Ally of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  Ally of the Crown

  The Heirs of Willow North, Book One

  Melissa McShane

  Copyright © 2020 by Melissa McShane

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any way whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Jay R. Villalobos www.coversbyjuan.com

  North sign and shield designed by Erin Dinnell Bjorn

  For Jacob,

  who understands romance better than I do

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  About the Author

  Also by Melissa McShane

  1

  Fiona had stayed at so many inns over the last month all their taprooms had started to look alike. Low ceilings with fat square beams painted black or dark brown, planed oak floors worn smooth from generations of feet, round or square tables and ladderback chairs between the two. Either this was the ideal configuration for a successful taproom, or there was some carpenter somewhere who had a monopoly on the hospitality trade. This one was different in having chairs arranged in front of the fireplace, encouraging patrons to sit and enjoy a drink or five. It was a generous gesture Fiona appreciated.

  The logs in the inn’s long fireplace burned low, giving off scant heat against the cold of a Tremontanan winter. Fiona hitched her chair closer and thought about poking the fire into life, but the innkeeper, with his pinched, narrow face, had the look of someone for whom firewood was an extravagance.

  She took a long pull from her mug and set it on the table at her elbow. Hot cider, not the alcoholic kind, and that order had earned her another skeptical look from the innkeeper. She never drank, not even new beer, not even when it was the only thing on offer. It had taken only one…accident…to teach her that lesson.

  She stared at the flickering flames and felt her right palm itch with sympathy for them, denied their nature by the lack of fuel. If she had been alone, if this had been the fire in her own house, she might have rolled up her sleeve and taken hold of the log, made it blaze hot and bright and reveled in its joy at being freed. But doing so here would get her far more than skeptical looks from the innkeeper.

  Having inherent magic wasn’t illegal, not the way being an Ascendant was, but most people didn’t care about the distinction. And fire-starting…it was a magic no one would make allowances for, not like healing. She’d be lucky to die quickly at the mob’s hands. She closed her hand on the impulse and took another drink.

  Someone dropped into a chair next to her. “What’s a pretty lady like you doing sitting all alone?” the man said. Fiona managed not to roll her eyes.

  “Enjoying the solitude,” she said, hoping he’d heed the warning.

  “What are you drinking? Let me buy you another.” He was a big man with a heavy dark beard, but his smile was friendly, and she didn’t get a sense of menace off him. Not that it mattered. Why did so many men think they could impose on a lone woman, even in a friendly way?

  “Thanks, but this is my limit.” She swigged down the last of her cider, made a face at swallowing the bitter dregs all at once, and stood.

  “Oh, you’re not leaving so soon? Come on, I just want to talk. You wouldn’t leave old Jack here with nobody but the fire to talk to, would you?”

  “Sorry. Maybe another time.” This time tomorrow, she’d be somewhere else, probably fending off yet another too-friendly man. Too bad she no longer had a husband to dissuade them. She didn’t want Roderick back in her life, but she had to admit being married to him hadn’t been all bad. A husband-shaped shield, that’s what she needed.

  “If that’s what you want, Fiona,” the man said, turning his attention to the fire.

  Fiona took two steps toward the taproom door and halted. She’d never said her name.

  She returned to her chair and said, in a low voice, “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but if you so much as think about interfering in my business, I’ll make you wish we’d never met.”

  “You don’t have anything to fear from me,” Jack said. He stretched long legs toward the fire. “It’s not much warmth, is it? Bet you could do something about that.”

  Chill dread filled her heart. “Who are you?”

  “Someone like you. I told you, you don’t have to fear me. I’d never give away another of us.”

  Fiona glanced at the innkeeper, placidly polishing glasses behind the bar. A few other patrons sat at the bar, and a young couple working their way toward serious inebriation laughed and groped each other at a table near one of the multi-paned windows. No one paid her and Jack any attention. “You have the wrong woman. I’m no one special.”

  “My inherent magic shows me the magic of others like us,” Jack continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “You’re bright with fire, and not just because of the red hair. I asked the innkeeper your name. He’s remarkably loose-lipped. You might want to move elsewhere tomorrow.”

  “I’m—” She closed her lips on leaving town tomorrow. “What do you want?”

  “To warn you. There are hunters here in Maraston, and at least one of them has inherent sensory magic. They’ve already picked up a couple of hares, and I don’t want them getting their hands on either of us.”

