A noblewoman with hidden magic. An exiled prince with dark secrets. Only together can they escape their magical prison and save their realm, in this romantic fantasy novel from Jamie Thomas.

Read an excerpt from Asperfell, on sale June 23rd, below!

1

I remember a little about the night the king was assassinated.

I was only eight years old at the time and cared not at all for life beyond my own nose, but some things can never be forgotten.

I was pulled from the deep, satisfying sleep of one who had spent the day climbing the rafters in the west turret to avoid their odious tutor by my older sister, Livia. She smothered my groan of displeasure with her hand, and in the stillness of the room I stared at her wide eyes and disheveled curls as she raised a finger to her lips, then slowly removed her hand from my mouth. Livia was the very soul of decorum. Her reasons for waking me in such a state must’ve been very urgent indeed.

“There are men below,” Livia told me in a breathless whisper, as I struggled to free myself from the bedsheets tangled around my skinny legs. “Men from the Citadel.”

“What time is it?” The sky outside the window told me nothing with its darkness. I could’ve just fallen asleep an hour ago or it might have been near morning. The late autumn night guarded her secrets carefully.

“Just after midnight.”

With a grunt, I turned my back on her and flopped down into my pillows, my hand groping for the blankets. “Go away.”

Livia shook my shoulder, her fingers gripping me so tightly that I yelped. “Get up, Briony,” she hissed into my ear. “I think it’s bad.”

“Men from the Citadel come all the time.” My voice was muffled by the pillow, and I shrugged my shoulder in an effort to be rid of her. She only dug her fingers deeper into my skin.

“Mother and Uncle Geordan are below with Lord Falstone,” Livia said. “And there are guards.”

At this, I perked up. “Guards?”

“Yes.” Livia pulled my blankets off me, and I gasped at the sudden shock of the cold air of my bedchamber. The little fire that usually burned so merrily in my grate was a dull smudge of blackened coals with very little living inside to stoke.

“Come on,” I whispered to her, suddenly eager. “We can listen at the top of the stairs.”

We walked down the darkened corridor, our bare, cold feet padding silently on the rich, dark wood floors until we reached the landing that overlooked the grand foyer of our Iluvien townhouse. We crouched together, Livia and I, in our long white nightgowns, and pressed our faces as close as we could to the ornately carved railing.

There were six people clustered in the foyer. I immediately recognized the broad, stalwart figure of my Uncle Geordan, and my mother beside him, still wearing the russet gown she’d had on at dinner, which meant she had not gone to bed. The tall man with a sallow face and hair the color of metal was Lord Falstone, whom I disliked. He was as stern as his countenance and, when it came to children, a traditionalist. He only marginally tolerated my sister Livia because she was twelve and had learned the intricacies of interacting with adults. Which was to say, she sat demurely with her fine white hands in her lap and said nothing at all. Me, he did not care for. I was, as my father affectionately referred to me, a whirlwind.

There were two palace guards, one on either side of the door to the courtyard, resplendent in black-and-silver livery and utterly still.

The sixth person I did not know at all. He was an unremarkable man; he was neither short nor tall, broad nor thin, and his face was quite ordinary. It was the sort of face one would forget entirely without frequent exposure. He looked to be in his middle years, younger than my father, but not by much. He hung back from the others, but his eyes were watchful.

“Who is with him now?” My mother’s voice, usually melodic and rich, was hushed and pitched low.

Lord Falstone replied, quieter even than she had been, and I could only make out two names of the several he listed: Aeneas and Magnus. The first was one of the king’s Mages. The second was my father.

“And the traitor?” my uncle demanded.

“In the Tower,” was Lord Falstone’s response. “The Guard is with him, and four Mages.”

“Has he said anything?”

“Nothing at all.”

My uncle snorted in disgust, the sound echoing in the vast open space. Mother laid her hand on his arm. “The girls are abed.”

My uncle ignored her. “Tell Magnus to send another detachment to the Tower. The filth killed his own father.”

I gasped out loud.

The unremarkable man, who had until this point remained utterly still and silent, turned his gaze to the railing where we crouched, and Livia gripped my arm. He must’ve seen us; we were hardly concealed in the shadow of the railing. But if he did see us, he said nothing.

“We should go back to bed,” Livia whispered to me, her hand on my arm. “I don’t think this is something we should hear.”

I shook her off. “You go back to bed, then.”

My father, a great friend and councilor to the king, was often at court and shared absolutely nothing about what he did there with Livia or myself. Had the news delivered to our home that night by Lord Falstone been of the mundane sort, I still would’ve been mad to hear it, mad enough to risk a sound whipping should I be discovered. But my uncle had just pronounced King Gavreth dead, and at the hand of his own son. No power in all of Tiralaen could’ve sent me back to my cold bedroom. I would hear it, never mind what it cost me.

“The bells have not rung,” my mother said below. “The news has not spread beyond the palace, then. How long can they possibly contain it?”

Lord Falstone frowned. “Not long, I’m afraid. The court was gathering as I left.”

“Will there be a trial?”

“It would be unprecedented if there were not.”

My uncle made a vicious gesture with his hand. “A waste,” he spat. “He was found with the body, Sabine. The king was killed by magic, and we all know his wretched son is a proficient.”

Livia’s wide eyes met mine, and in the dim light of the hall I could see her face was as pale as I imagined my own to be. To cause another human being harm by magical means was sacrilege.

“He is also only sixteen years old—not even a man,” my mother reminded him.

“He is man enough to use his magic to kill,” my uncle replied sourly.

“It troubles me greatly,” Lord Falstone agreed. “Prince Elyan is arrogant, and he has a sharp tongue besides. But to kill his own father? He has nothing to gain from it. The throne was already his birthright.”

“No doubt the old man wasn’t aging fast enough for his liking.” My uncle’s tone held none of the doubt in my mother’s voice, or even in Lord Falstone’s. “He’ll go through the Gate for this, though I would rather see him hanged.”

At this, the sixth man stepped forward and placed his hand firmly on Uncle Geordan’s arm. “I fear your conversation is no longer your own,” he said, and he tilted his gaze up to the upper floor where we crouched.

Livia shrank back into the shadows, likely terrified that our clandestine eavesdropping would anger and disappoint our mother. I did not. I gripped the bars of the railing in my small hands and met the faces below with a child’s brash confidence.

In the distance, the bells began to toll.

It was still dark when I woke to the sound of the hinges on my door creaking in soft protest. A thin shaft of light fell across my bed, and I sat up, fully intending to tell my sister to leave me alone, when I saw it was not Livia’s hand that held the lantern aloft: it was my father’s.

I said nothing as his tall, broad form crossed the room and set the lantern on my bedside table—had it only been a few hours since Livia had done the same?—and the wood of my bedframe creaked as he lowered himself onto it. In the lantern light, I could make out the proud, handsome planes of his face, the auburn curls shot with gray that spilled onto his forehead. I had inherited the color of his hair but very little else from him. My brown eyes were my mother’s, and far too big for my face. I was a tiny thing like her. Livia was almost as tall as Mother, even at twelve, and bonny like my father. She had already begun her bleeding and was filling out her dresses while mine hung off me like sacks.

“Is the king really dead?” I whispered into the darkness between us.

My father sighed heavily, inclined his head toward me. “I am afraid so.”

“Uncle Geordan said the prince killed him.”

Beneath his beard, the ghost of a smile tugged at my father’s lips. “Told you that, did he?”

“No.” I swallowed. “Livia and I were listening.” Then, because I could not discern if he was angry or not: “I’m sorry.”

“It would’ve come to you eventually.” My father’s voice was so very sad, and I reached out impulsively and grasped his giant hand with my much smaller one.

“Is it true?”

He took so long to answer that I wondered if he’d forgotten me there. “Yes.”

When my mother and uncle had spoken of it, it seemed too shocking to be believed, a story that had come from an overactive imagination in the palace kitchens, a fantastical distortion of an event that would eventually turn out to be quite ordinary. Hearing my father confirm it now, it became horribly real.

“But why,” I said, aghast. “Why would he kill his own father?”

My father’s eyes met mine in the dim lantern light. “Murder has many motivators, none of which are meant to be understood by a child.” He sighed deeply and looked down at our clasped hands. “Whatever his reasons, the king is dead, and the prince…”

My uncle had said the prince would go through the Gate for his crime. All children in Tiralaen knew what the Gate was and knew what lay beyond it: the ancient fortress of Asperfell, a prison created to hold Mages.

Magic was said to have been given to humankind by the goddess Thala, and the taking of a life in which the gift resided was considered the deepest blasphemy. The trouble was, there was not a prison in Tiralaen that could hold the Mages, their power was so great. Many fools had tried and failed spectacularly, and so an alternative was sought: a bargain between death and freedom. The Gate was this grand compromise, and it had done its job for five hundred years. No living being had ever crossed the threshold and returned.

