Chapter One
“You’ll never get a husband looking like that.”
The fact that Sorcha’s grandmother had been dead for the last three years was not enough to stop her from sharing her opinion.
Often.
And with marked enthusiasm.
Especially when it had to do with the state of Sorcha’s hair, attire, or general marriageability. Granny had died at the age of ninety-three and elected to remain a ghost so she could further boss her granddaughter about.
Sorcha loved it.
The castle they called home had been built in 1414 for the first duke’s mother.
Through complicated family lines—and no doubt a spell or two—Granny had eventually inherited Nettlestone Hall and taken great joy in barring entrance to the majority of her family.
She did not get on with her sister, her brothers, her cousins.
She tolerated her sons, liked her daughter well enough, and loved her granddaughter.
“It could be worse,” Sorcha said cheerfully as her grandmother hovered a foot off the worn stone floors, glowing faintly. Her witch familiar, a slender garden snake, wrapped around her wrist like a bracelet, as it had during the whole of her life, glittering green. “I could be wearing my breeches.”
“Bah, those horrid things.”
Granny, Lady Maeve, Dowager Duchess of Gloucester, had made certain she died in her best gown, an intricately embroidered robe à la Francaise.
She had also draped herself in pearls and diamonds and a sapphire the size of a large walnut.
She had no intention of haunting anywhere in a nightdress and slippers.
She had standards. Being dead was no excuse.
For her or for anyone else, in her opinion.
And her opinion was the only one that mattered, naturally.
And, in fact, Sorcha was wearing a perfectly lovely, if slightly out-of-date, ball gown.
It was a sapphire-blue open robe layered over a white silk round gown.
It fastened under her breasts and there was a glitter of crystal beads at the hem.
The Winterwells were an old-fashioned family.
They would not mind that she was not wearing something more au courant.
In fact, Lady Winterwell would prefer it.
She insisted on being the most fashionable lady wherever she deigned to go, especially in her own house.
Something that made Granny cross, even now.
“You should wear the iridescent silk and the moonstones,” Granny said, sniffing.
Wolf-shifter customs were not Sorcha’s forte—she knew more about actual wolves and even more about dogs, but even given how private they were, everyone knew the Lycan were mad for moonstones.
They were a badge of honor and prestige.
“I am not wearing moonstones to a Lycan house.” Sorcha shook her head. “Are you trying to get me killed?”
“No, only married.”
“To a wolf? They don’t marry plain old witches like me.”
“You’re twice as pretty as anyone that will be in attendance.”
Sorcha rolled her eyes at that blatant falsehood. “Granny, I’m already late. I really must go.”
“At least wear the diamond tiara, ragamuffin,” Granny snapped, but there was no rancor to it.
She simply enjoyed being cantankerous. She enjoyed it even more when Sorcha snapped back with some acidic retort or another.
She found it as invigorating as a good, brisk walk on the beach, which she could no longer do.
“I’ll be back before dawn. Go haunt the barn if you’re bored. The kittens are running about now.”
“If only I thought you were sneaking off for something salacious that might end in a good marriage,” Granny muttered.
“You’d be even more put out.” Sorcha snorted. “Reputations and all that.”
“I would not! Not if it came to something. And don’t forget to put the Sally Lunn buns in the oven. I refuse to be outshone by that shop in Bath.”
“I’ll be back in plenty of time, and Aesop is here.”
“He does have a more delicate hand,” Granny said.
As that was perfectly true, Sorcha did not take offense. Aesop, despite being an enormous Minotaur who could lift the cast-iron oven over his head with his delicate hand, did not care to leave the grounds any more than Granny did.
The Minotaur in question waited in the front hall, holding her white silk capelet instead of her serviceable red cloak.
He was gigantic, his curved back horns brushing the crystal drops from the chandelier above.
They tinkled softly, like wind chimes. His eyes were wide and black from lid to lid, and his skin was a ruddy red, down his muscled stomach to his fur-covered bull legs.
There were three kittens currently using him for climbing practice.
Only on the Isle of Lyonesse would an injured Minotaur appoint himself as your butler.
In a castle that saw virtually no guests and therefore had no need for a butler.