  Hares. Code for people whose inherent magic was harmless, the ability to sense lies or locate missing people. But to hunters, it didn’t matter what magic you had; all of it made you potentially an Ascendant. Not that there was anyone left to teach Ascendant magic. Willow North had seen to that, eighty years ago. How those hunters justified using inherent magic to track down their victims, Fiona didn’t know. But if they had someone—

  Fiona stiffened. Suppose Jack were actually one of them? He could be there to keep her talking while the hunters moved in for the kill…

  She stood again. “Thanks for the warning. I’ll move on in the morning.”

  “There are three of them, two blond as Ruskalder, one dark-haired. He’s got a scar on his cheek. Keep your eyes open.”

  Fiona nodded and walked unhurriedly to the taproom door, not looking to see if Jack was watching her. Once through the door into the chilly front room of the inn, she trotted up the stairs to her second floor room and immediately gathered her things. There wasn’t much to gather; she traveled light these days. A change of clothes; a pair of lightweight shoes she was fond of, unsuitable for the winter weather; he
r journal. Most of her savings was sewn into the hem of her cloak, which was heavy and black and weighed several pounds even without the guilders it guarded. She wrapped it around herself and shouldered her bag. The room was paid for; all she had to do was find the back way out and hope it wasn’t being watched.

  The full moon cast shadows over the back yard of the inn, wan and pale compared to the sharp-edged darkness of a clear noon, but enough to confuse the eye and, Fiona hoped, conceal a woman. She stood in the scant shelter of the back door and surveyed the yard. It was a small square of hard earth where nothing grew. A roofed well hunched darkly to one side, and beyond the low fence was the stable yard. Men and women moved there despite the dark and cold, tending to patrons’ horses. Fiona saw nothing to indicate any of them were watching the inn.

  She slipped from the doorway and strolled along the back wall toward the road, keeping a careful watch on the moving figures. No one approached her. She flexed her bare fingers, wishing she had gloves. It was a bitingly cold, clear night, and she wrapped her cloak more closely around herself and let out a deep breath that turned instantly to a white cloud. When she was a child, she’d made a game of breathing out puffs of white condensation and racing around so they trailed after her. It had been a long time since she’d felt that carefree.

  A few pedestrians trod the streets even at this hour, all of them bundled up against the cold and not paying any heed to anyone but themselves. Fiona turned right, away from the inn, and kept walking, though she had no destination in mind. Some other inn—

  Behind her, she heard shouting. The man walking just ahead of her turned to look, so she did too. Three horses stood outside the inn, their reins held by a shivering young woman whose hair was bright gold even in the moonlight and the pale yellow glow from the inn’s windows. As Fiona watched, a dark-haired man emerged from the inn’s front door, followed by two others who were dragging someone between them. The fourth man fought and kicked, and even at this distance Fiona could tell it was Jack.

  She stared, breathless, her mind a blur of terror. She should help him. She had no way to help him. She had to be touching something, or someone, to make it catch fire, and she only had two hands. Even if she could burn two of Jack’s captors enough to incapacitate them, that still left the third free to capture or kill her. Probably kill her. But Jack had warned her. He might be in this position now because of that warning. She had to do something.

  The two men threw Jack to the ground, where he lay for a moment before pushing himself up. Fiona saw the glint of moonlight on steel half a breath before the dark-haired man raised a pistol and shot Jack in the head. The spray of blood struck the girl, who flinched, but made no sound.

  The man standing near her made a rush for the nearest building, where he vomited against its foundation. Fiona covered her mouth to hold in a scream. She took a step backward, then turned and hurried away as quickly as she could go without running. If one of those men had the ability to sense others with inherent magic, she couldn’t risk drawing attention to herself. Heaven only knew how far that person’s senses reached.

  She turned the first corner she came to and ran, blindly, caroming off a wall as she turned another corner. Staying in Maraston tonight was stupid. She needed to put as much distance between herself and those hunters as possible. She ran until the stitch in her side had her bent double and gasping for breath, then she walked until she was out of the town’s boundaries. Tiredness set in, making her bones ache, but she kept putting one foot in front of the other, following the frozen road westward. It was as good a direction as any.

  She couldn’t sleep outside unless she wanted it to be a sleep she never woke from, and she wasn’t yet in that kind of despair. She consulted her mental map. Vanton was the next town west of Maraston, only a few miles. She would make it there before midnight, and if she was lucky, she’d find an inn still open. If not, she’d steal some sleep in a stable somewhere.

  By heaven, it was cold. Fiona rubbed her hands together, then wrapped a fold of her cloak around them. She made herself think of other things, which didn’t make her feel warm but at least distracted her. Those hunters hadn’t even pretended they were interested in a legal trial to prove Jack intended to use his magic for evil, and worse, no one in authority was likely to care that they’d murdered a man in the middle of the street so long as they could prove he was a dangerous potential Ascendant. And Jack’s magic could hurt no one. She cursed the hunters, running through a litany of profanity that distracted her further, then cursed the long-dead Ascendants for turning magic into something to be feared.

