RISE OF THE FALLEN COURT

THE RED KINGDOM

BOOK TWO

LILLY INKWOOD

One More Chapter

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2024

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Cover illustration © Alex Allden

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Version: 2024-07-01

To my husband

Thank you for holding the fort while I’m mindwalking in the heads of lots and lots of fictional people

Mora’s Tower,

The Year of the Red Maiden

(44 years before the events in The Kingdom is a Golden Cage take place)

WALKER OF NIGHTMARES

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

If there is one man in the entire Red Kingdom who can take Mora’s Tower, that would be Robert. And he has made camp right before it. Before us.

I lean out of a window on the third floor of the tower, searching, as if reaching out for someone to hunt when I’m mindwalking. I can’t make out Robert’s shape between the forest of ivory tents, the yellow banners, the fires, the to and fro of soldiers who stand guard or forage for something to eat.

‘You shouldn’t do that, Blanche,’ says Henri from behind.

I turn around, startled. Lovely Henri, elegant as always, from the steel-grey surcoat – the colour of his family’s crest – to the soft blue cape of the Pretorians, fluttering as he stalks towards me. He closes one of the shutters with a gentle move, while wrapping his other arm around my waist.

‘I was counting,’ I say.

Henri’s light blue eyes reach out through the night, towards the mercenary camp encircling Mora’s Tower.

Ensnaring us.

‘They will try to storm the walls soon. We should be prepared for it.’

I shudder to think that Robert is close, so close. After all this time.

Two years. It has been two years since the Tournament. The event that split my existence, split my stay at Mora’s Tower in half. Now, there is a ‘before the Tournament’ and an ‘after the Tournament’ by way of taking stock of my life.

By way of everything.

Two years since the man who is besieging us packed his mercenary company and skittered off to the Green Kingdom, leaving my brother, the King, to throw fit after fit after fit.

And now, Robert is back.

But he is not fighting for my brother, Etienne.

‘Are you afraid?’ Henri’s small, pointed nose crinkles. ‘Don’t be. We could hold out for weeks. They can storm the walls as much as they want. They won’t be able to climb them.’

The first two floors of Mora’s Tower, called the Keep, are nothing but windowless storage rooms.

The stairs up the proper Tower begin at the third level.

No one can come in here unless we want them to.

No one can come out unseen either, which has made Mora’s Tower the perfect prison for a princess in the past few years, ever since my brother decided that he was, in fact, afraid of me. Even with my powers bound, tethered.

And the perfect prison for an array of other young women, too, deemed undesirable by their relatives, for different reasons.

They called us the Fallen Court, but instead of running away from that title, as if it were slander, I decided we should turn it into a weapon.

A weapon is a dangerous thing, though, if used with lack of skill or blind bravery.

One might end up stabbing oneself with it.

Being hurt. Injured.

Maybe worse.

‘Even if we run out of missiles, we can throw masonry from the top at them if they try to climb,’ says Henri. ‘And no ladder is high enough to reach us. No sapper, no matter how skilled, can dig through the stone that the Keep is built upon.’

I want to hiss, But you forget they have Robert.

‘Any word from my brother?’ I say instead.

Henri shakes his head, his arm tighter around my waist. ‘Your brother’s troops are spread wide and thin, putting out small fires everywhere. I don’t think you’re the first thing on Etienne’s mind right now, Blanche.’

My brother’s mind. I shudder to think what sort of place that is. What sort of place it has become in the past week, since the Red Kingdom had burst into flames.

The Red Kingdom is now a huge chessboard, but this is a game like no other. There are five players on the board, not two, and four of them are trying to move, in their own way, against my brother.

The matters are complicated, but, at the same time, the matters are simple: Mora’s Tower used to be a derelict building in a pass set on the road between the kingdom’s important cities. Now, the tower is in the middle of it all. And us, its prisoners, are ripe to be swept away by whoever comes this way first.

Mora’s Tower is an important strategical point, someone told me once.

And the flags that have been planted outside the tower, in a move that no one anticipated, are the yellow ones of the Guilds. ‘Did it have to be the Guilds?’ I grit between my teeth.

Henri just squeezes my shoulder, because he knows.

A long, long time ago, when the Valmons were still ruling this kingdom, the cities used to belong to the Guilds, free associations of handworkers.

Some while ago, when the Earls of the Edge rose to power, this changed. Slowly, at first. Guilds’ Rights were stripped from them one by one. And then, under my brother’s rule – duly advised, of course, by his right hand, Prince Anselme – they reduced the Guilds’ Rights and their rule of Langville, Port Lang and Valserra to as good as nothing. And then the Guilds tried to fight back.

And then I happened to them. Unwittingly, but still. It was I who dealt them the final blow.

So when the first of the players made their move, not two weeks ago, forcing my brother to hide behind Lafala’s walls – our capital – the Guilds made a move, too.

They cheerfully raised their yellow banners in Langville, just a day’s ride south-east from Mora’s Tower, claiming their ancient Guild Rights. They ordered the company of mercenaries they’d hired to break into the Red Kingdom from the south.

That would be Robert’s company.

The one camping beneath our walls.

This is a personal catastrophe, four years in the making.

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ I say. ‘What does Robert want? Why didn’t he ride to Langville? Anselme is bound to pass through here soon. Robert’s company is no match for Anselme’s troops.’

Henri lifts an eyebrow. ‘What Robert wants? I’m not sure it’s relevant. Since he’s in the Guilds’ employment now, I think it’s a matter of what the Guilds want.’

Hearing it from Henri’s mouth makes my chest tighten.

‘There is only one way,’ I tell Henri. ‘We must ask Anselme for help. We must.’ The words scratch my throat with ragged claws.

‘You could ask for help yourself,’ whispers Henri. ‘In person, that is.’

I snap my head towards him. I could.

But I know that I won’t.

My Gift is the reason I was locked into this tower, and my brother does not know that I have learned to use other aspects of it. That such a thing is possible.

And if I treasure my life, he won’t find out, either.

But that’s not even half of it.

There are things that I’ve been keeping even from Henri.

‘Anselme should be two or three days’ march away,’ I say, instead of trying to shake what weighs heavy on my mind. ‘Robert will have to give up the siege and run, if he doesn’t want his troops to be destroyed in the pass. We only have to hold out for this night.’ I break away from Henri’s embrace, leaning my back on the cold, hard wall. ‘This wasn’t meant to happen like this.’

Henri brushes away a few strands of auburn hair from my face. ‘Do you want me to send a message to Anselme, then?’

I could tell him now. I could tell him how at night, when I sleep, I’ve been feeling out the shapes of other people’s minds again, something I haven’t been able to do in more than three years. I could tell him how I caught shadows of the minds of Robert’s captains, impressions of the archers whose only mission is to shoot down the carrier pigeons we send from Mora’s Tower.

But then, I would have to admit to myself that the tethers on my other Gift are loosening, and that someone, for some reason, is behind it all.

The situation we are in is complicated, but the solution is simple. I say, ‘Find someone who can slip away tonight. Into the woods. Someone who knows them well enough. Someone we can trust with the message.’

Henri shakes his head. ‘Blanche. Everything we’ve worked for… There has to be another way.’

I narrow my eyes. ‘I have been trying for months and months to open a path of communication with the Guilds, with no success. I see no reason why the Guilds would want to negotiate with me now.’

Every one of my actions will have consequences. And I’m responsible for the lives of many: the three young women who are still with me. The guards of Mora’s Tower. Even for Henri’s. And they aren’t something I’m ready to gamble away.

‘You are valuable,’ Henri says. ‘You and the girls.’

‘We are no more than trading coins,’ I say. Discards. Unwanted by their own families. Set to be used as sacrificial lambs, an example to be made of. ‘I can’t risk this. I won’t.’

I will not fail the girls, as their families have.

‘Instead, you are willing to risk the lives of one of our guards?’ says Henri.

I remember Robert’s lessons. About weighing the risks. Deciding who to save.

‘Do you forget how he is, Henri? How well he knows the ins and outs of this tower? Robert was the one who made it into a prison for me.’

My palms break into a cold sweat.

For him, no keep is too strong, no mountain too high to climb. He balks at nothing. He fears nothing. If he’s given the chance to storm the keep, if he places his troops inside… Robert knows just as well as I do what the stakes are.

If he has the tower, he has the pass.

If he has the pass, he holds the road to the capital. He can prevent Anselme’s army from uniting with my brother’s.

If he succeeds.

For a moment, I’m tempted to let him. Because in the end, that’s what we all want, isn’t it? My brother’s downfall.

No one more than the most important player in this five-sided game: my nephew, Charles. The leader of the red banners, currently marching towards Lafala.

Hopefully.

‘Did you forget, Blanche?’ says Henri, tracing his eyes across my face, down to my lips.

I curl my hands into fists.

I have tried to forget.

What happened during the Tournament two years ago, and after it.

You will have to save yourself.

This has never been truer than it is now.

I take in Henri’s lovely face. Cunning, clever Henri. Henri who was here.

Henri who helped me forget.

I lean into him, my hands on his shoulders, touching my mouth to his. He answers by nipping at my lips slowly, barely brushing them with his tongue. This touch, the feel of him, makes me feel light-headed and grounded, at the same time.

I pull him closer, my hands tangled in his hair. He is real, and solid. I need this, the assurance of his lean, muscular body, enveloping me with his warmth.

Here; he is always here, these days.

Where I need him.

He pulls my head back so he can drag his tongue down my neck and a wave of light and heat travels down into my belly.

Yes, this. Make me forget for a moment. Make me feel I’m not alone. I seek his mouth again, but he merely untangles himself.

‘Later,’ he says, his hot breath on my cheek. ‘I have to go now.’

There is no point in holding him back. There is much more he needs to attend to than just my fears.

As he leaves, I turn away towards the window again, in a mindless move, my head still full of Henri.

And I see him, as if my eyes knew precisely where to look. Robert. In a clearing between the largest four tents of the encampment. I would know those broad shoulders, that towering silhouette, anywhere. His short yellow cape flutters in the wind.

I cannot make out, from this distance, if his mouth is drawn into a tight line. But I feel his raking gaze upon me. Those searing green eyes, watching me as unflinchingly as on the day we first met. Searching. Prodding. Making me freeze my thoughts so he wouldn’t be able to see them.

From the staircase, Henri lilts, ‘I will go to Anselme myself.’

His words fall like thunder upon my head.

I close the last of the shutters in a quick move, struggling for air.

* * *

There are many reasons why I shouldn’t do what I have taken upon myself to do tonight, which is infiltrating Robert’s mind.

The first of them, and the most obvious, is that I don’t know who is slipping the tethers around my Gift and why. I should, perhaps, look to the Golden Pavilion first, and its doyenne, the woman who clipped my wings more than three years ago.

But she would know, she would sense me, she would be prepared.

And so would Robert, perhaps. Was I not warned against mindwalking? Wouldn’t he expect me?

No, he would not. Because as far as he and everyone else are concerned, I can’t mindwalk anymore. I can’t drift from my own dreams into someone else’s memories.

But perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps what happened last night was a product of my own imagination. Perhaps I want so much to be able to mindwalk again, that I persuaded myself that it is, indeed, so.

But I saw the archers, and what happens to our pigeons. I have to try, because I have a responsibility to my Fallen Court, the girls I promised to protect.

I tell myself, It’s not because I’m aching to look into Robert’s mind.

I sink into my bed, reaching out towards him.

Towards the impression he makes on the world, and the impression the world makes on him.

I roam the slumbering camp at the foot of the mountain, searching. He’s not in the large ivory tent at the heart of his army, but I find him two tents over, the one where armed guards sleep inside.

He is awake, fretting. I can smell a tinge of fear, even.

I tiptoe around the minds of the men-at-arms and captains. It’s a struggle to drift from my own dreams into someone else’s thoughts, after three years. Constantly having to force myself out of my own head, stuffed with worries, and absorb the landscape of someone else’s mind. To see their memories, their concerns, their hopes and wishes. To tell the difference between them and what I want to see.

There are camps and marches and battle plans in the men’s thoughts. I see half-whispered, obscure commands. I see the order to strike camp tomorrow, at first light.

Relief surges through me, a soft thread undoing the tension coiled in my body. I barely have the sense to snap myself out of the captain’s mind, and pull back into my own, before I flood him with my emotions.

The Guilds won’t capture us. Robert will have to go tomorrow, and we’ll barricade ourselves in the Tower, waiting for Anselme to rescue us.

After the surge of relief, disappointment crashes down on me in merciless waves. That I should have failed so miserably, that I had no choice but to send Henri to Anselme.

Precisely the outcome I’ve fought against in these past two years since the Tournament. And if my brother ever catches word of what I’d done… I shudder to even think of the possibility.

I can trust Henri, though it has been a rocky path.

It has been only eight months since I’d decided to take that last step.

He’d brought another girl to Mora’s Tower.

‘What happened? Did her father fall out of the King’s favour?’ I asked.

‘No.’ He frowned. ‘She didn’t provide an heir to her husband after six years of marriage.’

I rolled my eyes so hard that it hurt. ‘Mothers of the Forest, they’re horrible, aren’t they? So they dumped her here?’

‘This isn’t even all of it. She’s here so her noble husband can invoke the fact that she left her home, and he can seek annulment of their marriage.’

‘Lucius’s Flaming Finger. Was this my brother’s idea?’ I asked.

‘Anselme’s,’ said Henri, his gaze roving over my simple dress of coarse linen, my hooded cloak. ‘What are you wearing? Have you become a sort of penitent or something?’

I chuckled, so close to revealing to him the secret behind my plain clothes. What I had seen, what I was seeing. I took in his crooked smile, the dark blue cloak of the Pretorians floating behind him. A mark of his allegiance to my brother, the king.

And I took in his silver-grey surcoat with the Valmons arms. The mark of his allegiance to himself. Of what he perhaps still wanted, though he would never dare voice, as a second son, bound to make his own path in the world. By whatever means necessary.

‘And how are you enjoying your work at the Royal Palace?’ My voice was low. A poke in the dark.

Henri scoffed, his light blue eyes sparkling with mischief. ‘Are you seriously asking me this?’

‘Do you like it more when we talk about books and legends?’

‘Books are safe.’ He shifted on his feet. ‘This conversation you’re about to start isn’t.’

‘Haven’t you been warned that I am mad?’ I said, though, by that point, we had known each other very, very well for almost two years.

‘I have been warned about many things.’ There was, again, a trace of a smile on his lips.

‘I want to know. Truly. Are you happy with your work?’

He sighed. ‘You’re not asking the right question. What are the alternatives?’

Henri was hiding something.

No more, no less, than I.

‘But a Pretorian?’ The King’s personal Guard. ‘It is an unusual choice.’

Henri stepped closer to me, his eyes roving over my face, stopping on my lips. ‘I don’t have the inclination to become a hired knight in somebody’s household. Besides, don’t forget about the Valmons pride. A Valmons would only serve the royal household.’

‘So you pledged your sword to my brother, the King.’

‘If I remember correctly, Blanche, after the Tournament, I pledged my sword to you.’ His eyes burned bright with something, and I wasn’t sure, even then, if I wanted to unravel it.

In any case, tonight is not a good moment to start.

My chest tightens with worry. What’s done is done, and I should put it aside.

I use my Gift to find Robert’s tent and pounce into his dreams.

It’s easy this time, so easy. Nothing of that red-tinged swamp I saw the first time I walked his mind. I find him in a council room that looks like the ones at the Royal Palace. Walls of blue marble, veined with gold. An arched, filigreed window that looks towards the sea. A marble table, maps thrown on it in disarray. Robert’s tall, bulky silhouette leans above them, surrounded by at least half a dozen seigneurs, talking. Yet I cannot make out any of their words – they sound as if someone is yelling into a barrel.

I seek the shadows of the silk drapes. If Robert sees me, smack in the middle of this memory where I don’t belong, which I was never a part of, he might know that something is amiss. That my Gift is returning to me. From behind the drapes, I rise on the tips of my toes, to make out the maps on the table.

They are blank.

My heart is a wild thing in my chest. Is this merely a coincidence? Or does he know that I’m here?

Robert swipes his forehead, his chainmail clinking. He casts his eyes around the chamber, searching, while I mould deeper into the fabric of the silk.

He cannot sense me, I tell myself.

Yet he had sensed me, all those years ago.

The one and only time I have been in his head before this, he said that he felt me because things weren’t as they should have been.

Robert rolls the maps and turns on his heels, leaving the room. I follow him through the maze of corridors flooded in light. The chequered blue-and-gold marble floor resounds with the sound of his steps, and yet my own are quiet as I follow him in the shadows.

He cuts through Melusine’s Garden and enters the portico that leads through the square west wing. But by the Storm-Caller’s statue, he stops, looking over his shoulder.

I hide behind the trunk of a linden tree. I’m so close, too close. His yellow mantle flaps in the breeze, and his short-cropped hair is now streaked with a few grey hairs.

Something molten drips through my veins, weakening my knees.

Two years.

It might have been a lifetime.

I tell myself, Stay in the shadow. Hidden. I wouldn’t want him to change his mind about leaving tomorrow, about delivering – or, better said, not delivering – us to the Guilds.

I should go back. And yet here I am, unable to pull back into my own dreams.

