The Prince of Death and the Traitor's Daughter

Chapter One - From Ash

CHAPTER ONE

From Ash

SCREAMS ECHOED THROUGH the house as Rosamund turned the page of the book she was pretending to read.

Her position in the library had not been by accident.

Her sister’s room was on the far side of the crumbling manor and so it would take her Aunt Beatrice longer to barrel down the dusty corridors to find her, giving Evelyne more time.

The corridors were waking up, and there was the sudden thump of footsteps on the oak floors above her.

Rosamund heard her aunt call out to the few remaining servants to sound the alarm and rally to the foyer.

The doors to the library burst open as her squat aunt bumbled into the room in her brown velvet dressing gown, a Wytchfyre lamp in her hand, “Evelyne!”

Rosamund looked up from her book, snapping it shut and jumping to her feet, “What’s wrong?”

“Evelyne is missing,” cried Aunt Beatrice as she peered around the stacks of bookshelves, as if Rosamund’s sister might be hiding somewhere between the old tomes.

“What?” gasped Rosamund, resisting the urge to lift a hand to her mouth.

She was lucky that her aunt was preoccupied with her missing sister, any other day she would have seen right through Rosamund’s feigned surprise.

Don’t overdo it…

“Gone! Missing! Departed!” her aunt cried, “Absconded.”

Rosamund was used to her aunt’s theatrics; however, she found herself having to bite down on her bottom lip to keep from laughing. It likely would have come out hysterical in any case. There was little to find amusing in their situation.

“Perhaps she’s gone for a walk,” Rosamund suggested calmly as she crossed to where her aunt was searching the stacks, “to clear her head before today.”

“Clear her head? Clear her head?!” shrieked aunt Beatrice, “She knows what’s at stake with this betrothal. She knows what it means for this family. This ceremony must happen. There is no time for clearing her head!”

Before Aunt Beatrice could resume her assault on the bookcase Rosamund gently took her hand, “Aunt Cecily will know what to do.”

Aunt Beatrice nodded and linked her arm through Rosamund’s.

Kilgavie Manor was awake now as the remaining servants scuttled down the halls in various states of undress, called to arms by Beatrice’s scream.

A more officious voice was yelling instructions down in the foyer; the stablemaster Ernst, one of the few that stayed on after the fall of House Valehart.

Many had been swept up in the ‘Cleansing Dawn’, but those that had survived had seen the writing on the wall for the Valeharts and made quick departures for other estates.

Rosamund did not begrudge or blame them. She knew all too well what transpired for families accused of treason against the King.

“You head to the grounds,” said Ernst, pointing to the young boy that doubled as the kitchen and boot boy, “you take one of the horses and go down the south road, I’ll take the north,” the young woman who worked in the kitchen nodded eagerly, already pulling on her gloves, “ride to the first stopping point and ask for any news.”

“Do be careful,” implored Beatrice as she and Rosamund passed by, “there’s a storm out there, the roads will be dangerous. Oh Evelyne!” she bit the nails on her free hand, “I do hope she is safe. Find her, please!”

Ernst nodded to her, “We will ma’am.”

As they left, a sharp wind blew in and Rosamund rushed forward to close the doors. She looked out at the long path that led to the thick dark marshlands. Even during the day, the landscape was bleak, a far cry from the lush green fields of her youth at Hartwood House.

Rolling green grounds had surrounded the blonde sandstone mansion, with wide arched windows glazed in the claret and cobalt of her house colours.

Some with tales of the goddess, others with the stories her father would tell her and her siblings.

Light filled every part of that household, the mirrors reflecting it even to the darkest corners of the room.

Magic coursed through every room; the dancing lights bouncing around the corridors in the evening, the dinner trays were carried by vines, and her father would animate hedge people, to her and her siblings’ delight.

All of that was gone, taken by the King. Gone was the duchy of the Emerald Marches, subsumed into the Crownlands, whilst Rosamund and her sister were sent to Kilgavie to live with their recently widowed aunts. She had exchanged the sparkling halls of her home for the damp rooms of Kilgavie Manor.

Rosamund did not know who the manor had belonged to, but the owner had long since allowed it to fall into disrepair.

With all the Valehart lands seized by the crown, and the family’s exile from the Emerald Marches, it was the only home open to them.

