Chapter 1
Every morning, before the rest of the house woke up, I walked the halls of Ivyhill to make sure it was still standing.
It was my favorite time of day. I never slept well, so finally giving up and getting out of bed after four hours of thin rest was always a relief. And no one was awake yet to ask me questions, to need something of me. The light was dim, the shadows thick. The only sounds were the patient ticking of clocks, the distant bustle of the kitchens, Osmund’s velvet paws trotting along at my side.
Ivyhill was its most beautiful just before dawn, and so was my mind.
On my morning walks through the house, I didn’t think of my endless lists of tasks, my notebook in my coat pocket, heavy with accounts and letters. Instead I thought of things I would no longer have room for in my mind once the sun rose. I thought of scampering along the hallways with Gemma and Mara when we were small, and how many wonderful hiding places my mother’s corridors of vines created. Sometimes—rarely—I thought of my mother herself, and how she had left us, and how completely I loathed her memory, how I longed to tear it out of me by the roots like a weed.
And sometimes, more often than I’d ever admit, I thought of the night of the fire, when I was eleven and Mother was still here and Father still smiled. I thought of the fire, and I thought of him : the shining boy. The boy who had saved me. It hurt to think of these things—my sisters, my mother, the fire. It hurt like picking at a scab, feeling the sting, watching it bleed anew.
But for reasons I couldn’t explain, thinking of the shining boy sometimes hurt most of all.
I had never forgotten the feeling of his strong hand holding mine, the safety of his arms around me, the kiss of his hand against my forehead.
I have to go , he’d told me. I’m so sorry . And I did believe that he was. That voice, which I remembered so clearly: rough with regret, shredded by the same smoke that had nearly killed me. I closed my eyes as I walked down the corridor that led to the guest rooms and let the memory of his voice wash over me. My hands were in fists, holding on to the memory with all my strength.
Where was he now? What would his voice sound like? How would it feel to be held by him now that we were grown?
If, in fact, he actually existed.
I opened my eyes, glaring at the carpet as I stalked down the hallway, despising myself for wasting time on a daydream and furious at the dawn light starting to creep through the windows. Many people prayed in the mornings, to mark the new day; well, so would I.
“I hate you,” I whispered to the shadows, to the dead gods. That was my prayer. Either whatever remained of them after the Unmaking had planted the lie of this boy in my mind and let me believe it for thirteen years—the theory held by my skeptical family—or those same god-scraps had brought the shining boy to me, helped him save my scrawny eleven-year-old self, and then torn him away from me before I could even learn his name.
Raging at dead gods about the mystery of my strange childhood savior was far less dangerous than allowing myself to rage at them for the other thing, the unnameable thing in the shape of my mother.
My gorgeous mother with cornflower-blue eyes, hands rough from gardening, and a crease of hidden laughter carved into the left corner of her crooked mouth.
My mother, who had dressed our house in vines not once but twice—once just after she married my father, then again after the fire that had nearly killed us all. The scent of her botanical magic was earthy, floral, loam and lilies and honeycomb and something else, something bright and hot that I could never quite describe.
My mother, who had disappeared one night without explanation or apology, leaving me to pick up the pieces of our shattered household. I was the only one capable of setting aside my grief to do what was necessary, to keep the estate running, to keep Father from destroying himself. Mother would have known that, and she left anyway.
That rage was one I kept buried deep, even on my quiet morning walks. If I let it rise, it would destroy me, and my family could not afford my destruction.
I paused at the turn in the hallway, a staircase before me leading back to the ground floor and the start of my day. I closed my eyes once more, holding on to the memory of the shining boy leaning over me in the wet grass—the warm shield of his body protecting me from the fire’s glare, how bravely he’d led me through the flames. I ached with a pain I refused to name. I held myself very still and remembered the rasp of his voice.
The lump in my throat, the ache in my chest, the longing I felt pulling at my fingers, as if I could reach out across the years and touch his hand again. Would this feeling of loss and heartbreak, this memory burning forever in my heart, never fade and leave me in peace?
Privately, shamefully, I hoped it never would.
I opened my eyes. The creeping pale sun had reached my toes. It was time to get to work.
