Bloodgrove

Chapter 1

It hardly surprised Will that the train ticket to Bloodgrove bore a bloody fingerprint.

Last night, when doubts about his plan had troubled him, he had lifted the card to his mouth, cautiously put out his tongue, and licked the stain.

People said there were mages in Bloodgrove who could read any person’s identity from only a few drops of blood.

Will had tasted nothing but paper.

He quickly stuffed the ticket deep into his breast pocket.

Merely possessing it felt like forbidden magic.

He glanced over his shoulder, down the deserted platform, and froze.

The rush of commuters had long since passed, yet a group of men gathered on the opposite track.

His pulse quickened when he recognized the sharp cut of their uniforms. The letter and ticket burned against his chest like hot coals.

Drawing a deep breath, he forced himself to calm. The city watch was not here for him—he was leaving willingly. Of his own accord, he had accepted the commission as an interior designer in a city shrouded in myth.

Only then did he notice the golden insignia on their shoulders and the ceremonial rapiers at their hips, gleaming in the autumn morning sun. The young officers’ cheerful laughter drifted to him.

Will sighed and shook the tension from his shoulders.

Why did it feel so much like fleeing? The fact that everything he owned was crammed into the five suitcases at his feet did little to help, nor did the knowledge that he had sold half his clothes and sample books. There were still pieces he mourned.

“Sir, are you sure this is the right place?” The luggage boy tugged idly at his knitted cap. He was still rather small for fourteen, his thin arms gangling.

Will suppressed the urge to take out the ticket again. “I’ll give you another shilling if you wait,” he offered.

The boy held out his hand.

A piercing squeal filled the station hall. The rails trembled, and the gravel danced. Black smoke rose beneath the high dome as a procession of dark carriages pounded, clattered, and groaned along the platform, until at last the train shuddered to a halt before them.

The luggage boy and a railway attendant who had hurried over for the arrival both gave Will uneasy looks, as though they meant to ask him once more: Are you sure?

Will swallowed. The ground still vibrated beneath his feet.

Even on the other platforms, people had stopped. A mother drew her children against her wide skirts, and the young officers reached for their rapiers as though they could do anything against the monster of steel and coal smoke.

The commotion faded. The puffing locomotive slowly settled.

Only then did Will realize that he had been holding his breath, waiting to see who might disembark.

The train ran only once a month between the Capitol and the secluded city-state of Bloodgrove.

Whenever its black clouds rose above the capital’s viaducts, people whispered.

It was a relic from another age, nothing like the advanced blue-and-gold trains of the Capitol and their white steam.

No one stepped off.

“Young sir…” The railway attendant twisted his mustache and nodded toward the passenger carriage.

With an air of confidence he did not feel, Will swept his long, silver-white hair over his shoulder and took a step toward the train. Perhaps it simply wasn’t a busy day for travel. Perhaps more passengers were still coming.

The luggage boy pushed the cart behind him, though he already looked as if he regretted accepting the job.

At least they had that in common, Will thought.

Just as he reached for the door, it swung open, and from the darkness of the carriage a gaunt face stared back at him, its cheeks hollow and sunken. The cap of a conductor’s livery sat upon strawy hair.

A skeletal hand shot out, palm open and waiting.

“The ticket,” the boy whispered, half-hidden behind Will.

Will quickly obeyed. For days, he had run his fingers along the card’s punched edges, committing the dark-red lettering and the bloody fingerprint above the cross to memory.

Though he was the last person entitled to doubt magic, he still found blood-magic difficult to believe in. It sounded suspiciously like propaganda and fairy tales, much like all the other horrors people told one another about mysterious Bloodgrove.

Even so, he felt a flicker of disappointment when the conductor tore the ticket and handed back the unstained remainder.

With a suitcase in each hand and his leather bag clamped beneath one arm, Will boarded and followed the conductor down the corridor to his compartment. Dark mahogany paneling covered every inch of the walls, polished and unmarked where luggage and boots would usually have left their scars.

“Your compartment, Mr. Frank,” the conductor said, stepping aside.

Will frowned as he squeezed past him. Something about the man’s stiff movements and empty eyes felt wrong.

The compartment was spacious, its seats upholstered in dark-red velvet. Here too, the wooden paneling gleamed in the sunlight filtering weakly through the soot-stained windows. As Will ran his fingers over the inlays, he was struck again by how dated every small detail was.

His gaze drifted through the window to the white train glittering in the sun beyond. Clean, straight lines, gentle curves, broad sky-blue windows framed in golden trim—as though it were the direct opposite of the train around him.

That was progress—leaving the machinations of the old world behind, outlawing magic, and building a future for everyone. Anyone could study at the Academy. Anyone could become part of this new, safe world. Every resident of the Capitol helped raise the country out of the shadow of ancient customs.

Apparently, that new wind had never reached Bloodgrove.

“We are expecting one more passenger. Our departure will be slightly delayed,” the conductor said, his voice as colorless as his eyes, skin, and hair.

Only then did Will notice that the luggage boy had not followed him aboard. Irritated, he returned to the doorway and found the child shifting from one foot to the other outside.

“That wasn’t our agreement.”

“Sir, I don’t want the curse to catch me.”

