Chapter 1
Three Years Later
Magdala felt it in the cobblestones beneath her feet, in the heavy summer air, in the excited murmurs of passersby. The people were hungry for a riot.
Sweat beaded on her brow, and she asked herself again why she had ever left her mother’s cozy cottage on the Wildlands to return to this city and the hot leather doublet that crushed her breasts, the tall boots that squeezed her calves.
Leaving the city of Largotia behind, Magdala breathed in the cooler air of the countryside, the tang of pine, and the rich warmth of sunbaked mud as she followed the dry riverbed home.
Her father’s cottage stood on the outskirts of Owlbright, a nondescript hamlet five miles from Largotia.
Tucked under the pines like a magical fairy house and hemmed in by a perfect stone fence, the cottage should have been warm and inviting—idyllic, even—but too many years of her father’s bitterness had molded the walls and tarnished the gold-gilt furniture.
Still, Magdala enjoyed a swell of pride as she passed through the gate—she’d built it herself.
Fishing in her pocket, she found the key, but before she could fit it in the lock, the door swung open and her father, Seamus Slorus, waved her inside.
Magdala had taken her mother’s surname, as was typical in Russuli families.
Girls took their mother’s name, boys their father’s.
Her mother left Elegy when she was a child, though neither of her parents would admit the reason.
Her mother said that Seamus was too vicious for her, and Elegy had too many ghosts.
Her father said her mother missed the Wildlands. Neither story rang true to Magdala.
Seamus was tall and broad-shouldered, and he filled the cottage like a tree too large for its greenhouse. His dark hair was frosted gray, his beard neatly trimmed. He shuffled when he walked. Years of dragging stones had taken their toll.
“My zealots will be here soon,” he said. “To make plans.”
After a full day watching her charge Angelonia torment the unfortunate tailor fitting her wedding gown, and with a long night on the riot patrol ahead of her, Magdala just wanted to take off her boots, peel her socks from her aching feet, and climb into a warm bath.
“Can’t you convince them not to riot?” she groaned. “I’m so tired.”
“Don’t go to work tonight,” her father said eagerly. His eyes glinted with a mad light Magdala did not like.
“A storm is about to break in Largotia,” Magdala replied darkly. “And you know everyone will be called to serve. Even Julian.”
“Julian is the most loyal of us all. He will not be caught guarding the prince.”
Magdala let out a scoffing laugh. “Oh, yes, he will. If he wants to marry Angelonia, he will. And don’t forget that he is Huxley’s younger brother. He does what Huxley says.”
“I wish we could convince Huxley to come to the meetings.”
Magdala dropped onto the sofa and started to remove her boots. “Huxley doesn’t believe in curses, and neither do I. Be thankful he looks the other way and don’t push your luck, Da.”
“Not in the drawing room, Magdala!” her father exclaimed, staring at her sweaty socks.
“I’m sorry.” Magdala reddened and slipped her foot back inside her boot.
The cottage was little more than a kitchen, a cramped living space, one tiny bedroom downstairs and a loft with a washroom upstairs, but her father persisted in calling the living room ‘the drawing room,’ like they were still at the grand house on Elegy Island.
“We are not peasants and we will not lower ourselves to the working class, whatever our profession,” he continued.
The barb stung, and Magdala swallowed her shame. Most people would be proud to have a child in the royal guard. But Seamus Slorus was not most people.
“I was there when a woman wreathed in briars and nettles proclaimed the curse,” Seamus said darkly.
“It was the night of Prince Asherton’s christening.
I sat at the queen’s table with the lords and ladies of the court.
As we watched, the walls crawled with vines and thorns, and then a woman strolled into the hall and said, ‘The blood of Tiernan ends in blood. All his sons shall die in youth. And if this child touches the throne, death shall be his portion.’”
“Just because a mage says something doesn’t make it true.” Magdala sighed. “And nothing about that implies that we will all be cursed. Just him.”
“That woman wasn’t any mage.” Seamus paced into the kitchen, rubbing his rough hands. “She was Marwenna, Tiernan’s jilted wife. If her husband’s bastard takes the throne, she will be the curse. She will descend upon us and destroy us.”
Too tired to argue, Magdala rubbed her hands down her sticky face.
“Could you make bread for us, my little hen?” Seamus asked brightly.
Magdala dug her fingers in her hair. “Of course, Da.”