I passed the porters standing guard at the front doors, ready to be relieved by the next shift. Tomas, Treska—I told them good morning and made myself smile. A grand, gilt-framed mirror hung on the nearby wall; I ignored it. Mirrors were not my friends. If I looked into this one, I knew what I would see: a skinny, pale woman with golden-brown hair in a severe braid, half-moon shadows under angry brown eyes, dull skin because it had been some time since Gemma had forced me to sit with her stylist, lips cracked because I bit them when I was thinking or worried, and I was always thinking or worried. Whenever I glanced at a mirror or caught my reflection in a window, I looked tired and irritated, because that’s what I was. Tired and irritated always, and longing to sleep, and unable to sleep.
So, there was no need to look at the mirror.
Quick footsteps behind me, scurrying across the entrance hall, alerted me to Emry, our newest housemaid, who by the look of things—copper pail of firewood in her hands, clean rag over her shoulder—hadn’t yet made it to my bedroom to start the morning fire. She caught me glancing back at her and ground to a halt, eyes wide with panic.
“My lady, good morning,” she said breathlessly, with a hurried curtsy. “And my apologies, I overslept the tiniest bit and—”
“Not to worry, Emry,” I told her, impressed by how warm and kind my voice sounded when in fact I felt the opposite. “We all oversleep sometimes.” Except I never did. “I won’t be back upstairs for hours anyway. You can skip my room today.”
She curtsied again, gratefully, her eyes shining. She mumbled a thank-you, and I managed to smile at her again, though it dropped as soon as I stepped outside. Truly, I didn’t care about the fire, and I wasn’t the slightest bit angry at her. In fact I was glad for her, and envious. I wished my busy mind allowed me to oversleep.
Then, inevitably, as I strode across the pebbled drive, nodding and smiling at every groundskeeper already hard at work on the landscaping, I thought of another person who found it easy to sleep: my youngest sister, Gemma. She wouldn’t wake for hours, and when she did, it would be to a warm hearth, full sunlight pouring through the windows, and her maid, Lilianne, coming in cheerfully with a hot breakfast. By then, I would have already finished my morning meeting with Byrn, our head groom, confirmed tonight’s supper menu with Mrs. Rathmont, and been halfway through my walk to the tenant farms at the border of our estate.
I knew I shouldn’t mind her sleeping in as much as I did. Her lover, Talan, who lived in hiding for his own safety and ours, had come and gone only the day before yesterday, a whirlwind visit that I knew very well was agony for both of them. It had broken my heart to hear her crying after he’d left, though she wouldn’t let anyone comfort her, instead shutting herself away in her rooms with only her dog, Una, for company. A few weeks past, Gemma had been the one to break the ytheliad curse and rip the Three-Eyed Crown from Talan’s head, all while fighting Kilraith’s brutal assault. We had all helped her—Mara, the Bask siblings, and I—but Gemma had borne the brunt of it and now sported the glittering scars on her hand to prove it. She deserved some rest. I knew I shouldn’t begrudge her that.
And yet, I couldn’t help but burn. Resentment squeezed my chest into a fist. I wanted to punch something, but I didn’t know how to punch things, and I didn’t particularly relish the idea of a broken hand, though the thought was tempting. If I had a broken hand, I could lie in bed and heal. Someone else would have to take over my duties.
An absurd fantasy. Gemma couldn’t spend all day traipsing about our magic-drenched estate without getting at least a little sick—another thing it was unfair of me to resent her for, especially since she never dared complain about it—and Father…well. Father was another problem entirely.
I turned off the drive and onto the groomed path that led to the stables. Only there did I stop under the guise of adjusting my bootlaces. I needed to wrangle my thoughts into a calmer state. If I started thinking about Father, about the Basks, about punching things and the Three-Eyed Crown and Kilraith—whatever he was, wherever he’d gone—I would never get anything done. I didn’t have the luxury of indulging in fear, in anger, in envy. I felt a twinge of love for my sister Mara, who lived far to the north at the Middlemist. As part of the Order of the Rose, she guarded us all against the Old Country and its ancient, wild magic. Mara would understand, if I ever confessed any of this to her; Mara knew what it meant to abandon emotions in favor of duty.
When I stood, my mind was quieter. The morning air held a welcome, bracing bite. It was early autumn; soon the sunlight would grow scarcer. I could already feel the weight of that bearing down on me, the certainty of darkness. I despised the fall and winter months, everything gray and dreary and draped in shadows, each day harder to greet than the last.