Maybe there’s an answer somewhere to a question I haven’t even asked yet.

With a sudden move, Robert jerks away, disappears under the portico and back into the palace. I wait a few heartbeats, increasing the distance between us. But when I follow into the hallway, there’s no trace of him. The corridor is like a quiet, dark cave.

I feel my way forward. On the sea-side, I hear whispers. A creak of wood from behind a half-open door. I come closer with small steps, mindful that I should make no noise.

Inside, the shutters are drawn and the lit candle on the table throws shadows on a bed. I see him first, bent over a woman, his head bowed. He has removed his chainmail, and also the shirt underneath. The flesh on his arms hardens as he grips her by the middle. Her hair is spread over the bed covers and she moans softly when he kisses her neck, slowly, full of intention. She writhes, and he grinds his hips into her.

I make to retreat, but my feet won’t listen to me. The woman grips his shoulders.

Gisele.

Bloody Gisele again. She’s everywhere.

I think, Go ahead, you can have him. For all the good that it will do to you.

And just as I do so, the woman arches her back, tips her neck backwards. The crown of her head touches the mattress. I catch a glimpse of her eyes, of half her face, and I realise who she is.

It’s me.

COURTS OF ALL SORTS

THE PRINCESS

Four Years before the Year of the Red Maiden

The setting sun threw warm light patterns of red, green and blue on the table in Madame Faucon’s room. The doyenne of the Golden Pavilion had invited me to her workroom, to discuss my latest dreams, my latest feats of mindwalking.

In front of me, she’d set pomegranate seeds and meat pies.

It was our custom.

As we delved deeper into my nightly searches, while I was still fuzzy with sleep, she allowed me to have dinner, which was, in fact, my breakfast.

At night, I roamed through other people’s thoughts.

‘Tell me, Blanche, what did you find?’ Madame Faucon reclined into her seat and laced her small, thin hands. She was so diminutive, Madame Faucon, even with her hair pinned loosely on top of her head. She never wore a wimple, like the ladies of the kingdom, but she didn’t have to – she was both of the Red Kingdom and not of it.

She made her own rules.

I said, ‘The Guilds in Langville are stirring.’

‘Yes? Which ones?’

I rubbed my still swollen eyes, trying to remember the details. I walked through so many people’s minds, searching, trying to complete the tasks Madame Faucon set for me. Trying to separate memories from wishes, what truly happened from the lies we tell ourselves, picking out the bits of truth like small, dirty gems.

And sometimes – less often, lately – I was also mistaken. There was no one who could walk at my side through other people’s minds, to help me discern fact from hope, from what had not come to pass. My training was unusual, but there hadn’t been a Mindwalker in the Red Kingdom in centuries. They said that my birth was an omen in itself, but even the brightest mages at the Golden Pavilion didn’t quite know what to make of it. They hadn’t seen the likes of me in many, many years.

This meant my teachers couldn’t take me by the arm and show me the intricacies of my craft, like they did with all the other students.

From the courtyard below, a whoosh rose, and gasps. A flame flickered at the window, then disappeared. The Fire-Blazers must have been training below. I didn’t know for sure as I never trained with the others – my skills were of a different set altogether. Usually, the young men were trained to fight, and the young women’s Gifts were moulded to serve the kingdom in other ways. For instance, the female Water-Twirlers learned how to irrigate fields, while the male ones learned how to hone water into weapons.

Because of my odd schedule, I didn’t even dine with the other students. And they didn’t know precisely what my skills were. I liked to think they assumed that it was something more terrible than the truth, and that was why they did their best to steer out of my way.

‘Which. Ones?’ repeated Madame Faucon.

‘The Guild of Goldsmiths. The Tanners.’

‘The Weavers?’

I tried to bring into focus what I’d seen, who’d been speaking with whom. I tried to remember their names. By hopping from mind to mind, I often heard the same words, slightly changed, sometimes set in a different scene altogether.

Our mental landscapes reflect ourselves more than we would like, which made my work so much harder.

And far more interesting.

‘Them, too.’

‘How many dreams have you roamed?’ Madame Faucon pushed the pomegranate seeds towards me. ‘And what are their grievances?’

This was how my training had proceeded during my seven years at the Golden Pavilion. Madame Faucon set me a task, sending me to seek out a certain person’s mind, and I reported back. Based on the information I gleaned, and comparing with what she already knew, she could tell how my skills were honing.

‘Many,’ I said, counting on my fingers. ‘Seven or eight men.’

‘Grievances?’

I sat straighter in my chair and Madame Faucon watched me intently.

This was the time when I had to pick. From all I’d seen, heard and felt, I had to choose what to say. Too little, and she might deem my progress unsatisfactory, continue to keep me here.

I should have graduated from the Golden Pavilion years before. I was the eldest among the students, and in the twenty-one years of my existence, I’d only known two places: the Royal Palace and the magic school.

How I longed for the freedom of the wider world. A world I might have even found my place in.

Yet, no matter how hard I tried, my training never seemed to be complete. No one was able to say when it might be, either. It depended on the daily meetings, on what I said, and how correct I proved myself to be.

Even after all those years, I fumbled, fearing a misstep. I never knew what the doyenne was aware of. How much I was required to say. What I might let slip about these people whose minds I visited, giving away something that they didn’t wish to be known.

What I did had an ugly face; of that I was aware. I dreaded nothing more than laying these people too bare, saying too much, making them ripe for shredding.

We all have secrets we never want others to find out.

Stick to the facts. And to what might be of aid to my brother, the king. ‘The Guilds of Langville are unhappy since Prince Anselme forbade them to use any other coins except the ones he issues in Langville. The Guilds have to exchange the coin they receive in their trade for the prince’s – they call it the arselme.’

‘The arselme?’ An amused glint played in Madame Faucon’s eyes.

‘The arselme.’ I blushed. ‘But they lose up to a quarter of their winnings. They say that the prince doesn’t give them a fair rate of exchange. They say the taxes are already too high. They say they can barely make a gain.’

Madame Faucon nodded. ‘Is that all?’

I snapped a few pomegranate seeds, popping them in my mouth. So sour. So sweet.

The Guilds used to have the cities to themselves, once. But Madame Faucon said that the Guilds had become so powerful that they’d threatened the unity of the Red Kingdom. That this was why my brother had to act, and limit their rights.

Madame Faucon perhaps didn’t know that wasn’t what the Guildmasters thought.

They thought my brother and Anselme had been aiming for their wealth. That they’d reached the conclusion it would be much more profitable if the taxes gathered in the cities flooded their own pockets.

I still preferred to think that my brother was looking out for the safety of our kingdom. If there was something I’d learned after so many years of mindwalking, it was that no one held the absolute truth. They all chose to see the slice of the story that fitted them.

It was my job to make those slices fit together into a larger picture.

‘Blanche? Is this everything you want to tell me?’ said Madame Faucon.

Yes. I didn’t want to say much, but it was part of my training, and I didn’t want to spend my entire life at the Golden Pavilion.

I needed to get out of the school. I needed to find my place.

Madame Faucon laid her hands in her lap, thin fingers lacing. ‘Did you sense any threat to the throne?’

I hesitated.

‘One day, Blanche, the Red Kingdom will need your Gift, for you to look into the minds of our enemies. And that is the day when you might save us all. Yes, you. But I need to know if I can trust what you tell me. The old scrolls say that you may easily fall into your own dreams, the craft of your own imagination. I must know that you can tell where the threshold is. Because soon, lives might depend upon it.’

I creased between my hands the simple teal robe of the Golden Pavilion.

How I yearned to replace it with anything else. Like a pretty dress. But that wasn’t possible, unless I graduated.

‘Blanche,’ she said softly. ‘What else have you found? You can tell me. It’s not as if you will tell us something we don’t know. This is why we set these tasks to you. To make sure that what you tell us is accurate.’

The harm has already been done.

‘The Guilds are trying to secure mercenaries.’

‘How?’

‘Under the pretence of hiring town guards. Their numbers are swelling.’

‘Very good work,’ said Madame Faucon. She reached into a painted chest and held out a tablet made of sesame and honey.

I grabbed the sticky tablet, my stomach growling.

‘Will that be all?’ I asked.

‘Yes, unless you have something else to tell me?’

I shifted in my seat.

‘There’s a rumour. That the Condottiere and his followers are looking for a contract.’

Everyone had heard about the Condottiere, the second in command of the most sought-after army of mercenaries, north and south of the Alpen Mountains. They said he was a giant. They said he had the strength of five oxen. They said he was unrivalled in feats of the sword and that never, during a tournament, had he ever been unhorsed.

Some said he was a young nobleman from an impoverished family in the neighbouring Green Kingdom, who had to seek his luck elsewhere when he lost his ancestral home. Some said he was from the Cities beyond the Alpen themselves, his mother a famous itinerant artist.

Madame Faucon blinked. ‘How so?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then tell me what you know.’

The honey stuck to my fingers. ‘Not much. Except that he’s in Milena with the Company of the Lion.’

‘And?’

‘The Guildmasters are looking to speak to him.’

‘Then let this be your task for the next time.’ Madame Faucon pushed in front of me a blank page and a pot of ink. She handed me a writing quill. ‘I’ll need the names of the people you visited. The Guildmasters.’

I shifted in my seat. There was something irreversibly intrusive about putting a name behind a piece of information. Something that exposed these men too much. ‘But I don’t know their names. Just their faces.’

‘I need you to try harder, Blanche. Find out the names of the people whose minds you walk. And find out more about the Condottiere. And what he intends to do.’

‘But… That means I will have to carry my thoughts far south, over the Alpen.’

‘Yes, that’s precisely what it means. Do you want to hone your craft or not? Do you want to be, one day, of service to the Red Kingdom?’

I nodded. I wanted to be out of there, one day. Able to walk this world for myself, to see it someway other than through someone else’s eyes.

And to mingle with the noble young ladies and noble young men of this kingdom. To be just like them. And perhaps, among them, there might have been someone for me, too. Not just a lonely room at the top of a tower in the Golden Pavilion.

* * *

We are all connected. None of us float freely into this world, untethered. Every life we touch, every single person we ever spoke with, binds us in ways we can never imagine. And I was always there, the girl in the shadows, listening. The hum of a mother’s lullaby. A raised voice behind closed doors. The secret handshakes under the table.

I could always find my way to a person. Going from tether to tether, hopping from one mind to another, until I found the person whom I was looking for. Ransacking in their minds, until I brought out to light their darkest secrets.

Mindwalking was nothing else than reaching out for a face I’d seen, a name I knew, and seeking the impression that the world had made upon that mind. But that was all that it was – an impression – not the absolute truth.

That night, my task was to find the Condottiere.

I settled into my bed in my private chambers at the Golden Pavilion. It was a special bed that could fit three or four Blanches – and I’m not small. No, not at all. Rather tall for a girl, with wide thighs, and an even broader chest. My features too strong for me to be considered pretty. Perhaps my dark red hair was the only pretty thing about me.

I traced the edges of the figures carved on my bed’s headboard. Images from Sabya’s legends: Sabya on her magical mare. Sabya swinging her Morningstar against the dragon. Sabya fighting Darg, the bloodthirsty general of the Dark Mother. The last betrayal.

Sabya, the Light Cantor who took up her weapons, rose to lead an army of the Waldemannen of the Three Kingdoms, and defeated the Dark Mother once and for all.

Sabya, our most revered goddess.

But the depictions on the headboard were approximate and inaccurate. As all legends are, I suppose. When I’d brought my first and only lover, an apprentice Water-Twirler, into that room, he’d made a point of showing me inaccuracies: there had been no such weapons during that time, when the Romannhon Empire was at its peak – Morningstars were an innovation of these past centuries. And the order was all wrong. Sabya would have slayed the dragon after fighting the general, wouldn’t she? That’s the rule. Always slay the smaller monsters first, test your power against them, before moving on to the greatest menace that had ever visited the Three Kingdoms.

We are all surrounded, and growing up with a web of lies, spun tight around us. What matters…

What does matter? To be on our guards, I suppose. We never know where our enemies lurk.

This was why my brother needed me.

It was also because of fear. If they didn’t fear him, someone might have tried to take him down. And I would have sunk with him.

I had a duty to my family, to the only member of it who was left.

Help, Madame Faucon had said.

I lay down in the bed, pulling up a silk cover. Everything in the room was designed to help me with my mindwalking. The way the shutters closed, locking out all the light, day and night. My pillows, filled with dry mint and lavender.

I closed my eyes and began the hopping.

I always had to start with someone I knew, someone I’d met, someone whose name I’d heard. I had to cast my line into the darkness behind my eyes and hope to catch something. Then I went into their head, walked the chambers, or the woods, thread to thread, going closer and closer, until I found who I was looking for.

Sometimes it was easy – Madame Faucon asked me, as an exercise, to look into the minds of people I already knew. But sometimes, it was harder. I had to scour minds until I came upon the link that I needed.

But the task set for me that night, it was the hardest I’d ever had. I only knew a nickname: the Condottiere. Not his face. Not where he lived, and I didn’t know a single person he met.

How could I find a man who was cloaked by hearsay and legends?

Think, Blanche.

Seigneurs. I knew plenty of them, from the early years I spent at court. And even if I didn’t, there was a good chance one of the students of the Golden Pavilion did.

And who was more familiar with the Royal Court than Gisele, Prince Anselme’s own daughter? But she might have been warned by my brother and her father, to protect herself against what I was. I’d been told as much, at least. That the few people who were aware of my Gift were wary of my intrusion.

And I’d been told that so I could avoid temptation.

Sabya knows that I’ve been tempted to look into their minds.

Settle, settle.

Close your eyes.

Peer into the darkness.

I tried.

I hopped from seigneur to seigneur. But I found nothing more than titbits of gossip, distant reverberations of an incoming conflict that had nothing to do with us – Milena and Genvive were clenching their fists, about to throw themselves into another war. Romannhon, rising again, casting a long shadow across the cities in the south.

By the time dawn broke, or I thought it might have, my head boomed and clattered with the shards of life that I’d gathered while hopping from mind to mind.

My legs were unsteady as I climbed down from bed, opened the shutters. A cold breeze smacked me in my face. Starlight obliterated by clouds, and a few errant snowflakes fell from the sky.

It was still the middle of the night.

All around me, the Golden Pavilion rose in a symphony of towers and turrets, mostly students’ chambers, connected by elegant balconies, passages and terraces, sculpted in laced white-and-gold marble. How splendid it looked, perched as it was on top of the Opal Mountain, especially when one gazed at it from the valley.

The most beautiful building in our kingdom except, perhaps, for the Royal Palace in Lafala. I cast my eyes downwards, towards the swirling patterns of the central piazza, the fountain on the right side, quiet at that hour of night.

During the day, the Water-Twirlers brought it to life with their craft, making its waters slosh, or sculpting it into different shapes. Behind it, there was the long portico of the main building. The latter housed the Library, the Refectory, the teachers’ offices, and the kitchens with the pantry and the famous wine cellar.

Not a whiff of the hundred students that had gathered there from the Red and Blue Kingdoms. They all rumbled peacefully in their sleep, while my day’s work wasn’t even half-done.

But while the mages in it might have been slumbering, the magic of the Pavilion was as alive and pulsing as ever. And it would have been in vain to lie to myself that I could have slept, while my mind quivered with the memories and emotions of other people.

The only thing in this world that could soothe my reeling mind was the Pavilion itself. It understood, because it had collected impressions of the world as if they were vintage wines, as if the school had an intelligence and a will of its own. It was the only place that helped me settle when I was like that, though Madame Faucon had almost forbidden it.

I lay again on the bed with my eyes closed. My thoughts slipped to the fountain in the piazza. Made from the same white, gold-glimmering stone as the rest of the Pavilion, its edges were laid with intricate designs crafted in blue and yellow. The water sang its soft song behind me, and I slowed my breaths.

In and out. In and out. Night turned into day and seasons passed. Students – Water-Twirlers – gathered around the fountain as the doyenne, a different one from Madame Faucon, bellowed at a girl, dark-haired and small, to concentrate.

The other doyenne was tall, with wide hips, like me. Her features were obscured by her hood, but a great power thrummed around her.

It smelled like rain and obliterating winds.

I didn’t know where I was in the past, but this was always the issue when I went into the heart of the Pavilion and into the heart of the Mountain, and not into someone’s mind. Time was different there. As if everything was happening simultaneously, a stack of incidents, one topped above the other. Linked, but so that it was impossible to distinguish cause from consequence.

I didn’t know why I’d been brought there. Tears welled into the girl’s dark eyes, and I wanted to reach out my hand and tell her how I understood. And then, something shifted in her features, and the water rose in a rounded dome, higher, and higher, and higher, exploding in a spray that drenched everyone.

The doyenne wiped her face and barked at the girl to clean up the mess she’d made. I heard a name.

Celine.

Someone brought a bucket and rags and the girl ground her teeth, trying not to cry.

But there was someone else. A lean boy, his hair like liquid honey, surrounded by his own clique. He said something to the girl and she couldn’t take her eyes away from him. Another boy stepped up and threw a lick of fire, drying the piazza and every drop of water around the fountain.

The crack of smile on the girl’s face was like sunshine breaking through the clouds. And then, the honey-haired boy smiled as well, and gestured her to follow into the Pavilion.

