This Will Be Interesting

Chapter 1

Galwell

Galwell felt grateful.

Very grateful. Common gratitude would not capture how he felt in the seat of honor, under the rapturous hush in the darkness of

one of the finest halls in Queendom, the heat of packed spectators perfectly fending off the cool of the mountainous city’s

evening.

Yes, Galwell felt very grateful watching himself die.

Not literally, he corrected himself. He was watching the actor portraying him die onstage.

Gratitude fit the moment, Galwell the Great concluded. The chance to attend a play premiere about your life and death? Assuredly

an opportunity for appreciation. Witnessing the performer exaggerating Galwell’s own death gasps and gurgles in front of an

audience of hundreds? How wonderful.

Galwell had become quite good at gratitude in the week since he was “brought back to life”—although from his perspective,

he never really died in the first place. Instead, his dear friend Beatrice had used time-walking magic no one knew she possessed

to rescue him from the moment of his killing. She had pulled him into the present, which was ten years in his future. Ten

years during which Mythria had grieved his loss, only to have him appear alive and well—and decidedly youthful—again.

Oh, it was all so confusing, and Galwell was just oh so grateful. Galwell the Great-ful.

Under the enchanted conjuration of a lightning-racked sky in the theater, Galwell the Great-ful focused on the scene.

This was, he felt, the best play he’d ever seen.

It was the only play he’d ever seen. Well, no—there was the performance his younger sister Elowen put on in the dining hall when she was seven, drawing inspiration from her favorite shadow plays.

Or rather, his formerly younger sister. Elowen was now older than him, just like the rest of his friends.

The women seated near him stifled sobs. Distracted, Galwell gazed out over the dark performance hall—the audience was weeping.

He turned to his friend Clare Grandhart to voice his bafflement. Clare, Galwell found, was wiping tears from his eyes.

Grandhart had passed the performance leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped in concentration. Galwell had seen

other men watch horseball this way, as if they were participants. As if their enthusiasm or judgment could vary the physical

outcomes unfolding in front of them—or, in the present case, the predetermined dramatic ending.

It could not, of course. Nonetheless, forward Clare leaned.

Gazing out over the hall of hundreds of Mythrians weeping in commiseration with the characters onstage, Galwell privately

wondered whether he was the only person who did not know how the performance made him feel.

To the crowd, this pantomime, written by one of Mythria’s greatest playwrights, was stirring up the grief they had felt for

years. To him, it was—

No. He wouldn’t let himself interrogate the feeling.

To entertain bitterness or envy for the version of himself dying onstage—the hero who achieved his purpose—to mourn himself the way everyone else mourned

him . . .

It wouldn’t be right.

Instead, Galwell the Great fixed his expression pleasantly, watching his dramatic personae perish.

The performer was passable, he found. He resembled Galwell well enough.

Flowing auburn wig. Strong, muscular shoulders.

His eyes were presumably spelled blue to match the uncommonly piercing shade of Galwell’s.

He was giving it his all, which was what mattered most, Galwell reasoned. Were Galwell himself ever to command the stage,

he would give the performance his all, as well.

It was enough for Galwell to deem him the best performer of himself he’d ever seen.

The man wailed. Galwell watched.

While he could not remember his own death, he expected it involved less weeping. At least he hoped it did.

Collapsing to his knees, the actor clutched the gaping wound that Todrick van Thorn, leader of the nefarious Fraternal Order,

had dealt. Imitation blood poured down the man’s front. The crowd gasped.

The effect was marvelous. Galwell would inquire with Elowen how magic had accomplished it.

He quelled the quiet frustration this question produced in him. It was just exhausting how everything had advanced. He had no idea how to use the “message tapestry” Elowen had gifted him. He only vaguely understood her explanation of “spell

service.” He recognized none of the celebrities in the copies of Mythria Magazine in his friends’ homes, knew none of the popular songs they hummed—of which, he gathered, a considerable number were about

Grandhart.

The incompetence was not what upset him. He could learn how to use spell service. Eventually. What wounded him were the incessant

reminders of the years he’d lost. The past decade of his friends’ lives. His parents’ lives. Everyone’s.

“Thessia!”

The cry pulled Galwell from his rumination.

While he understood the writerly choice, Galwell would not have uttered the name of the queen of Mythria in the moments of his death. Not for lack of affection for the young regent,

of course! She had been his fiancée. However, their betrothal had been the product of promises made by their noble parents.