“There is no curse,” Will said, taking two more suitcases. Progress had banished curses and evil omens as well. “When I return in four months, I’ll prove to you there are no monsters or curses.”

The child nodded, wide-eyed, and handed him the final suitcase. “I’ll be here.”

Will sighed again. Resignation was the last refuge left to him, and sighing had long since replaced his laughter. He flicked another coin toward the luggage boy, who caught it out of the air and bolted without a final glance.

Back in his compartment, Will sank onto the bench, stirring the smell of dust. Everything was clean, yet there came a point when no amount of care could hide the passage of time.

The locomotive whistled. A shudder ran through the train, and black smoke swallowed the platform. Will moved toward the window and pushed it open. So far, no one but him had boarded, and he couldn’t suppress his curiosity about the person with whom he would spend the next two days.

One final time, Will let his gaze travel over the platforms: the mother and her children beside a small food stall, the stationmaster, the distinguished young officers, and all the other onlookers between them.

They were all staring, and Will had to resist the urge to hide.

Before the train had even left the Capitol, everyone in high society would know that William Frank was traveling to Bloodgrove.

A shadow moved through the train’s cloud of steam, striding swiftly across the platform, one hand pulling a hat low over his face. Smoke caught in the long tails of a coat, and a walking stick flashed in the weak sunlight.

The next moment, the passenger had vanished. The door to first class slammed shut, and a whistle shrieked.

Pounding, whistling, and groaning, the train began to move.

Will closed the window and dropped back onto the bench. The man’s silhouette—tall and elegant—had burned itself into his retina.

The train left the station hall, and a view of the Capitol’s high-rises opened before him. Far below, the city streets glittered, while viaducts bearing trams and long-distance trains crossed their path. A zeppelin rose from a landing platform.

Gold, blue, and white. Sandstone and granite, copper and steel.

Statues of angels with six outstretched wings crowned the skyscrapers, as though they alone held the buildings upright.

For the past ten years, this had been the world Will moved through, the place he had called home.

He had been an oddity even here, but people did not spit on the ground to protect themselves from him, as they had in his parents’ fishing village.

Unconsciously, he toyed with a strand of his hip-length silver hair.

It slipped through his fingers, soft as silk, and he couldn’t bring himself to feel ashamed of it.

Progress had taken him in and given him a place as an interior designer at the Royal Academy.

Everything that had found no place in the little fishing village fit perfectly in the Capitol.

And yet he was fleeing.

Will blinked. Steam streaming past the window laid a milky film over the world, as though he were already no longer entirely part of the capital’s brilliance.

As he had so often in recent days, he drew the letter that had saved him from the inner pocket of his jacket.

Dear Mr. Frank,

Praise of your work as an interior designer has reached me—“the rising star of the Royal Academy.” I would like to invite you to Bloodgrove, so that you might work your wonders here as well. It is time for change.

His stomach tightened at the quotation from the article in A Lady’s Guide magazine that had launched him like a comet into the highest circles of the Capitol.

The interior designer who creates rooms for the soul.

For a year, he had danced through every ballroom in the Capitol while requests piled high on his desk. At the fashionable cafés, the people he had always wanted as friends had made room for him. With a mixture of envy and hunger, as he understood now, they had welcomed him into their circle.

No one at the Academy had wanted to work with him, but that had changed the moment they saw his final project, and the queen’s cousin hired him on the very day the exhibition opened.

His ascent had seemed inevitable.

But his comet had burned out and crashed onto the hard ground of reality.

A ballroom for the queen’s cousin could have become the cornerstone of his career.

But how could he, only twenty-six, have borne the weight of those expectations?

Even now, he could see the construction site at night, hear the echo of impatient voices asking how much longer it would take—and feel the desperation with which he had reached for the knife and called upon his magic.

That it had been his lover who betrayed him still hurt.

A year later, the headline from A Lady’s Guide sounded like nothing but mockery. Where he had once had a little toe, where the leather of his shoe now sagged empty, a dull ache pulsed.

Outside, the Capitol glided past.

Perhaps it was for the best that he was going to infamous Bloodgrove—the last refuge for people as corrupted as he was.

He should never have answered magic’s call, but how was anyone meant to resist its siren song? Even now, he thought he could taste salt on his tongue. Goosebumps crawled over his arms. His lover had suddenly been standing before him with the queen’s cousin, the guards’ rifles trained on Will.

To avoid a scandal and the charges that would follow, he fled the city.

Magic had been outlawed more than a century ago, though even then, hardly anyone had practiced it. By now, Will understood why—something degenerate clung to it, something that had stained his soul.

With another resigned sigh, he took out his notebook. But before he could escape into his drawings again, he unfolded the letter once more and returned the remainder of the train ticket to where he had found it.

The handwriting was elegant and sweeping, faintly playful in the loops and curves of the Fs and Ss, written almost carelessly across the heavy paper without the aid of guiding lines.

It is time for your light to illuminate Bloodgrove and usher in a new age.

My house has been in my family’s keeping for centuries, and now that I am head of it, I wish my vision to shape these ancient walls as well.

Tear down what has gathered dust. Cast aside what holds no value in a new world. You have free rein.

With sincere esteem,

Duchess Elodie Ormonde