by Hanna Howard
Rinna looked disappointed, but Tira leaned forward with bright eyes. “Introduce me!” she demanded to panicked whispers of alarm and shock from the others, and I felt my face flame with embarrassment.
“Nightingale’s bright as a sunchild,” Rinna observed slyly. “Maybe the redhead likes servants too. Though I don’t know if even a servant would go for someone so . . . bony.”
A good strategy might have been to force a careless laugh, to try and deflect their attention, but mortification had frozen my brain. What was more, Rinna’s reference to sunchildren had made it impossible to stop thinking about Linden. So many of the fairy tales Yarrow told us growing up had featured them, and though I now knew his versions had been a far cry from truth, making heroes out of monsters that were now, luckily, extinct, I remembered many afternoons playing Sunchild with Linden out in the dying woods, pretending to light up the world with just our hands.
“Dark night, she’s getting redder,” Rinna said with a mix of glee and disgust.
Heat radiated from every inch of my skin, and the more I tried to think of something to say, the blanker my mind became. Before this table of raven-haired beauties, whose courtly poise and careless disdain came to them without effort, I suddenly felt as if I belonged to a lesser species. My hair seemed garish atop my head, my arms felt gangling and awkward at my sides, and my clothes, though tailored to my ramrod frame, seemed to sag in all the wrong places, like the upholstery of an old armchair. The thought that had haunted me from the moment I’d arrived at Gildenbrook and seen how different I was from everyone else returned: It’s no wonder my parents find me a disappointment.
Tears burned hot in my eyes once again, then—
“Watch out!” someone hissed down the table, voice slicing through the laughter. “It’s the Head!”
I jerked up alongside everyone else, shoulders back and etiquette recalled as silence enveloped all the tables around us. The clipping heels marched closer, and I heard them stop a few paces behind me. I swallowed and tried not to move.
The headmistress’s stern voice rang out, transforming my burning skin to ice: “Miss Nightingale? Come with us, please.”
3
CHAPTER
I turned mechanically, as if I were made of rusted metal, and found Gildenbrook’s headmistress standing alongside a tall woman in fine black silks. The newcomer had kohl-painted eyes, and they glittered like jewels in deep water as she gazed down at me.
“Today, Nightingale, not next week,” the headmistress snapped, and I scrambled out of my chair, clattering a spoon onto the floor in my haste. The headmistress’s nostrils flared as she watched it fall, but she merely jerked her chin and set a sharp pace back across the dining hall.
My mind groped for explanations as I trotted after her, and guilt over imaginary crimes turned my hands clammy. Did she somehow know I was considering a visit to Linden and Yarrow’s cabin that night? Had someone seen me draw that sun on the window? Perhaps I had talked in my sleep about how much I hated the Darkness, and my roommate overheard . . .
We stopped in the black-and-white-tiled entryway of the school, and the stranger strode forward to face me with a rustle of skirts. “Hello, Miss Nightingale,” she said, her voice low, with a slight Umbraz accent. “I am Madam Corbin Pearl, court advisor to Her Majesty, Queen Iyzabel.”
I fumbled an awkward curtsy, heart throbbing. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
She smiled. “What would you say if I told you that you’ve been selected for something rather special at tomorrow’s Choosing Ball? A privilege that gives you greater prominence among the contestants?”
Greater prominence? I gaped at her, uncomprehending. “Me?”
She laughed. “Of course, you!” She reached out and hooked an index finger into the netted caul just above my ear, pulling forward a long strand of auburn hair and laying it over my shoulder. “You’ll be among a few girls who are pampered and dressed before the ball, by the queen’s own handmaids. How does that sound?”
My whole chest filled with something light and buoyant as a wonderful thought occurred to me, extinguishing my worries: Could my parents have arranged this? Had they, perhaps, hoped I would be chosen so much that they’d decided to give me a little extra help? “That sounds . . . amazing!” I breathed.
“Excellent,” said Madam Pearl. “Then please gather anything you might need for the journey and meet me at the top of the drive in five minutes. The Choosing Ball begins at dawn, so we must leave at once.”