There was no one, not even a single person within the Golden Pavilion, who would have ever done the same for me.

I was an oddity.

I was an omen.

I thought, I’d like to see the day when I win someone on my side. I’d like to see the day when someone lifts their hands in my defence.

I finally fell asleep, a single lonely tear drifting down my face.

* * *

There was a sharp knock on my door, pointed and impatient. I hurried from my mindwalking bed, nearly tumbling to rip the door open. I’d failed to find the Condottiere last night.

Amelie Valmons was waiting in the corridor. Her lips drawn in a pout. ‘You’re wanted in the Pavilion’s piazza, for the Morgen Movements.’

I stifled a yawn and hurried after her. I shouldn’t have been sleeping at that hour. Instead, I should have been hopping through minds. Or finding ways to accomplish my task. Resting was reserved for after breakfast.

I’d made a mistake and Madame Faucon would see. I could barely keep up with Amelie. By the time we’d wound down the stairs, I’d lost her as she’d slipped into the second line, alongside her friends.

I wasn’t one of them.

She must have been so irritated that Madame Faucon had sent her after me. Amelie, of a family far older than even mine. Which had held the reins of this land while my father’s ancestors were no more than warlords; what we’d, perhaps, call counts.

But a long time ago, one of the queens failed to give her husband a son. Or the other way around, as I preferred to believe. And the kingship had passed to my family; from the Valmons, to the Shadowline, the Earls of the Edge.

Someone must have been angry that the queen had been denied her right to rule, though. Perhaps one of the olden gods. Perhaps Sabya herself.

Ever since the line was removed from the throne, only the women of the Valmons blood carried the Gift. Which, in Amelie’s case, made her a Water-Twirler, like the girl I saw that morning in the Pavilion’s memories.

‘There you are,’ snapped Madame Faucon, stopping from her side bend. Everyone else turned to look at me while I sought a place, behind the last line.

As always. Behind, at the edges.

Gisele, Anselme’s daughter, seemed to go out of her way not to acknowledge me.

Right behind her, my two-time lover stared at the back of her head. Gisele was how it had ended, what had ended it. I’d looked into his sorry mind and saw he had no more interest in me. I was a petty diversion while he chased whom he really wanted: Gisele, Gisele, Gisele.

Her name on all their lips.

Me, they barely saw. And it wasn’t only because of the odd hours I usually kept.

Madame Faucon pointed us to the next motion, rising on the tip of her toes, balancing one of her legs behind.

I followed, my limbs aching, my eyes heavy with sleep. I was hungry and cold and what I wouldn’t have given to be able to return to my bed, still. But Madame Faucon was adamant about the Morgen Movements, even if it was certain they’d never, ever make a fighter out of me.

You can hardly withdraw into a dream during battle.

Bloodshed, that’s something that I, probably, would never see.

* * *

I focused, hard, on Prince Anselme’s mouth. As if I could call back the words he’d just said to me, which I hadn’t heard.

He was smaller than I remembered him, but again, the last time I’d seen him, I was a girl of fourteen. He was of middle height, but stately in his splendid velvets and furs, still somewhat handsome in spite of his grey hair.

I was still settling into where I was, and into how quickly I’d been whisked away from the Golden Pavilion to be brought to the Royal Palace. Only the morning before I had stumbled through the Morgen Movements after an unproductive night. And now, I found myself at the beating heart of the Red Kingdom, in the room of the Curia, where my brother met with his trusted councillors.

There were only three of us on that day in those chambers: my brother, sitting on his sculpted throne at the long table, Anselme and I.

I caught a quick glance between my brother and his most trusted adviser. I wasn’t looking into their heads, and they weren’t speaking, but I knew what they were saying. She is far gone.

I took a deep breath, let my eyes rove through the rest of the chamber. A space full of light carved out of blue marble, veined with gold.

Marble that had come from the heart of the Opal Mountain, according to the legends.

Marble that had held on, somehow, to its magic.

Through one of the shutterless, arched windows, the stone trimmed to resemble lace, I could see the surface of the sea, shimmering in the sunlight.

So much sun. Everything so bright.

‘I said,’ repeated Prince Anselme, his tone even, his words spaced, as if he were talking to a child, ‘would you like something to drink, princess?’

I took in his annoyed stare, the way my brother sat splayed on his throne, all bones and sinews and flesh consumed by whatever fire burned within.

Though he was an Illusionist, my brother. A rare and powerful sort even within the mages.

An Illusionist, just like Madame Faucon.

This brought me back to sieving the truth from the lies of my reasons for being in the council room of the Royal Palace.

If my childhood at the Royal Palace had ever taught me something, it would have been, Think before you open your mouth.

I hardly did so as a child. You wouldn’t expect that from a six-year-old, so haunted and terrified by her own vivid dreams that she’d be prone to blurt it all out to whoever would be willing to listen. They’d thought me not quite right in the head for years, visiting Blood-Flowers, performing healing spells on me, but nothing could chase the nightmares out. The hopping.

It wasn’t until Madame Faucon came to the Red Court that they realised something else might hide underneath the babbling.

Though I suppose my mother knew. She must have known, she must have sorted through the figments of real life woven tight with my dreaming. She’d sit on one of the high balconies, her back turned to me, asking, ‘And where did you go in your dreams last night, Blanche?’

It took me years at the Golden Pavilion, years after she’d died, to realise why she’d kept quiet. Why she told no one else. Not even my father. Not even my older brother.

They were the same reasons why I always went through my words carefully every time I opened my mouth, every syllable picked to create a certain impression.

Mostly, that I was someone who wasn’t right in her head.

Whatever ‘right’ might have meant.

I’d been enough in other people’s heads, riffling through their secrets, to know that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ depended on who you were asking.

‘Just water,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

Anselme’s heels resounded on the marble, full and hollow at the same time, as he exited through a side door. My grasp on the day was failing. I’d slept in my own bed in my royal quarters, buzzing with the why? and the how?, fishing for reasons why I would have been brought to Lafala, instead of looking for the man I was meant to find.

The Condottiere was still eluding me.

‘Sit down,’ said my brother, more an order than an invitation. I pulled the chair closest to me at the table. Red cherrywood, polished to brightness. His throne, lonely and distant, at the head.

I wanted to ask why I was there, but I knew better than to pose direct questions. They would have told me only what they wanted me to know. Just like I did, I suppose.

My brother threw me a long, assessing glance, roving over my simple teal dress, the uniform of the Golden Pavilion.

I cleared my voice. ‘I understand that you need my assistance?’

Why did you bring me here?

Etienne clenched his fist. ‘Madame Faucon led me to understand that your Gift might be … of help. I do believe you have seen enough to comprehend the intricacies of the world we move in. Of what we need to do in order to survive. As a family.’

I nodded, sifting through what Madame Faucon had told me about the plots surrounding my brother. The vying for power. What I could do in order to assist him, the tests she had subjected me to, in order to find out how reliable I could be.

I must have passed the test with the Guilds with flying colours. Whatever Anselme’s spies had been whispering in his ears, it must have coincided with the information I supplied to Madame Faucon.

Though they had yet to find out about the Condottiere. And my lack of grip on him.

But before I could say anything on any subject, my brother went on. ‘We would like you to live with us, at the Palace. And help us.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

This bit of information fell upon me like a stone in a well.

It seemed that I’d finally graduated from the Golden Pavilion.

A clop of steps informed that Anselme was returning, setting a chalice in front of me.

Above my head, my brother exchanged a glance with his closest counsellor.

Anselme said, in a soft voice, ‘We would like you to attend some of the formal dinners. But you are free to spend the rest of the time as you will, dedicating yourself to your … craft.’

I wanted to ask if I was allowed to go to the city, walk the streets of Lafala. I’d hardly been anywhere. In all these years, I’d never once left the premises of the Golden Pavilion.

Only in my mind.

I wanted to step into that wondrous world I saw from everybody else’s eyes. Feel a hot cobblestone in the summer, smell the fish grilled in the bay of Port Lang. Plant my feet firmly into the rocks of the Valmons mountains, drive my fingers though the rushing brooks.

Not now, I told myself. Not now.

They were looking at me, I realised. Expecting me to say something. I weighed in what that might be. I settled for a simple ‘Thank you.’

‘And we also have a first mission for you,’ said my brother, waving at Anselme to go on.

‘We would like you to look into something. Pamphlets, full of poison and lies, are being distributed in the capital. And written and copied here, also, we suspect.’

‘What are they about?’

My brother’s nostrils flared, and my first instinct was to ask myself whether I’d done something to upset him.

I couldn’t afford that.

After our parents died, he was all I had left.

‘It’s mostly propaganda against the mages.’ Anselme’s voice became even quieter. ‘You understand why such … positions would be dangerous for us. Driving a wedge between the ruling classes of this kingdom, and those who are ruled.’

No one knows how it started, truly. Why the magic stayed deeply rooted within the borders of our kingdom, while it faded from the rest of the world, bit by bit. Even Sabya’s legends were unclear about this. If the magic had to do with Lucius or not, the king who arose to unite the Three Kingdoms just before the Nightdragon and Sabya emerged, and the Romannhon were cast out from our lands.

All we know is that, after the Dark Mother had finally been vanquished, Sabya and Lucius – the enlightened one – built the Royal Palace in Lafala, to stand guard to the sea. It had been a fortress, at first. And then, they built the Golden Pavilion on top of the Opal Mountain, which has served as a magic school, ever since, for more than five centuries.

But in time, a sort of balance – or imbalance – had arisen. The seigneurs were almost all of the mages. Even those of the noblemen who had no Gifts were somehow tied to their interests. Like the Champys or the Goderics in Anselmois.

The common people envy our power, Madame Faucon said. They try to destroy it. And she wasn’t only speaking of our Gifts. The seigneurs had the land and the coin concentrated within their hands.

I could see why such ideas would be dangerous to my brother’s reign.

To me.

But… ‘I wouldn’t even know where to start,’ I said.

‘That’s fine,’ said my brother. ‘We do.’

Anselme turned, and with a wave of his hand, he made the metal engravings of the side door glow with fire.

A sign.

The door opened and a man was brought in front of me.

A man with bloodied face, bloodied hands. Two of his fingers stuck out at odd angles, and he was whimpering as the two guards in dark blue cloaks dragged him and threw him at Anselme’s feet.

My gut twisted into knots. I pushed down the waves of nausea. My gaze was fixed on him, unable to look away.

He must be our enemy, I tried to remind myself. But I could hardly breathe at the sight of the pain he must have been in.

‘You can start here,’ said my brother.

‘Show your face,’ said Anselme in the same soft, commanding tone.

The man cradled his arm, crouching on the floor. Hiding his head between his knees. Anselme made a sign and one of the guards forced his head up. I took in his battered, bruised face. The cuts on his cheeks. And my stomach churned again.

‘Do you have what you need?’ said Etienne.

I nodded, unable to speak.

Etienne waved them off and the guards hauled the man up, disappearing where they came from.

There was only silence in his wake. Anselme seemed to have seen something on my face, because he said, ‘There are things we are forced to do. Think of those we are trying to protect. Even an idea can be such a dangerous thing. It can … disturb the good peace of the realm. All that we’ve strived so hard to build.’

Thoughts darted, raging and rearranging themselves through my head. There was always a price to pay for my brother’s peace, I’d seen as much in other people’s minds. But if something were to happen to my brother, what would happen to me?

This is real, I realised. This wasn’t the make-believe at the Golden Pavilion, this wasn’t a game. I’d wished so much to be freed of the Pavilion, and now I wasn’t sure if I was ready to face what my life would become.

What I would have to do for my brother.

‘The man was found handing out pamphlets in the Spice Market yesterday,’ said Etienne, trampling over my thoughts. ‘The Pretorians caught him.’

The guards tasked to protect the royal family and the major cities.

‘Go into his head tonight,’ said Anselme. Gently. As if he wasn’t asking me to scour through the man’s most intimate thoughts. Hopes and dreams. ‘And find out who gave them to him. Who is printing them. Who pays for all of it.’

As if that was the sort of work that could have been taken care of with a snap of fingers.

‘I’ll try,’ I said, not sure at all that I wanted to.

My stomach churned and I knew that nothing could have ever prepared me for this.

‘Good,’ said Anselme. ‘That’s all we ask. And when it comes to the other business…’ He swirled his finger. ‘The Condottiere. We have been led to understand that you need to use connections, sometimes, to reach the results we need.’

‘Yes. Yes. People who know him. People he might have met.’

‘We will have people for you to meet at the dinner tonight,’ said Anselme, giving me a courteous bow. A dismissal of its own sorts.

‘Dinner?’ I hadn’t been to a formal dinner in years. And even when I did, I was someone at the edges of the royal table. The king’s daughter, barely past her childhood years. A curiosity. ‘I’m afraid I have nothing to wear,’ I said, hoping to manoeuvre myself out of it.

But Anselme waved me off. ‘We can take care of that. Certainly. You can hardly miss a dinner, when you are the guest of honour, can you, princess?’

BREACH: PART 1

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

It’s me, it’s me.

That woman pinned underneath Robert in his dream, who seems to be so thoroughly enjoying herself, isn’t Gisele, Prince Anselme’s daughter.

That’s undoubtedly me.

I pull back from Robert’s mind with a start.

Something wasn’t right. I had been before into Robert’s mind. Four years ago, at my brother’s behest, and this was not how it felt, back then.

I try to recall the details from four years before. His mind was quicksand. His mind wasn’t willing to betray its secrets.

His mind was full of sadness.

I leap out of the bed, open a shutter. In the camp underneath Mora’s Tower, everything is quiet. I take large gulps of air, willing my heart to settle. Below, a few fires are blazing, their flames throwing lazy shadows over still silhouettes.

I turn around, looking for my goblet of wine, but my hand trembles so hard that I knock it over.

Bloody Robert. Bloody, stupid Robert.

Think.

He couldn’t have known I was there, in his dreams. Could he?

No, no, no.

No one can root me out, unless they’re a fellow Mindwalker, and I have never, ever met someone like me.

Robert doesn’t even have any magic.

I quickly gulp what’s left of the wine, pour myself some more.

Perhaps there’s a simple answer. Perhaps I haven’t been in his mind at all, and I have been walking who knows what forgotten corner of my own head. This thought leads me to a whole different array of questions relating to why, exactly, I would dream of such a thing. Honestly, this is a path I don’t care to explore.

Nor do I have the luxury to do so. There are more pressing matters at hand than⁠—

I breathe in and out, in the way that we had been taught at the Golden Pavilion.

I press my palms to my eyes, willing myself to stop the buzz of my thoughts. There is one way I can find out if I’d been in my mind or someone else’s. One way I could tell if I was in his mind or not, if only I’d pay more attention to the details this time. I hadn’t been doing that at all, my eyes set on him and where he was going.

I walk back to the bed, perch on its edge.

I try to concentrate, to find my way back to him. I tiptoe through the sleeping men in the camp, the slumbering women.

Unrest is the word for this night. Fear.

But not one of them is who I’m looking for.

Not one of them is Robert.

I tear myself out of the mindwalking, breathing hard. He isn’t there.

I wonder again if he was ever asleep to begin with, or if I was caught in a dream of my own.

My cheeks grow heated and I brush away the moist strands of dark red hair from my face. They have come loose from my braids, with all the tossing and turning.

I strain to listen for sounds, but there’s just the hoot of the owls, distant, in the thick forests stretching in the direction of Port Lang.

It will all be over soon.

If Henri reaches him in time, Anselme will come. And I have to brace myself for his arrival. To explain it to the Fallen Court.

Well, that will be something. Telling them that we are enjoying my brother’s protection after we’ve enjoyed his hospitality at Mora’s Tower for years.

I wonder what that protection might look like.

And protection from whom, exactly, since my brother’s true enemy, the greatest opponent on this complicated chessboard that our kingdom has become, is the man I’ve been working with for almost a year: my nephew, Charles.

Charles, who has been preparing for much longer than that. Charles, turned by my advice from an irrelevant seigneur in half-hiding to the shield of the people.

Charles, whom I call my nephew, but who’s a more distant relative than that. His grandmother was a cousin of my father, the King, but this makes Charles the only person left who still has a claim on the Crown of the Red Kingdom, as tenuous as it is.

Because all the other people with more of a claim have been whittled down by my brother over the years.

It should come as no surprise that when the first player on the board made his move twelve days ago, that was Charles’s signal to act, as well. He raised his own red banners, rallied his famed Crossbowmen and whatever army he’d been able to assemble, and started riding down from Meranois, towards Lafala.

So when I think of allowing Anselme to rescue us from this fix we’re in now at Mora’s Tower, allowing him to scatter the men of the Guilds, I can’t help wondering what Charles would think when he sees me approaching Lafala as a part of Anselme’s following. What sets my teeth most on edge is that, should my nephew see such a thing, every doubt he ever had about me, every sign of mistrust, would be confirmed.

And not only that, but my Fallen Court will ask questions, I’m sure of this. They will ask what Charles was doing, when I decided to deliver us into Anselme’s hands. They will ask if, before I betrayed him, Charles’s coup had even a chance of succeeding.

What the Fallen Court perhaps doesn’t yet understand is how, in the current situation, my nephew has been set up to fail.