  She hurried faster, hoping to stay warm. She was probably safe now that she was away. The hunters were opportunists rather than hunting her specifically. She’d been careful, ever since her inherent magic had manifested when she was thirteen, and no one had ever guessed she was anything but ordinary. Not even Roderick had known, which probably should have been her first clue that their marriage was a mistake. She’d always believed married people ought to be able to share one another’s burdens, and inherent magic had to qualify. But every time she’d come close to revealing her secret, he’d done something that stopped her—they’d fought, or he’d ridiculed her, and she’d felt relieved that she had an excuse. Now that they were divorced, she was particularly grateful.

  But even if those men weren’t hunting her, they were close enough that she needed to be careful. She’d been traveling with no destination in mind, and that needed to change. But where could she go? Where did she want to go? That was a question with no answer. She didn’t particularly want anything these days except a warm fire and no one prodding her to move on with her life. She’d adopted back into her birth family after the divorce, not wanting to be a singleton, and she loved her aunt and uncle and cousins, but they had a tendency to nag. Fiona wished her parents were still alive, but illness had taken her mother, and her father—she shut her eyes and stopped in the middle of the road, fighting off old memories. It was an accident. Not your fault. Just an accident.

  She opened her eyes and kept walking. How far could she go? The Eidestal, or Ruskald? Neither the Kirkellan nor the Ruskalder were very welcoming of outsiders. Eskandel? Veribold? Or—a new thought struck her. There was that new country the Eskandelics had discovered, far across the southern ocean. Dineh-something. If she was worried about being followed, that was far enough away to dissuade even the most dedicated hunter. She knew nothing about the place, not even its name, but the idea gripped her. It was different. And it was at least a direction.

  She walked more rapidly, wanting to get to her destination as quickly as possible. She’d need to take ship from Umberan in Eskandel, which meant going west to Ravensholm and then south. She could take the overland carriage from Vanton and be in Ravensholm in days. And maybe then she’d have some idea what she wanted to do with her life.

  2

  Five days later, Fiona strode through the streets of Ravensholm, her bag over her shoulder. The snow hadn’t fallen here, so far south; instead filthy rainwater lay in the gutters and the depressions between the pavers. Leafless trees, the famous lindens lining Center Street, reached bony fingers toward the blue winter sky. The afternoon sun cast long gray shadows pointing Fiona’s way down the street. She caught a whiff of hot roasted chestnuts and veered to one side to buy a paper cone full of the delicious nuts. She smiled at the woman ahead of her, who ducked into her coat collar and just shrugged in reply. Well, Fiona was in a good mood, and one sour woman wasn’t enough to ruin that.

  She accepted her cone with another smile and juggled a couple of chestnuts—too hot to eat, yet. Ahead, she saw a wooden sign with a spiky crown painted lopsidedly on it. The inn was tall and elderly, but its windows were clean and reflected the sky, and it didn’t look very expensive. It was as good a place to stay as any.

  Ten minutes later she sat on a lumpy bed in an interior, windowless room and took a deep breath, inhaling cool dampness the heating Device on the wall couldn’t dispel
. It had been the last room in the Crown Inn, but she’d opted not to look for someplace nicer. It wasn’t as if she’d be there long. The wooden walls were stained dark brown and were bare of anything but a small oval mirror just big enough for Fiona to see her face. She scuffed the soles of her boots across the woven rug, streaked with marks that showed she wasn’t the first to do so, and looked her reflection in the eye.

  “I’m Fiona Cooper,” she told herself. “I was Fiona Kent until I came to my senses.” Though no one needed to know this. Divorce wasn’t unheard of, but people did look at you funny if they knew your marriage was dissolved, like there was some flaw in you. The idea that a divorce might be best for everyone concerned seemed not to occur to some people.

  She left her bag on the bed and went down the stairs, nearly running over a young woman coming up. “I beg your pardon,” Fiona said. The young woman was dressed casually in trousers and a heavy knitted sweater, and her boots looked new, as if she’d only just bought them. She had hair nearly as red as Fiona’s that she wore loose around her face, which was narrow and sharp-nosed. Fiona took a step to the right to get out of her way. The young woman nodded, not meeting Fiona’s eyes, and hurried on up the stairs. Fiona shrugged and continued down the stairs. Someone here must know where she could buy a newspaper.