I blinked at her in shock before turning for the stairs. The rest of the school was leaving at midnight, so I’d believed I had hours to prepare, to plan . . . to say some kind of goodbye to Linden and Yarrow. A shadow fell across the bright feeling in my chest.
Would I ever see them again?
I hurried up four flights of stairs, repressing the thought as well as I could. This was an opportunity I could not waste, could not afford to jeopardize with any trace of regret. When I reached my room, I pulled on my black, fur-lined traveling cloak and quickly stepped to my bed, where I had hidden the two notes beneath my pillow. My mother’s went into my pocket, but Linden’s I squeezed tight in my fist as I crossed to the low-burning fire in the grate.
I stood for a moment, irresolute and trembling as I fought back a thousand gilded memories of a childhood spent with two people who were not my family. Then I dropped the scrap of parchment onto the glowing embers, where it began to curl and smoke. Biting my lip hard against the urge to cry, I gripped my mother’s note inside my pocket and hurried back down the stairs.
These were the fierce, desperate last days of winter, and I shivered as I strode across the flagstones outside into the fathomless dark, lantern lit and boots clacking as I made my way toward the small black coach in the drive. It stood behind a pair of snorting and stamping horses, whose breath looked like clouds of silver in the gloom as each puff caught the lamps’ refracted light. A footman held the door open for me as I climbed inside. Madam Pearl was already seated by the far window, smoothing her silk skirts, and we rumbled into motion almost as soon as the door clicked shut behind me.
“Try and get some sleep, if you can,” Madam Pearl said, gesturing to the cushioned walls and armrests. “Preparations will take all night, and you don’t want to be drowsy when you meet the queen.”
I nodded, feeling awkward. Much as I knew she was right, I doubted I would be able to sleep on this journey. Though would she expect more conversation if I stayed awake? To my relief, Madam Pearl seemed prepared to take her own advice, and as she settled herself back against the plush green brocade, I pushed aside the lace curtain to peer through the window.
Gildenbrook sat on a broad hilltop in the middle of a bleak, boggy landscape that stretched to the north and south like an ocean into the void. According to Yarrow, prior to the Darkness this moor had been a rolling green stretch of countryside that bordered the east bank of the Elderwind River on one side and the western edge of the Forest of Eli on the other. But fifteen years without the sun had reduced it to scrubby heath, and it blurred by like smudged charcoal as we raced alongside it on the road. Gildenbrook was an hour’s walk to Nightingale Manor and the split-wood cabin that Linden and Yarrow called home, but I saw their lights glittering in the darkness after only fifteen minutes inside the coach.
My stomach twisted. How long would it be until Linden realized I was not going to meet him on the step? And how much longer until he figured out I had left—perhaps forever—without saying goodbye?
But I could not think about that; not now, when things were going well for the first time since I had arrived at school with my oddball looks, social ignorance, and tendency to befriend servants.
It was only about an hour’s journey to Umbraz, but it seemed like no time at all before the first distant glow of green told me we had arrived in the royal city. I had felt the Darkness’s potency increase with every clop of the horses’ hooves, but that was nothing new. My anxious sensitivity to changes in th
e Darkness—like an ever-tightening and loosening corset around my ribs—seemed as unique to me as my hair. Even Linden and Yarrow, who hated the Darkness, didn’t experience this kind of reaction, and I never mentioned it to my peers for fear of their ridicule. I tried not to think about how challenging it would be to live in Umbraz; I would deal with that if and when the time came.
Madam Pearl awoke as the emerald-paned streetlamps grew larger outside the windows. She sat up straight and inhaled deeply through her nose as though she knew Umbraz by smell alone. As the carriage clattered over a narrow canal bridge and onto one of the main thoroughfares, the city grew up out of the darkness, great silver spires gleaming like vertical swords in the mist. Slate rooftops hulked between steeples, bell towers, and chimney stacks, their colors muted in the green glow, and the dark stone streets reflected the lamplight almost as vividly as the water. In fact, the whole city was misty green, as if we traveled beneath the canals instead of above them.
