He is a wolf, and Jor and I are rabbits he means to devour, but he will not have us.
Ignoring the putrid smell, I ease Jor into the waste chute and give him a push. He wakes as he falls and begins to scream, but I am already climbing into the chute, muffling his cry with my body, keeping it from the ears of the guard at the top of the stairs.
The longer our departure goes unnoticed, the better the chances we’ll reach the woods where the fairies will be waiting.
I count to ten—knowing I must give Jor time to land and hopefully be pulled out of the way—and then I flatten my body, lift my arms, and slide down the chute. My spine knocks painfully along the slimy stones for a few moments, but after a fall of a dozen hands, the narrow passage joins a larger tunnel where rushing waste water carries me along more gently, gaining speed as the channel dips sharply toward the ground.
Less than two minutes later, I am born into my new life in a rush of filth and wet.
I land with a grunt in the sodden, stinking hay of a farmer’s cart and turn to look for Jor. I find him clinging to the neck of the guard with the dark eyes and the single brow scribbled across his broad forehead.
When he sees me, the guard’s breath rushes out, his eyes widening as he takes in my bloodied hair and face. “She’s dead, then? Lady Rose?” I nod, and he hugs Jor tight before whispering, “The gods rest her beautiful soul.”
“She didn’t believe in the gods,” I say, brushing the hay from my dress. “She believed in good people. She told me to tell you thank you with all her heart,” I finish in a voice I scarcely recognize.
I sound like a grown-up. A girl who will become a queen.
I will be queen. Father is dead, and he had no children with his first wife. He named me his first heir and Jor his second. I will go to the fairies now, but one day I will return with an army and reclaim my kingdom from those who have stolen it, and I will start gathering my allies now.
I come to my feet in the cart, putting myself at eye level with our savior. “When I am queen, I will grant you forgiveness for pledging yourself into Ekeeta’s service, and land of your own, if you’re still alive to work it.”
The guard nods, but I see the pity in his expression. When he looks at me, he sees a helpless little girl. He doesn’t know that I have Mama’s magic inside me. He doesn’t know that I will never stop fighting to avenge her, not so long as there is breath in my body.
“Come, Princess. My horse is tied in the alley. You and your brother will both fit on the saddle in front.” He shifts Jor to one arm and reaches for me with the other. “Think you can hold the little man tight as we go?”
“I can.” Ignoring his hand, I vault over the edge of the cart, landing lightly on the stones, my bones vibrating pleasantly from the impact. I feel as if I could leap the entire road, run for miles. As if I could lift the heavy sword hanging from the guard’s belt over my head, storm the castle, and knock every ogre inside it into the sea. I’ve never felt so strong or fearless or full of life.
Even before we meet the fairies in the shadows of the woods—before Janin, the Fey healer who will become my second mother, places her hand on my chest to take the measure of my new magic—I know that Mama has wished something very different for me than the beauty or grace or lovely singing voice the fairies granted her in her cradle. When I learn I will walk through life with enhanced strength, a brave spirit, a merciful mind, and a heart no man I love will dare defy, I am pleased that Mama wished so well for me, that she gave me such fine tools to help me reclaim our kingdom.
I don’t dream for a moment that she has cursed me as surely as she’s blessed me.
I am only a child, too innocent to realize that there is no salvation without sacrifice, no light without darkness, no triumph that doesn’t carry the seeds of its own destruction bouncing in its pocket.
Chapter Two
The immortals are wrong; the golden god the humans say comes to fetch their spirits at the end is real—far younger than they’ve imagined, and neither wrinkled nor bearded, nor possessing a third eye in the center of his forehead—but real all the same.
Real, and divinely beautiful.
Sleep drags at me, but I struggle to keep my eyes open, not wanting to miss a moment of my death.
I wonder how the god will summon my soul from my body, and if it will hurt the way it does when ogres steal a soul. I wonder if he will take my spirit to the Land Beyond, curse me to the Pit, or force me to live out another mortal existence, this time as a vulture, or a Carn fish, or a maggot, or something equally miserable in order to pay for the mess I’ve made of my human life.
“A fifty-fifty chance and I get the wrong one.” The god laughs bitterly as he runs a hand through his shaggy hair. “Should have flaming known.”
I try to ask what he means, but all I manage is a moan.
“Waking up, then, are you?” He glances down at me where I lie, wrists chained to a metal ring the Boughtswords drove deep into the ground. “How you feeling, little man?”
His voice is deep and softened by an accent I know I should be able to place, but I can’t remember the language of round vowels and soft Rs. I can’t even remember the names of the four kingdoms. There is no room in my thoughts for anything but the god’s terrible beauty—his golden hair falling in waves to his shoulders, his bee-stung lips, his eyes as bright and blue as the sea stone I stole from Janin’s treasure box.
He is … magnificent.
The god snaps his fingers between my eyes, but I’m too numb to flinch. “Can you understand me?”
I reach up, patting his cheek before running a buzzing finger over his impossibly perfect mouth, surprised to find his lips as solid as the chains knocking against my arm, real and warm and a tiny bit chapped, which for some reason makes me giggle.
“Sleep-drunk bastard,” he mumbles, knocking my hand away. His expression is kind enough, but I see the disappointment in his eyes.
But then, he is a god, and must see straight through me to the secrets of my black heart. He must know that I have lied, thieved, and betrayed my only friends, and all of it for nothing. I am dying, and soon Jor will join me in death and the Ronces line will reach its tragic end.
“Forgive me,” I say, but the words come out tangled. My tongue is thick, my mouth dry, and my head full of smoke and shadow.
The leader of the Boughtswords set four braziers of Vale Flowers burning in my tent, determined to keep me too sleep-sick to damage any more of his men before the caravan reaches the slave market. Instead, I will soon be dead. I try to take satisfaction in the fact that he will lose the small fortune even a scrawny, Fey-trained warrior would have fetched at market, but I’m too muddled to focus on any one thought for long.
Even Golden God, the great and beautiful, with his lips like a love poem, has begun to lose my interest to the dragon-shaped shadows flickering on the roof of the tent until he takes hold of my shoulders and gives a shake.
“Focus, boy.” He pinches my ears before tapping my forehead with his thick finger. “If I free you, can you stand? It’ll be easier to get you outside on your own feet.”
Outside? Outside the tent? Outside my body? Outside …
My eyes begin to burn from being held open too long. I try to blink, but my lids slide shut and stay that way, no matter how I fight to open them. My lashes are made of stone, my lids weigh more than the leather armor lying heavy on my bound chest.
The armor is stolen, too. I snatched it from Thyne’s cot the morning I left, though I knew he would give it to me if I asked. Thyne would lie down and let me use him as a carpet if I told him to, though, of course, I never would. What’s the point in walking on a broken man?