Chapter 1
One
Emmy Vallillo had developed an affinity for screaming.
Ignoring the stabbing pain in her throat, she stood in front of her iron door and shrieked. A vocal cord hemorrhage, Papa would have called it. Sometimes she pictured him in the corner of her cell, hunched over his beloved anatomy book.
The longer she spent in Grimsbane Tower, the less she trusted her eyes. Or her ears, for that matter. Or her heart.
Her naive, pathetic heart.
A welcome heat prickled her skin as Emmy screamed louder. Whenever she carried on like this, the guards eventually threatened
to beat her to silence. Hollow words. Not once had they entered her cell. Not once, in eight hundred and twenty-eight days.
But at least they’d speak to her, which was all the opportunity she needed.
As if on cue, the pass-through window in the center of her door jiggled as a guard unlocked its metallic flap. With considerable
effort, Emmy swallowed her excitement. The guards hated when she smiled.
The metal flap yawned open, revealing the male guard with the long face that resembled a horse’s. “You’re as dumb as rocks,
aren’t you, little princess?”
How they loved to tease her about the ruined ball gown she still wore. As if she had any choice in the matter. But the joke
was on them, for the torn dress had served as a pillow and a bed mat for two years. And although the embroidered clouds no
longer meandered across the once ivory satin, they were her constant companions, a permanent reminder of her foolishness.
Proper gowns weigh as much as horses, Grace had teased when Emmy had protested the bulky garb. A gift from sweet Clara Claremont, whose magic enchants fabric patterns into motion.
Lies. Nothing was free. The Claremont girl was far from sweet. And gowns were not supposed to weigh as much as horses. Not without fool’s gold sewn into their hems.
“Bring me a book,” Emmy rasped, “and I’ll never make another peep.”
There was no escaping Grimsbane. She’d never even left her cell. But today, she was determined to earn a distraction. No matter
the cost.
“How many times have we told you? No one can hear you.” With his usual sneer, the horse-faced guard patted the stone wall.
“No sounds get in. No sounds get out.”
Or so they claimed. Of course, there was some truth to his words. Emmy couldn’t hear so much as the guards’ approaching footsteps,
let alone another prisoner. The only time she heard anything at all was when they unlocked her pass-through window. Still,
some echo of her screams must have penetrated the magic in the walls, or they wouldn’t bother to shut her up. “Bring me a
newspaper. An advertisement. Anything.”
The guard stared as if she hadn’t spoken.
There had been a time when Emmy had tried to reason with the guards, had protested her innocence night and day, shouting that
she, Emilia Vallillo, was no fraud. That she possessed rare transformation magic. That, even without a patronage, she’d learned
to turn water into wine, moth-bitten cotton into thick wool, even flimsy tin into bona fide gold. That she’d been framed.
They’d told Emmy to show them, knowing damn well she could not.
Because her magic was gone. Ever since she’d tried to prove her innocence at that cursed ball, she hadn’t felt a lick of it.
No, her only taste of power now came from the guards.
Just last week, Horse Face here had whipped a gale through her cell, pelting her with dirt and rocks.
“You know what?” he said abruptly. “I think I will bring you something special.”
She highly doubted that, but the tiny door slammed shut, cloaking her in unyielding silence once again. For most of her life,
she’d lived in a tenement house bursting with conversation in so many languages, Papa had called it the Tower of Babel. Now
she was trapped in a quiet so suffocating, her mind filled it with a deep voice whispering, Hold on, just a little longer. Another hallucination, one she pretended was Papa. But he had died—no, been murdered. By the same vile man who’d declared her a fraud.
With a ragged inhale of stale air, Emmy huddled against her favorite wall, the one that was a smidge warmer than the rest.
Weak daylight streamed through the tiny oval window opposite the door, far too high and too narrow to provide any hope for
escape. It illuminated the faint tally she’d scratched into the stones, the jagged lines taunting her with their abundance.
Seven hundred. Eight hundred. On and on and on. She tried not to keep track of the date—April 30, 1882—but her mind was rather
fond of torturing her with it. Her mind was also fond of picturing what Grace might be doing on such a spring day. The magic
she was learning. The parties she was attending.
Perhaps waiting for the guard’s return was her punishment. A typical hour in the penitentiary felt like a year. Anticipation, however, stretched the afternoon to a
century, the shadows creeping longer and longer until the darkness swallowed them whole. In her first months here, the nights
she’d spent shivering in unyielding blackness had tortured her, but now, there was a strange comfort in the darkness. After
all, it hadn’t broken her.
After an eternity, the metallic flap creaked open once more. Unable to stop herself, Emmy hurried toward it, shielding her eyes from the abrupt light of the hall sconces.
“Hungry, little princess?” the horse-faced guard cooed. A feminine snicker rose behind him, and Emmy braced herself. Two guards
meant trouble. Perhaps they’d hidden a decomposing rat in her gruel again. Or maybe when she reached for the tin, they’d hit
her with the female guard’s water magic.
Still, a visit from two guards was a rare novelty, one Emmy would not waste.
As Emmy drew closer, the sharp, pungent scent of urine flooded her nostrils. They’d pissed in her dinner. How original.
“Come now, little princess.” The female guard’s eyes were alight as Emmy feigned interest in the same grayish gruel that had
sustained her for two long years. “Even rabid dogs get hungry, don’t they?”
“We kept it warm for you.” The male guard dangled the piss meal precariously over the edge. They usually avoided reaching
into her cell, but their mischief had made them reckless.
Emmy sank her teeth into his fleshy arm.
The guard screeched and flailed, but Emmy only clamped down tighter. Such beastly cries he made, and yet she was the feral creature. He should have known better than to stick his arm in a dog’s cage.
When he finally wriggled away, he did not laugh, but Emmy did.
This wild laughter took her sometimes, carrying her right to the edge of sanity. She could not afford to sink into delirium
again, not when the guards were far from amused. Still, guffaws slipped between Emmy’s chapped lips, even as the guard stuck
her hand through the slot, muscles tensing with magic’s grueling effort.
A deluge of water struck Emmy in the cheekbone like a brass-knuckled punch. She dove out of its path, but the guard angled
her palm, soaking Emmy until the wet silk clung to her scrawny limbs.
It was the guards’ turn to laugh now. Emmy glared at them as coldness convulsed through her, not giving them the satisfaction of—
A thunderous crash, loud enough to shake silt from the stone walls.
Emmy stilled, shivers and all.
The guards hurried away, the pass-through window slamming shut. Emmy lunged for it, and for once, they’d forgotten to lock
it. With her forehead pressed against the cool metal, she searched the hall.
The male guard slammed against Emmy’s door with a deafening crack.
Emmy scampered back, dropping the metal flap before she thrust it open again.
He was lying on the floor, his neck twisted at an impossible angle. Dead.
Emmy tried to blink away the hallucination. But he remained on the floor, the arm she’d bitten limp at his side.
The female guard backed into Emmy’s line of vision, her hands raised. “Wait, Fontaine—”
A dark figure gripped her neck and snapped it.
The popping sound was much like a cracked knuckle—only louder.
Emmy must have gasped, for the dark figure whipped toward her. As she yanked her hand back, the pass-through slammed shut,
but Emmy remained just behind it, her pulse hammering in her ears. Waiting.
The slot creaked open, revealing a pair of stormy gray eyes.