“Will he go through the Gate, Father?” I asked in the silence that stretched between us. “To Asperfell?”

“Undoubtedly.” He lifted his head and looked at me. “Briony, I must ask something of you. Something of great importance.”

I sat up straighter, eager to show that whatever it was that he wanted, I could be trusted to do it.

“Our family is about to see a great change.” The way he said it made me feel as though this change was not something he took any pleasure in. “And I fear there may be difficult times ahead.”

I nodded, though I had little idea what he meant. Difficult times for a child of privilege meant no pudding at supper, or an early bedtime.

“You have always been a strong-willed child.” My father chucked me under the chin, and I smiled at him sheepishly. “With a certain, shall we say…proclivity for shirking the rules.”

I believe if he had seen me that morning in the rafters, he wouldn’t have put it quite so delicately. “I don’t mean to be a burden,” I said.

“I know you don’t.” He smiled ruefully. “And I have always loved this about you, my little whirlwind. But where we are going, the life we will live, you must try your hardest to behave. To play the lady.”

I squeezed his fingers in the dark. “I promise to be better, Father.”

“Just so.” He nodded and helped me snuggle back into my blankets, tucking them around me. “Briony, there is one more thing you must promise me.”

“Anything,” I said. My eyelids were growing heavy.

“Have courage. And no matter how dark the world seems and how much you’d like to darken with it, find whatever light you can wherever you can, and help it grow.”

“I will,” I murmured.

“Help it grow,” he repeated. Against the sweet pull of sleep, his voice sounded very far away. “For that is the only way we can defeat the darkness.”

In the end, it was decided that Livia and I should be permitted to attend the administering of the prince’s punishment. My mother protested, believing we were far too young to witness something so somber, but my father prevailed. He was adamant that we begin to learn the intricacies of court life, even those as ghastly as this.

The sentence was carried out on a frigid morning five days after the king’s death.

Livia and I were trussed up into our finest gowns, our cheeks rosy and pink after a thorough scrubbing from Augusta, the maid we shared between the two of us. Her deft hands braided our hair into coronets atop our heads and fastened our fur-lined cloaks under our chins and sent us out into the blustery gray to meet our mother and uncle.

I was used to seeing my uncle in his court attire; he did not often change between the palace and our townhouse when he came to call. But the sight of my mother draped in rich silk and dripping with jewels was a rare one indeed. If the gravity of what we were about to witness had not set in for me before, it certainly did then.

We rode in silence to the palace. Bored and uneasy, I sat on my knees on the carriage seat and pressed my face to the glass, watching the grand stone residences of the city’s wealthy and influential gradually give way to rows of neatly kept terrace houses and shops in the bustling heart of the city and, farther still, the ramshackle tenements where the poorest lived. I wrinkled my nose at the sudden onslaught of smells, a pungent intermingling of roasted meats, wood smoke, and feces, both horse and human. It was not a smell I cared for.

For those who worshiped the new god, today was a holy day, and crowds of people swarmed the gleaming temples, seeking the promise of salvation. Their prayers were sung with reverence, but they were not beautiful; always mingled with the holiness was fear, and fear and love were not easy company.

The places where the Old Gods were venerated were far more ancient, and to worship them was to worship the moon and the sun, the stars, the earth, the water. To worship them was to worship magic, for it was from the Old Gods that magic had first come to humans.

The Father is Coleum, who rules the heavens, and the Great Mother is Sator, whose realm is the world itself. Between them they bore three children. Bellus, who loves discord and strife, is jealous of humanity and petty; thus, we are tormented by his spirits, though such abominations have not been seen for centuries. Mor, whom we simply call Death, cares little for anything living at all.

It is Thala, born of water and stars, who loved the poor creatures her parents had made, and in her love had blown softly against the skin of the first people and woken the light within them, stirred the magic in their blood. Her temple by the sea was said to be made of white stone shot through with silver that gleamed when the sun rose over the sea and bathed it in light. I’d never seen it; only Mages were permitted within its sacred walls.

Like his father before him, King Gavreth honored both the old religion and the new, believing them capable of living side by side, and so families worshiped as they chose, anathema to the lands to the north and east where the religion of the people was determined by the religion of the crown. There, the monotheistic teachings of the new religion reigned.

Iluviel, the Shining City, capital of Tiralaen, known for progress and enlightenment and culture and learning, had gradually come to embrace the new god as they might a new fashion, but outside of the city the Old Gods still held sway, even amidst he wealthy, where shrines to Coleum, Sator, and Thala could be found on the grounds of most country estates.

Still, there was an uneasy truce between the Old Gods and the fashionable new, though the former thought the latter prudish and insufferably smug and the latter found the former strange and wild and savage.

My own parents had taken their vows of marriage before the Old Gods in the Temple Sol Eternum, but they did not practice the way some families did, particularly families with Mages. They observed only the two most important of the sacred holidays, Serus in the winter and Solarium in the summer, and only occasionally placed offerings at the foot of a statue of Sator in our garden, bunches of herbs and bowls of milk for the faery folk that were her pages and handmaidens.

They did not keep the long vigils, did not know the old stories and songs, did not make pilgrimages to the shores of the Lucet Sea.

“Why do Mother and Father never take us to the temples?” I asked Uncle Geordan above the rattling of our carriage wheels on the cobblestones.

He smiled. “Perhaps they are waiting until you are grown, so that you may better understand the choice you make when you worship the Old Gods. Or the new, for that matter.”

“Which do you worship?”

Uncle Geordan snorted. “I have love for neither, really, but if forced, I would throw in my lot with the Old Gods. This new sort has far too many rules for my taste.”

In the distance, the spires of the Citadel rose in the dull morning fog like fingers pointing toward the heavens. Beyond it, I could just make out the Tower Maer. An ancient fortress, the Tower was the original seat of the royal family before the Citadel and the sprawling palace within its walls were built as a gift from a king to his Yalanese bride, who had lived in an exquisite palace by the sea and wept upon seeing her new home. The Tower Maer was now a prison, and a place of execution and banishment.

The poor and wretched, whose crimes were those of desperation and passion, were not kept in the Tower Maer. They were either condemned to hard labor in the east or sent to Vraith off the coast of Cyr, where they died quickly and were forgotten. If their crime was particularly heinous, or they had some notoriety amongst the rabble, they were executed in Iluviel’s main square, but this practice had fallen out of fashion with the rule of King Gavreth and his father before him.

No, it was men and women of wealth and influence who lived out their days within the small rooms of the Maer or were executed within its walls, along with Mages waiting to be banished beyond the Gate to Asperfell.

I had never been to the Tower before, and my eyes drank in the imposing slabs of stone that rose into the sky as we passed under a portico. The outer vestibule of the Tower was a gloomy business, made gloomier by the grim presence of Lord Falstone, who had been sent to collect us in my father’s place. He said nothing as we stepped down from the carriage but gave my mother a stiff bow and offered her his arm.

Uncle Geordan did the same for Livia and me, and I was grateful for his solid, warm presence as he guided us through an archway where two palace guards stood unmoving. We passed into a long corridor lined with ornate sconces holding glass spheres full of Magefire. The effect was quite breathtaking, and I could not help but gasp in delight at the sight of it.

“Are we almost there?” Livia asked Uncle Geordan, her small voice echoing around us.

So enraptured was I by the magic before me that I did not see his smile, but I heard it in his voice. “Very nearly.”

“Will they have pies?” I asked, as my stomach rumbled loudly in protest. “The cook’s boy said they have pies at executions, and cider.”

Livia looked horrified, but my uncle chuckled indulgently. “There are food and drink carts at the executions of commoners in the streets, Briony, but not here. Not at the Tower. Executions here are a serious affair.” His smile faded. “And today’s most serious of all.”

I was highly disappointed by this turn of events. I’d purposefully eaten only half a sweet bun at breakfast in anticipation of the bounty I was falsely promised.

I shielded my eyes from the sharp, cold morning sunlight as we emerged from the passage into the inner courtyard. My first impression of the place where Tiralaen’s most noble criminals were executed or exiled through the Gate was that it was much smaller than I had imagined. I could not help but stare open-mouthed at the walls of the Tower, punctured here and there by uneven windows with filthy, warped glass, or by clumps of green growing stubbornly in the fissures in the stones. I began to count the windows, if only to figure out how many floors high the Tower was, but I stopped when I realized there were faces staring out at me. They could’ve been male or female, young or old, for all I could see of their features. They floated in the panes, smudges of white with sunken eyes, and I shivered at the hopelessness I saw within their depths.