Osmund had followed me outside. A rarity—he was solidly a creature of the indoors. But there he was, sitting calmly in the dirt beside my feet, looking up at me with this keen light in his yellow eyes, as if he could hear everything I was thinking and found it all rather pathetic. He let out a grumpy, muted meow. Why had I stopped moving? There was work to be done.
He was right.
There was always work to be done.
***
At midday, I returned home from my morning errands to sit for a few minutes and eat lunch—with Father, I hoped, though recently I ate in our family’s private dining room alone more often than not, which normally would have been a small blessing. Quiet moments, for me, were rare; I hungered for them.
But Father had been strange of late. Evasive, taciturn. Even short with me, which was rarely the case. I was his favorite daughter, a fact I privately relished.
That afternoon, Father was nowhere to be found. The morning room was empty; the door to his private study upstairs stood open, hiding nothing. And yet I’d seen unfamiliar horses in the stables that morning while meeting with Byrn, and I could have sworn I heard carriage wheels turning on the drive while in the kitchens with Mrs. Rathmont.
As I settled uneasily at the dining room table and opened my notebook to look over the day’s remaining tasks, Gilroy, our butler, glided into the room carrying a silver platter of sandwiches.
“Good afternoon, my lady,” he said with a little bow. “Cucumber and tomato sandwiches, my lady, and the morning post, which came late, I’m sorry to say. Would you prefer lemonade or mint tea with your lunch?”
Immediately, my mind cleared and my heart leaped into my throat.
The morning post.
“Lemonade, please, Gilroy,” I said, barely restraining myself from snatching the stack of letters right out of his hand. Quickly, I sorted through them. An alarmingly thick envelope from our cousin Delia, an Anointed silvertongue who lived on the southern coast and never tired of the sound of her own voice. A booklet of advertisements for various shops in Derryndell, Tullacross, and Summer’s Amble, the nearest settlements of note. Notices of payments owed to Mrs. Rathmont’s favorite grocer, Father’s tailor, the elemental carpenter who repaired our formal four-horse coach…
Then, at the bottom, two more letters. One bore the rather severe, slanted penmanship with which I had unfortunately grown familiar over the past weeks. It belonged to Ryder Bask, talented Anointed wilder and insufferable ass, son of Lord Alaster Bask. The Basks had for years been my family’s greatest enemies, and now? In the wake of everything we had done in the Old Country? After freeing Talan from the curse that bound him to the creature Kilraith, thereby eliminating the evil force behind our families’ long feud?
I shoved the letter into my coat pocket. I couldn’t handle a missive from Ryder Bask at the moment. The contents would no doubt give me a raging headache: yet another report about increased sightings of Old Country beasts in the northern Mistlands, or an obviously irritated request for us to finally allow him and his horrid sister to visit, or some finicky detail about the speech we were all meant to give at the upcoming royal ball. A speech commemorating a new era of peace between the continent’s two most powerful families.
Peace. The word sat askance in my mind. Gilroy had gone to the sideboard, his back to me, so I allowed myself to make a quick ugly face at my plate.
Then I ripped open the other letter, the one sealed with a red wax insignia in the shape of a rose. When I tore open the seal, a hot pane of magic cracked open at my touch, allowing me in with a slight shock to my fingertips. A bit of spellwork, no doubt implemented by one of the Order’s beguilers to prevent tampering.
Dearest sisters , read the letter in Mara’s plain, efficient handwriting, I miss you both terribly and wish I was writing with better news…
I pushed my chair back hard and jumped to my feet just as Gilroy approached the table with my glass of lemonade. I knocked into him, sloshing the drink all over his front. He let out a little grunt, and his bushy black eyebrows shot up in dismay, but then I turned to him, holding the letter to my chest like the precious thing it was, and breathed, “It’s from Mara.”
His face brightened at once, the spilled lemonade forgotten. “Go, my lady,” he said, shooing me away with one stained white glove. “I believe Lady Gemma is in the library.”
I beamed at him and hurried out of the room, but before I could get even halfway across the entrance hall’s gleaming parquet floor, the sound of murmured voices made me turn.
