by Mary Taranta
Bryn looks up from her letters. “She wants coffee,” she says.
Cadence demonstrates a pocket watch, and I understand the warning implicit in the gesture. Three minutes, Bryn told me once. That was as long as I had to come when she summoned me, or she would mete out punishment in blood.
I stare at my sister, dubious. Drinking coffee this late was clearly not her idea, but it gives me one of my own. “So then we’ll go get coffee,” I say, forcing my voice brighter, coaxing. “Have you been to the kitchen yet?”
She wavers, torn. Exploring the palace this late at night is far more appealing than sitting in a bedroom while Bryn writes letters, even if she’s angry with me.
“The kitchen is for servants,” Bryn says coldly.
Cadence flinches, and then straightens, lifting her chin. “And I’m not a servant,” she whispers fiercely, clutching at the watch.
Bryn shifts in her seat, glancing toward me. “But you are,” she says. “Two cups of coffee.”
“Ticktock,” Cadence adds, and beneath her crowing smile is the slightest flicker of apprehension. Will I actually do it? Will she get in trouble? The sister within the lace and cotton nightgown is barely visible beneath this goading little monster. How far can Bryn push her?
How far will she go on her own?
Cadence swings the pocket watch in warning, and I turn numbly into the hall. A guard jolts to attention only to gape at me in my nightclothes, but I ignore him, shoving aside a damask tapestry and ducking into the servants’ hall beyond. Within the first few days of arriving at the palace, I learned the layout of the halls out of necessity, memorizing the fastest ways to each of the rooms Bryn was likely to visit, in case of something like this. With the wedding and other preoccupations, however, this is the first time I’ve actually needed them.
The kitchen should be empty this time of night, but when I step inside, a figure is seated on the island, back to me, feet hanging several inches off the scrubbed stone floor. The fire is banked too low to offer much light, but the small tiger begging for scraps is identity enough.
North.
He doesn’t look over as he extends a piece of meat to the tiger, Darjin, and I spin on my heel with a flash of adrenaline.
“I see you still don’t sleep at night,” he says, stopping me mid-retreat.
I pause with my back to him, hands framed on the doorway as I stare down the darkened servants’ hall and debate whether or not to just keep going. Yet returning to Bryn’s room without coffee would be begging for retribution—something I refuse to let Cadence witness if she’s already this eager to emulate Bryn. Reluctantly I turn back into the kitchen. “I was just coming for some coffee.”
He pushes himself to his feet, brushing crumbs off the front of his trousers. He’s still dressed, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows. While he’s always been thin, preparing for Perrote’s return and the subsequent expedition into the Burn has taken a toll, leaving him more gaunt-faced and shadowed than usual.
“Bryndalin?” he guesses, hands sliding into his pockets as he leans back against the island, hooking one ankle over the other.
Darjin pads over to me in search of more scraps, and I crouch, scrubbing at his flank, grateful for the excuse to hide my face, and my surprise. Of course North’s on a first-name basis with Bryn. He can’t call his wife “Miss Dossel” for the rest of their lives. “Cadence, actually,” I say, standing again.
North arches an eyebrow. “She’s certainly acclimated to palace living quite quickly.” His eyes briefly lower, and I remember I’m in my nightclothes. I fold my arms over my chest, and he blushes, dropping his gaze to the floor between our feet. When he scratches the back of his neck, I catch a glimpse of a dark mark along his throat, some new spell I don’t recognize. A burr of envy catches in my stomach at the bitter reminder that we’re practically strangers now, and the only thing we share these days is the roof over our heads.
At least I know the spells exposed on the flats of his wrists: the doubled crosses that were part of the council’s decision to forbid him from practicing any magic until he can find his father and secure the throne.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?” I ask.
He sighs, hair falling forward as his chin dips toward the floor. “There’s been another golem attack in the south,” he says. “Just like the last one. They made it as far as the Corsant city limits before imploding.”
Chills race down my back. “They carried infected magic?”
