The Crown of Moonlight (The Five Crowns #1)

Chapter 1

Stranger in the Wood

Flora

W

ar is never glorious. That’s a lesson we women learn at our mothers’ knees. Apart from those closest to the royals, no human in Alba Scoria will benefit from this battle for a throne the Sun King stole from us and gods that were never ours.

I was as happy as anyone when another of the Everfolk came through the Veil from Tirnaeve and ended four centuries of the Sun King’s tyranny. But the Raven Queen

has proven herself more cruel than any of us imagined, and I’ve no doubt the so-called king challenging her for the throne would be no better than his murderous father.

Battle by battle, the destruction marches towards our doorstep, and I’m preparing in every way I can: storing food for a siege, making candles, and preparing medicines to tend the injured.

With my father and brothers dead and our warriors scattered, my position is tenuous at best. The Clan Council may never accept me as Chief, and even if they do, there’s no guarantee the Raven Queen will repeal the Sun King’s law that prohibits women from leading clans.

None of which changes my determination not to let Dunhaelic fall.

Like everyone else these days, I’m tired to my marrow and feel a noose getting ever tighter around our necks. These early-morning runs to exercise the stallions have become my only chance to clear my head.

Today, the cold bites deep. My fingers are numb holding the reins against Ari’s steaming neck.

The sun spills pink and crimson over the hilltops behind us, but ahead in the Sacred Wood, frost and gloom still linger beneath the mid-April canopy where the old military road climbs through the ancient trees.

I normally turn back at the edge of the Wood, but today I give in to a whisper of rebellion instead.

Urging the stallion faster, I lose myself in the sensations: the surge of his muscles, the chuff of his breath, the thunder of hooves on hard-packed earth.

Crouched low over Ari’s mane, the wind whips my face and billows my kilted skirt.

Faster and faster we run, until abruptly, Ari snorts and throws his head. His shoulder drops out from under me, and he turns to bolt back the way we came.

I fight to keep my seat and hold him back.

“Easy, lad. What is it?” I pull him in a circle, patting his neck as I force him forward again. He watches the slope on our right with his ears pinned back and his eyes rimmed white.

Nothing stirs around us. Nothing rustles.

Yet the stallion bucks and fishtails, jolting me against the pommel. Pain flashes white, and I circle him again, keeping him moving.

Then I realise that I’ve been slow to understand. It’s always hard for me to pinpoint the source of sound. My left ear is deaf, but I don’t need both ears to hear what isn’t there.

Silence coils around us. Gone is the usual dawn chorus of thrushes and blackbirds, whose morning calls can seem insistent enough to wake the dead. Gone, too, are the rustlings of squirrel and hunting cat, of marten and deer and capercaillie.

Something large must be hiding among the trees.

This is the perfect place for an ambush.

Centuries of wagon wheels and iron-shod horses have worn the road away, leaving steep banks of earth and roots on either side that cut off any escape.

The thick-trunked trees would give good cover for a highwayman or a deserter to lie in wait, but it could also be some of our own men returning.

I whistle the five notes of Dunhaelic’s signal call and wait.

No one answers.

Still, part of me clings to the hope that a few of our warriors might have survived the recent battle at Culodur. They could be weak. Wounded. Either way, I need to know.

Shifting Ari’s reins to one hand, I draw the dagger from my belt. My fighting skills are basic at best, but if all else fails, I have my one trick of illegal magic to help. The ember of power that lives inside me has burned low these past months, but with luck, it would be enough.

I kick Ari sharply. He rears in protest, then surges into a gallop. I run him ten yards, wheel him, and use his momentum to scramble up the bank.

Weaving through trees and low-growing brush, I search for intruders and follow a diagonal line towards the ridge to cut off anyone lurking near the road.

The haunting stillness follows us, and Ari’s footsteps rustling through the leaves and bracken sound impossibly loud.

Then twenty yards below the ridge, a gust of wind stirs up a strange, sweet scent.

Fingers of ice shiver along my back.

I’ve encountered this stench before—only once, but some memories burn themselves into your soul and refuse to fade. The smell hurls me back four months into the landscape of my nightmares.

I’m walking among the bloated dead on the battlefield where I went to retrieve the bodies of my father and oldest brother.

Searching each corpse for familiar features, I stumble over the severed head of a Grey—its bleached irises staring sightlessly, ash-coloured skin stretched over features twisted by the queen’s corrupted magic.