And then as we turned down another street, the intensity of the royal city’s Darkness seemed to peak, settling over me like a stifling, weighted cloak. I was expecting it, having been there twice before, but I still ground my teeth in frustration at its baffling strength. Queen Iyzabel’s enchantment began within her seat of power, of course, and from there spread out over the kingdom like spilled ink, but that did nothing to explain why no one else reacted to it like I did. While Madam Pearl checked her reflection in a handheld mirror, I took long, steadying breaths, trying to loosen the pressure constricting like a band around my chest.
“Ah,” she said as the carriage began to slow. “Here we are.”
I looked up, and the sight was almost enough to make me forget my discomfort. My parents always left me with a nanny when they came to the Black Castle, and a distant view of its spires was all the experience I had. The sight of the structure through the window now stilled my breath. I had never seen a mountain, but I supposed this castle was on the same scale: bigger than comprehension allowed, stunning, majestic. And unlike every other building I had ever seen, this palace was not made of stone or brick, but of some gleaming black substance, flawless and smooth and rising in organic spikes and spirals toward the black sky as if it had been grown, not built. It reminded me of a raw cluster of crystal I had once held in my hand. There were no windows.
A guard opened the carriage door, and a gust of humid, clammy-cool air swirled inside, a full season warmer than it was even at Gildenbrook. For that effect of the Darkness, at least, I could give thanks: the closer you got to Umbraz, the warmer the temperature became. In winter here, the air was still chilly enough to require a cloak, but in summer it was warm as a subterranean cave. Rumor whispered that temperature and loyalty to the queen were linked, which was why the far north suffered from such dangerous weather. Or so people said. I didn’t know anyone who had ever been farther than the southernmost edge of the Battlement Mountains. No one with any sense would dare such a journey.
Madam Pearl gathered up her skirts. “Come along, Miss Nightingale,” she said with a smile. “Let us start your transformation.”
4
CHAPTER
A butler bowed us through the towering front doors of the castle, and Madam Pearl led me down a wide corridor with a brocade runner rug, its black walls gleaming in the light of many bracketed green candles. I gazed around in wonder. Countless silver-framed paintings—some depicting the queen herself, others scenes of her triumph over the madness of the House of Luminor, and still others sensual images from mythology—seemed to watch us as we passed, the painted eyes gazing back from every angle. The walls themselves were made of the same seamless rock as the exterior, yet they formed hallways as even and precise as the corridors at Gildenbrook.
We turned another corner, and I saw two guards at the end of the passageway, standing before a set of short steps leading to an open door. Nervous anticipation seized me, and I began to tremble. Surely my parents would be waiting inside this room, though Madam Pearl’s expression gave nothing away. I hurried up the steps, ready to fly into the first proper hug my mother would ever give me—and then I caught sight of the people inside.
Freezing in the doorway, I passed disappointment in the briefest of flashes and landed squarely in dumbfounded shock. My parents were nowhere to be seen. Instead, there were seven girls about my own age. While their skin ranged from the usual pallid gray to ash-tinged coal, each one was as unlike my Gildenbrook classmates as myself: Burning ochre, sandy straw, orange-peach, and vivid, shining gold gleamed on their heads in the lamplight, dazzling in bright variety. Every hair in the room was bold with a pigment artists had been banned from using for fifteen years.
I suddenly felt faint. Never before had I seen another redhead, and only once, many years ago, had I seen a blond. Not even my parents had hair like mine.
Before I could do more than gawk once around the parlor, Madam Pearl buffeted me inside and clapped her hands in an unnecessary call for silence. Several women seated on plush velvet settees rose and walked to her side, their satiny black skirts rustling like the wings of many large birds.
“Girls, choose a seat.” Madam Pearl gestured us toward the ring of mirrored vanities lining the deep-green tapestried walls. “You have been selected as probable favorites of the queen and are to be dressed here, with special attention, for the Choosing Ball. I do not need to remind you that there is no greater honor than to be chosen for this court. And now—” She crossed the room and pulled a bell chain hanging from the ceiling. A curtain rippled at the back of the parlor, and a line of she-faun servants trotted through it, each one cradling an enormous, finely made gown in her bare arms as if it were a giant, floppy baby. “Let us begin!”
