Chapter 1
It was a rare quiet morning at Rosewarren, dawn only just beginning to brighten the windows and the air crisp with the coming winter. A beautiful morning, really, if one cared about such things.
I did not.
I stormed out of the priory and strode across the grounds, the frosty grass crunching beneath my boots and my blood burning bright with fury.
I had just come from the infirmary, where I’d left one of my fellow Roses, Cira, with Nanette, our head nurse.
Cira was fifteen and strong, far more resilient than her reedy frame would suggest, and the wound in her shoulder was minor.
Nanette wasn’t concerned; neither was Cira.
Injuries were to be expected. We were Roses, after all, and our country was at war.
But in the twelve hours since the arrow had pierced Cira’s shoulder, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the man who had fired it.
Just before I entered the stables, I threw an irritated glare at the nearby Middlemist. Its soft light that morning—a silver glow beneath the rising dawn—felt like a cruel taunt.
I hadn’t seen it so tranquil in months. Not since before my sisters and I freed Talan from Kilraith, before any of us knew that the late Queen Yvaine had been a godly being called Ankaret.
Before the war that now governed our every decision, every meal, every hour.
That morning, however, even with blood from the night’s battle still spattering my arms, I hardly thought of the war. I could only think about Gareth. Gareth Fontaine and his foolish friends, one of whom was apparently a fantastic shot with a crossbow even when he was drunk.
I took to one of our new mares with a curry comb, hoping a few minutes of vigorous brushing would calm me. A list of tasks awaited me—writing reports, training our new recruits, running through my daily conditioning exercises—and I wouldn’t be able to focus on any of them until my anger quieted.
Before even a minute had passed, however, Posey found me. One moment she wasn’t there; the next she was, in that uncanny way of the Olden fae.
“You look terrible,” she remarked, regarding me over the mare’s shoulders with her bright silver eyes. “What happened to Cira? I heard something about an arrow wound.”
“We were on patrol in the southeastern canyons yesterday evening,” I replied, eyes focused on my work. “An intoxicated ass thought she was a game bird and shot her with his crossbow.”
Posey snorted. “What kind of game bird is as large as a Rose in flight?”
“I think we can blame that miscalculation on the aforementioned drunkenness.”
“I suppose he could have thought her a harpy or a chimaera. Neither is as unlikely as it once was.”
“If he were smarter, he would have given me that excuse,” I said grimly. “Alas.”
“Did you kill him?”
“The thought crossed my mind. But then a piece of Mist fell. Even that far south, we could feel the aftershocks. We left, we fought the invaders, we secured the break, we came home.” I pressed my lips together, remembering how bravely Cira had fought, even with her injury. “If her wing is permanently damaged…”
“Then you’ll kill him?”
“Perhaps.”
Posey began combing her fingers through the mare’s mane. “Who was he, anyway?”
“Some librarian from the capital. A friend of my sister’s friend. I don’t know his name. But Gareth will tell me, or else I’ll make him tell me.”
“Gareth? He’s your sister’s friend?”
“Gareth Fontaine.” I punctuated the words with a brisk stroke of my comb. “A professor and librarian at the university, and a breaker of many ladies’ hearts, if I am to believe Farrin’s stories, and I have no reason not to.”
Posey looked at me with new interest. “What sorts of stories are those?”
“I came out here for peace and quiet,” I said, “not vulgar storytelling.”
“I don’t think you’re allowed peace and quiet if you’re the Warden’s favorite.”
Something about the tone of her voice made me lower the comb and look at her.
“What is it?” I said. “You’ve come to tell me something.”
Just then a small falcon glided into the stable and alighted on the mare’s stall door. My angry heart lifted to see the familiar brown feathers of Freyda, my falcon and familiar. Posey turned away from me to stroke Freyda’s speckled white breast.
“The Warden wants you,” Posey said, holding up a curled piece of paper. “And if you don’t go quickly enough, she’ll take it out on me. So please go quickly. If she asks why you’re late, blame it on Gareth and his friends.”
I sighed, set down the curry comb, and came to Posey’s side.
Freyda watched my approach with a stern yellow glare.
Never mind that she was my bonded familiar and I would never love another creature the way I loved her.
I hadn’t sought her out upon returning to Rosewarren, as was our custom, and it was clearly important to her that I understand how upsetting that was.
“When you say the Warden will take it out on you,” I said to Posey, “what does that mean?”
