by Amanda Joy
I cursed such a fool mistake. I should have searched for my sister the moment I stepped into the room, and then kept far away. Isadore was two years older than me, and though we’d once been as close as sisters could be, when I returned to Ternain, she’d made it her business to torment me. Few of the younger members of Court were outside Isadore’s influence.
Today would be especially infuriating to Isadore. A week ago an Auguri had come to Court to announce that a Blood Moon would rise tonight. The Auguries, women who read the sky’s omens to map out Myre’s future, rarely left the Temple they shared with their male counterparts, the Sorceryn. The omens triggered visions, which the Auguries then interpreted for the Queen. The details of the visions were sealed to the crown, and rarely shared with anyone else. The appearance of an Auguri at Court had filled the streets of Ternain with talk of the moon. The last time the city had seen such a marvel was nearly seventeen years ago.
In Auguri teachings, Blood Moons were portents of great change. The First had been named beneath one and so was I. And in my Harkening spell to learn my magick, the Sorceryn had named it marrow and blood, just like the First. Bets were set while I was still in swaddling, predicting I would become the True Heir, and eventual Queen. My mother had never given me any hint as to what the Auguries saw in my future, and almost seventeen years later, I’d fallen short of those early expectations. Isadore was the would-be Queen; I was only Princess Eva, my name said with disappointment.
All because I did not know how to use my magick—a weakness few in the Queendom could forgive. Soon after returning from Asrodei, my mother had asked for a demonstration of the magick I had learned while away. Before the entire Court, I was forced to admit that I couldn’t use the one gift given to every person born on Myre’s soil. Rumors of my inadequacy had spread through Ternain quickly.
Still, the Auguries’ announcement reminded everyone that my nameday was just under two months away, on the last day of high summer, and their bloodlust had risen accordingly. A fight to the death between Rival Heirs was both a source of entertainment and a chance to increase the strength of Myre through a Queen whose power must intimidate our enemies. My mother had been the previous Queen’s only daughter. It had been many years since the generation before hers, in which three sisters, triplets, had fought.
All of that was more than enough reason to avoid Isadore.
I continued forward, closing the distance between the courtiers and me. They’d drifted into my path and now the only thing to do was face my sister. I focused my gaze on the throne and Mother’s spill of golden hair turning quicksilver as the sunlight hit it, but I wasn’t truly seeing.
My skin began to itch and my heartbeat thumped in my fingertips, reminding me to breathe. Ten more steps and the courtiers surrounded me. Isadore’s circle was tight and exclusive; all fifteen of her devoted sycophants were heirs to the most powerful Houses in Myre. I knew them all. We’d grown up together and had been close until I left.
I smiled and was pleased to find it held as their eyes swept from my slippered feet up to my diadem, sneers peeking out when polite expressions faltered. I bit my tongue, tasted blood, and smiled wider, deeper. Too quickly I found myself in the center of their circle. Dread rippled through me with such startling intensity that my hands shook.
My elder sister’s dark gold hair was swept over one shoulder, falling in soft waves around the sharp angles of her face. Isadore and I only vaguely looked alike. She looked like a younger copy of Mother. They had the same eyes, deep-set and flashy green, and Isadore’s hair was gold to Mother’s light blond. They were both rail thin and shared the same slightly overlong but dignified noses. The main difference between them was Isadore’s golden-brown skin—the combination of Mother’s pale pink complexion and Papa’s rich brown.
All I had of our mother was her heart-shaped mouth. The rest of me was of my father: his thick black curls, his broad face, full cheeks, and short, stocky form, which translated into some well-placed curves I was still getting used to. Only my eyes were my own: large, upturned, and a shocking blood orange. A coarse rumor, started when I returned to Ternain, had called them khimaer eyes. The rumor was quickly smothered by Mother, but it didn’t matter. It was just another way they’d found to make me feel small and out of place, though they needn’t have bothered. The main difference between me and everyone else at Court was that they used magick and I did not. There was nothing I could do to make up for that, so I’d stopped trying.