Father was emerging from the corridor on the other side of the hall, accompanied by two people I didn’t know: a lean woman with dark brown skin who wore a smart white gown and matching jacket, and a ruddy-faced man, clean shaven, auburn hair curling at his collar. His body sat awkwardly in a brown suit with a dark blue waistcoat, as if he had never worn such garments before. They came out onto the entrance hall floor in pieces: a gloved hand, a polished boot, a crisp hem. Shadows snapped around their bodies, and the air near them wavered as if turned liquid with heat. The sour tang of magic filled the room, making my bile rise and my stomach drop.
It was no wonder I’d not been able to find Father upon returning to the house. He’d made sure I couldn’t, that no one could, shutting himself and his companions away behind some sort of spell that hid their voices, their very presence.
Father was no beguiler, deft with spellwork; he was a sentinel, Anointed by the gods with extraordinary strength and speed, unthinkable prowess in combat. One of his guests must have been a beguiler, then, though I couldn’t tell which one simply by looking at them. I looked at their faces for a long moment, trying to make sense of it. I didn’t know them; how did I not know them? I knew every one of Father’s guests, all his friends and enemies, every merchant whose goods he preferred and why.
What was he doing meeting with some beguiler I didn’t know?
I hid Mara’s letter in my coat pocket, lifted my chin, and strode across the entrance hall to meet them with what I hoped was some kind of smile on my face.
“There you are, Father,” I said brightly. “I didn’t realize we were entertaining guests today. I’ll inform Mrs. Rathmont at once so she can adjust our supper menu.”
Father smiled fondly at me, as if I were silly for talking about such things as menus. “No need, dear heart,” he said, kissing my cheek. “My friends were just leaving.”
I glanced over his shoulder at his friends , these strangers whose stony expressions chilled me to the bone. But their gall brought me courage; this was my house, not theirs.
“I’m terribly sorry to interrupt, but I really must speak with my father for a moment,” I said.
I put a firm hand on Father’s arm and guided him across the hall into one of the adjacent anterooms, where the walls were sky-blue velvet and the ceiling was covered in Mother’s ivy vines.
“Who are those people?” I demanded in a whisper.
Father looked at me hard and said nothing. The quiet, cold patience of his gaze made something queasy unfurl in my stomach, but he wouldn’t cow me as easily as that.
“I don’t know them,” I went on. “Who are they?”
“Is it a requirement that I introduce to you everyone I bring into my own home?” he said smoothly.
It was meant to make me feel stupid and childish, the sort of question he might have launched at Gemma to discourage her from meddling, but never at me. I’d always been the one to meddle alongside him. I had known the truth of things long before Gemma had figured it out: that the demon who held our family under his control was real, that the path to his lair lay inside the old oak by the fountain, and that there were eighteen greenways scattered across our estate of which Gemma still remained unaware.
And now my father was looking at me as if none of that was true, as if every confidence we’d shared, every worry he’d confessed to me, was some figment of a needy daughter’s imagination.
“Yes, it is a requirement,” I replied, unflinching, “because I live here too, and I oversee the daily workings of our house, and I’m not accustomed to having strangers roaming about.”
“They were hardly roaming. They were with me.”
“Discussing what?”
Father’s brow creased. “Really, Farrin, this is tiresome. If I wanted to tell you, I would tell you. Leave me be.”
He stepped past me, but I hurried to block his path. I grabbed his sleeve and lowered my voice, trying not to quail at the furious look on his face. Only twice before had my father looked at me this way. Once was several weeks ago on the far side of the oak’s hidden greenway, right before he had gone to meet with the demon. The other time was when we’d returned home from Rosewarren, still healing from our trip to the Old Country, and had told Father everything: the demon who had kept us fighting the Basks was Talan, and Talan was now free from his cruel master, Kilraith, and Gemma and Talan were in love, and there was no further need for war. Kilraith was hurt and in hiding somewhere. We could call a truce with the Basks. We could have peace.
And now Father looked at me with seething fury for only the third time in my life. An oil painting of his father’s father sat proudly over his shoulder, glaring down at me. Both pairs of eyes, flinty and bright, belonged to sentinels.
I did flinch then. I nearly stepped away from him. For a moment I thought he might strike me, which he had never done before. He’d never even come close. But I sensed the sentinel violence coiling tightly within him. My body’s instincts came alive, warning me to run.