Of the four players competing against my brother, none are playing with each other. As much as I tried to rally the Guilds to our cause, they would not even speak with me. And as far I can see, the Guilds would not be interested in pursuing anything else after securing Langville and, perhaps, Port Lang.

Except for settling a score with me. Robert’s presence just outside the tower is a testament to that.

The land has been ripped into five pieces of different colours, but my brother’s arm extends far and wide. He could break each and every one of these small rebellions with the armies from the principate of Anselmois and the county of Valmons, with the troops amassed in Lafala.

Anselmois alone is nearly half of the entire Red Kingdom. After all, the Prince of Anselme is skilled in all possible trades, but mostly in fattening his own purse and extending his territories.

Without any help, Charles’s rebellion is doomed. Perhaps it was doomed already.

I slip under the bed covers, my feet now freezing. I’m tired, so tired. Ever since Robert’s army appeared at the foot of the cliff, my sleep has been broken. My ears straining for sounds in the night.

I close my eyes, shifting them, reaching out.

Charles is asleep. But his mind… His mind is a maze with walls of grey stone, the floor a chequered board of black-and-white marble, like the one that tiles his villa. The heels of my boots ring hollow, so I slip out of them, to walk bare-footed, to avoid causing any disturbances.

It’s cold here, so cold, the cold of fear. Fear of plans wrought in the dark falling apart in the light of day. I advance through sharp turns towards a side opening. It leads into a room shaped like the council chamber at his villa. I watch my own double leaning her back on the long, heavy table, Charles’s spare silhouette across from her. Me. His dark eyes are weary, assessing.

‘And why do you think an exile might help me?’ he says.

‘You know why,’ my double says, her arms crossed. I remember this, but not quite so.

My nephew sees me as this tall, cold, formidable creature. I’m surely not this tall. Nor as haughty, or imperious. There are shadows of distrust coating my double, and I sigh inwardly. Not that I wasn’t expecting this.

My double says, ‘Because he’s an exile. He must be raring to come back home.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I don’t know, but just think about it. Why wouldn’t he? After all he’s done.’

Charles’s face is blank, betrays nothing. Just like his mind. But I suppose this is how he survived for so long under my brother’s reign – by showing nothing of his ambitions, which definitely stretch beyond not catching the King’s eye. Or Anselme’s.

That had seemed to be his wish before I literally walked into his life. Yet the luck that has been on my side ever since I contacted my nephew seems to have run out.

In the end, by sending Henri to Anselme, I’ve done nothing but betray our cause.

I step back into the maze, trying to find my way to another room. At least now I have no doubt that this is Charles’s mind. My own mind can’t be the Royal Palace and Charles’s villa at the same time, though I suppose I’ve never seen my own mind from the outside, the way a Mindwalker might see it.

Excitement sings through me. This is his mind, indeed, and I am mindwalking.

I. Am. Mindwalking.

Mothers of the Forest and Sabya’s Morningstar. Why now, and why not a few days ago, when the course of many, many things could have yet been changed?

When I could have still found the key to Charles’s trust? When Robert wasn’t yet crouching at the foot of the tower?

I’m on the verge of finding the entrance to another opening, when there’s the sound of steps, thudding above me. I look to the ceiling of the maze, a sky the colour of stormclouds. Nothing moves there. Not even the wind.

The thuds grow louder, faster. No, they don’t belong to Charles’s mind. They’re of the physical world. Of reality.

A change of guard? Is it that late in the night?

I snap my eyes open, staring at the canopy of my bed. My breath sounds ragged in the silence. Steps. No clink of swords, no shouts at Mora’s Tower.

I tell myself, it’s nothing, it’s nothing.

And then, the door to my room is torn open. My heart skips a beat – or more. There’s no mistaking the man who walks into my chambers.

BREACH: PART 2

THE PRINCESS

Four years before the Year of the Red Maiden

My brother’s arm, laced through my own, steadied me before the first official dinner I was to attend at the Royal Palace. I curled my fingers around his elbow, and he gave me a cursory look. There was something falconish within it. ‘Stand straight,’ he said.

I couldn’t. The dress they’d arranged had been, in fact, one of my mother’s. A vivid red embroidered with golden threads, the fine silk biting into my shoulders, my heavy breasts. Her construction had been so much finer, so much slighter than mine.

The dress caged me.

My brother pulled me forwards towards the vast reception room, a great hall with wood-panelled walls.

I thought, I’m not ready, I’m not ready for this. Sweet notes of lute travelled from within, as did the murky chatter of so many voices. A male laugh resounded, booming.

Etienne’s arm was tighter around mine, as if sensing my hesitation. The surge of fear. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘It can’t be as bad as you think.’

My breaths came thicker, faster. He pulled me into an archway, the rest of the court halting behind us. His features were set into angles and sharpness as he searched for something on my face. And then he ran his fingers softly across the back of my hand. As if he knew how hungry I’d been for kindness in the many years I’d spent at the Golden Pavilion.

Madame Faucon never touched me.

The only one who came close was my two-time lover, caresses snatched in my sleeping chambers. Quick kisses, hurrying towards that inevitable ending. I shook my head, unwilling to think of it.

‘We all have to do terrible things, sometimes,’ said Etienne, leaning to whisper in my ear. ‘But that doesn’t make us terrible people. The problem is… Power tends to come at a cost.’

His thoughtfulness swept me off my feet.

‘It’s a dinner,’ he continued. ‘No one there wants to hurt you. They just want to … meet you.’

I looked at the door to the hall. And then at his face.

I swallowed.

‘We can tell them that you are unwell,’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t be surprised.’

Of course. The odd, blabbering princess. So unsuitable. So not of this world.

When I’d watched life pass by me at the Golden Pavilion, I’d wished to be a part of it.

If I wanted that life I’d dreamt of, I had to teach myself to be brave.

I took Etienne’s arm again. ‘Thank you, brother. I think now I am ready to go in.’

* * *

Silence tightened between Mathilde and me as she saw me returned to my chambers for the night. She trailed behind me, holding up the train of my dress.

I needed ladies-in-waiting, my brother had told me. Mathilde didn’t seem so willing to be one, though. I opened the doors to my chambers and relief surged through me. I took in the huge space laced with red-gold marble, the white four-poster bed. The sitting corner, with its round table, the velvet sofa and the carved chairs. Beyond, the wide terrace, the sea glimmering with the blue light of the stars.

I took a deep breath.

Mathilde stopped at the edge of the terrace, her hands laced before her. She was of the few noble families that had no Gifts and I wondered why my brother had chosen her. Perhaps because there was something caged about her, her stubborn, dark locks domesticated in a tight braid, her powerful body restrained by the silver-embroidered dress.

Perhaps my brother was truly hoping that I’d make some friends.

‘Should I help you undress, princess?’ said Mathilde stiffly.

Friends, perhaps, someday, but not at that moment.

‘No, thank you, Mathilde. You may withdraw for the night.’

She left without a single comment, without a single insistence that she should stay. As her steps faded, I sat down at the table and started fingering my lute.

How bland was my own singing compared to what I’d heard that evening. The singers had woven their own music into something that had risen above the individual instruments. Together, they had become so much more.

I was always alone, and somehow, I’d managed that at a table full of people. I’d hardly been paid attention to. Their conversation had flown all around me, but it never touched me.

I sighed.

Even if they had known how well I was acquainted with some of their secrets, that wouldn’t have provided much material for friendly, casual exchanges.

Some day, I told myself. Some day.

* * *

It was late at night when I lay down in my bed, my task set clearly before my eyes. The man’s bloodied face. Just thinking of it made nausea tighten my gut.

I knew they needed me to do this.

I knew they wanted me to.

But I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to.

So I focused on my other task.

They introduced me to someone that evening, discreetly. Our ambassador to the southern Alpen Cities. I closed my eyes, the man’s face before me. I drifted gently into his mind.

It was a bright place, a palace like the one in Lafala. There were many chambers, close together, and young women in airy dresses – much like the ones in the paintings that depict the decadent Antiquity – were chatting in the gardens, dancing, crushing grapes between their white teeth.

The ambassador liked young things, it seemed.

I’d seen worse.

But I wasn’t there to look at women with bare shoulders. I’d learned to use these impressions of the world as the people willed it to be, so I could find guidance into someone’s mind. I approached one of the girls and whispered, ‘The Company of the Lion.’ She placed her grapes on the edge of a fountain and signalled me to follow her. On a balcony, not far away, the ambassador was speaking to a man. I stopped close to a marble column, unseen. The man was stocky, well-built, and had greying hairs. The yellow cape of the company was clasped around his shoulders.

This isn’t him, I thought. Not the Condottiere. He was meant to be a giant. Still, there was something tight and clipped in the way the man spoke to the ambassador. As if he was someone used to his orders being heeded.

If the Condottiere was second-in-command in the Company of the Lion, I inferred that the man was its leader.

I took a deep breath and hopped into his mind.

It was a different place. It was a wasteland, studded with thorns. Great pools of blood dotted the barren places between army tents. Soldiers marched about the place, some of them sporting horrible wounds. But when I ducked into a tent, it looked like the home of a prince. Sumptuous carpets, gold inlays. Carved furniture.

This man, he liked comfort. Wealth.

I went back outside. ‘The Condottiere,’ I whispered towards a group of soldiers. They pointed towards the largest tent in the camp.

Of course.

I walked up there, bracing myself, though no one paid me any attention. I’d learned that the best way to walk other people’s minds was with confidence. Our heads are so busy all the time that a girl, flitting at the edge of a half-forgotten memory, is never paid attention to. And if I did stumble upon someone who knew me – though few people did in the kingdom – why should I have been of any importance to them?

It wasn’t as if anyone believed that someone else could walk in their minds. Only a few people knew. I could count the people who were aware of my abilities on one hand, and still have spare fingers: Etienne, Anselme and Madame Faucon.

I sometimes wondered what the doyenne had told the other students about my Gift. What she’d led them to believe.

But I had no time to muse as I parted the flaps at the entrance of the tent. It was full of officers of the Company of the Lion, but from the first glance I knew him.

I’d found the Condottiere.

He was the tallest man, an odd sort of power emanating from him. It was as if everyone else had drifted away from him, to give him space.

No, he claimed that space, in the way he stood, in the precise way he moved. Like a predator who knew he only had to open his maw…

Before I allowed myself to think too much, I hopped into his mind.

It was cold. So cold. And there was another feeling, which clung to my skin. The solid ground had turned into sands my legs sank in. This wasn’t a wasteland. It was a tall building with many rooms, except that the floors weren’t solid, and the walls were so, so high.

The corridors were empty.

It was as if the Condottiere was deliberately keeping everyone away from the scattered bits of himself. I trudged forward, clinging to the scratchy wood of the walls. Into the nearest room, probably a recent memory. It was tall and as barren as everything else. The stocky man in whose mind I’d been just before, the leader of the mercenary company, and the Condottiere were facing each other, arguing.

‘Milena has made an offer to ensure our allegiance,’ said the leader.

‘And?’ said the Condottiere, crossing his arms.

‘Genvive has made a better one.’ The leader’s eyes gleamed. ‘This sort of opportunity comes once in a lifetime.’

‘Because it’s much more likely that we’ll lose most of the company in this war. Think. Think what happens if we meddle between Milena and Genvive. When the Romannhon catch wind that both cities are weakened.’

‘Robert,’ said the leader, shaking his head. ‘It’s good business.’

Robert. His name was Robert.

I felt almost lightheaded.

‘I disagree. It’s the worst kind of business,’ Robert said.

The leader scoffed. ‘It’s the only business. We need a contract, the men are growing restless. Where do you want us to go?’

The Condottiere prepared to say something, then turned his head sharply towards the entrance. I froze as a pair of glittering green eyes locked with mine.

I made myself take a deep breath.

It’s fine, I told myself. He doesn’t know who I am. I was a disturbance in a memory, a distraction that would disappear the next time he remembered this moment.

The Condottiere, though, seemed prepared to come towards me, when the company leader laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Be reasonable.’ Robert’s attention snapped back to him. I took the opportunity to withdraw into the hallway with small steps.

It’s fine.

I stood with my back to the scratchy wall for a long while, considering if I should jump back into my bed.

But, for some reason, I was intrigued.

I called into the corridor, ‘The Red Kingdom,’ to see if something came up.

No one answered.

I concluded that we might have made it in good time, then. Before the Guildmasters sought the services of his company. Or they already had, and the leader was refusing to share this bit of information with the Condottiere.

Robert.

This was good.

Better than I expected.

If I told Etienne to write to Robert directly… He might have been more than willing to come to the Red Kingdom, instead of meddling in this incoming war between the cities. He would have jumped at a different opportunity.

I was ready to go back now.

Except that I wasn’t.

I needed to see.

What made his mind so cold, so full of sadness.

It took ages to walk from room to room, and I didn’t understand half of what I saw.

A lean boy, his ribs like a ladder, was in the centre of a ring lined in chalk. He was quick on his feet, throwing punches at a grown man. But he took as much as he gave. The man, stout and barrel-bellied, landed a hit in the boy’s face and I almost called out when his nose crunched. Blood flooded his mouth, his chin.

I reached out, ready to pull the boy from the ring.

Don’t interfere.

But that small, determined boy wiped his nose, raised his fists. And then met my gaze with glittering green eyes.

It was Robert, I knew it was him, but as a little boy. He didn’t deserve it, the blow that was coming for him. I scrambled to scream, Watch out, but he had already sent his balled fist flying into the man’s right side.

The grown man crumpled to the ground like a sack of wheat.

I tore myself from this room, unable to look on, as another man stepped into the ring.

The next room was a training camp, the standards of the Lion fluttering in the wind. The boy, a bit older now, marched purposefully towards the main tent, but a guard pushed him back as he tried to step inside.

The boy fell, grinding his teeth. And said nothing.

He dusted himself off and crossed his arms in that gesture I’d seen in the tent, when he’d spoken with his commander. His green eyes glowed with anger.

This one had no fear.

This one had a will of iron.

This one was someone to dread.

Go back, I told myself. You’ve seen enough.

But if there’s one thing that I am above all others, it’s curious.

I wove through the murk for half an eternity. Searching. I passed by bloody training sessions I averted my eyes from. I saw a young Robert with a blade glinting in his hand. The pommel was shaped like an owl, but beyond him in the room, there were only shadows.

I saw him in ancient woods that made me hesitant to approach even in his memory. I saw so many things that I didn’t understand, and that I didn’t have time to linger upon.

I wove and wove through the maze, mindful that he shouldn’t see me, mindful not to touch anything.

I trudged for so long that it must have been morning already. But I knew it when I found what I’d been looking for. At the very centre of it all, the air so cold and crisp and laced with that feeling that seeped through my bones.

A room that wasn’t quite a room, but a hovel. A splintered door. I took a deep breath and pushed it open.

IN FLESH AND BONE: PART 1

THE PRINCESS

Four years before the Year of the Red Maiden

I’d been summoned, yet again, by my brother into the Curia’s chambers. Something was off that day, and it wasn’t hard to spot what it was.

Impressive as he might have been in other people’s minds, the Condottiere was even more impressive in flesh and blood.

Robert, I reminded myself.

His name is Robert.

The towering man stood next to Prince Anselme, broad and wide-shouldered, with huge hands that could crack a grown man’s skull. An odd sort of power emanated from him, from those glittering green eyes, fixed upon me as I wove towards my place at the Curia’s table. I found it hard to remember what I was supposed to say.

He’s here, he’s here, I thought, my mouth tightly shut.

They hadn’t seen fit to inform me how the negotiations with the Company of the Lion had gone. Though judging by the Condottiere’s dark blue cloak, the colour of the Pretorians, he wasn’t part of that company anymore.

Questions clamoured through my mind, vying for attention.

When had he arrived?

With how many men?

What services was he meant to render to my brother?

Why was he in the Curia chambers?

And, for the love of me, I simply couldn’t seem to take my eyes off him. I took in every angle of that square jaw, the long nose that had once been straight but was now full of knots, probably in all the places that had been broken.

This man had been a fighter since he was a child. In every possible way.

And that gaze of his pierced through every layer, through every thought in my mind. I made myself still. Concealed the fact that I’d been in his mind, as well.

‘Good day to you, too, Blanche,’ said my brother and I snapped my head to him, remembering that there were other people in the room.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to be awkward.’ Words, I thought. They have so much power. ‘I was hoping for someone to make the introductions.’

I couldn’t ask what he was to them, so I was hoping they might offer this themselves.

‘Princess Blanche, this is the new Commander of the Pretorians. And of the King’s personal armies,’ said Anselme, his tone smooth.

‘Delighted to finally meet you, princess,’ said the Condottiere, though he certainly didn’t seem so. ‘I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. I’ve heard so much about you, that I feel as if I know you.’

There was something odd in the way he phrased this. Something intimidating.

I clamped my fingers into fists. He couldn’t have known that I’d been in his swamp of a mind.

I wondered what he’d been told. I wondered what he made of me.

‘The pleasure is all mine,’ I said, tilting my head.

My brother stared at me. ‘We had two tasks for you, Blanche. We wanted to hear how they were coming along.’

I glanced at the Condottiere. Doing what they expected of me, in front of him…

I was ashamed of raking people’s minds at night, at my brother’s behest, even if what I did helped to keep peace in the kingdom.