Her shoulders aching, she got up and walked into the kitchen. She wondered what her mother was doing now. Perhaps dancing around the fire in a swirl of tartan skirts, a dervish of red and green, her braided hair flying. Bare armed. Barefooted. Joyful and free.
Magdala took the dough rising on the windowsill and dumped it onto the counter, then punched it down with her fist. It deflated, and she kneaded it violently—stretching it, then crushing it into a ball and stretching it again.
She set her teeth on edge. At that moment, she hated the prince almost as much as her father did.
If it weren’t for him, she would be sitting in a deep armchair in her little bedroom at Elegy, leisurely and indolent.
Perhaps she would be reading a novel instead of sweating in a cramped cottage, making bread for revolutionaries who, in two hours, would be spitting in her face.
“Now all we have to do is get rid of the bastard and our fortunes will be restored,” her father said.
“I don’t think that murdering the crown prince is going to get us our house back, Da,” Magdala said, wrestling with the dough.
Seamus prodded the fire in the cookstove with an iron poker. “If the house is empty …”
Sighing, Magdala formed the dough into loaves and set them on a clay baking sheet.
With a razor-sharp bread lame, she slashed the top of the dough.
The lame was small, the length of a finger, and Magdala kept it sharp enough to cut bone.
This was not usual for the innocent tool, but Magdala was an unusual baker.
“Good, good,” her father said. “My friends will need sustenance. It will be a long night.”
“For me as well,” Magdala said. She stepped into the “drawing room” and took her knives from a box on the mantle.
They were made from elkin bear antlers, the handles cold and creamy white with brown ridges.
As she slipped them into the sheaths at her hip, wrist, and thigh, the door opened, and Julian strode into the cottage like he owned it.
Magdala had known Julian since he was a cocky teenager in the lowest ranks of the guard.
They’d risen together, worked together frequently, and while Magdala liked Julian, he was suggestible, and recently, he had become moody and irascible.
Her father’s meetings had radicalized him—turned him from a smiling, straw-haired boy to an angry zealot.
Against Magdala’s advice, Seamus relied on Julian for information about the prince, stolen from the palace or from Angelonia, whom he was meant to marry in a few weeks.
Magdala resented that her father had taken Julian under his wing while holding her at arm’s length.
Seamus said he didn’t want to compromise her because of her position on the guard, even though Julian was a royal guard, too.
But, unlike Magdala, Julian believed in the curse.
Not that Magdala didn’t believe in magic.
Magic was rare in Allagesh, but not unseen.
There were stories—a dragon trainer at the Silvanlight dracorium who had suddenly manifested magic at the paddocking a few months earlier, only to be carried by a raging hydra into the forest and never seen again; or the botania who had healed the Scathmore Barrens.
These people were special, descended from ancient faerie blood.
But the war between Ashkendor and the kingdom of Sennalaith had whittled down magical bloodlines, and even if it hadn't, the existence of magic didn’t imply it could be tossed onto your enemies.
King Tiernan of Ashkendor had been a known alley-cat, sleeping with every woman he desired.
Of course, his wife burst into his illegitimate son’s christening to pronounce doom on the baby. What wife wouldn’t?
“Julian!” Seamus cried, holding out his hands in greeting. “I’m glad you’re here! What news?”
Julian grinned. “Queen-Regent Madelaine has given birth to a healthy baby boy.”
“Bless her,” Seamus said reverently.
“The crown prince is coming tonight for the christening and the ball tomorrow,” Julian continued.
Seamus nodded. “Good. Exactly as we planned.” He added with a sneer, “We will give him a royal welcome.”
Julian followed him into the kitchen. “When I was at school with the bastard, he and his oaf of a brother hid in the trees, waited for me, and when I came into the shadow, they attacked me.”
Magdala rolled her eyes. How many times had she heard this story? Half a dozen at least. Perhaps more. It changed with each repetition, but the root of it was always the same …
“I had no weapons, but I broke the prince’s arm and then kicked in his brother’s ribs. Neither of them could stand for weeks. They stayed away from me after that.”
Magdala didn’t mention that, in an earlier iteration of this tale, there had been three other boys with Julian, making them a two-to-one match against Prince Asherton and his Ashkendoric half-brother.
More than anything her father had said in ten years of meetings, Julian’s tales of the prince at school had fanned the flames of royalism around her father’s hearth.