, and wing feathers like the slash of a blade. Ravens.
It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. Certainly more beautiful than anything I’ve ever owned… or that he can afford.
“Lowen. No.” I shake my head, burning eyes stuck on the mirror even though I want to look up at him. “This is too much. You can’t afford something like—”