There was a wooden scaffolding in the center of the green, and surrounding it on three sides were benches three rows deep, each raised higher than the one preceding it. Though the benches could’ve held at least a hundred spectators, I counted only a few dozen men and women, all members of the king’s court, hunched in their cloaks against the chill. I could see no children among them. On the fourth side of the scaffolding, there was a dais that held two thrones, one larger and one smaller. Two palace guards flanked the thrones, and I realized that must be where the new king would sit to watch his brother’s eternal banishment.

As my uncle guided us onto the bench beside our mother, I tugged on his sleeve. “I don’t see the Gate. Where is it?”

“The king’s Mages will open it when it is time. You cannot expect that they would leave it open with such impish girls running around, now can you?”

I stuck my tongue out at him. “We can’t cross through the Gate. We’re not Mages.”

He meant to abate my worry, I was sure of it, but I honestly had no idea what to expect. My childish mind could not conceive of a gate that could appear and disappear at will, as this one must’ve done, for I simply could see no evidence of a gate anywhere.

“Look!” Livia whispered. “There’s Father!”

Sure enough, our father had emerged across the courtyard with two men familiar to my eyes though I could not name them. They each bore the gilded chains of members of the king’s privy council, and behind them strode a youth close in age with my sister. Behind them were three very somber men indeed, Mages wearing sweeping robes, and last of all came a constituent of palace guards in black-and-silver livery emblazoned with the sigil of House Acheron: a raven and a branch of thorns. A murmur rippled through the small crowd at their appearance, and I understood this meant that the dreadful thing we had all come to witness was soon to begin.

As the Mages ascended the scaffolding, Uncle Geordan whispered to me, “The young man with the fair hair is the king’s cousin, Macon Eleutheris. He has been a ward of Gavreth’s for some time, but now I imagine he will return to his family’s estate in the south. The other two men with your father are members of Gavreth’s privy council.”

“Will they serve the new king now?”

“It would be terribly unwise of them not to.”

“Where is the queen?” I craned my neck, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. I’d seen her twice before, on Solarium of this year and last, when my father had finally relented and allowed me to attend the palace festivities, however briefly. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen—tall and lithe, with a perfect oval face and hair as dark as a crow’s wing—and she had the loveliest laugh, like the tinkling of bells. I did not imagine I would hear that laugh today.

“She will accompany the king,” Uncle Geordan said.

I couldn’t quite remember the faces of Keric, now king of Tiralaen, or his brother, now condemned. I’d caught only glimpses of them at Solarium during the feast, before my father had sent Livia and me home in a carriage, determined that we should not see the court descend into what he described as the “less-than-savory activities that typically follow a night of drink and revels.”

He’d smiled at me, the younger of Gavreth’s sons, when our family approached the throne to wish the royal family health and happiness for the season and to present our gift: a magnificent hand-painted globe my father had commissioned from an artist in Minn, awash in gold filigree. Likely he thought me quaint in my best dress and pinned curls, a court lady in miniature. I know King Gavreth certainly had; his booming laugh and pleasant voice had made me blush.

I remembered very little about the king’s eldest son and heir, other than that he was tall and had dark hair and a sharp expression. He’d spoken little and smiled not at all.

Once my father and the king’s cousin were standing on the dais, the small crowd on the benches rose to welcome the new king and his mother. Both Livia and I were far too short to see them, so my uncle let us stand on the bench. Beside Livia, my mother pursed her lips in disapproval but said nothing.

“Oh,” Livia exclaimed quietly. “He is very handsome, isn’t he?”

The young king of Tiralaen, resplendent in his fine black velvet trimmed in silver, was indeed a handsome boy with the rich brown hair of his late father and a pair of fine eyes that looked as though they often sparkled in merriment. At only fourteen, he was a strapping lad and would likely grow finer still. Beside me, Livia gazed at him enraptured.

On his arm, his mother was weeping. If I had not known her to be made of flesh and blood, I might’ve thought her a statue of the finest porcelain. Her face was deathly pale, and she was shrouded in black veils that billowed around her face.

As the king and his mother approached the empty thrones, the court bowed as one, deep and low. Of course, I had no idea I was supposed to do this, and Livia had to shove my head down.

Once we were seated again, I pinched her leg.

King Keric saw his mother seated in the smaller throne before he took his own. Then he nodded at his Mages.

We did not rise for the prisoner.

Like all of those unfortunate souls condemned to death or banishment through the Gate, he wore no ornaments, only the simplest garments of pale gray: the color of the lost. He bore no chains but walked freely between two members of the king’s personal guard and mounted the scaffolding alone. He was a tall, thin rail of a boy with skin so pale it was almost translucent and a shock of overgrown black curls that fell over his forehead. I did not care overmuch for the sharp angles of his face, but he had the most extraordinary pair of eyes I had ever seen: the palest shade of blue, so pale they were nearly clear, the color of summer rain, and of ice.

Those extraordinary eyes slowly swept the court and finally landed on his brother. His expression held nothing but cold contempt, and even from where I sat, I could see the muscles of his jaw tighten.

This was the boy who had murdered his father in cold blood with magic? Even though he was twice my age, he seemed so impossibly young. The anger that thrummed through his taut form was the helpless rage of a child, a throaty scream, hot, furious tears. I could not believe this boy, no matter how proficient a Mage, could take a life.

I knew from my Uncle Geordan that his trial had been swift and attended only by a handful of people at court. He must’ve had the chance to defend himself then, or at least someone should’ve done, but I wondered why he said nothing now as he stood in front of us all, facing his terrible fate.

As if he’d understood my distress, Uncle Geordan whispered into my ear: “He’ll have been spelled into silence. It would be unwise for the king to allow one smack of perceived martyrdom.”

I did not know what martyrdom was, but two of the three Mages were moving toward the young prince, and Uncle Geordan’s words fell away as the Mages raised their hands and touched the tips of their outstretched fingers to one another’s. I had seen magic worked before, of course—everyone in Tiralaen had—but the spells had been simple. Nothing like what I was now witnessing on the scaffolding. Very slowly, the Mages drew their hands apart, and between them blossomed a glittering circle of silvery light, as if the sky had been cut open to reveal it. The farther they moved away from one another, the more the circle grew until it was the height and width of a person.

It became clear at last. “The Gate,” I whispered.

“Elyan, son of Gavreth of House Acheron,” the third Mage intoned. “You have been found guilty of the murder of your father, the king, by magic and sentenced to eternity through the Gate in the prison of Asperfell, never again to walk this world. May you find solace in the Old Gods, and may they grant you mercy.”

Prince Elyan’s piercing gaze had not left his brother as the Mage pronounced his fate. Now, he spared a brief glance for his mother. Tears were streaming down the queen’s pale cheeks, dripping freely onto her hands, and she made no effort to wipe them away.

“Oh, Briony,” Livia whispered, her voice quivering. “To lose her husband must hurt beyond all imagining. But to lose him to her son, and to lose that son as well…”

I glanced up at her and was shocked to see her eyes rimmed with red, the streaks of moisture on her cheeks already drying in the cold wind. Perhaps it was her words, or the distress in her distraught face, but I felt the hot sting of tears in my own eyes. Ducking my head to hide my face in the hood of my cloak, I dashed them away quickly.

Beside his despondent mother, King Keric’s face was pinched and pale. He had, up until that point, held his brother’s malice-filled eyes. As Prince Elyan’s sentence and final benediction hung in the air between them, Keric cast his eyes down. Shock blossomed in Prince Elyan’s face, mingling with the anger, followed by something that almost looked like regret.

Face him, I willed the king, and my fists clenched at my sides. You’ll never see him again.

But he did not. And Prince Elyan turned his back on him.

Then he strode across the scaffolding and disappeared through the ring of light.

A sharp gasp arose from the crowd. The silvery lines of the Gate seemed to pulse and, with a shudder, collapsed upon themselves until nothing was left but a pinprick of light that blinked once and disappeared, leaving the air exactly as it had been only moments before.

Prince Elyan was gone.

2

In the days that followed, the change my father had warned me about that fateful night began to take shape around me.

Our belongings were borne away from our townhouse by liveried attendants and placed in a suite of rooms in the palace. A furious fight ensued between Livia and myself over the largest bedroom, which she wanted because it was pink and I wanted because the bed was the highest and, therefore, the best for jumping off onto an enormous pile of pillows. Age prevailed, and I was relegated to the blue bedroom, which I also liked though I did not admit this to anyone out of sheer stubbornness. The walls were a rich cobalt trimmed in gold, and the ceiling was a mural of the heavens: the sun, moon, and stars, gilded and gleaming.