A slight rise of his chin confirms my guess. “The Burn has consumed over a hundred acres in less than a week. The city has evacuated, but . . .”
But I remember the map he once drew me, of the kingdom of Avinea and all the dark places where the Burn had taken hold, leaving only broken bits of land in between. Avinea is running out of sanctuaries. And if New Prevast is any indication, even a sanctuary becomes a prison when too many people crowd its walls.
Swearing under his breath, North slams his palm against the island behind him and straightens, raking his hair back with both hands. “Why is he doing this? Why now? He’s had twenty years to destroy Avinea if that was his intention. What changed?”
“Are you sure it was Merlock?”
He gives me an impatient glance. “Baedan wouldn’t waste the resources on golems. Now that she has my blood, she has a chance of inheriting everything. Expanding the Burn right now isn’t her priority.”
“Baedan is not the only hellborne in the Burn, your majesty,” I remind him wryly. But he’s right: as our only real competition for finding Merlock, Baedan wouldn’t waste time on petty attacks, especially if she’s heard that North plans an expedition soon. “If news has gotten out that you got married and now have magic and the means to hunt Merlock, thereby destroying the Burn and everyone who lives in it . . .” I trail off, shrugging. “That’s incentive for any hellborne with half a practical thought in their head, don’t you think?”
A ghost of a smile crosses his lips as he glances over. “Fair enough,” he concedes.
I catch myself smiling back, only to remember myself. I look away.
He straightens. “Right,” he mutters to himself. “I apologize, Miss Locke. You have your own concerns.”
“North—”
“North is dead,” he reminds me tightly, and I wilt with the rebuke, feeling useless in the face of his frustration. An uneasy silence stretches between us, but my wrist continues to throb, reminding me of my task. I strike a match on the stove to start a flame before filling a copper kettle. Behind me North wordlessly pulls a tray from under the island and sets it on top, then crosses to the adjacent pantry. He returns with a small burlap sack of coffee and a sunken sieve that he sets into the kettle.
“Thank you,” I mumble.
He crosses to the doorway without looking back. “Good night, Miss Locke.”
He doesn’t even wait for a reply. I bite my lip to keep from calling after him, focusing instead on the dark coffee grounds until they blur into meaningless shadow. When footsteps return, I twist toward them, hopeful.
“Almost forgot,” he says, stepping back into the pantry. When he emerges, he offers me a small covered dish. “The most important thing.”
I accept it warily. “What is it?”
“Sugar,” he says, and my heart cracks with the memory of that night in his wagon, when he made me a cup of hot water sweetened with sugar and drew me paper flowers to replace the one I had lost in the woods.
Don’t, I warn myself, but my blood warms to the thought of a different night in the wagon, when I slept curled against his side and woke to the feel of his skin ghosting across mine.
North watches me, expectant. Despite the weeks of silence between us, a single word could close the gap now, a single step. My fingers hum with a need to pull back the collar of his shirt, to explore the unknown spell that lies hidden at his throat. Sofreya may have excised the poison from my blood, but my heart will always be greedy and it sings its desires now: more.
; No one would know, I tell myself: We’re all alone down here in the dark, with no one to witness our weakness. But I hear Chadwick, see his disapproving face. And I feel Bryn in the burn at my wrist, Cadence hanging on her every move.
North made his choice and I made mine. If I had wanted to be a mistress, Thaelan would still be alive.
“Good night, your majesty,” I say.
He doesn’t answer.
Ten minutes later I nudge Bryn’s door open with my hip. I set the rattling tray on an ottoman in the center of the room, sloshing coffee in the process.
Cadence grins, hanging over the edge of the bed, her long golden curls spilling down to touch the carpet. She regards me with upside-down eyes as she brandishes the pocket watch.
“Twenty minutes and thirty-seven seconds,” she announces.
“Well.” Bryn picks up the tray and shoves it at my chest. Coffee, sugar, and cream spill over the edge, soaking the front of my nightdress and the weave of her carpet. “Take it back to the kitchen and we’ll try again.”
Five
BREAKFAST IS TORTURE.