Isa’s smile deepened as she cupped my cheek. I cupped hers, hoping my face didn’t reflect the fear slowly filling me.
At Court it was customary to graze hands in greeting, but close family touched each other’s faces, as a show of trust. Usually it was only a brief point of contact. Mother’s fingers sweeping against my cheek, cold and stiff, was as familiar a feeling as anything. So was Papa’s thumb sweeping over and pinching my one winking dimple. The first person to make contact was meant to first break it, but Isadore’s hand settled into the contours of my cheek and didn’t move, nails digging into my skin slightly.
She inclined her head and I gasped.
Magick rose from her skin, silk soft, yet vibrating like lightning.
Two things happened in quick succession:
First the young courtiers swayed toward her like flowers seeking the sun. I searched for alarm in their expressions, but all I could find were empty smiles. They should have been offended, disgusted she would use magick so casually to bend them to her will, but her magick of persuasion had them in its grip. There was nothing but blankness behind their eyes.
Yet no haze fell over my mind. I recognized the cloyingly sweet scent of Isadore’s persuasion magick; she’d been using it since she was a child, bending my will to hers by accident before she learned to do it on purpose. She could convince a person to do almost anything, but this time she didn’t even try.
Second, Katro bent close, his cheek grazing mine. “Hello, Evalina. Are you well?”
The words hadn’t come from Isadore’s mouth, but they were spoken in her voice, each one furled and predatory like the spine of a jungle cat. I staggered into the courtier behind me. I twisted, an apology on my lips, but he only stared blankly.
The floor tilted beneath me.
How? I’d never seen this particular trick before, her treating people like puppets.
Her smile dropped and so did the magick. If Isadore’s spine wasn’t always ramrod straight, I wouldn’t have noticed, but she sagged. Though she’d controlled that courtier, it had cost her.
“Breathe, Evalina,” Isadore whispered, this time from her own lips. Her voice oozed with faux concern, so patronizing it would have been appropriate directed at a six-year-old in the midst of a tantrum. In truth I was on the verge of one. Only imagining the Court’s reaction kept me from sprinting from the Throne Room as fast as I could.
I forced myself to speak. “Isadore. Are you well?”
“I am quite well actually.” She lifted her chin, lowering only her eyes as she spoke. “And you?”
“I am.” The lie rolled smoothly from my lips. I wanted to slap that simper off her face; she knew I hated that look, hated craning my neck to meet her gaze. “It is a lovely day. I hope it won’t grow any warmer. I’d hoped to ride along the river today.”
“Lovely,” she echoed, glancing down at her lacquered nails. “We plan to visit the pools later, once it cools a bit.”
“Well.” The moment hung. I wouldn’t have considered going to the pools, lest Isadore subject me to more conversation with her speaking from other people’s mouths. And yet I longed for her to at least offer an invitation.
Foolish that it stung.
“Will I see you tonight?” Her expression softened, eyes wide and green as the underside of a sand beetle’s wings. “Mother is hosting a dinner to celebrate the Blood Moon.”
Hope pulled me under like a drug. I
could see what would happen: When I approached the throne, Mother would fold me into her arms. She would say the dinner would be hosted in my honor. She would tell me she loved me before the Court. She would repair our fractured family.
Except our mother would never do any of those things. She wouldn’t tell the Court she loved me, because she didn’t. And she certainly wouldn’t fix us, when she was the one who created the first cracks that left us shattered now.
The taste of caramel and oranges drizzled with honey bloomed on my tongue. Too sweet to be real, so thick I could drown in it. This was Isadore’s magick of persuasion, poisoning my thoughts.
I knew only one way to resist Isadore’s magick once I was under its spell: pain.
“Remember, I know your tricks.” I held up my hands, wet with blood from ten perfect half-moon cuts. “And the answer to your question is no. I have other plans tonight. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .”
Isadore looked past me, her smile deepening. “And what are those plans, sister?”