But there was something in the Condottiere’s glare that laid me bare as a woman who looked through peepholes.

I cleared my voice. ‘Is he going to listen then, from now on?’

Etienne barked a laugh. ‘Excuse my sister, Commander. She is somewhat awkward.’

‘Since the Commander will be tasked with putting to use the information you give us, princess,’ said Anselme, toying with the fur collar of his surcoat, ‘we thought it best for him to hear it first-hand.’

I tried to swallow, but it was as if I’d forgotten how it was done.

He would be here. Watching me.

Etienne slammed his hand on the table, making me jump. ‘Right. Blanche. Enough chit-chat. How are we progressing on the matter of the pamphlets?’

They hadn’t been pleased to hear that the battered man whose mind they made me wrack wasn’t writing the pamphlets himself, but only copied and distributed them. He received the drafts from a woman who wore the livery of a seigneur, his insignia embroidered on her linen dress. But the battered man hadn’t looked carefully at that coat of arms, so I couldn’t make out whose it was. My power only allowed me to see what the person had seen, not what I would have looked at with my own eyes. And because her face had been hooded, I couldn’t jump into her mind, to find out who she was.

I wasn’t sure I would have wanted to give her away, even if I could.

Though the scribes did receive parchment and ink – expensive merchandise to come by. I’d seen the messenger boy who delivered the supplies to derelict houses at the edge of Lafala, houses where there would have been no use for such luxuries.

‘Blanche?’ barked my brother, impatient. ‘I was talking to you.’

‘She’s distracted,’ said Anselme, pensive. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t bring the Commander when we speak to her.’

The Condottiere himself – the Commander, I supposed, as my brother called him – shifted. Perhaps uncomfortable.

He wasn’t the only one.

‘She’d better get a grip on herself,’ said my brother, as if I weren’t even there.

He was in a bad way that day. The circles dark and deep beneath his eyes.

He was worse and worse, my brother, and I didn’t know what I could do for him. To stop him from being so … haunted. I wondered, was it because of what he had to do to keep us safe?

I would have been.

‘The Commander stays,’ said Etienne. He added, pointedly, ‘The pamphlets.’

‘Someone does deliver the blank parchments,’ I conceded. ‘To the people who write them. They receive compensation for copying them. I saw that in the mind of the man who you…’ Tortured that day. ‘Brought before me.’

‘There are more,’ said Anselme. ‘Can you find them for us?’

‘I’m not sure. I don’t think they know each other.’ I felt nauseous because of what they made me give away.

Robert’s gaze told me that he thought I was horrible, too.

Though, in my own defence – the pamphlets they were writing, they were inciting riots. Many more lives would have been lost if the fire spread. Anselme had explained this to me while Etienne had watched, his fists clenched.

‘Do you think, or do you know?’ said my brother.

‘I know. I’ve looked into his mind.’

‘The boy who delivers the parchments,’ said Anselme. ‘Could you find out who he works for?’ He turned to Etienne. ‘If we find the merchant who sells them, we might find out who pays for them in the first place.’

A smile curled my brother’s lips. ‘Good, very good. You do that, Blanche. Find out who the boy works for.’

A claw dragged across the inside of my chest. ‘I will.’

‘Good, good,’ said Etienne, his tone softening. ‘What a good sister I have. How hard she works for our kingdom, too.’

‘Am I excused?’ I asked, pushing with my hands against the table.

Anselme turned around and pressed a hand to my shoulder, shoving me back down. ‘Not just yet. The Guilds.’

‘The Guilds.’ I rubbed my face. Quite inelegantly for a high-born lady.

I couldn’t see the Commander, but I knew he was looking at me. Judging.

‘We need names,’ said Etienne. He threw the words like stones.

‘Names,’ I said. ‘Names are hard.’

Anselme glanced at the Commander, telling me that finding his name hadn’t been hard. ‘Princess, I know it might be difficult. But perhaps you don’t realise how dangerous the Guilds are. How much power they still wield.’

‘They need to be crushed,’ said Etienne. ‘They want to riot. We need to stop them. You can stop them.’

‘Commander, since you are here, do share your opinion on the matter,’ said Anselme.

The Commander grunted. ‘If the Guilds rise, it will end in bloodshed. There will be a price to pay.’ Displeasure trembled on his face. ‘Sometimes, princess, we have to make decisions. Weigh the costs and the risks. And we have to stick to those decisions, even if we don’t like them.’

‘Spoken like a true leader.’ Anselme nodded. ‘I’m glad we have you on our side, Commander.’

On their side. And only because of me. If I hadn’t interfered, if I hadn’t told them, he could just as well have been the Guilds’ man.

Anselme pushed a piece of parchment and a pot of ink in front of me. ‘We need those names, princess. If you’ve seen them.’

I straightened the piece of parchment, wavering.

I didn’t know why it was so hard.

It hadn’t been so hard at the Golden Pavilion, when Madame Faucon had simply tested my abilities.

What I did for my brother, it made a difference. And I wasn’t sure I liked it.

‘By the Dark Mother and her murderous ilk,’ cursed my brother and I shuddered at the mention of that name.

Etienne seemed to be in the grip of a dark spirit that tensed his muscles. He’s afraid, I realised. He was afraid of the Guilds and what they could do.

‘Give us those names,’ said Etienne. ‘Why won’t you give them to us? Do you want them to succeed?’

I could have told them about the responsibility I felt. How so many years in power had perhaps blunted their own feelings. How this had yet to happen, in my case.

But I wasn’t sure they’d have been inclined to understand.

There was something irreversibly sad about having to rely on my brother to be my shield, and only as long as I was of use.

And yet. That night, that first dinner I’d attended at the Palace. The concerned way Etienne had looked at me, the way he’d said I didn’t have to do anything that I didn’t want to. He must have felt, in a corner of his heart, that I would never betray him. And not just because I feared what might happen to me if he was no longer, but because, in the end, he was the only family I had.

And supplying the names he needed, on that day, was an act of love. I dreaded to think what would happen to both of us if the Guilds were to succeed in starting a riot across the Red Kingdom.

The truth was, I had no one else to rely upon. Intentional or not, this was the corner my brother had steered me into.

So I did the only thing that I could do.

I bent and started writing down the names.

IN FLESH AND BONE: PART 2

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

Robert is here, in my room. At Mora’s Tower. I’d know the shape of his shoulders anywhere. That way he throws his legs when he walks: like a lion, prowling. The square shape of his face, all the places his nose has been broken, illuminated in the moonlight drifting in through the still open shutter.

My heart pounds so hard that I feel it in my throat.

This must be a dream.

I pulled back from Charles’s mind into mine, but I’m not awake yet. I have lost my touch when mindwalking. I’m poking in the dark.

Robert stops at the edge of my bed, crossing his arms, his feet spread wide apart.

I sit up.

There is one way to know if it’s a dream or not. I reach for the goblet of wine, pour it down my sheets. Soaking and staining, the liquid seeps into my dress, the fabric clings to my shins.

Wet and cold.

Nothing ever feels like this in a dream.

This. Is. Real.

He’s here. He has broken into the keep.

Robert lifts his eyebrows. ‘I’m disappointed, Blanche. I thought you’d throw that in my face.’

The low purr of his voice makes me shudder.

Two years. It’s been two years.

I shift the soaked bed cover to the side, brush away the wet corner of the shift from my skin. I have questions to ask. Who let him in. Who betrayed us. What happens to me now.

My throat struggles and yet words come out, unbidden. My tongue has always been too loose around him. Bringing out the worst in me. ‘I wasn’t sure if this wasn’t a dream.’

‘Do you dream of me often, Blanche?’ He smirks.

That smirk.

That awful smirk.

‘I’m sorry, I meant to say a nightmare.’ I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, unsure of what my next move should be.

What am I meant to do when the leader of the armies funded by my declared arch-enemies is allowed into the keep?

I feel like that night when I pried into the Opal Mountain and time slipped from under my feet, throwing me into an age when there was no Golden Pavilion yet, perched upon its precipice. Just a plateau of ragged, sharp, golden-white stone.

When a great beast with an ear-piercing wail and tattered wings plunged from the air towards me. When I was so terrified that I couldn’t jump back into the safety of my bedroom.

When a woman with tanned skin, dark eyes and rusted armour came up from behind on a grey horse, swinging a Morningstar with a glowing fire burning within. When she called some words at the beast in a language I didn’t understand, her voice rising, lilting, almost like a song.

When I thought, Sabya and the Nightdragon, and This must be a dream, wake up, but I couldn’t. Because it was real and it was not and I was about to be devoured and I wasn’t.

I have that feeling exactly when I look at Robert’s amused grin. ‘No, I’m here,’ he says and I half-turn to take him in again.

This time, I know that it’s unmistakeably him, and that if I stretch my hand I won’t find air, but bone and blood and sinew, and skin stretched taut above those knuckles that have been broken so many times in the ring, since he was but a child.

Our gazes lock.

‘How awful,’ I say, and it’s the truth and it’s a lie, because that feeling seizes my guts and pulls at them, and spreads into my legs, and I am both heavy and light at the edge of the bed, poised in motion, and yet so still, and he’s here, and he’s real, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

LIAR, MADE; NOT BORN

THE PRINCESS

Three and a half years before the Year of the Red Maiden

‘Get dressed, princess. We’re going to see the Fischerfang Procession.’ The Commander stood in the middle of my chambers, a midnight-blue creature of leather and steel, a hollow of darkness in the serenity of the red-gold landscape of my quarters.

His glittering green eyes were piercing me; noting, searching, as always.

Even after he’d been in Lafala for months. It was always the same in that Curia chamber: my brother and Anselme asked the questions. Robert watched.

He might as well have been made of stone.

I didn’t know what he did with what I told them. I didn’t want to know.

It’s for the safety of the kingdom, I told myself.

They said the Commander could hold off five armed men at once with his sword. They said that, for him, war was an art, just like painting and dancing.

I shuddered at the thought of having to go anywhere with him. But the Procession… I’d never wanted more to see anything for myself.

In the Red Kingdom, the Fischerfang Procession is the greatest spring festival, and it goes on for three days and three nights of revels, drinking, masquerading, theatre plays re-enacting events that had taken place more than five centuries ago.

I’d read much about the procession – the scholars said that it was, in fact, a celebration of rebirth, of the living creatures that had made it through the dark of winter, of the joy that came flooding in when nature explodes in blooms and greens.

Like any festivity in our kingdom, it’s connected to Sabya, though, if you look at history as a whole, she’s a fairly recent goddess. Before, the people of the Three Kingdoms – the Waldemannen, as they were called in Antiquity – had been forced to honour the gods of the Romannhon, while they were but a province of their empire. And before that, the Waldemannen honoured the Mothers of the Forest, gentle beings connected to the land, who ensured its fertility. The foremost among them had been the Golden Mother.

It’s odd that the procession honours a goddess of war, Sabya, and not the Mothers to symbolise the rebirth of nature, but I suppose that defeating the Dark Mother was a rebirth in itself. Some scholars argue that popular tradition welded Sabya’s image with the one of the Golden Mother, but that wasn’t the point for me, on that day.

The point was that, in spite of reading so much about it, I’d never seen a procession with my own eyes. All I’d seen were bits and bobs, through mindwalking. Snatched shards of songs.

It seemed, though, that my brother had taken the hint that I’d offered at dinner a few days ago, when I’d asked him about the festivities. If the Court was going to the city proper to see the procession for themselves.

Even Gisele, Anselme’s daughter, had stopped whatever she’d been talking about with the Commander and had lifted her head. ‘Why would we want to see that?’

How could anyone not want to see it? The costumed people, marching down the streets dressed as Romannhon legionaries, as Waldemannen warriors, as mervolk, or replicas of Sabya herself? This was the only day in the year when women were allowed to wear breeches and carry weapons on the streets, in honour of our goddess. Not just that, but groups of actors staged plays, showing Sabya’s iconic battles, such as the one against the Nightdragon, and the one against the treasonous general Darg.

It didn’t matter that I’d seen the real battle between Sabya and the beast, when I’d delved into the memories of the Golden Pavilion. That there had been nothing shiny and splendid about her armour, that she was at least half a foot shorter than all the depictions of her, that her famous mare was just a skinny mount. But I’d seen the Morningstar.

I’d seen the truth. I wanted to be at the procession to experience the myth, the magnificent legends she’d inspired.

Sabya was a hero. She rose from the ranks of the people in times of great turmoil for the small kingdoms of the Waldemannen and defeated the Dark Mother and her minions.

And that was who I aimed to be, someday.

A woman around whom legends were spun.

So, yes, my answer to Gisele would have been that I’d wanted to see it all.

But as always, I’d chosen my words carefully. ‘I think it would be … interesting. I’m always fascinated by the legends of our realm.’

Even so, they’d looked at me as if I’d decided to peel off my dress in the middle of dinner. My brother had waved my suggestion away. ‘If you say so.’

But he’d thought about it, obviously, or the Commander wouldn’t have been standing here. ‘I will have to call for my ladies-in-waiting,’ I said. ‘To help me get dressed.’

A mark of displeasure folded the mercenary’s features. ‘Can’t you do it by yourself? If you take too long, we might miss the Slaying of the Nightdragon.’

‘I suppose I could.’

‘Don’t wear anything too fancy,’ he said. ‘It might be wiser not to strut around wearing a crown.’

I wasn’t stupid. I knew as much. That people wouldn’t care for seeing the King’s sister out and about. I knew what they said about us. My brother had commented a few days before how ungrateful the people were, when all he’d wanted was a strong, united front in the kingdom. Even if that entailed sacrifice.

‘I wasn’t about to wear a crown. And I wear tiaras, not crowns, anyway,’ I snapped.

Something like a smile flitted on the Commander’s face. ‘If you say so.’

‘I’ll get dressed then,’ I said, straightening.

‘I said as much, didn’t I?’ He didn’t move, though.

Some days, I wondered if I’d done anyone a favour by walking into his mind and telling my brother what he’d needed to know.

Robert was so … cumbersome.

‘If you don’t mind waiting outside,’ I said in a sharp tone.

It seemed like he was about to say something again, but then shrugged and turned around. Slowly. After he was gone from my chambers, I slipped into the plainest dress I had, so uncomfortable knowing that he was there, on the other side of that door.

* * *

Apparently, no one made me as jittery as he did. It was just the two of us as we wove through the palace’s inner courtyards. I was so nervous that I found it hard to stomp down on the words that came to me, as I usually did. ‘Just us?’ I said, though I knew better than to ask.

‘Do you think you might draw less attention if you’re surrounded by half a dozen guards? You’ll be safe with me.’ His gaze roved up and down my plain beige dress, the simple leather belt at the waist. ‘You’ve chosen well.’

For some reason, my cheeks grew heated at the way he was studying me. I looked to the main gate, with its wrought iron, the spikes. ‘You’ll be safe with me,’ I parroted and snorted.

He was so… Urgh.

‘Did you just roll your eyes?’ he said, piqued.

‘No.’

‘I knew it, you know.’

‘What?’ My eyes met his and I made myself hold that gaze. To show him that he didn’t intimidate me.

I wasn’t sure it was working.

Who did he think he was, to order me to ‘get dressed’ and pass judgements on what I wore?

‘That you have much more temper than you let on.’ He leaned into me, that bulk of muscles, laced with steel at every joint. ‘It shows on your face. Even if you don’t say a word.’

‘Then stop staring at me,’ I sneered and quickly changed the subject. ‘Wouldn’t it be wiser to go out through one of the side gates?’

He crossed his arms, but said nothing. I could tell he was thinking hard. ‘Yes, it would,’ he conceded.

I peered beyond the gate. Outside the palace, the Fischermarket was much quieter than usual. It seemed almost deserted. ‘Are they all at the procession today?’

‘No, they moved the market to another quarter.’

‘Why?’ The Fischermarket had always been here. Always.

The Commander shifted beside me. ‘I’m… I’m not so sure this is a good idea.’

‘My brother must have thought it was, though, if he allowed it.’ I headed for the gate. As mortifying as his presence might have been, I had the chance to see the procession today. And the Slaying of the Nightdragon. And to walk the streets of Lafala.

Not even a foul-tempered mercenary could stop me doing that. He stalked to catch up with me, his hand on my arm. ‘Princess, wait, maybe we should go through another gate and⁠—’

But I shook him off, his touch searing.

He’d never, ever touched me, and the thought of all that bulk, trying to restrain me⁠—

I ran off. And when I’d cleared the gate, I saw them. Six or seven men in the lush velvet of the Guilds, stained with blood. Raised on bloody wooden poles that went through their bodies from their backside to their napes.

In the glaring sun, the stench unbearable, for everyone to see.

The Commander was quickly by my side, grabbing my arm. ‘Back inside with you.’

I wrenched myself violently from his grasp, unable to glance away. Some of the men looked as if they’d been there for days, their faces bloated and beyond recognition. Some faces, though… ‘Who are they? What is this?’

‘Princess, we should go,’ he said.

The faces. I knew the faces. These men had been impaled. Suffered a slow, painful death…

And it was all because of me. The last of the blood drained from my cheeks. I could hardly speak, but I had to, I had to know. ‘Are these the Guildmasters? The names I gave away?’