The routine developed over the last few weeks is maddening: Sit, be served, wait for all to finish, second course, repeat. I can’t refill my own water from the blown-glass pitchers in front of me; if I want salt, I have to ask it of whoever sits beside me, who then continues the message down the row. When it arrives, a servant dispenses it, as if I’m too simple to know how much salt my eggs require. And when I’m finished and want to bolt back to my room, or better yet, to the training barracks to spar with Chadwick, I have to sit in silent abjection until North or Bryn stand, dismissing us all.
I used to believe Thaelan had freedom. I used to envy him the lifestyle that afforded him nice clothes, guaranteed meals, a life free of fleas and cracks in the windows. But this is no better than life in the Brim.
At least down there you could run.
The only ones immune to the torture this morning are the Dossel children, who chase one another through the cavern of the dining room, voices ringing to the arches overhead. They clamor beneath the table, knocking into our knees in a game of tag, using the stoic-faced servants as their touchstone bases.
The game soon morphs into playing Burn, where the dark veins of the marble floor become rivers of poison they must avoid as they race to reach the safety of a curtained alcove—Brindaigel. When a child succumbs, their anguish is vocalized with shrieks and dramatic pitching, as the others dance out of reach with expressions of morbid delight and a barrage of questions: Does it hurt? Are you bad now? Do we kill you? Will you kill us?
Cadence pretends not to notice the game, feigning dignity that mirrors Bryn’s, even as her eyes slide back again and again with a shadow of wistfulness clouding her face. She used to be the fastest runner in her pack of Brim rats, but there was no running at the workhouse. There was no Perrote watching either. And while he ignores her the same way he ignores me, Cadence is not so indifferent to him, flinching at his voice, staring at her plate when he moves. She needs a friend, Alistair echoes, and it infuriates me to think that that is why he chose the seat on her other side. Playing the hero. Earning her trust while I’m still waiting for a simple acknowledgment.
Sol, one of the boys, rolls across the floor, rumpling his clothes. “I’m dying,” he wails. “Cut my heart out, quick, or I’ll turn into a monster!”
His cousins shriek with horrified delight. “Better yet,” one of the older girls says, “let’s give him a crown and call him the King of Avinea!”
“All hail the withered king,” the others chorus.
Despite myself, my eyes slide toward North at the head of the table, who eats while scanning a handful of council reports at his side—damage reports, no doubt, from the golem attack he mentioned last night. He pretends not to hear them, but when the children begin an elaborate coronation, a muscle in his jaw tightens and doesn’t relax.
“I’ll play grandfather,” someone calls, rushing back to their make-believe Brindaigel. “Here, we must have war!”
“Those children are beasts,” Bryn says mildly, her own uneaten breakfast pushed away from her, hands clasped across her stomach.
“Wait until you have your own,” her mother says with a knowing smile, shared by all the women at the table.
Bryn’s returning smile is glazed with ice. Her eyes settle on North. “Children are not born monsters,” she says. “It’s a skill inherited from their parents. If I have children, they will not scream at the breakfast table, because they will be taught better than that.”
They will be taught how to be cold and calm and calculating. There’s no surprise in the attack if everyone hears you coming.
“Cadence is less than a year older than Sol, and yet she conducts herself like a lady,” Bryn says, sitting up, leaning forward. She reaches out and strokes Cadence’s loose curls before squeezing her shoulder. “Ideal, I think. I would be happy with a daughter like her one day. Or a sister.” Her eyes cut slyly toward me.
Cadence blooms more brightly than a rose beneath her attention. She’s wearing her traveling gloves again, and it occurs to me suddenly that she doesn’t wear them because she’s cold or finds them fashionable. She wears them to hide her reddened, work-roughened hands, so unlike the soft, spoiled hands of those around her. My little sister is ashamed of her past, and that, more than Bryn’s taunting, is what deflates me.
“You have sisters enough already,” I say sharply to Bryn, pushing my chair back, throwing my napkin onto the table. “How many more do you need?”