Posey handed me the Warden’s message and raised one elegant silver eyebrow. A row of elaborate pearlescent earrings glinted in each of her long, pointed ears, and her green-tinged skin gleamed in the torchlight.
“She doesn’t beat me,” Posey said coolly, “if that’s what you mean. I can tolerate a lot, but not that.”
“And if she did decide to beat you, how would you fight back, exactly?”
“A captive fae is still a fae. There’s some strength in me yet.”
“If we were talking about any other human, I’d agree with you. But the Warden is…”
“A horror?” Posey offered sweetly. “A brute?”
I wasn’t in the mood to joke about the Warden. “She’s also the reason you’re here and not dead.”
That surprised her. A wave of hurt crossed her face before she could hide it, and she began fiddling with the small silver locket she always wore at her throat—a familiar nervous habit of hers.
As impossible as it would have once seemed to me to befriend a fae, I had done it anyway over the last few weeks, after convincing the Warden to offer Posey asylum in exchange for aiding our intelligence efforts.
During that time, I had seldom been short with her.
“I’m sorry,” I said after a moment. “That was unkind.”
I rubbed my forehead, wincing a little. I could feel a headache coming on.
We’d all been getting headaches more frequently.
Headaches, fevers, tremors, random stabbing pains.
Soon those symptoms would spread far beyond the Mistlands.
The gods had made the Middlemist, and they’d also made all of us who lived in the human world of Edyn.
Now the Mist was falling, and if we couldn’t save it, so would we. It was inevitable.
All of this was inevitable. At least it felt that way to me.
I hadn’t been able to make my own decisions since I was ten years old and the Warden had taken me from Ivyhill, with a few notable exceptions.
And even those—going into the Old Country with my sisters the first time we fought Kilraith; sneaking them into Rosewarren for more visits than they were allowed—had felt like stumbling into decisions that someone else had made for me.
The only thing I’d done completely of my own volition was collect my morbid cave treasures: corpses affected by Mistfires, artifacts belonging to people who had been infected by the failing Mist and gone mad.
I could barely stand to think about that Mara of months ago, so earnestly determined to shoulder some of the Warden’s burden and unravel the growing mystery behind the Mist’s condition herself.
A whole lot of good that had done.
Posey put a hand on my arm, wresting me from my dark thoughts. “You should ask the Warden for some time to yourself. You need rest.” Mischief curled her voice. “I wasn’t joking earlier. You do look terrible.”
I smiled a little. Teasing I could handle. “Rather unfair, coming from a fae. Is it even possible for you to look ugly?”
“Certainly not. I’m offended that you would even ask such a thing.”
The knots in my shoulders eased the slightest bit. I pushed aside the pain of my headache and took the Warden’s message from her.
Posey watched me with an uncharacteristically grave expression on her face. “I mean it, Mara. You’re no good to any of them if you’re exhausted.”
Them. The other Roses. The tired elders, the frightened littles. More and more littles these days. With our dwindling numbers, we could no longer afford to be choosy when recruiting, and the new draft law issued by the Royal Conclave told us we didn’t have to be.
“I’ll think about it,” I lied, giving Posey a reassuring smile.
“That is the worst fake smile I’ve ever seen.”
“Go have some breakfast. You’ll get the freshest rolls.”
Posey made a face. “Rolls. Good gods. How I miss fae food.”
As I strode across the stable yard back toward the main house, Freyda flew after me and landed lightly on my shoulder. The pinch of her talons reassured me. She gave a few strands of my hair one of her familiar sharp tugs. I’d been forgiven, it seemed.
I reached up to stroke her belly, wishing I could retreat to my room and draw her close, tuck her little head under mine, and breathe in the scent of her feathers. Most falcons would tolerate no such behavior. But like me, Freyda was far from ordinary.
“Thank you,” I whispered. It was so much easier to face the Warden when Freyda was with me—and easier to ignore thoughts of home, which seemed to arise much more swiftly when I was tired.
Ivyhill, Farrin, Gemma, Father. Mother, sequestered up at Wardwell.
I still wasn’t used to thinking of her as a god.
For so long I’d tried not to think of her at all.
I’d tried—and failed—not to think about any of them, though with every breath I missed them a little bit more.
Over the years, they had come to visit me once a month, as all the Roses’ families were allowed to do, and every time they left, it was like they carved out a piece of me to take with them and I was left a little less whole.