I back away in horror and fall onto its headless body. The sweet stench is everywhere. I lurch to my feet and brush at the crust of dried blood clinging to my hands, my skirts, my bodice—wherever I touched the Grey’s stained uniform and scarlet cloak.

The memory chokes my lungs. Gulping deep breaths, I blink away the tears that blur my eyes.

Today, I will not cry.

My tension, on top of the smell of blood, only adds to Ari’s nerves. He plants his legs and refuses to go farther.

“Easy, my handsome,” I whisper. “We can both be brave.”

If there’s a Grey bleeding in the Wood, I need to know. I can’t risk having one of the Raven Queen’s abominations follow me back to Dunhaelic Keep.

Ari rears as I kick him forward. His front legs thrash the air. Then his hind legs skid on the incline, and I jump out of the saddle to keep him from going over backwards.

Clinging to the reins, I pull his head down and wait until he steadies. His heart pounds so hard that it thuds against my shoulder.

I coax him forward. A dozen yards below the ridge, we edge around a thicket of dog rose blocking our path, and Ari snorts and stops. Head low and ears pricked, he stares fixedly at something on the ground ahead.

The trees have thinned to scattered birches and wind-gnarled pines.

Light slants through them, revealing a man lying flat on his back.

A few yards beyond that, a second man lies face down, tied across the saddle of a dappled mare who’s collapsed onto her side.

The horse’s ears twitch, but she doesn’t raise her head.

Neither man is moving.

They aren’t Greys—they don’t have the pale skin or deformed limbs of the Raven Queen’s monsters.

But they aren’t human, either. Our mortal magic was outlawed after the Sun King put the last of the Cailleach Queens and most of my family to death.

Where it survives, as mine has, it’s kept strictly secret, and what little remains in my blood doesn’t carry nearly the strength that charges the air around these men.

They’ve done their best to look ordinary, I’ll give them that, going so far as to wear coats and breeches like tradesmen from the south instead of their own clothes or the kilted plaids our Highland warriors wear.

Still, even if I couldn’t feel their magic, the swords buckled at their belts would give them away.

Not to mention the wounds that must have caused their deaths.

I can’t see where the man on the horse is injured, but he’s bled enough to leave a purple-brown crust dried along the horse’s withers, belly, and foreleg.

More blood has stained the coat and shirt front of the man lying stretched out on the ground.

My pulse kicks into a run as I realise the bodies have been arranged. Someone arranged them. The man on the horse is tied to the saddle, but the other has been positioned respectfully, like a corpse in a coffin, with his hands folded across his chest.

Someone else was here—may still be here.

The thought brings on an eerie sense of being watched. Gooseskin prickles along my arms, and the sweat-slicked hilt of the dagger digs deeper into my palm.

I turn in a slow, wide circle, searching every shadow that shifts in the wind and each tree trunk thick enough to offer a place to hide. Nothing moves, and Ari’s attention stays fixed on the mare and the two dead bodies around her.

Eventually, my heartbeat eases. Inch by inch, I persuade Ari to move upwind until I find a sturdy tree where I can tie him. Then I creep back for a closer look. Ari whickers anxiously, pulling at his reins and pivoting to watch me.

The sweet smell and the warmth of magic thicken as I approach the bodies. As much as my brain wants to reject it, there is really only one conclusion.

The dead men have to be Everfolk, although that’s a contradiction in itself.

The immortals from the world beyond the Veil can only be killed by removing their heads or piercing their hearts with celestial steel—an instant death that leaves no time for their magic to start to heal them.

These men still have their heads, and if their hearts were pierced, then they must have been here in the Sacred Wood when they were killed. That is a problem for many reasons.

In the 1,600-odd years since the doorways through the Veil were sealed, only twelve Evers have crossed through from Tirnaeve to Alba Scoria: the Sun King who murdered our last mortal queen, the Raven Queen who killed the Sun King almost a year ago, and the rebel king and his Riders who arrived shortly after to challenge her for the crown.

If these dead Evers were among the rebel king’s close companions, the Sun King’s so-called heir will demand revenge.

Snakes of fear coil around my heart as I think it through. Because the king’s wrath isn’t the only danger. If the queen discovers Riders here, she’ll take it as proof that I’ve been sheltering her enemies.