There was a splendid parlor at the heart of our suite with an enormous fireplace surrounded by richly appointed couches, where our family gathered in the evenings to play cards, read, and, in the case of my mother and sister, embroider and darn. My uncle, who had been newly named a member of the king’s council, was often with us, which pleased me greatly. I did not acclimate to court life quite as well as Livia, and, knowing this, he went to great lengths to make me laugh. Many evenings we sat around the fire trading stories and playing cards and chess. I was absolute rubbish at the latter; while my uncle was calculated in his moves, I blundered ahead with single-minded determination only to realize with dismay that had I paid more attention to what was happening on the board apart from my own bold maneuvers, I could’ve prevented my figurines from being snatched up by my chuckling opponent.

We saw very little of my father, consumed as he was with the young king’s initiation into the intricacies of rulership. I longed to know what it was they discussed in the privy chamber. No doubt it was vastly more entertaining than what awaited me as a daughter of a nobleman at court.

Livia and I began lessons under the tutelage of a master for our academics and a mistress for our etiquette. This I did not enjoy because, unlike old Master Robar, the new master, Omerus, was considerably younger and considerably faster. My efforts to escape him were embarrassingly unsuccessful.

Mistress Precia was worse.

She rapped my knuckles with a willow branch if I dared to show less than the most intense concentration in her lessons. I did not mind music, I was fairly good at drawing, and I thoroughly enjoyed dancing (although I think I did it with far more enthusiasm than Mistress Precia believed was warranted), but I loathed table manners, the art of using a fan, and anything having to do with needlework. Livia, of course, was perfect at nearly all of it, and Mistress Precia absolutely adored her. Me, she barely tolerated.

“Your father will expect to make excellent matches for you both in only a few years’ time,” she said one afternoon as Livia and I sat side by side in front of the fire, sketching a vase full of flowers that Mistress Precia had set on a low table. Livia’s version was true to life, of course, but I’d taken liberties with mine; I’d made my flowers slightly wilder than our model, adding thorns here, tendrils there. Mistress Precia was bound to find fault with it. “You are not likely to do so if you are thought to be an embarrassment to his household.”

This, she directed at me. There was no chance of Livia being an embarrassment to anyone.

Mistress Precia made mention of our future prospects no less than three times a day, sometimes more when I was particularly unruly. I thought us both far too young to be anything to anyone’s household for quite some time, but Livia, nearly thirteen, listened intently, nodding in agreement. She had begun to copy the women of court of late, wearing her hair pinned in elaborate curls studded with ornaments and carrying a fan around her wrist. The youngest of Queen Alenda’s ladies-in-waiting was a mere two years older than Livia, and my sister made no secret of her desire to join their ranks until she made a match among one of nobility.

“What if I don’t want to get married?” I lowered my sketchpad and fixed Mistress Precia with the most stubborn look I could muster.

Mistress Precia pursed her lips disapprovingly. “My dear, even you will find marriage a great deal more suitable than the alternative.”

“You mean become a governess like you?”

This was, evidently, the wrong thing to say, and my knuckles paid the painful price.

“She’s wretched,” I told Uncle Geordan that night as we sat together in front of the fire. I would not have spoken thus had there been anyone else in the room; my sister and mother had retired earlier, and my father was shut away in his study, as he so often was. “And her lessons are boring.”

“Are they really? No. Surely not?” Uncle Geordan raised an eyebrow at me. I was too little and inexperienced in the intricacies of conversation to know that he was playing a game at my expense.

“Yes!” I exploded passionately. “It’s all curtseying and which fork to use and ever so many dance steps that I can never remember. I nearly fell asleep yesterday while we were practicing embroidery, and she pinched my ear!”

“The nerve!” Uncle Geordan feigned outrage, and when I scowled at him, he burst out laughing. “Briony, every man and woman living in this palace has endured the wrath of a master to varying degrees of severity. A rite of passage, if you will, for noble stock.”

“Maybe I’ll just stop going.” My mood was sour, and I sounded petulant even to my own ears.

My uncle faced me then, with a serious look on his handsome face. “I know this has not been easy for you, and you may think me cruel when I say this, but you must learn to think beyond yourself now. Your father is one of the most important men in Tiralaen. He has been tasked with guiding a young and inexperienced king through a difficult time. A great many eyes are on him now, and everything he says and does is scrutinized to an unbearable degree. Do not add to his burden by making an embarrassment of yourself at court.”

The words stung, and I felt a hot flood of shame wash over me. He’d been as kind as he could’ve been in the telling of it, but I still felt as though I had committed a grievous sin. My father was beloved to me. I could not bear the thought of causing him pain. After all, hadn’t I promised him on that terrible night that I would try my best to play the lady?

I applied myself more studiously after this, though I still resisted any talk of marriage. Once I overcame my indignation at having been thwarted in my attempts to escape Master Omerus, I realized his lessons were quite fascinating. He loved history and was all too happy to indulge my desire for celebrated battles, magic, and court intrigue. I still did not enjoy Mistress Precia’s lessons, though I reminded myself as my hands moved, laboriously at first and more deftly as the time passed, over the strings of my lute that I was helping, even in my own small way, to lighten my father’s worry.

And Uncle Geordan was right: he did have much to worry about.

The new king was not as experienced as my father had expected him to be in matters of state. Unfortunately, little thought had been given to what should happen if Elyan did not succeed his father, so although Keric was an intelligent young man, of good humor and charismatic, his knowledge was woefully inadequate. Prince Elyan had been a scholar, rarely seen in the yard practicing at swords and war games. Like all men of royal birth, he’d been a skilled swordsman, or so they said, but he took little pleasure in it, preferring to study politics and languages and history in addition to his magical aptitude.

Keric preferred hunting and gaming to policy, and though there was a modicum of intelligence behind his laughing eyes, he relied upon his charm and good humor to shape his rule.

He gifted lands and titles to his friends, young men he had come up at court with, and wanted to give them positions on his council. My father managed to subvert at least some of these impulses, convincing Keric that experience, like youthful vigor, had its advantages. Harder to convince him of was the need for frugality. Keric loved opulence almost as much as his father had, and feasting and tournaments were absurdly abundant in the first year of his kingship.

Keric was also deeply paranoid when the eyes of the court were not upon him. I did not blame him. His predecessor had been murdered by his own brother. Within days of his coronation, he doubled the size of the palace guard, insisting they be trained harder than any before them. He also commissioned a contingency of Mageguard for his own personal protection, who never left his side.

They terrified me. Their black armor and obsidian swords had been created by Alchemists and were imbued with the most terrible of spells. The little of their faces I could see behind their helms could’ve been carved from stone for all the life in them.

This did not stop me from being deeply fascinated by what they were, what they represented. We all were, if we were honest, those of us not able to do magic.

There were three children in the palace who studied magic, and I was envious whenever I saw them climbing the stairs of the south wing to their lessons with Master Aeneas, a jovial Elemental Mage with a long silver beard and a hearty laugh that he used liberally. Two of them were the children of a nobleman on King Keric’s privy council: a brother and sister near Livia’s age. The other was the son of the Head Cook, who was a Hearth Mage herself. Older than the other two, he had already been through his Trial and, unsurprisingly, shown himself to be adept in Hearth magic like his mother. It was assumed he would take over from her when the time was right. I wondered if this pleased him, or if he’d been hoping for a life different than the one he was born to.

Of course, I’d never actually seen a Trial, as they were private affairs attended only by the adolescent Mage and the Masters he or she studied under; but from what I understood, it was a ceremony of the utmost sacredness involving relics of some kind, enchanted with powerful spells to reveal the true nature of the Mage in question.

Every Mage could, of course, with proper training, bend magic to their will, though some were decidedly better at it than others. But more than that, within each of them was a singular gift, an affinity for a particular branch of magic that they were destined to master.

The most common were the wielders of the Arts of the World, those talents that directly influenced that which surrounded us all: Animalis, Naturalist, Hearth, and Healer. Under their hands crops flourished, animals thrived, and, for those who could afford it, the banalities of everyday existence were lessened.

The Arts of Might were rarer and concerned physical manipulation of the elements and brute force magic. Keric’s Mageguard was comprised mostly of this sort, and he’d had to scour the very corners of Tiralaen to find so many.

Though the spells they employed were fierce, Mages who boasted this aptitude were not always so; in truth, I suspected Keric only selected men and woman of brawn to fulfill his own notions about what strength must be. During a feast at court, a diplomatic envoy from the eastern lands brought a contingency of Battlemages with him, and they were absolutely nothing like the black-armored figures hovering on either side of Keric’s throne.