In truth, he loved Thessia like a friend.

“How tragically we have been torn apart, my love!” the performer lamented. Wistful hope flickered in the man’s Galwell-blue

irises. “I will wait for you, for our reunion at the Ghost’s Gate! I’ll love you forever.”

The audience recoiled.

Galwell noticed. The weeping ceased. The reaction now was different. Discomfort.

He understood it well. The audience had not wished for this reminder of their queen’s tragic “love triangle”—Galwell had learned

the term from Elowen, who’d explained its recent coinage in Mythria Magazine when three shadow play characters were crossed in love.

The unfortunate coincidence of Galwell’s resurrection with the royal wedding left Mythria worried. For Galwell, their hero

whose former paramour wed another. For Thessia, their queen pulled to her first love. And for poor Hugh, their newly beloved

soldier facing an unkind fate.

In reality, Thessia loved her groom. Hugh had nothing to fear. And Galwell was . . . Galwell.

He was not waiting for Thessia at the Ghost’s Gate. He was here. Watching her have her fairy tale with another man.

Despite everyone in Mythria’s concern, it was the one aspect of his present position for which Galwell did not need to practice

gratitude. He was genuinely glad Thessia had moved on, found hope instead of heartbreak. While he’d never loved her the way

she loved him in her youth, he’d only ever wanted her happiness.

Hugh was her happiness now.

Quite literally right now. Galwell could not help glancing from the stage to the box where Thessia was seated with her new

husband. Hugh’s arm wrapped comfortably around the queen’s shoulders. She leaned into his sturdy side.

Thessia’s long chestnut hair flowed over the contours of her dress, which even Galwell—no connoisseur of fashion—could see

was exquisite. On the other hand, Hugh’s confusingly modern doublet looked like it did not know what to do with the powerful

former soldier’s frame inside. The poor fit only made Galwell like Hugh more.

They were perfect. The queen, the gem of Mythria, with her new king like the shield she was set in, the work of the finest

weaponeers in the realm.

Over the past week, Galwell had wrestled with whether to confess his lack of feelings for Thessia. Thessia would know she

could love Hugh without reservation. The realm would release their “love triangle” discontent.

He could not, he’d decided. He didn’t need to hurt her feelings ten years after the fact. Better to hope Mythria forgot and

embraced Hugh.

Which seemed the way things were going, until this play, which had uncomfortably emphasized the love between Galwell and Thessia.

The Galwell actor had now perished, fortunately, ending his cries of “Thessia!” and their uneasy implication. No, Galwell corrected himself. The Galwell actor had performed his character perishing. The man himself had not perished!

What was important was that the performer had ceased wailing the queen’s name and kissing the actress portraying her with

far more tongue than Galwell would ever have used. Far more than he ever had used. In his experience, heroics did not leave much room for . . . tongue.

The curtain fell. The enchanted stormy sky inside the hall dissipated. The audience applauded halfheartedly.

Clare—a man for whom tongues were certainly used in heroics—leaned over, unperturbed. It was one of Galwell’s favorite qualities

in his friend. Galwell had the courage to face fear. Clare Grandhart had the courage to never entertain it.

“Not his finest, I’m afraid,” Clare whispered cheerfully.

Galwell glanced down, finding the his of Clare’s commentary on the playbill in his hands. Sir Cheswick Chestlewitt.

The portraiture rendered the current favorite playwright of the realm rather dashing. In his third or early fourth decade,

Chestlewitt half squinted with perspicacious scrutiny. Dark ringlets framed his sharp features. He was unsmiling, yet somehow

seemed prepared to smile.

Galwell’s friends shared enthusiasm for the plays of Chestlewitt, who had risen to prominence in Queendom and the realm after

Galwell’s death. Everyone praised his unusual skill in equal measure for writing sorrowful plays—the famous The Weeping Widow, The Weeping Widow Still Weeps, and The Weeping Widow: She’s Still Weeping—and comedies.

One could not restrain Clare’s enthusiasm for Dog Noblemen or The Lament of Frederick the Flatulent: It Ends in Fire.

“I’m certain this would’ve gone over much more enjoyably had it come out two weeks ago,” he offered in the playwright’s defense.

Clare smiled as if he wished to indulge his friend’s forced generosity.

The contemplative measure of Clare’s expression struck Galwell. Contemplation was unfamiliar to the rambunctious, reckless