Instead I stood firm, terrible scenarios piling high in my mind.
“Tell me you aren’t planning something for the queen’s ball,” I said quietly. “Promise me you’ll do nothing.”
“Do nothing?” The corner of his mouth went up. He let out a soft puff of laughter. “No, Farrin, that’s your special talent. You do nothing. Gemma does nothing. I act.”
“Father, the war is over. The Basks—”
“The Basks are still themselves,” he spat, shaking off my hand. “That has not changed, and it never will.” Then his gaze fell to my coat pocket. I glanced down, saw the corner of Ryder’s unopened letter poking out.
My heart sank.
Father’s mouth thinned. “Speaking of,” he said very quietly, “is that from him? The Bask boy?”
I hated many things about this conversation, none more so than the fact that I had to speak up in defense of a man I despised. Never mind that he’d fought for all of us in the Old Country as fiercely as if we were his own family. He was still a Bask, and I didn’t have to like him. I simply had to not kill him.
“His name is Ryder,” I said, “and he’s hardly a boy. He’s twenty-eight years old.”
Father raised an eyebrow. “He wants to come here, doesn’t he? For a visit ? He’s still on about that?”
“I haven’t opened the letter yet.”
“You should burn it. It could contain some wicked spellwork. The ink could be poisoned.”
“It isn’t wartime, Father. Things have changed, and you know it. The queen’s ball—”
“The ball ,” he scoffed, and then, quick as lightning, he grabbed my wrist, held me fast. His grip was so ferocious that it shocked the breath out of me. The sentinel anger had awakened in him, gods-given magic that could help him tear a chasm through a battlefield, leaving ruin in his wake.
“No amount of balls, or polite invitations, or gifts sent as peace offerings, or even pretty, freed demons,” he said, deadly quiet, “will change the fact that those people are our enemies, and they will take any opportunity they can to hurt us.”
I shook my head, tried to protest, but he spoke over me, leaning close. There was a glint in his eyes, like sun flashing on a blade.
“I will not let my family be torn apart by the likes of them. Do you think the harmless tricks they’ve pulled these past few months have satisfied their need for vengeance?”
All at once I remembered that horrible moment at the queen’s midsummer ball. My long-lost mother, finally come back to us, had run to my father in the middle of that crowded room, weeping with joy, calling for my sisters and me. Their impossible reunion had cut me in two and left me standing there agape, frozen not with relief but with fury. Now she had come back to us. Now , after so much damage had been done.
But then the glamour had melted away, revealing Alastrina Bask—crowing, triumphant—and then Ryder Bask, her brother, had stormed through the scandalized crowd to attack my dumbfounded father, to kick and punch him again and again.
“Harmless tricks?” I gasped out, trying in vain to tear away from Father’s grip. “You’re lying. I saw your face that night. You looked like you’d been shot. In fact, I think you would have preferred that.”
He kept on, ignoring me. “Since the curse your mother and I engineered ended, and the forest trapping the Basks at Ravenswood fell, I’ve been waiting for them to come at us again— really come at us, like they did all those years ago. The fire , Farrin.” He shook his head, and now I saw that the glint in his eyes was angry tears, threatening to spill. “Two daughters safe, one trapped in a house set aflame. No one could find you. And the smell of whatever spellwork they’d used to start the fire…bitter, terrible, the sear of poison laced with the stench of rot. I smell it every night in my dreams. Searching the grounds for you while the flames roared on, finding your body at last, smeared with smoke, limp in the grass… No, I will not endure another moment like that. I will not. ”
I couldn’t bear the pain any longer. The bones in my wrist felt like they would snap. “Right now, the greatest danger to all of us is you ,” I said with a little sob. “You’re hurting me.”
He froze, then looked down at my wrist and let out a soft cry. He released me at once, stumbling away from me. His boot caught on the tasseled rug, and he fell back, knocking against a cushioned bench and then falling hard to the floor.
Without thinking, I went to him, reaching for him with my unhurt arm.
He waved me off, shrinking into himself. A horrible sight, my tall, hale father sitting slumped on the floor. He looked up at me, tears on his cheeks, his face suddenly haggard. I couldn’t move; I was mortified.