Rarer still, and little valued because their enigmatic nature was so little understood, were the Arts of Truth. There were quite a few aptitudes that fell under this classification, but only two were mentioned outright in Master Aeneas’s books—Dreamwalkers and Alchemists, though many argued that Alchemists, because of their ability to forge the fiercest weapons Tiralaen had ever known, were better classified as Mages of Might. The Arts of Truth were considered that of scholars: magic of the mind, meant to understand and shape in a far more subtle way than the conjuring of flame or wind.

And then there were the Mages of Arts of the Arcane. These were rarest of all, and rightly feared for their awesome power over the darkest and most dangerous sorts of magic. Their ranks included Prince Elyan’s aptitude, Siphon, as well as Necromancers and Blood Mages. If there were others, I knew them not.

Mages of the Arcane were, in fact, so rare as to be infamous when they did appear, and often, in the cases of Necromancers and Blood Mages, engendered such fear that they of necessity lived apart from the society of men. Had Prince Elyan not killed his father and instead succeeded him on the throne, he would likely have been an unpopular king simply by the virtue of his aptitude, his reign perpetually threatened by those who’d have preferred one of his non-magic kinsmen.

I would’ve given anything to escape Mistress Precia and join Master Aeneas’s students in their dusty tower full of old tomes and candles, but, to my great disappointment, I was not a Mage. At least, not yet. Magic was in the blood, and it followed families, though not always directly. Sometimes two Mages produced perfectly ordinary children, and a family who had an Animalis several generations back had children full to bursting with rare magic. My mother’s family tree was dotted with Mages here and there, though no one of note, and no one within the last four generations. Magic usually appeared in children by the time they were five or six years of age, so I doubted my mother’s bloodline would reveal a Mage within me, ancient at nearly nine years old.

I liked Master Aeneas very much and used any excuse I could think of to visit his rooms at the top of the tower and pepper him with questions. He was possessed of so many delightful things; I could’ve spent hours poring over everything he kept on his shelves and staring at the images depicted in stained glass in his windows. They told the story of King Soteris, Keric’s twice great-grandfather, who was known by all accounts as a bringer of peace and enlightenment to Tiralaen after he took the throne from his tyrannous father in a Mages duel. King Soteris was an Alchemist; his father, Harpax, a fire-wielder. They clashed in glorious color in glass panes more than three times my height: father throwing Magefire, son turning it to rivers of gold. According to the songs, the son began at his father’s feet, encasing them in gold that slithered slowly up the tyrant’s body and hardened, all the while begging his father to cease his attack and abdicate the throne. The king refused him, and, with tears in his eyes, for there were always tears in his eyes in the songs, he swathed his father in gold, where he remained to that day in the palace vaults.

“King Soteris made many of the instruments you see here for my predecessors,” Master Aeneas told me, fondly resting a hand on the top of a beautiful golden globe of our world, the continents and countries and rivers and mountains drawn in silver.

The old Master was kind to me despite how I must’ve annoyed him.

Perhaps it was because he pitied me. His students had a glorious sort of freedom that a girl of my birth would never have without magic. If I did not marry, as Mistress Precia insisted I must, my options were sadly limited, while Mages of the fairer sex had prospects all their own and not only those acquiesced by kindly fathers or doting husbands.

Whatever his reasons, he did not mind my boundless curiosity and even let me look through some of his books on magical history. Being the wild, bloodthirsty child I was, I only read the bits about torture and murder and political coups that ended in more torture and murder.

And, of course, I read all about the Gate and the construction of the fortress of Asperfell.

Ever since I’d witnessed Prince Elyan’s banishment, finding out more about the ring of light and the land beyond it had become somewhat of an obsession, and how could it fail to be? It was something out of a faery tale that could not possibly be true, and yet it was: a prison no outsider had seen, that held Mages of extraordinary power and extraordinary darkness, in a land no one had ever returned from.

I learned it had been two great Mages, Masters Viscario and Rhowyn, who had discovered the weakness in the barrier between this world and the one beyond, created the Gate, and ordered the construction of Asperfell once they were well and truly certain that no one could ever return. I was surprised to find that both men had come from humble origins, hailing from a tiny village once called Beheren when it was part of a very small kingdom beyond our southern border. When one of Tiralaen’s kings decided to conquer and absorb the kingdom, the town was given the name Kithia after his beloved daughter.

Their aptitudes were exceedingly rare: one a Blood Mage, the other an Alchemist. But what was rarer still was the fact that they were brothers. For two Mages of such powerful and fearsome aptitudes to be born to the same parents made certain their infamy even before they’d conceived of the Gate.

Though accounts of their childhood were scarce, what did remain painted them as quite remarkable, skilled, and determined and together in all things. When the king of Tiralaen had need of a solution for a dark Mage who had committed atrocities—and, if one was being honest, held power to seize his place upon the throne—it was to Viscario and Rhowyn he turned, and the two Mages, young and flush with power and possibility, took up the challenge with gusto.

When I asked if I might see an image of the prison of Asperfell, Master Aeneas shook his head sadly and told me that, at the bidding of its creators, all information pertaining to Asperfell’s designs or complicated spellwork had been burned before the two Mages crossed the Gate themselves. As for what became of them afterward, there was no way to know. Not even they could return, much less any messenger to share news of their fate.

“Did they build the fortress themselves, Master Viscario and Master Rhowyn?” I asked.

“Goodness, no,” he chuckled. “They designed it, but the builders were mostly indentured servants. They agreed to go in exchange for their freedom once Asperfell was complete.”

I frowned. “But no one can come back through the Gate. You told me that.”

“Indeed, they did not,” he answered. “They were set free on the other side, to make their way as they would.”

How extraordinary those Mages must’ve been! To leave a life of the familiar, even life as a servant, for one of toil and suffering with no chance of return…It took courage such that I could not imagine. The price of their freedom had been high indeed.

I leaned forward. “Do you suppose their descendants might be there still?”

“Perhaps. I suppose we’ll never know. A great pity, that.”

“If I were a Mage, I don’t think I should like to go through the Gate, no matter how much I’d like to see Asperfell.”

“It is fortunate, then, that you are neither Mage nor criminal.”

Master Aeneas told me that, as the centuries passed, the number of Mages sent through the Gate grew fewer and fewer. He believed this to be the natural progression of an increasingly civilized society, particularly in the last hundred years. King Gavreth and his forebears had been dedicated to reform and rehabilitation and used the Gate only for the most abhorrent of Mages. With my childish innocence, I argued that perhaps Mages simply feared to misbehave, given the risk of never seeing those they loved again, for surely even the most wicked of men and women loved something.

To me, this was the most horrifying consequence of banishment through the Gate; not the prison itself or its inhabitants, but the certainty that whatever your life had been before, it was gone forever. I was, after all, a child beloved and kept safely in the bosom of my family. I could not fathom a life without them.

Of the banished prince, very little was spoken except to christen him the Raven King of Asperfell, for if he lived still, he presided now over a kingdom of criminals. I imagined him sometimes, a tall, sorrowful figure high in a tower, staring out over a desolate land and longing for home.

3

One afternoon Livia and I returned to our suite from our lessons with Master Omerus to find my father and uncle deep in conversation with another man in front of the fire. He turned at the sound of our intrusion, and I saw a face that was both deeply familiar and utterly foreign to me. The man’s gray eyes met mine, and a memory stirred of a conversation I was not meant to hear on the night a prince murdered his father.

“How were your lessons, girls?” Uncle Geordan asked pleasantly, as my father moved to an ornately carved table to pour himself several fingers of brandy. The other man regarded us calmly and said nothing.

“Most instructive, uncle,” Livia answered dutifully.

“And you, Briony?” He smiled at me, a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye. “Were your lessons also instructive?”

I met his gaze frankly. “Oh, yes. We learned all about Eddwyn the Conqueror and how he beheaded his enemies, flayed their skin off their faces, and displayed them in a trophy room in velvet cases.”

A gale of laughter burst from my uncle as my father choked on his brandy, and I thought I saw the man with the gray eyes smile ever so slightly.

“That’s enough of your cheek!” my uncle gasped merrily. “Go and see your mother now. And pray do not tell her anything about Eddwyn the Conqueror and his cases of flayed heads.”

“Briony!” Livia hissed, as she gripped my hand and pulled me down the corridor to our mother’s sitting room. “The things you say sometimes are so horrible!”

I could still hear Uncle Geordan chuckling, so I wasn’t entirely sure the things I said were that horrible.

My mother would likely side with Livia, and so I dutifully kissed her cheek and said nothing of severed heads, flayed or otherwise. She was sitting on a lush velvet settee, flanked by her two lady’s maids, Alys and Issa, working at a loom with skeins of silk. I could just make out the pattern emerging within the strands: cranes in flight.