To slip my chains and dance beneath a blood-drenched moon.
Anger and exhaustion warred within me until I felt nothing at all. In the months since my return, Isadore had done everything in her power to intimidate me at Court. Usually it worked, but today I was too tired, my nerves still raw from last night.
“That’s enough, Isadore,” I snapped, and for once the anger in my voice gave her pause. “I’m Rival Heir just like you. You may pretend that I’m less, but that won’t change the truth, sister.”
“Who’s pretending?” she said. “Your magick is feeble and useless. You haven’t the loyalty of the Court. You are less. You left.”
I tried not to flinch at the memories that dredged up. Because of you, I wanted to say, but instead whispered, “Stop it.”
“Why should I?”
“Your friends may let you use your magick on them, but what about the rest of the Court? If they find out that you use magick to earn their loyalty—”
“I don’t need anything to earn their loyalty. This is just practice.”
“If Papa knew, if Mama—”
“Papa isn’t here and Mother doesn’t care. All that matters to her is power and I have it. She’d probably encourage you to use your magick as well if it wouldn’t result in you accidentally killing everyone in some mad accident.”
Air hissed out of my mouth, her words like a punch to the gut. A memory flashed through my mind, but I smothered it. “You know I can’t use my magick.”
She inclined her head. “That’s exactly why you should have stayed away. You don’t belong here and, lucky for me, you never will.”
I looked into her eyes, hoping to find some sense of shame, or even pleasure. But she wasn’t savoring the taste of this small cruelty—her eyes were flat with truth. If I had any question as to whether saying such things cost her anything, the answer was clear.
The bitter part was that the same sentiment crossed my mind every day. I didn’t belong here. I didn’t even want to belong here. If I’d been allowed to stay away from the capital, to let my nameday pass without mention, I would have done so, but the law was very clear.
All daughters born to the Queen will become Rival Heirs. As Raina the First slew her sister, so shall a Princess in each generation sacrifice her kin in a show of strength. The victor will become the True Heir to be crowned the following year.
This was our birthright: to kill and become Queen, or die.
It became more obvious with every passing day which of us would live out the rest of her life perched on the Ivory Throne.
I wanted to run, to feel my feet slap the cool marble floors, to pull out every pin forcing my hair into submission, and to wrench the jeweled bangles from my wrists. But instead I moved on, searching for Falun’s bright head. I couldn’t help but look at Mother. I had her attention now. Her eyes tracked me across the room, studying me, lips curled into a vacant frown. The barest smile crossed her face. Her contempt washed over me, cold and familiar.
Damn Isa. Damn this place.
If I were meant for this—being Princess and one day Queen—I would have had the strength to stay. I would have swallowed it all back and marched toward my mother.
But no.
For today, one conversation with Isadore had been more than enough.
I startled as Falun’s hand settled against the small of my back, and I let him guide me from the room. The crier, lips pressed into thin disapproval, wouldn’t meet my gaze.
No tears escaped until the doors slammed shut behind us. I held to that victory hours later, eyes finally dry, alone in my room.
CHAPTER 3
“OUT WITH IT.” Mirabel stabbed her knife into one of the petite hens she had brought for lunch. With her other hand, she pulled the hem of her skirt over her lizard feet. In the soft afternoon light, her scales shifted between teal and jade.
She was half khimaer; the slight gazelle horns spiraling back from her brow marked her as much as her feet. Physically, humans, bloodkin, and fey were mostly the same, besides a few minor differences, like the bloodkins’ fangs and the fey’s pointed ears. The khimaer, on the other hand, were graced with horns, and shared physical attributes with animals—wings, tails, talons, and the like.
Outside my bedchamber, Mirabel wore long skirts. Luckily her feet were easy enough to hide; had she possessed more obvious animal aspects, she wouldn’t have been allowed inside the Queen’s Palace, let alone around me. It was the Queen’s unspoken policy to hire only khimaer with mixed blood to work in the Palace.