The grey stone building was crumbling. The roof, fixed with thatch, often leaked, causing mould to spread quickly from room to room.

In summer it held in the heat, a stinking oven.

In winter, there was ice on the inside of her window.

The curtains had done little to keep out the chill, threadbare as they were.

Most worryingly, every so often a step on the many stairs would belly in and on more than one occasion Rosamund had put her foot right through one.

Evelyne had wept the first week they had stayed there.

Rosamund would hold her in her arms until she fell asleep.

Later, when Evelyne finally slept, she would wander out to the surrounding marshes and scream where no one would hear her.

She screamed for her lost home, she screamed for her missing brothers, and she screamed for the father she had lost. That scream never left her, but she learned to keep it hidden from the rest of them.

Rosamund, instead, focused on her younger sister.

Especially when their mother had accepted the King’s offer to become a Sister of the Silver Eye, rather than endure exile with her daughters and Evelyne had had fallen deeper into despair.

She had clutched at Rosamund and said, “You’ll leave me, you’ll all leave me.”

“I’ll never leave you,” Rosamund had assured her sister, “never. I will always protect you.”

They had endured their exile with the aunts together. Until tonight.

Looking out at the dark marshes, Rosamund felt a stab of worry for her sister. She pushed it to the side. Evelyne would be safe. She had seen to that.

As the remaining servants lit the wall mounted Wytchfyre lamps, Rosamund and Beatrice proceeded to Evelyne’s room.

Like hers, it was a large wood panelled room, empty of belongings even before her sister had packed her satchel.

The expansiveness of the room served only to highlight how little they had been able to bring with them from Hartwood.

A large wooden wardrobe, empty except for a beautiful red and black velvet dress with swooping sheer sleeves and silver trim.

A four-poster bed that had long since lost its curtains to be fuel for the fire, and a dresser that had recently been cleared of all its items.

Rosamund’s willowy aunt stood in the middle of the room in her mauve dressing gown; her long white hair braided to one side, leaning on her sleek black cane.

She assessed the room with her hawkish gaze, looking for any clue as to where Evelyne had gone.

Though, there was little mystery; the one window to the room had been slid up, and a waterfall of green vines travelled down from the window to the grounds below.

At her aunt’s raised eyebrow, Rosamund quickly schooled her expression back to one of concern, rather than the smug look she had given her handiwork.

“What a mess,” Aunt Cecily rasped as she looked at the window, stomping her cane down into the wooden floor, “foolish girl. She has jeopardised everything!”

“You never should have forced her into this,” said Rosamund quietly, though not quietly enough.

Aunt Cecily rounded on her, peering down at her along her hooked nose, “what do you know about this?”

“Nothing,” lied Rosamund, dropping her gaze to the ground, her hands clasped in front of her.

Her Aunt was not convinced, but returned to the window and muttered, “Where did these vines come from?”

Beatrice gasped and crossed to her sister, “A lover perhaps?”

“Don’t be ridiculous Bea,” snapped Aunt Cecily, “who would she have met out there that could do this?” she gestured to the vines, “No, no, this is something else.”

Rosamund cursed herself for not removing the vines as soon as her sister had reached the ground, but she had been so pleased with herself.

Father would have been proud.

He had risked everything to teach her. Her brothers had been decent mages but her father had become frustrated in their lessons.

Rosamund still remembered, after one particular lesson, he had wandered out to the grounds to find his eldest daughter mimicking the same gestures and words he had been teaching his sons.

She remembered the look of delight on his face when he saw the daisies around her rising up towards the sky.

She had used the same spell this evening, that same spell that could have had them both killed if anyone found out.

Evelyne had come to her in the same manner she always did when she knew she was in trouble; stealing into Rosamund’s bed in the dead of night, her face wet with tears, she had clung to her sister, “I can’t do it Rose; I can’t marry him.”

“We’ll speak to the aunts-” Rosamund had started to say when her sister interrupted her.

“They won’t listen!”

“Maybe it won’t be so bad Evie,” Rosamund said, attempting a different tact, though her heart was not in it. Even she, exiled as they were from court, had heard about the reputation of the Seventh Prince of Valdyr.

Evelyne looked up at her, brow furrowed, her mouth twisted into the shape of disgust, “Rose, he’s a monster. They say he tortures his own people, keeps them behind a wall, wasting away in a land where nothing grows, he-”