Livia, skilled in needlework like our mother, sat at her feet, the skirts of her silk day dress spread out, and began to gossip with Alys and Issa. They spoke of much and of nothing, and I soon became bored of the conversation and longed to escape. Specifically, I longed to hear what my father and uncle were discussing with the gray-eyed man.

And so, I took advantage of their distraction and inched toward the open door. When I was sure they had forgotten all about me, I slipped through the crack and into the corridor.

Making my footfalls as silent as I could, I crept back to the great room where the men still sat beside the fire, deep in conversation. Back against the wall, I slid down until I was hunched into a ball, my arms wrapped around my knees, as though making myself as small as I could would render me invisible. I rested my cheek against my arms and listened.

“The queen has advised him against it.” My uncle’s voice. “I believe that is all that is holding him back.”

“Where did you get this information?” My father, this time.

There was a pause. And then, “From Macon.”

“You heard this from him directly?” This time it was the man with the gray eyes who spoke.

“He has a loose tongue when he drinks.”

“And you believe him?”

I heard rather than saw the shrug in my uncle’s voice. “He’s the king’s cousin. No doubt he is privy to information we are not.”

“That guarantees nothing.”

“Macon cares for little beyond the latest court gossip,” my uncle snapped. “That he should take a peculiar interest in this guarantees it is no passing fancy.”

My father sighed heavily. “The people will no doubt support it, at first. That is the damnable thing.”

“And by the time the truth of it comes out, it will be too late,” the man with the gray eyes agreed.

I heard the sound of glass against wood, and my father’s muffled curse. “I suppose he will go after the wielders of the Arcane first.”

“He’ll record everyone at first, just to make it seem fair. But yes—that is his intent. His brother was a Mage of the Arcane, after all,” the gray-eyed man said. “But we may yet have time to sway him. What is it, Magnus?”

There was a long silence in the room. I held my breath.

“The queen is unwell.”

My father’s words fell like stones.

“How unwell?” my uncle asked, and his voice sounded strained.

My father’s silence told me all I needed to know. The queen was dying.

“By the Gods. If she dies—”

“I’m afraid it’s not a case of ‘if’ but ‘when,’” my father corrected him. “And when it does happen, Keric will likely act on the impulses Alenda is keeping at bay.”

“Then we must do our best to quash these impulses, so far as we are able,” Uncle Geordan declared. “We might still wield a measure of influence. Keric is young and impressionable, to a degree.”

“I think you overestimate our influence. And underestimate the citizens of Tiralaen,” the man with the gray eyes said. “Since King Gavreth’s death, they are understandably wary of magic. Keric’s paranoia will only stoke their fear, and they will follow him blindly as a result of it.”

“I fear a registry would be only the beginning,” my father agreed. “A way to weed out Mages he fears, even if they have never given cause for suspicion. Even if they have just come into their powers.”

“Their fellow citizens will turn on them,” Uncle Geordan added. “They will do the work for him. Soon they’ll report each other over the slightest perception.”

“Reporting one another is the least of what an ignorant population will do,” the man with the gray eyes said.

“You believe there will be violence.” My uncle’s words were not a question.

“Of course there will be violence,” my father said. “It is only a matter of time.”

Their voices fell silent, and I heard the unmistakable sound of liquid being poured, the tinkling of a crystal stopper being put back in its decanter, a log being thrust into the fire, and the hiss of young, unseasoned wood. So comforting and familiar were the sounds that I did not notice the heavy footfalls approaching. Then I looked up and saw the man with the gray eyes standing over me.

He did not look angry. In fact, his expression was almost kind. He lowered himself onto his haunches and held out his hand to me. “My name is Cyprias.”

“Briony,” I answered, taking his proffered hand and shaking it with all the dignity my nine-year-old self could muster. “Do you work for my father?”

“Of a sort. He and I have been friends for a long time.”

“Are you going to tell him I was listening?”

Cyprias smiled. “No. In fact, I am glad you were.”

“You are?”

“I don’t believe any of us can afford to be ignorant during these times. Knowledge is the most powerful weapon any of us can possess, and even the smallest of us can wield it. Your longing to be informed does you credit. It may even save your life someday.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Knowledge is a weapon?”

Cyprias laughed. “Yes! Yes. And it is so very precious. Always seek it, and never waste it. Knowledge makes warriors of us all.”

“But I’m a girl,” I pointed out. “Girls aren’t supposed to be warriors.”

“Do you agree with that?”

“No.”

‘Neither do I.” Cyprias smiled. “I suspect that if you put your mind to it, there is no end to what you can do.”

I was in awe of these words, though I was far too young—and far too inexperienced—to understand their gravity. All I knew was that they made me feel important, though I was only a girl huddled in a corridor. The idea of wielding anything of power, even something as intangible as knowledge, gave me a thrill.

“I want you to promise me something, Briony,” Cyprias said, and I nodded mutely. “Promise me that you will not reveal to another soul what you have heard us speak of here today. For your father’s sake.” The corner of his mouth quirked up in a sardonic smile. “And mine.”

“I promise,” I said solemnly.

“Very good.” Cyprias’s hand was heavy on my shoulder. “Be safe, young Briony. Now run along back to your mother.”

“I detest needlework,” I informed him.

“So do I,” he told me quite seriously.

In the end, my father was right: Alenda’s strength continued to wane.

The queen hailed from the lands to the south, and she was as gentle a person as I had ever met. Everything about her was soft, from her dark limpid eyes to her voice, rich and supple as the finest doeskin. But she was not strong; not in the way that she needed to be. Gradually, that fine skin grew paper-thin, those eyes sunken. She stopped laughing, and then stopped smiling.

Her illness confounded the healers who came from all over Tiralaen and beyond. Elixirs and tisanes and possets were brewed by the palace Mages and coaxed into her mouth by her worried ladies, but they did nothing at all to impede her decline.

“But she is so young,” Livia said one night, as we sat with my mother on her bed, watching Alys unbraid my mother’s heavy coronet. “Surely she will get better!”

“I do not believe the queen’s illness is one that can be cured,” my mother said sadly, cupping Livia’s stricken face in her hands. “She loved her husband. And her son. I think, perhaps, she simply does not wish to live without them.”

“What a horrible waste,” Livia whispered.

I was not as sentimental as Livia. I thought it was a terribly selfish thing to allow oneself to die simply out of grief. Then again, I knew things that Livia—and perhaps even my mother—did not.

For a time, Keric continued to seek his mother’s counsel at her bedside, and for a time, it seemed as though the thing that my father, uncle, and Cyprias had feared would not come to pass.

The celebration of Serus drew nearer, and despite the shorter days and flurries of dry, powdery snow that settled on the grounds of the Citadel, there was an air of cheer amongst the court. I preferred the rites of Solarium, celebrated as they were in the summer to honor the longest day and the coming of the light. But Serus, for all its solemnity, had its merits. Particularly the food, though the presents were not entirely unwelcome either.

Serus was the longest night, the welcoming of the darkness that shrouded the bitterest months when the soil grew harsh and unyielding and death was everywhere. As the day afforded little natural light, candles and tiny flames encased in glass littered the Citadel, their merry glow dancing upon the gleaming white walls and floors, and fragrant evergreen boughs and bunches, hardy winter rosemary, and hellebore blossoms of white and deepest aubergine decorated doorways and beams and windows.

That year, our family attended the Serus celebrations with the rest of the court, and I watched as my father and uncle laughed and smiled with the young king. Keric had celebrated his fifteenth birthday only a few months before, but he seemed years older, and far more subdued than I remembered. He was still a handsome youth, and charming, but he smiled far less than he used to. And when he did smile, it did not quite reach his eyes. He received our gift of fine books trimmed in gold, and he smiled at Livia and me graciously, though his eyes lingered on my sister far longer than on me.

We sat at tables groaning with roasted meats, vegetables swimming in exotic sauces, fruits that burst with sweetness on the tongue, breads and cakes, and vats of wine and ale, though I took none of those. I was still far too young.

The fashions of court were on full and glorious display, and I stared, entranced, at the jewels encircling slender white throats, rich velvet brocades, impossibly cinched waistlines, and sweeping trains of silk. My own little gown was a lovely pale blue trimmed in gold, and I had a new necklace from my Uncle Geordan, filigree and clear stones. I felt quite grown up, though I knew I still looked like a child while Livia, resplendent in claret, was already garnering gazes that no doubt made my father very nervous indeed.

It was splendid, all of it, and yet my eyes were increasingly drawn to the place beside King Keric, empty out of respect for the absent queen, alone and wasting in her bed. How much we all had, and yet she had lost everything that meant the most to her in all the world.

In the end, it proved too great a loss. Less than a week after Serus, Queen Alenda died.

Nobody thought much of the Registry at first.