The Commander fell quiet. He didn’t even try to lay a hand on me.

It was as if a veil had been lifted and I could see clearly.

My brother had left them here, to writhe in pain and rot.

A warning.

I fell to my knees and began retching, heaving in great shudders of my stomach. It was as if my guts were trying to wrench themselves out through my mouth.

The Commander was upon me in the blink of an eye, a hand on my back, warm and steadying, the other holding my plait away from my face. I retched and retched and retched. I wanted to stop, I wanted to stop so hard that tears were in my eyes, but I couldn’t.

I’d done this. It was all because of me. I’d never be able to forget this unspeakable horror. What had been done to these men.

Think. I needed to think. I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the horrible smell.

‘Blanche, breathe,’ said the Commander, trying to haul me up. He started to pull me back inside.

The golden-blue silhouette of the Royal Palace greeted me, so still and beautiful, while all these horrors— ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not inside. I can’t bear to be inside.’ My thoughts circled like carrion crows.

Not inside, not when I’d just seen what I’d done.

What my words, which I thought I’d chosen carefully, had done.

‘Are you still of a mind to see the parade?’

‘No. Take me somewhere quiet. Take me somewhere…’ I trailed off. Not even I knew what I wanted. If it was wise to let him take me anywhere.

But he had my arm, already, leading the way. ‘As you wish,’ he said in a tone that I couldn’t read.

I wished to crawl under the earth and die. Erase even the last traces of me.

* * *

I dipped my fingers in the icy water of the sea, willing it to still me. To still my thoughts. The Commander had brought me to a set of mossy steps behind one of the side streets, and the sea was lapping at my feet, soaking the hem of my dress. People walked up and down the parapet above us and I didn’t even care if they were looking at us.

At me.

‘You’ll catch a cold,’ he said.

‘What is it to you?’ I retorted, without even thinking.

He took a deep breath that almost smelled like anger.

‘Did my brother put you up to this? Did he make you show me, to teach me about going out?’ It didn’t make sense to me that Etienne would have approved of my sortie, only so I’d come face to face with this.

The Commander set his jaw. ‘No.’

Words flew, just like the water at my feet rippled in waves. ‘So you took it upon yourself to show me. Did you do it? Did you impale those men, hear them cry and beg?’

His face contorted with sheer, blind fury. ‘I’m not a henchman, princess. I’m a warrior. On that day, I took it upon myself to find something else to do.’

‘You’re a coward, then.’

‘So I am,’ he nearly shouted.

I recoiled at that. He was my brother’s Bladehand. Why would he have shown me? What sort of a twisted game…

‘Why?’ I said. ‘You could have taken a side gate. I even asked you why you didn’t.’

I stared back at him, where he sat behind me, his back leaning on the wall, his long legs stretched before him, ankles crossed. ‘Every word you say, princess. There are consequences.’ He looked up to the parapet, as an afterthought, to check if someone was listening. ‘I think you’re fully aware of them now.’

Nausea rumbled in my stomach again. Yes, I did think there would have been consequences. But I’d been too focused on how the things I said would affect my standing.

‘I am the foremost of my brother’s spies, am I not?’ I asked. ‘Since I came to Court.’ Perhaps even before that. Who knew what lies Madame Faucon had fed me.

I didn’t know if the relationships between the Golden Pavilion and the Crown were strained. Perhaps the doyenne also wished to give Etienne what he wanted.

The Commander crossed his arms. His eyes didn’t leave my face. ‘You know, for someone who is meant to be half-mad, you’re surprisingly quick.’

‘Stop glaring at me,’ I hissed. ‘And if someone actually bothered to speak to me, they’d know I’m not half-mad. But all they care about—’ I took in a deep breath. What I’d seen, it had upended what I’d thought about my work.

It wasn’t safe to say anything. Certainly not to him.

‘Am I the foremost of his spies?’

He sighed. ‘You’re the only one of his spies who is a part of the Curia. Make of that what you will.’

I dug my fingers into the water, clenching my teeth. The nausea was coming up in waves again. And as I sat at the edge, I knew that something would change.

That something would have to change.

They’d thought they could use me. To do this.

I breathed deeply. In and out.

I am the master of my own power.

Not them. Not my brother, not Anselme.

No. I was.

I decided to reclaim that power for myself.

Step by step.

I would not let them do with it what they’d done to the Guildmasters. Nor to anyone else.

‘You can talk to me, if you want,’ said the Commander. ‘It must be – overwhelming.’

‘Sure,’ I said, wondering what sort of game this would be. If he would report to my own brother.

I had to be very careful.

I had to think it through.

Alone, as always.

They’d taken my Gift from me and they’d used it to harm others.

I had no choice but to take it back.

I straightened myself, still wobbling on my feet.

The Commander drew himself up, too, offering his arm. I walked by him.

I wasn’t sure what he wanted, why he’d brought me there, but I knew it wouldn’t have been wise to even want to find out.

Every word you say. There are consequences.

‘The procession?’ he said, as I took the stairs back up to the city.

‘I don’t have the stomach for it.’ I shuddered. ‘And take me back through another gate, please. I’ve seen enough.’

‘What you’ve seen… It’s just a glimpse. I don’t know what you find in other people’s minds. But I think you don’t see everything.’

I made a note to look closer. To look more into the minds of the common folk. Had I stumbled upon a single fisherwife who sold her goods in that market, I’d have seen. But I kept mostly to seigneurs and petty knights.

Learning where to look, without someone telling me to, that was something I had yet to teach myself.

Step by step.

‘No, I don’t,’ I said, ‘because I always walk the minds, and not the streets. I never see for myself. I see only what the others feed me.’

He stopped, opening his arms as if performing an especially dazzling magical trick. ‘You’re on the streets now. What do you want to see?’

I tilted my head, trying to glean what he was trying to tell me. If he lied. If it was a game. If it was indeed a trick.

But he wasn’t laughing. Not at my expense. Not at the expense of what was happening. So I gave him the only possible answer I could give him. ‘Is there something else that you want to show me?’

* * *

‘Your brother found out that we were in the city,’ said the Commander, his arms crossed, his jaw set.

We were in my chambers again and it was evening and I was meant to attend another formal dinner, which I couldn’t face. I was fully dressed – I’d done it myself, because I couldn’t stand the churn of my thoughts in the presence of anyone else, not even my ladies-in-waiting, not even Mathilde. I was afraid that I would lose the hard grip on myself, like I did this afternoon, on the quay. That I’d start to blurt, like I’d done with him.

And now, he was telling me that— ‘What do you mean, he found out? Wasn’t he the one who sent you there with me?’

The Commander’s face was all hard angles when he replied, ‘You wanted to see the procession.’ He studied the tips of his shoes as if they’d grown heads. Many of them.

I asked, ‘And you honestly thought that he wouldn’t find out?’

I fixed the folds of my mustard-yellow silk dress for want of something better to do. The Commander had taken me to see the Guildmasters and an entire small village of yeomen and their children, who lived under a bridge in the capital, because Anselme had chased them out of their homes.

Because they’d refused to bow and give to him what had been theirs for hundreds of years.

So he’d taken it. Their land. All of it.

I’d never forget the mud they lived in. The bony arms of children. Their ripped clothing.

‘What do we tell the King?’ said the Commander.

‘I didn’t realise there was a “we”.’

He squared his shoulders as if getting ready for battle, but there was a tinge of concern in his eyes. He’d come into my chambers to discuss this, not to throw me under a moving cart. Which he could have easily done to save his skin. But I had trouble interpreting his motives. ‘Tell him what you want, Commander. I’m not coming tonight.’

‘Why?’ he said, and there was no challenge in his words, just pure curiosity.

I tried not to shrink from that searching gaze. ‘Do you think I’m up for a rich assortment of dishes tonight, after what I’ve seen?’

‘What will you do about it?’ His voice was so soft, like I’d never heard it before.

It was almost like a pull. I got to my feet. Even me, solid, round Blanche, I was so small compared to him. His gaze was soft, so soft, and the images were bubbling up, the horrors, and he felt so warm, from where I stood, just inches from him, and I wanted someone to hold me, tight, crushing, and he was there.

My brother’s Bladehand, I reminded myself.

‘That, Commander, I think, is none of your business.’

I had many plans. And I had many thoughts. I needed days to sort through them.

Alone, as usual.

‘Just be careful,’ he said, and he lifted his hand, hovering, as if he couldn’t decide what to do with it.

I looked at him from the corner of my eye, and I remembered how he had laid that hand on my back earlier, to get me away from the Fischermarket. How warm it had been. And how, after that, I’d leaned into him.

I shivered. How easy it would have been…

I took a step back and he let his hand fall. He gave me another once-over, then turned to leave. ‘I’ll tell him the truth, then.’

‘Which is?’

‘That I took you out.’

‘You can’t tell him that,’ I snapped.

‘Then?’ He arched his eyebrows in a way that I could only describe as aggravating.

‘Tell him I ordered you to take me. That I wanted to see the procession.’

‘I can’t do that,’ he said.

‘Why?’

We studied each other like trained enemies.

He is my enemy, I remembered. Every single person at Court was, in fact, my enemy.

They only cared for me as far as they could exploit my Gift.

‘I can’t shift the blame onto a girl.’

‘A. Girl?’ My ears were burning. I was so much more than that. ‘Yes, you will, if you know what’s good for both of us. If you tell him you took me to the city… Think of the implications.’ I jabbed a finger in his chest. Underneath the jacket, his flesh was impossibly hard. He didn’t even flinch. ‘Tell him I ordered you to.’

He studied his shoes again. ‘Yes, sure,’ he mumbled in a way which led me to believe that was certainly not what he’d say.

Aggravating. So aggravating.

There was only one thing I could do.

‘Not a moment’s peace do I have in this court,’ I muttered and seized his arm. He was genuinely shocked by this, and he laid a hand on top of mine. Again that feeling. Warm. Steadying. ‘Take me to dinner,’ I said, this time wobbly.

He patted my hand, and I sensed the approval behind the gesture. ‘It’s wiser if you come, anyway. If you behave as usual.’

I wanted to ask whatever that might mean, but I knew already, as he began leading me through the corridors, that I’d have to save my strength for the upcoming confrontation. I’d soon have none to spare.

* * *

Dinner was the usual affair with singing and dancing, where no one paid me much attention. Even my lady-in-waiting, Mathilde, was completely oblivious of me, caught in dance upon dance with the eldest of the Arnauld brothers. She swirled around him with the grace of a predator, precise moves and broad smiles.

His family are Beastwhisperers, I remembered. They held lands at the border with the Green Kingdom, dry hilltops covered in vines.

Each to their own. No one saw with how much disgust I watched the proceedings. Knowing the pile of shit and misery this entire palace was built on.

What the price was.

Next to my brother, in a place of honour, my nephew Charles was sitting, quiet and brooding as usual. Etienne had asked him to come down from Meranois, so he could size him up. To gauge if he was enough of a threat to justify the trouble of making away with him.

My nephew had no glances to spare for me, as usual. No pity to bestow. Perhaps he was much too focused on keeping his own head on his shoulders – even as wobbly as his claim on the Crown was, he could become a potential threat. Under certain circumstances.

But Charles was too soft for that, too careful. I knew because I’d been asked to trudge through his mind the week before, and I saw nothing of note.

Still, my brother was ever suspicious, ever fearful.

Everyone behaved just as usual. Except the Commander—two seats across from me, he kept throwing me glances. I suppose I was doing the same, since I noticed.

To his credit, he did remember at one point that he was meant to dance. When he flitted by our seats to reach Anselme’s daughter, resplendent in sea-blue silk, my brother stopped him with a hand on the elbow. ‘Commander, I heard you and my sister went on a little adventure today.’

I willed myself to look at my brother, keeping my face blank. Not to look to the Commander to see the face he made. ‘I wanted to see the procession.’

‘So you took it upon yourself to seek out my High Commander?’ My brother narrowed his eyes, and I could feel Anselme’s gaze on me as well.

I hoped he wouldn’t ask about the Guildmasters, not the Guildmasters.

I forced myself to nibble some of the blueberry pie in front of me. ‘Is it forbidden?’ I asked with my carefully crafted ‘I am not adequate for Court’ face. ‘I thought it was fine. Since he escorts me to dinner all the time.’

‘Yes, but the procession. It was dangerous, princess,’ said Anselme.

‘Was it?’ I asked, playing the role they expected of me. ‘It didn’t feel dangerous at all.’

Not a word about the Guildmasters, I prayed. If Sabya protected me and they asked nothing, I promised I’d buy weapons for a young man in training, in her honour. Anything. ‘I supposed he would have told me if there was something.’ I looked up to the Commander. We had to appear not to be much in agreement, either.

Etienne and Anselme both turned on him. ‘You didn’t think to ask me first?’ said my brother.

The Commander shrugged, all passivity and challenge. ‘I didn’t know the princess was forbidden to go out. Is she?’

‘Am I?’ I said, cocking my head. ‘I was under the impression that I wasn’t.’

My brother skilfully skidded around the questions. Oh, how he could play these games. But as I tested myself against him, I noticed I wasn’t without skill myself. I wondered if he noticed how I held my breath. In spite of the bravado.

Etienne said, ‘And how was the procession?’

I considered.

Careful.

‘Disappointing,’ I said, and blinked.

My brother studied me for a moment, his curiosity satisfied, then turned away.

Just like that.

The Commander hovered, giving me one of those looks, which I pointedly turned away from.

And that was the end of it.

It had been so, so easy to lie to Etienne. No more of an act than his displays of affection for me.

I took them in – how they laughed and danced and ate and talked, with so little consideration for what was happening beyond the gates of the palace. For the people who were paying the price.

I thought, They have no idea what is coming for them.

They have no idea what I can do.

LITTLE RABBIT, CAUGHT: PART 1

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

Robert and I stand in front of one another in my chambers at Mora’s Tower, two years after I’ve seen and heard the last of him. And the reality of what was ever said and done between us, of how we confront each other on this twisted chessboard that the Red Kingdom has become, the weight of it drives into me with the force of a boulder rolling off a cliff, crushing my words.

Robert swings the shutters open, the opposite of a gesture I used to know so well, and it strikes me how different we are from the way we used to be two years ago.

He watches his own camp at the foot of the Tower, not even knowing what his presence here means: that all the good work I’ve done in the past year and a half has turned to dust with the simple fact that he decided to make an entrance again.

I’m knee-deep in quicksand.

I don’t know why I didn’t realise earlier that I couldn’t win this.

The ties to my brother cannot be dissolved. He is inescapable, as was my imprisonment here.

I say, ‘Enjoying the view from up here?’

Robert turns to me slowly, too many feelings on his face for me to be able to read them. ‘I’d say you should enjoy it while you can, because we’re leaving today.’

Cold shivers run down my legs, turning them to ice.

Questions burn on the tip of my tongue. Where to? And why? But from the way he’s searching my face, I can tell that he’s raring for me to ask them.

I won’t give him that satisfaction.

Because no matter what he has to say, it doesn’t change the facts.

And the fact is that I will never, ever forget the faces of those men impaled in the Fischermarket. Nor would the Guilds forget that it was I who had supplied the names, though I don’t know who kindly informed them that it was I who did the spying.

‘Well, then,’ he says, ‘I’ll see you later.’

What does he remember from all that happened, I wonder? What makes him turn away from me like that, eager to put more distance between us?

He strides towards the door as if he has more important things to do than stay here with me and chat. After the door swings shut behind him I toss a pillow at it, wanting to scream, What later, why later, what are you going to do with me?

There’s a pang in my heart when I realise that Henri would be rushing down the path to Port Lang, prepared to enlist Anselme’s help, and what a pile of absolute dust everything has turned to, everything I’ve ever tried to achieve.

This is a cruel game of fate, as the wheel spins, mixing up all the players, setting them against one another. It’s a game that started not two weeks ago when an exile, Seigneur Bencifert, came down from the Blue Kingdom with an army of renegades, to reclaim his father’s seat.

That, as such, wasn’t a bad thing – in the end, Charles and I had encouraged him to – but the fact was that Bencifert arrived too soon, planted his sky-blue flags at Bencifert Castle, and the proverbial boulder started rolling off the hill. My nephew, Charles, had no choice but to start marching from Meranois with his Crossbowmen and whatever army he could muster, and the Guilds called for Robert to support them from the south.

Which left me and my Fallen Court isolated at Mora’s Tower, while the heat of the battle seemed to burn somewhere else.

And yet, it did not. Robert had other ideas, it seems. With slow steps, I head for the shutter he left open. The camp at the foot of the tower is a rustle of movement, even now, a good hour before dawn.

And my thoughts turn away from my nemesis, and towards the young man whom twice I had tried to help, and who twice – unwittingly – caused my downfall.

LITTLE RABBIT, CAUGHT: PART 2

THE PRINCESS

Three years before the Year of the Red Maiden

It had been months since I learned how to do this, how to use my Gift for my own purposes. Since I’d learned how to look, and who to warn. Since I’d been visiting people’s minds at night and speaking to them through their dreams.

And the thrill of it, of delivering a warning, hadn’t worn off. I was thrumming with the satisfaction of having looked beyond what I’d been told by Etienne and Anselme and having passed a judgement of my own.