I still felt dizzy as the women of the court dispersed, each attaching herself to a bright-haired girl. No greater honor, Madam Pearl had said. I tried to focus on that assurance instead of my bewilderment as a plump woman made her way toward me. She smiled through lilac lips.
“Hello, my darling,” she said in the low, seductive tone people in Umbraz considered fashionable. “Let’s get you ready for the ball, shall we?”
I nodded. After this, I told myself, my parents would be eager to see me, to spend time with me, to induct me into the life they had always led apart from me.
It took six long hours, including breaks, for my attendant to declare herself satisfied with my appearance, by which time the other red- and gold-haired girls had undergone similar transformations. They all wore voluminous gowns in vivid shades of green, blue, and purple, and had such blackened eyes and pigmented lips they might have been painted porcelain dolls. I was no exception. My skin—as faded and lifeless as any other sunless Volatian’s—looked almost transparent beside my bold eyes and lips; and the turquoise gown I wore, heavy with peacock feathers, silver filigree, and sapphires, was large enough to conceal the whole of my canopy bed at Gildenbrook. My school-issued heeled boots had been swapped for a tight pair of satin slippers. But my hair had taken the most time and attention. It had been woven and braided into an intricate beehive coif atop my head, and I struggled to hold my neck up as the drowsiness Madam Pearl had predicted stole through me. To complete the ensemble, I was to wear a peacock feather mask until I was officially announced.
“You girls will be the only ones wearing colored gowns,” my attendant said with an impressive nod, straightening a sapphire. “We want you to stand out.”
As if we wouldn’t already with our unusual hair colors. But if it improved my odds, I thought, I wasn’t about to complain.
An interminable period of tweaking and sitting and yawning ensued. I started pinching my thigh through the silk of my dress every few minutes to keep myself awake. Eventually someone whispered that the other guests had arrived but were delayed by myriad precautionary checks because the queen’s security was so high. She was worried about mages, one of the attendants said. Mages?
Mages!
The word spread about the room in fearful murmurs, shaking
us into wakefulness, and I felt a chill trip down my spine as the sharp voice of Gildenbrook’s history mistress rang through my memory.
“Mages are more powerful than any other magical species, girls, and more dangerous. Never forget that it was mages who brainwashed the nymphs into rebellion against our blessed queen fourteen years ago, and their evil influence that threatened our kingdom’s very existence. Magic cannot go unchecked. If history teaches you nothing else, let it teach you that.”
I shuddered. Mages were not allowed the option of an obsidian band like the nymphs; they were universally slain.
Madam Pearl burst back into our parlor, startling me so badly I nearly fell off my chair. “It is time!”
The women of the court jumped into action, arranging us into a line, then swooping around like excited magpies, tucking a bustle here, polishing an amethyst there. I untied my mask and used it to fan myself. The bulk of so much fabric was stifling, and unsettling thoughts about mages had increased the pressure around my chest. I took a few deep breaths, trying to loosen it.
“Ladies, let us go!” called Madam Pearl.
I shook myself. Soon my parents would see me. Soon they might even see Queen Iyzabel choose me for her court.
I could let nothing distract me.
5
CHAPTER
One torch-lit corridor led into another, and gradually the strains of an orchestra drifted toward us as we walked in our jewel-bright line. I could hear the low murmur of voices, the faint strain of a soprano’s aria. A flush of anticipation swept through me.
“Stay together please, girls,” called Madam Pearl. “Once we are inside the ballroom, I will lead you onto a platform where you will be announced to the queen.”
The corridor opened into a green-tiled foyer where four sets of carved double doors stood open before our long-awaited destination. The floor inside was some combination of silver and glittering black stone, polished to liquid perfection and inlaid in a vast spiraling pattern. The walls were hung with plum velvet, and green light fell over everything—though there were so many people crowding the doors, they obscured most of the details. And the people were distracting enough in their own right. All of them were staggeringly beautiful, and in spite of my finery, I felt clownish and plain among them.