In fact, just as my father had suspected, most citizens of Tiralaen agreed that an official record of those who practiced magic would benefit everyone. After all, what would a loyal, upstanding subject of the crown possibly have to hide?

A year after King Gavreth’s death, Mages in every household in Tiralaen were identified, and their names, ages, and aptitudes recorded. Parents were ordered to report any sign of magical talent in their children within two days or face heavy fines, or even imprisonment in the Tower. A clutch of guards was assembled solely for the purpose of patrolling the streets of Iluviel to ensure the king’s edicts were followed. They knocked on doors and spoke to citizens and paid for secrets, ferreting out any whiff of magic that tried to remain hidden.

Trials to determine aptitude were no longer private affairs but were conducted at the palace in the presence of the king’s Mages so that their results could be recorded properly. Mages in the Arts of the World and the Arts of Truth were largely ignored. It was those who showed proclivity for the Arts of the Arcane who merited special notation on Keric’s list. The young king insisted the list be public so the people might know who walked amongst them. It soon took its toll.

Arcane Mages had always been feared, though there was often little reason for it. My father told me it was because their gift was little understood, and people were afraid of what they couldn’t reason out. After Prince Elyan murdered his father, the people abandoned what little pretense of acceptance they’d had for wielders of the Arcane and very publicly turned against them; their gifts were openly scrutinized and judged for how they might be used against their fellow citizens rather than how they could help them.

Necromancers—needed to calm the restless dead in places of great bloodshed—found themselves being forced to prove time and again they were not amassing those same dead into an army to overthrow the king, and yet never did their neighbors believe it, nor the whispers stop. Likewise, Siphons, called upon to draw dark magic from cursed places, regularly awoke in the morning to find the doors and windows of their homes had been chained against them from the outside, out of fear they might become physically transformed in the night by the magic they drew into themselves, emerging under the full moon as ravening beasts that devoured the flesh of livestock, if not of women and children.

Who, then, could wonder that parents of young Mages of such aptitudes often panicked and tried to hide their children’s gifts?

Or worse—among those families who could afford it, many parents attempted to have the children bound when the results of their Trials were not favorable. Binding, as I understood it, was extremely difficult and disastrous if gotten wrong. Several young Mages died as a result, though the kingdom did not mourn them.

Those who did not embrace the new fashion of fear—or did not do so with required zeal—also found themselves ostracized by former friends and angry neighbors. This was especially true of those immigrant families from the rich, fertile lands in the south and the blistering deserts of the east. In these places, magic was known to be celebrated and Mages held in honor. Further proof, as if any were needed, that Tiralaen was surrounded by dangerous and uncivilized kingdoms. Fearful murmurs and pointed fingers followed them in the streets, and they soon found themselves barred from shops and homes where they had previously been received.

It spread like a disease, stealing into every crevice of uncertainty and every corner of doubt, where it festered even in those with the most stalwart of constitutions, unfurling its black, decaying tendrils throughout the Shining City.

Then one morning, a family from Cyr with a son who was a Battlemage woke to find a symbol painted in red upon their door: the letter M drawn twice, interlocking. No amount of scrubbing removed it entirely, and the next day, it was back again, darker this time.

The first time I saw it, I thought it was mountains and wondered why anyone would associate mountains with fear of magic. It was Master Aeneas who told me what it really was: an ancient symbol for Magefire, one of the first spells.

The symbol began appearing on other doors wherein dwelled wielders of the Arts of Might and the Arts of Truth, a warning to all that they could not be trusted, that they were to be feared and reviled as much as those whose aptitudes were the Arcane. Then it began to appear on the doorways of Animalises, of Hearth Mages, of Naturalists—Mages never before thought to be a threat to anyone. It came to be synonymous with magic, which in turn had become synonymous with fear, and within months it was everywhere.

As the streets of Iluviel began to change, the air in our suite of rooms seemed to grow thick and stale, and we moved slower and with more sober purpose. My father talked frequently in private with Lord Falstone, Cyprias, and Uncle Geordan, and I found myself frustrated by the lack of opportunity to hone my weapons, as Cyprias would’ve said. I sometimes caught my mother and father watching me during moments of silence, studying me with worried expressions, though what they were looking for I did not know.

I toiled away at my studies, and the world outside the Citadel grew darker and more dangerous.

The autumn arrived, crisp and golden, and a festival with it to give thanks for a bountiful harvest. Livia and I begged our parents to allow us to attend. My father was quite reluctant, and, in the end, it was Uncle Geordan who convinced him that it would lighten the family’s spirits considerably to leave the walls of the palace for an afternoon. My father’s face was grim as we settled into our carriage, blankets of thick wool over our laps, our hands bundled into rabbit fur muffs, and his countenance did not change as we left the gates of the Citadel, a company of our household guard at our front and rear.

We passed a lovely afternoon. There were jugglers and fire-breathers and dancers who wore brightly colored costumes and feathered masks. They contorted themselves into all manner of shapes and swung above our heads on lengths of silk, and I drank it all in, my cheeks flushed pink with excitement and the brisk autumn chill.

My father bought us meat pies and tiny spice cakes drizzled with icing and cups of hot cider, and we ate and drank as we wandered among the booths where merchants sold their wares. Livia and I had each been given coin to spend at our leisure. Livia bought a beautiful length of velvet in a deep, rich brown that she planned to ask Alys to add to the sleeves of her gold gown. I wanted to purchase a dagger with a jeweled hilt that was perfectly suited for my small hands, but my father refused, no doubt fearing my mother’s retribution, and so I settled for a book, thinking perhaps Cyprias would be proud of my choice.

It seemed as though my father might finally have found some modicum of peace; his face smoothed from worry to ease as we rode toward the Citadel, and he laughed heartily at my impression of the jesters who wore bells on their ankles and distorted their faces into shocking caricatures. That was, until we reached Lower Gilding. Ahead, we heard voices raised in shouting, the murmuring of a crowd. My father reached up and banged his fist twice upon the roof of the carriage, and we pulled abruptly to a stop.

“Wait here,” my father instructed, and swiftly exited the carriage.

Through the window, Livia and I watched him approach the doorstep of a modest stone dwelling two stories high where a group of people had gathered, including four guards in black-and-silver livery and a Mage wearing black robes lined with silver silk and trimmed in silver brocade.

“Make way! Make way!” my father shouted, as he pushed through onlookers gathered on the street.

The Mage, recognizing him, lifted his hand, and the guards came to an abrupt halt. Between them, they held the arms of a struggling boy of perhaps thirteen with hair the color of doeskin. His mother and father were pleading with the Mage; their hands gripped the rich velvet of his sleeves desperately. At my father’s approach, they fell silent, their pleading eyes turned on him.

“Magnus.” The Mage gave a slight bow. He was a man of fifty I had seen about the palace, short and unassuming, with a bulbous nose.

“What misconduct is this?” my father asked, and although his voice was level and calm, I could not mistake the tension in his broad shoulders. “What is this boy’s crime?”

On the door of the house behind the terrified parents, I saw the ancient symbol for Magefire painted in crude strokes.

“Failure to register,” the Mage replied crisply. In his hand, he held a large book bound in black leather with heavy silver clasps.

“It’s a mistake,” said the boy’s father. “He isn’t a Mage, sir. If he were, we’d have registered him straightaway.”

“Silence,” the Mage cut in swiftly. “First you flout the king’s laws, and then you dare to lie in front of a member of his privy council!”

My father raised a gloved hand. “Enough.” He looked down at the young boy, terrified, clutching his mother’s hand. “Does he speak true, boy? Are you a Mage?”

“No,” he whispered, but he did not meet my father’s eyes. “No, sir.”

“Do you know why the king’s men would have cause to think you so?”

At this the boy lifted his wide, fearful eyes and shook his head, his brown curls flying about his ashen face.

My father turned to the king’s Mage. “And you, Penrick. Where came you by this information?”

Penrick shifted defensively, his cruel eyes sharpening. “A reliable source, and one who does not wish to be named.”

“Who has accused him?” shouted the boy’s father, face twisted in fear and fury. He looked around at the crowd, grown larger since our carriage had stopped. The faces that stared back at him were sympathetic; they were undoubtedly friends, neighbors. But they were also subjects of the crown, and afraid. The father’s eyes landed on a man lingering in the doorway of a house across the street; his face twisted and changed into something I did not recognize, for at my tender age I had seen little of true hatred.

“Halfreth, you bastard!” The father surged forward.

The palace guards were quick to grasp his arms and haul him back, even as he struggled mightily and shouted obscenities at the man in the doorway, who shrank back into the shadows, defiance on his sallow face. The boy’s mother had begun to cry, clasping her son to her.

“Enough of this!” Penrick screeched at the boy’s father. “Control yourself, sir, or it will be to the Tower with you!”