I told the young man whose mind I was visiting that night, ‘They will come for you two days from now.’

Seigneur Bencifert was his name. He was lean, and about my size. He pinched his nose in the way that someone does when they feel they can’t see quite clearly.

Even if we were in his own dream, where I had to track him down, dusty chamber after dusty chamber of the packed library of his mind.

‘Who?’ he said, ruffling his thick set of dark curls, cropped short.

I leaned forward, mindful that the green hood didn’t slip from my head. A few tendrils of auburn hair were streaming down my shoulders. I had to remember to show them the hair, because, this way, they knew the warnings were real.

They’d given me quite an ominous name.

They’d taken to calling me the Red Maiden.

This is how it went: before I gave my brother a name, I sought that person out and warned them.

I made sure they had enough time to arrange an escape, or for incriminating evidence to disappear. Whether they decided to believe me or not, that was up to them.

The first few hadn’t believed me, didn’t think I was more than a product of their own imagination. But after the Red Maiden had begun to be known, my presence started to be considered an omen. Some of the people I visited had even said they had prayed to me, and I wasn’t sure if I should have been frightened or flattered.

I knew they whispered.

They whispered of the Red Maiden in the shade of the covered markets of Lafala, in crossroads inns and at the borders of our lands.

This boy, he also knew who I was. Even if he lived in his modest castle on the border of the Anselme principate, even if he’d carefully avoided Lafala.

To avoid raising suspicion, I presumed. About his own activities.

‘I know what you have done,’ I whispered.

The pamphlets.

I found out who’d been writing the originals that had been copied throughout the kingdom. I found out who’d been paying for the blank parchment, for the couriers.

It had been him, this boy who was more at home in a library – which was exactly what his mind looked like.

This boy wanted to start a riot.

And he knew that I’d come to warn him.

‘If you’re wise, you’ll pack whatever you have, and be gone from the kingdom,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen what happens to those who are caught, and you don’t want that to happen to you. Please trust me. And take your servant, the one you send to Lafala wearing your livery.’

This was how I’d tracked back my way to Seigneur Bencifert. I trod through the courier boy’s mind and saw his insignia on the woman’s uniform: the blue banners with the silver pin.

‘Who are you, really?’ The boy angled his head, trying to peer underneath my hood.

‘Don’t,’ I said sharply. ‘You know who I am.’

He lifted his chin. ‘The Red Maiden.’

‘And that’s all you need to know. For the sake of us both.’

I doubted that he’d listen, and make himself scarce, but he did.

Two days later, by the time I gave my brother the boy’s name, the young Seigneur Bencifert was nowhere to be found.

Etienne slammed his fist on the Curia’s table and Anselme squirmed. I widened my eyes, as if unsure of what had happened.

‘This isn’t the first time you have failed us, Blanche.’

I lowered my head, hiding a smile. The Commander was behind me, his gaze searing. I brushed my red hair across my shoulder, revealing the bare skin on my nape. My neck was stretched, on the line, ready to be cleaved at any misstep. It had been every single day ever since I began lying to them.

The thrill wasn’t wearing off, nor was the constant fear, gnawing at my insides, every time I was in the Curia’s chambers.

‘It is odd,’ said Prince Anselme, ‘how your work has diminished in quality lately.’ His tone was even, and I didn’t dare look in his eyes. ‘How everyone escapes our grasp by a few days.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I breathed.

‘A bit too much for this to be a coincidence,’ said my brother.

If my brother had always been suspicious of everyone, he was more so those days. And more ready than ever to eliminate those perceived threats.

The Commander shifted in his seat, and said, ‘I think the princess has been working quite hard lately.’ I didn’t have to look up to know he was gazing at me.

We played the game quite often in this chamber. My brother became heated with a suspicion, Anselme threw kindling into the fire, and the Commander shrugged impassively and told the king that perhaps it wasn’t all as bad as it seemed. More than once had Anselme told Robert, ‘And what if it is true? What then?’ to which Robert shrugged again, and usually said, ‘Then I will take care of it.’

Spinning, spinning, spinning, we were all spinning inside the same wheel. A cart that hobbled over a road full of holes. The horses whipped into a mad pace by my brother.

Someone was doomed to fall.

Someone was doomed to break their neck.

‘I suggest,’ said Prince Anselme, turning to me, ‘if your position here is dear to you, that you should work harder.’

‘You have no idea what I have to do to keep us safe,’ said Etienne.

Anselme added, ‘I find that sometimes even my finest steeds grow a bit lazy. Why should they work hard? They have all they need.’

‘What do you do, then?’ There was amusement in Etienne’s voice. There was also something stilted, rehearsed, as if they’d had this conversation before.

The Commander remained quiet.

‘Oh, they usually need a bit of whipping. They’re always in better shape, afterwards.’

With a click of his fingers, my brother dismissed me. The Commander led me out of the Curia’s chambers and my knees felt so soft, my own mind whirring so hard, that I didn’t even realise I was leaning on him until I was halfway back to my quarters.

They would punish me, I had no doubt about it.

And perhaps they wouldn’t even stop at a whipping.

There was no one, not a single soul, who would speak out for me.

I was at their mercy.

I pushed away from the Commander, but looked up at him as I did so.

There was something I couldn’t quite make out in the faint crease between his eyebrows, in the way his eyes rested on my hair. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ he whispered.

I took him in, still unsure what sort of game he played. ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Are you eager to humiliate a princess? They wouldn’t do it themselves, you know. The punishment. They would make you do it.’

I hurried to my own chambers, walking a few steps ahead of the Commander, unwilling to hear what he had to say.

After the door slammed behind me, I fiddled and fretted in my chambers, willing the night to come. But night never blessed me with restful sleep. I lay in my bed, staring at the heavy canopy, aching to fall into oblivion, dreading what I’d find on the other side when I closed my eyes.

I had to give Etienne and Anselme something, soon, but delivering someone to them felt like carving a piece out of my own flesh.

If I closed my eyes and allowed myself to drift, I knew what I’d see. Entire families who had lost their land, gathering in the cities. Those from Valmons, filling the streets of Valserra, and those coming from across Anselmois, gathering in Langville and Port Lang.

I didn’t quite know how my brother and the prince achieved this. All I knew was that sometimes the families stayed, sometimes they drifted towards the lands of other seigneurs, to work as employed help, driven by cold and hunger.

To become nothing more than serfs, tied to the whims of their seigneurs. Compelled to give them more than taxes.

I wondered if my brother had heard about the growing cult of the Mothers of the Forest, but the question had never arisen in the Curia’s Chambers, and I wasn’t going to be the one who brought it up. As I would have never brought up the fact that, in Meranois, my nephew Charles was doubling the size of his units of Crossbowmen.

And yet, I did wonder if Etienne and Anselme knew about the women, young and old, dressed in their green cloaks, who drifted among these people without a home. How they distributed a bit of food, and rags to keep them warm. How they whispered the names of the Mothers of the Forest, and spoke of a time when there had been no seigneurs, just the people and their land.

Their land.

Not the land of the few who held the reins of power in this kingdom.

I compelled myself to settle.

That evening, they had given me no task, and I was weary of seeing something I might have been tempted to speak about when the promised punishment befell me. So I withdrew to the only safe place I knew.

To the collected memories of the Golden Pavilion.

But chaos was waiting for me. Smears of blood on the marble, dull clanks in the shadowed portico across the piazza. A few ragged cries coming from within. The edge of a yellow cloak in a window, not a single student, not a single teacher in their teal robes in sight.

As always, I didn’t know if I was in a memory of the Pavilion, or if I was shown something that had not yet come to pass. I certainly hoped this wasn’t our future. I took in the empty balconies and terraces and dived deeper in, towards the heart of the mountain. When I caught a glimpse of Madame Faucon, sitting at the edge of the Opal Lake with a few students, their backs turned to me, I started. She bent her head, and I must have been at the edge of her vision when I leapt again, melting into the stone.

I’d not heard of any troubles at the Golden Pavilion. It would explain his mounting fear – a rebellion from the mages themselves.

But then, if it was true, wouldn’t Etienne have wanted me to look into their minds?

After all, as an Illusionist, Madame Faucon was almost a century old.

As I travelled through the stone, feeling as if I was swaddled in a thick blanket, I thought how this must have happened in the past, an incident that nobody had bothered to tell me about.

I was falling, and I was barely noticing it, when my feet hit a floor with a dull thud.

I was in a cave, a dim chamber lit by glowing orange lanterns. Warm light spilled to trace the shape of a great amber rock in the middle of the cave, and I was drawn to it. There was a swift movement inside it, a curtain of hair sweeping towards the surface of the boulder of amber, seeming to be liquid inside.

There was a creak to my right, and I turned to see half of a throne sculpted out of the same blue-and-gold marble that graced the Curia’s chambers. A silhouette sat in it, someone dressed in golden armour, and when there was a metallic clink, giving away movement, giving away that my presence might have been felt, I finally woke up with a jolt.

* * *

There were no more incursions into the heart of the Golden Pavilion after that, nor did my brother make good on his promise. He called for me less often, but then the Bencifert boy proved to be grateful, indeed.

Too grateful.

Red Maiden, Red Maiden, my name rising like a tide.

In the end, I was the one who was swept off my own feet.

Somehow, they found out.

Somehow, they knew it was me.

The first thing they did was take my Gift away from me. Pretorians ripped the clothes from my body and I was left, shivering, in but a shift. They did it in the Curia’s chambers, a last act of spite from my brother. Madame Faucon herself turned away from me in the wake of the binding of my Gift, disgust written across her face.

I was no longer a Mindwalker.

I was no longer a princess, no longer somebody’s sister. The last words my brother said to Prince Anselme were, ‘You can do as you please with her. She’s useless as a wife for you now, anyway.’

A wife? To Anselme? I hadn’t even known it had been a possibility, a horrible outcome that this other horrible outcome had saved me from.

My feet were frozen on the chequered blue-and-gold marble of the Royal Palace, even though it was stifling hot outside. Through the window, I glimpsed the mountains arching around the city. Beyond it were the Meranois lands, owned by my nephew Charles. At the foot of the mountains, there was the sea. Lucius’s Cliff, red-orange like the heart of a billowing fire, stood out not far from the shore.

Lafala stretched to the opposite side, out of sight. But I only had eyes for the two men left here with me: Prince Anselme and, to my left, clenching my arm, the Commander in his dark blue cape on top of a light chainmail shirt.

Anselme took in the shape of my body, looking up and down, down and up. I wanted to cross my arms in front of myself, hide the shapes of my breasts, the contour of my legs underneath the thin shift. But I didn’t dare to move, afraid of what might yet come.

‘Humph,’ he said.

‘I wouldn’t,’ said the Commander, in a raspy voice.

Anselme’s eyebrows jutted upwards. ‘Yes? Please do impart me your wisdom, mercenary.’

‘She’s tainted. What if she taints you, too, if you take her maidenhead? What if it meddles with the binding spells? I wager the over-witch won’t be too content.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Prince Anselme, pulling at my other arm. ‘Etienne said I can do as I please with her.’

‘I have orders from Etienne to take her to Mora’s Pass as quickly as possible.’

‘This won’t take long,’ said Prince Anselme. ‘I feel cheated. She cheated me.’

Cheated, yes. That was what my brother had also said. He said he thought he could trust me. That we were working together.

They chose to see the half-mad girl. Who had made one mistake after the other.

And when they’d realised the truth… The worst, for them, wasn’t that I had aided people. The worst, for them, had been that they were wrong about me.

What they felt cheated by was their own lack of judgement.

My flesh screamed where Anselme had touched me.

‘Fine,’ said the Commander. ‘I’ll see if I can catch the over-witch. Check if she can do the spell again or whatever it is after you take her maidenhead.’

It was silly how I could almost laugh at their assumption that I was still a maiden. Twenty-two, and I’d tricked them, and they treated me as if I was still a child.

‘Nonsense.’

Tears started flowing down my cheeks. That they could speak this way of me, as if I wasn’t even in the room. That they could dispose of my body as they pleased.

The Commander growled. ‘Don’t you know what they say? That some of the witches lose their powers when they lose their maidenhead. Maybe this one takes it back. I’m not ready to wager it isn’t true.’

‘Stupid superstitions,’ puffed Anselme. ‘Illiterate halfwit. But go ask. No matter.’

The Commander nodded and his fingers unclenched from my arm, while Anselme’s grip tightened. The mercenary had barely closed the door, when the prince hissed, ‘And I wanted to make a wife out of you. Stupid girl. Do you realise what you’ve lost? Do you?’

He let me go with a jerk, then turned his back on me, inspecting the view from the window. ‘I was never fond of girls with big thighs, anyway.’

I could only think of what they’d already taken away from me. I was nothing without my Gift. I was that odd girl whom no one wanted to speak to. My Gift, it hadn’t only been an escape from this world, it had been an escape from myself.

And within the dreamworld, I had become something.

The Red Maiden.

All the people that I’d warned.

They said I was a harbinger. And yet gratitude had been my undoing. It had been Seigneur Bencifert who’d said too much, to too many. The circle of betrayal had grown wider and wider. And now my powers had been taken by the very woman who’d trained me.

At least, Madame Faucon didn’t have the stomach to stay until the end. To see what they would do with me, how they’d discard me, and where.

‘Was the Bencifert boy worth it, then?’ Anselme spat.

I didn’t know. But I thought, perhaps, they didn’t know, either, how many I’d helped.

If they’d known, then what they’d done to me, what they were doing, would have been ten times worse.

The door banged open and the Commander marched through, grabbing my arm, rushing me towards the side exit. ‘She says not to touch her,’ he threw out as he unlocked the heavy metal door.

His fingers were tight around the soft flesh of my arm. It was because of him that everything had started. The warnings. The lying to my brother. And even though we’d never spoken a word about it – because I’d feared he would be the one to betray me – I hated him, as well. He opened my eyes, from the moment when he’d brought me to the Fischermarket.

I hated the feel of his hand around mine, how he was the one who determined the direction of my steps.

Why? I wanted to ask. Why did you show me?

The Commander pushed me outside, the breeze rustling my shift. It was cold, so cold and the light was blinding, and the door closed with a thunk behind us, sealing the way between me and Anselme. A single rowboat was docked on the shore, the oarsman waiting.

The Commander looked at the palace, over his shoulder.

For a long moment, nothing moved.

He snorted, unlaced his dark blue mantle and wrapped it around my shoulders. The brush of the silk hem against the goosebumps on my knees was unbearable. The irony of it, that a Pretorian’s cloak should have covered me.

The Commander pointed towards the boat. ‘Princess. Your carriage awaits.’

* * *

For the first time in two days of fear and misery and anger so ripe that it made me want to tear the very dress that the Commander had provided me with, I had a question.

What is this?

We stood in the middle of a narrow pass between a cliff and a mountain. A brook streamed between them, at the foot of a tower made of large white bricks.

And that was it.

I was hopeless with a map, I was hopeless with direction. I couldn’t have said which way we’d been travelling, and I’d been cooped up for two days in a carriage.

A carriage and my miserable escort of Pretorians, led by the Commander himself.

I would have looked around for any landmark to help me orient myself, but it was useless. From the corner of my eye, I observed the man stiffening beside me.

If he made a move, if they dragged me all the way here so no one could see what they had in store for me, if that blow was going to fall, I wanted to feel it coming. To prepare. Though by Sabya’s Morningstar, I didn’t know how I could have prepared for being obliterated from existence.

‘He’s not going to kill you,’ the Commander grumbled.

I flinched and turned to him. He wasn’t smirking. No, that terrible jaw of his was set. In complete and utter disgust. With me? Was he disgusted, too, by what I’d done, by how I betrayed them all?

It’s your fault, too, I wanted to spit at him.

None of this would have happened if he hadn’t shown me.

‘He won’t kill you,’ he repeated. I watched every tense muscle on that formidable face. His eyes were raking mine and I looked away. ‘And you know why.’

I thought, Because if my brother gives the order he will lose his own Gift. Even if he gave the order to someone else to give the order.

‘What is it to you?’ I asked, unable to hold myself back anymore. Because I’d already lost everything. Because I had nothing more to lose.

‘She speaks!’ he said, and there was a tinge of amusement in his tone.

I whirled on him.

He had the decency to shift. ‘Anyhow, since you asked, this will be your home from now on. Mora’s Tower.’

Mora’s Tower. I let the words roll in my mind. Ah, yes. In the middle of nowhere, indeed, and in the middle of Anselme’s huge principate.

‘I didn’t ask,’ I mumbled.

I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I usually kept a tight lid on my words.

Oh, but I knew what was wrong with me.

I’d lost everything.

So much for my dreams of seeing the world.

‘Of course you were dying to know,’ he conceded. ‘In any case, Mora’s Pass is a very important strategic point between Port Lang and Lafala.’ He pointed in the distance, and I followed the direction of his finger.

‘Is that⁠—’

He nodded. ‘The Golden Pavilion. A day’s ride from here. And not far from it, the Bencifert lands.’ I froze at this. ‘Come on,’ he continued, walking up towards the tower. ‘Let me show you your new home.’

‘It’s not a home, it’s a prison.’ I struggled to keep up. Two days in a carriage, barely sleeping, had turned my legs to mush. I wobbled, at best.