“Farrin,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. Gods. My darling girl, I’m so, so sorry…I don’t know what…”
He fell silent, ran a shaking hand through his hair. He shut his eyes tight, then spat out, his voice thick and shaky, “Damn this magic. Sometimes I feel like it’s punishing me. It’s as though I don’t use it enough for its natural purpose—not enough for its liking, anyway. It gets coiled up tight inside me and snaps loose whenever it wants, like some sort of wild animal. If only I could serve the Mist, as Mara does. Fight a few dozen Olden monsters every month. I’d be docile as a kitten then.” He laughed a little, scrubbed a hand across his beard, and then looked up at me. His gaze fell to my wrist. “Farrin, Farrin.” He shut his eyes once more, as if the sight of me pained him. “I’m so sorry. I can’t be sorry enough, for so many things.”
There was much to address in that little speech of his, so much that I felt the words nearly burst from my chest in outrage, but now was not the time. Instead I knelt beside him and touched his arm. He flinched, but I didn’t budge.
“This is good , Father,” I told him. “Peace is good . I know it feels like the opposite, but that’s only because it’s new. Without this feud in our lives, we can become ourselves again. We can simply be a family. We don’t have to keep secrets from Gemma. We don’t have to plot and scheme, or wait for curses to break, or worry that the allies of our enemy might attack us in their stead. And as far as a healthy use of your sentinel magic is concerned,” I added, trying to infuse my voice with a little cheer, “I’m quite sure the Warden would welcome your presence at the Mist. Perhaps training new recruits?”
He shot a grim smile at me. “New recruits? You mean gangly little brats with no awareness of their bodies whatsoever?”
That stung. I remembered the day the Warden had taken Mara from us all too well.
I sat back on my heels. “Mara was one of those gangly little brats, if you’ll recall. And she could knock you on your ass even then.”
Father’s face fell once more—ashamed, I hoped, of his callous remark. Of course, I was used to his thoughtlessness and had been for years. When I was younger, I used to imagine that Mother had literally carved the best bits out of our father to take with her when she left.
Now, at twenty-four, I couldn’t be sure that my childhood theory was entirely wrong.
“Of course,” Father said softly. “But Mara is special.”
She was, even more so than he knew. I thought of how powerful she’d been in the Old Country, every limb a weapon, her strength astonishing. Without her holding on to us in the attic playroom of that evil house, I wasn’t sure we could have saved Talan. I wasn’t sure we could have saved ourselves.
A little shiver went through me as I remembered the melody I had sung that night, its notes raw in my throat as I’d fought to be heard over the sound of Talan’s agonized howls. The horrible smack of Gemma’s body once she’d pulled the crown from Talan’s head and had gone flying back into the wall. Ryder, scooping her up into his arms, roaring at me to keep singing as we’d all fled.
I swallowed down those memories and said briskly, “And every little Rose is someone else’s Mara, so think about that next time before you pass judgment on other people’s children.”
“Of course,” he said quietly, looking thoroughly abashed, which gratified me. I helped him stand, trying not to think too hard about what an old man he seemed in that moment. In the wake of a rush of sentinel magic, especially one that came unbidden, Father sometimes experienced a sudden loss of strength, as if whole years had been sucked out of him. A common enough side effect of magic when it was used improperly, but not one I’d often seen Father endure over the years. He was Anointed. His ancestors had been chosen by the gods themselves to receive a piece of their magic.
And yet here he was, leaning against me as if his legs might fail him, while my wrist throbbed with the echo of his grip.
As I helped him settle on the bench, a horrible tenderness overtook me at the sight of him looking so vulnerable, and yet I was so furious with him, and frightened of him, and for him, and for us. Who were those people waiting in the entrance hall? What had they all been discussing? What would the days to come bring, and what would I have to protect us against?
Could two families raised to hate each other ever truly embrace peace?
“I love you, Father,” I whispered, and it was true, wrenchingly so. But there were too many questions in my mind all clamoring for attention, and my throat was aching with sadness, and I was angry and tired as ever, and I suddenly couldn’t bear to be near him any longer. I had to hope that our conversation had sobered him, that his memory of hurting me would protect us for a time.
What a horrible thing to hope for.
I left him sitting there and went to find my sister. We would read Mara’s note together, and I would try to forget that look of rage Father had given me for speaking favorably of peace. I would try to forget how beneath his fury had flashed something even worse.
Disappointment.