“You have not been dismissed,” Bryn says, fingers still resting on Cadence’s shoulder.
“It’s only breakfast,” North says, annoyed, without looking up from his reports. “Why should she be forced to sit here with the rest of us if she’s already finished?”
Bryn’s frigid gaze transfers to him. “Oh,” she says. “I didn’t realize Faris belonged to you.”
North stares down at his paperwork, but everyone watches me now, to see what I do, whose side I choose. Even Cadence openly stares, a flicker of concern filling her blue eyes. I latch on to it with a desperation that surprises me. My sister is still alive, buried beneath gifts of silk and satin; maybe she’s not entirely against me.
Not yet.
A sudden clap startles the awkward silence. “The Stone and Fern Tavern,” Rialdo says. “I knew I recognized you!” Grinning, he waggles a finger at me with mocking admonishment. “I lost money because of you!”
Beside him his wife stiffens. “I beg your pardon?”
“If you lost money,” Alistair says drily, his first words of the meal, “it’s because you bet on the wrong girl.”
Rialdo barks a laugh, twisting toward Alistair. “That’s right! I was with you that night! You told me she was a sure win, but I bet on the other one instead, the little wiry one.”
His wife looks scandalized; Perrote looks annoyed. My skin begins to tighten uncomfortably, and I look to the door behind me, tensed to leave.
“Sit down,” Bryn says coldly. She balances a silver butter knife along the table’s edge with a careless grace. She won’t use it against me, not here. There are too many witnesses and possible spies among the servants to risk exposing the spell that binds us together. And while Cadence might find a late-night request for coffee harmless fun, I can’t imagine that the workhouse has inured her to cruelty—or the knowledge that Bryn’s father is the one who put her there. If Bryn wants my sister’s continued adoration, she has to show mercy.
“Do you still fight?” Rialdo asks.
“Of course not,” says Perrote. “She has no reason to.”
“You underestimate me, sir,” I say flatly. And then, defying Bryn’s order, I stride out of the dining room, back straight and chin raised—until I’m out of sight. Only then does the adrenaline force me to pause, breathless at my own nerve. Perrote is not my king anymore and I owe him no loyalty, and yet for sixteen years he was the dark shadow cast over my life, cutting off
the view of the sky around me. Talking back to him carries an inherent fear of retaliation, even though here his power is limited, his role relegated to that of a mere guest.
Chairs scrape back in the dining hall, and I quickly straighten, hurrying for my room to avoid anyone catching up to me. Only with the door shut safely behind me do my nerves unfurl again, and I cross to the window, staring out at the harbor beyond. We sail tomorrow, and it’s both too soon and not nearly soon enough. I expected these final two days to be nothing but Cadence and catching up; when I left, it would be with a proper good-bye and a promise to come back—something I was cheated out of in the dungeons six months ago. Now I don’t even know if she wants me to come back, or if Bryn has already replaced me.
The sea beyond the harbor is an endless, placid gray, mirroring the thin-spread clouds above. It would have snowed in Brindaigel by now, and despite myself I feel a pang of longing for the home I knew, where Cadence and I were still allies.
I can’t leave like this, full of anger and regret. She needs to know what I’ve done, and why. If she still hates me, then at least I tried.
Decided, I turn back into my room, and pause, surprised. A slender letter sits atop a wrapped book on my bed. My eyes swing to the closed doorway, as if to find a courier there with an explanation, but whoever delivered it must have done so during breakfast. I overlooked it in my nerves.
Warily I sink onto the edge of the mattress and pick up the letter first, tracing the generic wax seal on the back before snapping it open with my finger. Inside, the thick paper shows an address and a name. Dimitr Frell. My mother’s contract.
A shiver racks my body. Ever since discovering a coded list of coordinates and names denoting my mother’s contacts within Avinea, I’ve been determined to track down Dimitr Frell listed here, in New Prevast. But her coordinates were ambiguous, and his name worthless without proper city records. Chadwick caught me examining old council documents for more explicit answers, and North became suspicious of my motives, so he decreed I was forbidden to leave the palace.