The boy’s father stopped struggling, but his face was still twisted with fury. “How much did they pay you, Halfreth?” he snarled. “What was the price of his life? Of ours?”

The man did not reply, but stared back at his neighbor, perhaps once his friend, with a dour expression in his yellowed eyes.

Penrick made a sound of disgust. “There is only one way to settle this,” he snarled. “Give me your arm, boy.”

Inside the carriage, I gripped Livia’s hand tightly. “What are they going to do to him?” I whispered.

The boy was pried away from his sobbing mother and brought before Penrick, his sleeve pushed up roughly to expose the skin of his arm. The boy’s father moved to take his distraught wife in his embrace, and they watched helplessly as Penrick laid his hand upon the boy. For a long moment, I thought nothing at all would happen and it would be just as the boy’s father said: he was no Mage at all, the accusation against him unfounded.

And then the boy’s skin began to glow. Under Penrick’s hand, a silvery light bloomed and the boy began to struggle, gasping, his mouth opening and closing like a fish washed ashore.

“Stop!” the boy wailed, as he tried in vain to pull free. “It hurts!”

With a snarl, Penrick threw the boy to the ground. His arm was fairly glowing now, tendrils of light swirling and eddying beneath the surface of his skin, tears of pain and terror streaming down his cheeks. It would be many years before I understood exactly what it was I had just witnessed, but I knew then that the boy and his parents had lied. He was a Mage after all, and his parents traitors to the crown.

Beside me, Livia was shaking her head. “We shouldn’t watch,” she said. “We shouldn’t watch this.”

I ignored her and pressed my face closer to the glass.

“You lied.” Penrick rounded on the boy’s parents. “What sort of Mage is this child? What is his aptitude?”

A look passed between father and mother, a look of fear, of desperation, of resignation, and the father’s voice was barely more than a whisper as he answered: “A Blood Mage.”

His wife buried her face in her hands and wept.

“Penrick,” my father said in a low voice.

If the king’s Mage heard my father, he gave no indication. Rather, he was staring at the boy with what could only be described as a fierce hunger, a glint of triumph in his eyes. He reached down and hauled the terrified boy to his feet. “He comes with us to the Citadel.”

“And his parents?” one of the guards asked.

“Penrick,” my father tried again.

“Take them to the Tower,” was the Mage’s reply. He did not look at the guards or the boy’s parents as he said this, but was still staring at his young captive intently. “And search the house. Who knows what else they might be hiding?”

As one of the guards moved to take the boy’s mother, the boy himself thrust off his captor, sending Penrick tumbling backwards in surprise. He threw his hands forward with a raw, guttural scream, and flame erupted from them, spiraling viciously and without mercy toward the guard. He was untrained, but his rage and desperation made him powerful indeed. Fire engulfed the guard entirely and he staggered back, piercing screams of pain rending the air.

The boy’s mother dropped to the ground and screamed, “Stop! Janus, stop!”

The boy’s father rushed forward, gripping his wife’s shoulders tightly and hauling her back against him as the boy, Janus, turned his fire on the other guard.

Penrick had managed to scramble back to his feet, and with a thrust of his hand, the fire that had engulfed the two guards sputtered to nothing in the span of a single heartbeat.

“That was exceedingly foolish,” Penrick hissed at the young Mage. His hand cut through the air, and the boy was blown back—his body, seemingly so full of power only moments ago, falling to the ground like a rag doll. “Take him.”

The guards, their fine livery thoroughly singed but otherwise apparently unharmed despite the spectacle, hefted the boy’s unconscious form between them and dragged him away and out of my sight.

Tears coursed down his mother’s face, her mouth open in a silent cry of anguish as her son disappeared into Penrick’s carriage, but his father was like a stone. His gray face had gone slack, his eyes staring off into the distance as though his grief and fear had taken him somewhere else entirely. I’d seen little of misery in my short life, save the banishment of Prince Elyan when Queen Alenda had wept beautiful tears behind veils. Grief of another sort radiated from the boy’s parents in waves, visceral and raw.

My sister had turned her head into the velvet curtains, but I refused to do so. I bore witness as the soldiers hauled the mother and father to their feet. The mother’s sobs had ceased, though silent tears still flowed freely down the crags of her worn face; they both looked as though they’d aged years in only moments. They did not protest as a guard approached with shackles and bound their hands, and they followed numbly as they were led away.

The carriage that bore their son lurched to life and I watched it disappear, carrying him away toward the Citadel to begin his new life.

The moment we returned to our suite of rooms, my mother gathered us both into her arms and held us until we squirmed and complained. No doubt she’d been well-informed as to what we had encountered on our way back from the festival. When she drew away, she held us both at arm’s length, staring at us as though she were memorizing our faces. Her smile was meant to be reassuring, and perhaps to Livia it was, but when she looked at me, I thought I saw sadness in her eyes.

She bid Alys fetch a Mage to heat the water in the copper basin in our washroom, and we were stripped of our clothes and scrubbed until our skin was pink and raw and smelled of lavender. Nightgowns were produced, we were bundled into them, and then we were tucked into bed, our candles blown out.

I lay awake for some time, staring at the golden stars on my ceiling and waiting to hear my father’s voice outside my door.

I waited a long time.

Sleep had very nearly claimed me when I heard the distant rumble of male voices, and I sat up in bed, wide awake and ready. My feet made no sound as I padded down the corridor, and I kept my body flush against the wall so that my shadow would not be seen. Then I peered around the corner into the great room and saw a figure crouched in front of the fire, pushing the glowing coals about until the wood above caught. He stood, his hands clasped behind his back, and I recognized him at once.

“Cyprias!” I whispered.

There was genuine surprise in his eyes when he turned, squinted in the darkness, and saw me. I took a certain satisfaction in it, that I had managed to catch my father’s spy off guard. “Briony,” he said, relaxing visibly. “Good evening.”

“Good evening. Are you here to see my father?”

“I am. But he has been called away, and so here I wait.”

I moved into the room. “Called where?”

“To the king, I expect. Would you care to sit?”

I adored the way he spoke to me, as though I were not a girl of nine up far past her bedtime but a companion, a friend. He gestured to the settee, and I sat obediently, tucking my cold, bare feet into the folds of my nightgown. He sat opposite me, a goblet of wine in one hand.

“Cyprias,” I ventured, “did my father tell you what happened today? About the boy with glowing skin?”

“He did, indeed.”

“Is that why he’s been called to the king so late?”

“I suspect so.”

“It was awful,” I whispered, and despite the warmth of the fire, I shuddered. “What will become of him now?”

Cyprias drank long and deep from his cup of wine. “I am not entirely sure,” he said at last. “His aptitude is particularly rare, and extremely dangerous. Keric will want him under thumb, and so there he will remain, likely to be trained by Keric’s own Mages until he can be of some use to the crown.”

“And if he is not?”

His answer hung between us in the silence.

“Why did they not register him, like the law says?”

“I imagine they thought they were protecting him. In truth, his fate was sealed the moment his Trial concluded.”

I frowned. “What exactly is a Blood Mage?”

“Blood magic is the rarest sort of magic there is,” Cyprias answered. “And so, naturally, we know very little about it. There have only been a handful of Blood Mages in all of Tiralaen’s long history.”

“One of the Mages who built Asperfell was a Blood Mage,” I said, suddenly remembering what I had read in one of Master Aeneas’s books.

“That’s right.” Cyprias smiled faintly at me. “Collecting knowledge, I see. Blood Mages use their power to control those with magic in their veins and can even drain magic blood for use in spells and potions. Or so I am told.”

“How awful.”

“Indeed.” Cyprias nodded. “I’m sure you can see why the boy would be of such value to Keric. A very skilled Blood Mage could weave a spell to eviscerate enemies, even topple armies, if he or she is strong enough. Better to make an ally of him than to have him as an enemy.”

“And what if he does not wish to become an ally?”

Cyprias said gently, “He will not be given much choice.”

I imagined the boy, alone and afraid somewhere in the vast Citadel, missing his parents, uncertain of his fate, all because he was born with magic in his blood, magic he did not ask for and perhaps did not want.

Cyprias drained his wineglass and stood. “The hour is late, Briony, and your father may not be back for some time. Perhaps it is time we both sought sleep.”

I dutifully rose. Cyprias gave me a bow, and halfway through my own answering curtsey, I changed my mind and bowed in return, which earned me an amused smile. Then I made my way back to the corridor from whence I’d come.

At the corner, I hesitated and turned back. Cyprias had resumed his vigil by the fire, his back to me, and I thought his shoulders seemed even more hunched than they had before. “I used to want to be a Mage,” I told him quietly. “Not anymore.”