An hour ago, I came back from Court to find her in my sitting room meeting with two young men. One was bloodkin and brown-skinned with fangs that seemed too large for his mouth, and the other, a human with sea-green tattoos. They’d gaped at me, stammering greetings as Mira hustled them out the door with instructions not to be seen near my rooms.
Last year, when we returned to the capital, Mirabel had created a network of spies—ghosts, we called them—because knowledge was power. If secrets were coins, she always said, they would be gold.
She didn’t look like much of a spymaster. Her round, beautiful face was cut with deep lines from decades of frowning and laughing. In a cotton blouse and bright-patterned skirt and with not one hair out of place in her iron-gray bun, she could have been my grandmother, but for her horns.
I rarely saw our spies; recognizing a face I had no business knowing could endanger them. Even Mira rarely met with them in person.
I’d been ready to ask her to leave with them before she shoved a tray of food under my nose. Only then did I notice I was starving. Mirabel always remembered such things. When I forgot to eat, she was there to bring me a meat pie or spiced mazi fruit.
I folded flatbread smeared with chili paste around a slice of the hen and I groaned as smoky heat filled my mouth.
“I received word from the King. As the two of you discussed before we left Asrodei, he’s increasing the number of soldiers in your guard leading up to your nameday. The first should arrive within the week.”
I gave a noncommittal grunt. Another thing I didn’t want, someone new to follow me around the Palace. How I regretted agreeing to add more soldiers to the guard. If I’d known that returning to Ternain would mean I wouldn’t be left alone unless to sleep, I might not have agreed to it. But it was necessary; contests of Rival Heirs were dangerous leading up to the challenge. Though the Entwining spell ensured that only we could strike the killing blow, heirs had been kidnapped before. Kidnapped and starved until they were too delirious with hunger to win a fight.
“Eva,” Mirabel pressed, gaze soft as she awaited an answer. “What happened at Court?”
I set my food aside, appetite lost. “I don’t want to discuss it, Mira.”
This seemed just the opening she intended. “I’ll talk, then, if you’ll allow that. This morning you woke on your own. I
usually have to drag you out of bed before Court, but not today.”
“I couldn’t sleep.” That was close enough to the truth anyway. “I thought you’d be pleased I was up early.”
“I was until you came back hours before I was expecting you. Tell me what happened.” She brushed her fingertips across my cheek, wiping away a rogue tear.
This tenderness was so unlike her. Though Mirabel was once my nursemaid, now her duties varied between adviser, spymaster, and near-mother all in one. And just like my real mother, she wasn’t one for comfort.
She solved military dilemmas for my father when she was bored and favored jeweled hairpins that doubled as blades. She complained about my recklessness as she mended tears in my clothing, and taught me ciphers and how to survive if stranded in the desert. She wasn’t good at softness and neither was I. I never cried in front of her. I never cried in front of anyone—or at all—if I could help it.
The black leather-bound book where she kept all her golden secrets sat beside her on the floor of my bedchamber. She opened it and held up a white card. “A courier came by while you were at Court. Your mother sent an invitation to a dinner she’s hosting for the Blood Moon, which . . . surprised me.”
I snorted as I plucked it from Mira’s hand. I traced the illustration of a crimson moon on the back of the card. Mother must have sent it before I’d stormed out of the Throne Room. “Lovely. Shall we pick out something to wear? It’s much too late to have a dress made, which I’m sure was her intention, but I must have something to suit the occasion. Red for the Blood Moon? Cobalt for House Killeen? Perhaps sea-foam for my mother, the Storm Queen? Honestly,” I added, “the red should be for Killeen or for the throne, for all the blood spilled in its name.”
Mirabel cringed but said nothing.
I filled her silence. “I can’t go back there. I have less than two months left and I don’t want to spend those weeks at Court.”
“Your mother won’t like that.”
“Whatever punishment she devises is sure to be better than being dissected like a moth under glass at Court. That’s hardly a way to spend the last days of my life.”