The draw of the family estate was privacy.
And Granny had used it to pursue her one hobby: baking.
It was not exactly the usual hobby for a duchess.
She ought to have had a fascination with watercolor paintings or Classical architecture or dancing.
And though Granny certainly agreed that a lady ought to sparkle with diamonds, she could sparkle perfectly well while kneading bread dough, thank you very much.
And that was that, as far as she was concerned.
Sorcha had promised to keep the bakery running after Granny died, and she did not mind the work, but her magical talent came from her grandfather’s side of the family, much to Granny’s disdain.
Not because she minded Sorcha’s gift of communicating with birds, but because she disdained her late husband’s family, even in death.
She could not leave the castle grounds, but if they were visiting the island, she made sure that moldy bread was delivered to their door.
And once, an éclair writhing with maggots.
It was upsetting for everyone involved, including, no doubt, the maggots.
One did not cross the Duchess of Gloucester.
As Sorcha had no wish to live in a house with constantly rattling chandeliers and exploding crystal goblets—or maggots of any description—she also did not cross her gran.
Much.
“Thank you, Aesop.”
Her beaded reticule began to move as if something living was attempting to escape. Sorcha’s stomach dropped. “Blast,” she said, loosening the cord. “I’m already late as it is.”
A paper bird lifted out of the reticule, parchment the color of warm honey in the light of the oil lamps.
It was the worst possible timing, but the spell had done its work and woken them.
Another bird emerged from the nest set on the windowsill, joining the first. She had found the nest abandoned in a tree and filled it with her paper birds.
“I should come with you.” Aesop watched the birds circle her once before they darted out of the open window, waiting for her to follow. She always followed.
“It’s not safe for you.” Sorcha often wore a crown of paper birds. She would be fine. “But I’ll be right as rain.”
Probably.
Lyonesse, for all of its delusions of elegance and grandeur, was still a witch’s island. London might not know that it had belonged partly to the witches since it was built on the banks of the Thames, but Lyonesse had never forgotten its provenance.
It was built by witches, for witches.
A safe place where you did not have to hide the witch’s knot on your palm.
All witches had the mark on their left palm, hidden under gloves in Polite Society even if it was invisible to those without witchery in their blood.
But on Lyonesse, no one wore gloves, even if it was fashionable in Mayfair.
Witch knots were sacred. They were the color of weak tea when they first appeared and grew darker with the more powerful spells a witch worked.
Here, you did not even have to hide the fact that your familiar might be a glowing, two-thousand-pound horse galloping through the ballroom.
In Lyonesse you were as likely to find a unicorn in the hills as a cottage.
You could hire a Pegasus to take you on a tour over the island.
You might have wings or antlers or turn into a rabbit.
You might have the power to grow green things like Sorcha’s friend Briar, or have a chat with a bluebird, like Sorcha herself.
But you still had to wear white dresses if you were a debutante, and curtsy and make socially acceptable chatter and never be caught without a chaperone (magical or otherwise) and all the rest of it.
But Sorcha, recently turned thirty-one, was hardly a debutante.
Not anymore.
Thank the stars.
And no one who had known her only as the granddaughter of the Duke of Gloucester could have guessed she would become a red-haired spinster who roamed the moors and baked bread for the tourists on festival days.
And she loved it. She had excelled at being a debutante, but she did not miss it.
It had fit her cousin Lydia exceedingly well, and seeing her enjoyment had proven to Sorcha that she wanted something else.
It was exhausting pretending to be someone she was not.
And if that meant she had to find herself a new family, so be it.
It had been worth it.
She had Granny and Aesop and the monstrous and beastly Black Shuck on the moors. The grotesque black dog terrified even the heartiest of witches, but Sorcha had not balked. Looking frightful was not the same as being frightful.
Although his acid saliva would burn right through her clothes and skin if she let it touch her. And so she didn’t. Problem solved.
And she had her old manor house and the storms that gathered over the green hills. Her paper birds, made of torn bits of parchment, old poetry, household accounts from a hundred years ago. They knew where to look to find secrets.
And she had her mission.
But first, the Winterwell ball.
Blast.