He offered me his arm and I shot him such a look that he let it drop. ‘Fine, then. As you wish.’

We closed the distance between the carriage and the dismounting guards, heading towards a net thrown at the base of the tower. ‘This will be your ride up. You can’t access the tower unless you’re pulled up to the second level. The first two floors are storage rooms, and they have no doors or windows.’

‘Why are you so chatty?’ He hadn’t spoken this many words to me, probably, in the entire year we’d known each other. ‘Is this what you do day-to-day? Locking princesses in towers they can’t escape from?’

The Commander’s expression darkened. ‘What I do day-to-day would make your stomach turn. And you should be glad that I’m here with you today, and it isn’t someone else.’

Piss off.

I didn’t utter the words aloud, fortunately.

‘You should go first,’ he said, pointing at the lift. There was a sort of wide wooden board at its base, and a net was looped around it. ‘Unless you want to squeeze in with me. Which I suspect you don’t.’

I refused to do anything to acknowledge his words. I simply stepped onto the platform, and he tugged at the rope, clanging a bell at the base. A face appeared two storeys above and he gave a sign. ‘I’ll meet you up there,’ he said.

* * *

I was still taking in the cavernous, rounded landing area when he hopped from the platform and joined my side. Three men, who must have been operating the pulley, stared at me with wide eyes as if they had just seen a Nightdragon awakened.

The Commander came up to me, our shoulders touching. ‘This is Princess Blanche,’ he growled. ‘Anyone who lays even a finger on her will be punished by the King with death.’

He showed me to a door, hidden in the back.

‘That was unnecessary,’ I said.

We walked into a dark, narrow corridor that led to another door and a staircase. He turned me around, his eyes searching again. ‘I know what happens to women, when they are alone, and at the mercy of others.’ Anger chiselled his face. ‘I know what some men do, when they think no one is watching, and that no one would punish them.’

I would have dissolved in a puddle of tears, if I could have. But not in front of him.

‘If anyone upsets you, you tell me,’ he went on. ‘And I will take care of it.’

‘What? Are you going to live here now, too?’

‘No, but your brother will want me to look in on you from time to time. To make sure there are no signs that your abilities are returning.’ There was a shadow of something as he said this.

I took him in. How his short dark blue mantle trailed behind him. ‘Keep your pity to yourself,’ I spat out. ‘I don’t need it.’

‘I see you haven’t lost your temper. Or you’re just as prone to show your temper. Good.’ He opened a door at the end of the corridor. A table, a few chairs scattered around it. ‘Dining room.’ There was a servant standing next to the window, a willowy woman.

‘And if there are signs that my Gift is returning, then what? Are you going to tattle to my brother⁠—’

He threw me such a furious look that I didn’t finish the sentence.

I coiled my fists.

This was ridiculous. Everything bordered on absurd.

He simply motioned the woman to come to us. ‘She will show you to your room. And above that… The rooms at the upper levels need to be sorted. Everything happened too fast. I’ll be here until tomorrow. If … If there’s anything.’

I headed for the staircase, trailing behind the servant.

I stared at the walls. Plain white walls.

I could already tell that this place was going to make me mad.

An entire lifetime of white walls and nothing.

The fourth level had two doors. The woman first showed me an empty room, told me I could do with it as I pleased.

As if I could have done anything at all.

But the final blow came when the woman opened the other door. ‘Your room, princess.’

A table, two chairs, a recliner. And a bed.

My bed.

The mindwalking bed, from the Golden Pavilion, the one with the carved headboard.

This time, there was no stopping the sting of tears in my eyes.

A last slap in the face.

HORSE AND CARRIAGE

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

Robert barges into my chambers, the morning after his company has seized Mora’s Tower. As if it’s still years ago and he’s looking after the conditions of my imprisonment.

As if nothing has changed.

As if he isn’t about to deliver me directly into the hands of the Guilds, as if the entire land isn’t rioting against my brother, as if I’m not considered an accomplice to his misdeeds.

‘We’re leaving,’ he says. ‘Horse or carriage?’

He says this like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

‘Am I your prisoner now?’

Robert gives a low chuckle. ‘It’s entirely up to you what name you give things. It doesn’t change what they are.’

‘Which is?’

‘You are now in the custody of the Guildmasters. Officially.’

I try not to let that knock me off my feet. A current of icy water is splashing through my veins at the mere thought. I almost ask, And the rest of the Fallen Court? When I realise, No, he can’t know, he doesn’t know. ‘And the other young women upstairs?’

‘They are in our custody, as well.’

Our custody.

Arrogant piece of…

But Henri is on his way to Anselme. If Robert hasn’t intercepted him. I wouldn’t put anything past him.

I think, He’d say something, though, if they had Henri.

But he doesn’t know about me and Henri, does he?

He wasn’t here.

Don’t worry, I tell myself. Henri will know what to say to Anselme, how to say it. He is born into an important house of this kingdom, but has enough humility as a second son, as someone who had to cut his own path using his wits and other skills.

And he chose me. This very thought helps me settle.

‘Carriage,’ I say. I won’t let them parade me in front of everyone as we trudge towards only Sabya knows where, like a trophy. I won’t allow them to humiliate me.

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘I’m a bit disappointed.’

Stop looking at me, I want to say. As if he’s just seen an especially delicious piece of crispy baked apple.

‘Why, did you want to catch up?’ I put all the venom I’m capable of into my tone, considering my position, which is, to say the least, difficult.

He shrugs. ‘I thought you wanted to.’

My cheeks are aflame. And words swirl on the tip of my tongue, as they are bound to, every single time the two of us are in the same room, with no one else.

Or on a quay, after I saw the most revolting thing in my life, an image that would haunt me for years to come and dictate most of what I did.

‘You are wrong, then,’ I say pointedly, and turn around to watch the preparations in the tower’s courtyard, trying to signal that the conversation is over.

‘Why were you in my dreams last night, then?’ His voice drips with honey.

It feels like he drove a metal rod down my spine. The stiffness in my back, the complete loss of feeling in my hands and feet.

I struggle for something to say. ‘I can’t help it if you dream of me at night.’

‘How would you know, if you weren’t there?’

I will not let him intimidate me. Even if I can’t look him in the eye.

‘You said yourself that I was in your dreams last night.’ I remember the blissful half-face, the tilted-back head⁠—

No, no, no.

‘Someone has a penchant for flattering themselves,’ he says. ‘I knew you were there. I just showed you what I thought about your … intrusion.’

I bite my tongue, hard. On its tip is the reply, Intrusion? How about what he was doing to the dream-version of me? How is that for an intrusion?

‘Will you stop it?’ I say. ‘I can’t mindwalk anymore. My powers are bound.’

‘I felt you. You were there last night.’ There’s a sort of anger tinged with desperation tinged with more, so much more, that punches me in the gut.

I know there is, because I feel these undercurrents of emotion. It was the first sign I still had a Gift after my Gift had been taken away from me.

And, last night, he felt me.

He was expecting me?

He was hoping I would be there.

Arrogant, arrogant arse.

Hasn’t he always been this way?

You can call me what you want. There’s no stopping that.

I have many ways I want to call him. But I put a stop to what I’m about to say.

For a long while, none of us says anything. I purposely pretend to ignore him, my senses alert, aware of every heavy breath he draws behind me, every shift in his stance.

I don’t know what to tell him. I don’t know how to act, how to look at him. I don’t know what normal people would do in a situation like this, if there had ever been a situation like this.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if that bat Madame Faucon cut the tethers on your powers,’ he says. ‘All things considered.’

I take in a deep breath.

There are so many things Robert would be aware of, portents of how deeply woven into the threads of my life he was, until he wasn’t.

He would know, for instance, that, three years ago, Madame Faucon was the one who had bound my Gift of Mindwalking. He knows, just as I do, that she is most likely the person who is now slipping the leash around my Gift. That she might or might not do such a thing at my brother’s behest.

He knows that Madame Faucon must be desperate now, and perhaps frightened. Because after Seigneur Bencifert came down from the Blue Kingdom, after Charles came down from Meranois, after the Guilds rose their flags – the people, finally, revolted.

So many of them, brandishing their forks and axes and whatever sharp tools they had at their disposal. The last I’d heard, they were besieging the magic school. The Golden Pavilion.

Madame Faucon has, maybe, sixty students around her, their Gifts not yet honed. She would be looking for allies. And for ways of communicating with them.

But this is not something that I should discuss with the man employed by the Guilds.

‘No one cut any tethers,’ I say. ‘I wasn’t in your head last night.’

‘Yes, you were. And I showed you what I wanted you to see.’

I’m beginning to question why he would do such a thing – not a word in two years, as if he’d vanished off the face of the Earth and wasn’t just warmongering in the neighbouring kingdom – when he says, ‘Anyhow. We leave. Pack your things, Blanche. Swiftly.’

I glance around at my chambers, transformed into a sumptuous space in the past few years. Clothes, books, thick carpets, wall tapestries. My instruments in the adjoining room.

The songs, I think.

The songs will be the first thing I’ll take with me. And he can’t know.

He takes a step towards the door.

I’m about to exhale with relief, when he says, ‘Odd that you didn’t ask about Henri. In case you wanted to know, your lover is on his way to Langville. To negotiate with the Guildmasters what will happen to you.’

I try to discern from his features if what he just said is true. A small smile curls on his face. ‘He was right, then. You didn’t suspect a single thing.’

‘You’re lying,’ I say.

‘I’m not, Blanche, and you know as much.’

I do know. Looking at him, I know.

And what he says next makes it even more true. ‘Who did you think let us in?’

THE TOWER

THE PRINCESS

Three Years before the Year of the Red Maiden

There were days when I wondered what good it would do to rise from my bed. There were days when I didn’t rise at all.

I was still, stagnant.

I caught myself trying to slip, on some days. Into my Gift, which didn’t yield any distractions anymore. I missed sliding into the hidden chambers of the Golden Pavilion, of walking through its past and its present. Witnessing the history come to life again.

As it had, in fact, happened. Not as it had been presented to us in the words of ballads and songs, twisted beyond meaning.

Truth is an odd thing, so distorted through the lens of time, engendering heroes and monsters. Truth is most interesting when looked in the eye.

Which I did not. I never summoned the courage to peer beyond the shadowed cave I stepped into just that once, to glimpse who had really stood on the golden throne.

Legends say that the King of Kings hides in the heart of the Opal Mountain, and he’ll return when the time is right.

It was a pity that, since I’d been imprisoned at Mora’s Tower, I’d summoned the courage to try and look again, but I didn’t have the Gift anymore to allow me to do so.

And every single time I tried to leap, to reach behind that shield of my mind, to step into the wonders of this world and feel their imprint, I felt as if I banged my head against a thick wall, as impenetrable as the bricks the tower had been built of.

I’d become a prisoner of my own mind.

Taking my Gift away from me meant erasing me from existence. I used to be the girl lurking in the corners when no one looked, eavesdropping on conversations that no one else had been meant to hear. I’d been there and never there and I was nowhere anymore, but at Mora’s Tower.

And it was stifling me. The walls were closing in on me, more and more each day.

If I wasn’t a Mindwalker, I was nothing.

Hidden in a tower, a girl that no one remembered.

No one missed.

Just me, the bricks, and the carved headboard of my formidable bed, the cruel reminder of my inability to look Truth in the eye.

I traced the contour of Sabya’s Morningstar, the wings carved of gold that were attached to her legendary armour, and thought about truth and legends. What were they whispering about me in the Royal Palace? What did they believe?

I was staring out of the window when the Commander returned, a few weeks after bringing me to the tower. My chest tightened between fear and the possibility of company.

How low I had fallen.

I traced his moves. Four men were loading large crates – crates? – onto the platform when the Commander looked up and saw me. I retreated into my chambers before I had the opportunity to see what happened next, my heart beating wildly in my chest.

I hid in the depths of my chambers, straining to hear the creaks and huffs of the net being pulled up.

Not long after the tower grew quiet, a servant knocked at my door. ‘The Commander says you are welcome to join him for dinner, if you’d like. He’s waiting downstairs.’

My instinct said, Stay locked up in your room.

The Commander was my brother’s Bladehand. He did Etienne’s bidding. He was there to confirm that the tethers on my powers were not growing weak.

Which they weren’t. I would have known – I tested them often enough.

I shifted in my seat, my bones aching.

There was nothing better for me to do. Nothing for him to discover.

‘Tell him…’ I said, still wavering. ‘Tell him I’ll consider it.’

* * *

It was well after sundown when I finally summoned the courage to go down for dinner. The Commander was waiting for me, staring at the door I walked through, with his arms crossed. Anger simmered on his face. ‘That took you long enough.’

I took in the set table, but without any trace of food on it. ‘Why didn’t you eat?’

‘You didn’t ask to have anything sent to your room, so I assumed you’d crawl out of your burrow. Not soon enough, as it turns out.’

‘Your mistake.’

I plonked myself into a seat, as far from him as I could. Two servants brought in food: mutton stew, pork jelly, bread, beans.

‘You seem in a good mood today,’ he said.

‘How would you know?’

Shut up, I told myself. But it had been so long since I’d spoken to anyone.

‘You’re chatty,’ he said with a smirk.

I narrowed my eyes. ‘Did you instruct the servants not to speak with me?’

The Commander took large helpings of everything. ‘No. They don’t speak to you? Should I talk to them about that?’

I rolled my eyes. ‘I don’t need you to come running on your white horse to save me.’

He chuckled. ‘I have a red destrier, if you must know.’

I spooned some food onto my plate. ‘What news from the Royal Palace?’

The Commander shrugged. ‘The same as always.’

Heads on spikes. Men and women held in the dungeons, their screams slashing the night. I shuddered. ‘You know, some days, I think this isn’t such a bad place. At least it’s quiet.’

‘So you’ve taken a liking to it.’

I met his gaze, my brown eyes to his glittering green. ‘I hate it. You can report that to my brother, if you want.’

‘I probably won’t.’

‘I haven’t been mindwalking again, if that is what you intend to ask next.’ He was still looking at me and I quashed the impulse to shrink from him. Like I usually did. I had nothing more to lose. Nothing to hide. And I’d not let him intimidate me.

‘I wasn’t about to ask.’

We ate in silence.

When he was done, the Commander got to his feet, rang a bell next to the door and a servant appeared. ‘We are ready for dessert,’ he said. ‘And a big carafe of wine.’

While the servants cleared the table and brought in what he’d requested, he asked, ‘Is the food to your liking?’

‘It’s fine, I suppose.’ I hadn’t been very hungry since I’d arrived.

‘You don’t look well.’

I set down my spoon just to stifle an impulse to toss it at him.

‘Walk for a few days in my shoes and you’ll see how well you’ll look then.’

‘Stop the self-pity, Blanche. You have everything you need.’

The spoon flew out of my hand before I even realised what I was doing, but my aim was off. He watched as it harmlessly landed next to his chair. The look he gave me afterwards was thrumming with disbelief. ‘What, Blanche, you can’t stomach a truth? People are starving in this kingdom while you push your food around. Children. And you want me to pity you?’

‘Don’t call me Blanche,’ I exploded. ‘I’m a princess of this kingdom. And you are⁠—’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘I am what?’

The ‘what’ was so pointed, falling between us like a boulder.

My brother’s lackey. I started nibbling at the apple pie on my plate.

My eyes were stinging with tears. I didn’t know what to do with this avalanche of feelings I couldn’t parry. ‘I am caged here. They may starve, but they have the freedom…’

The Commander’s face became wild. ‘Freedom to what? Wake up, Blanche. Many of the people of this kingdom are tied down to their own lands. By their seigneurs. They can’t go anywhere. They can’t make a better living for themselves. Because—’ He stopped, shook his head. ‘Why do I bother?’

I hated him so much for daring to lecture me. Considering what he did. Who he supported. Considering that I was at the tower because I’d tried to help precisely those people he’d been speaking about. ‘Watch what you say, Commander, or someone might think that you are proffering precisely what those blasted pamphlets were saying. I doubt that my brother would like that very much. Should someone tell him.’

The Commander leaned back. ‘You know what? Even when you were so quiet at Court, barely saying a word, I thought that, underneath that all, you were a proper fiend.’

My cheeks caught fire and I struggled for words.

‘They said you were half-mad but I always thought that you knew precisely what you were doing. Of course, if someone sees all you see, they might go mad. Or they might become very, very clever.’

The look he sent me gave me shivers down my spine.

I willed myself to shut up again. I pushed the plate away, pushed myself up. I’d said enough. Much too much.

But his voice caught me as I made for the door. It sounded … defeated. ‘I’ve brought crates from the Palace, Blanche. Your books. Your belongings.’

I wanted to spit at him to stop calling me that, but an old instinct told me that it was what he was fishing for. So I stood straight and walked towards the stairs.

‘Please tell me if you’ll need anything else,’ he called, his words echoing in the narrow corridor. ‘I leave tomorrow.’

My heart made a little leap at that.

* * *

After dinner, when I’d returned to my room, the crates were waiting for me. Books. Parchment. Ink. And, set aside, my instruments. All of them.

The next morning, the servants were arranging a few pieces of furniture in the spare room on my floor, when he came marching in with the last of the stools. I retreated towards the window as he closed the door behind us.

‘You’re redecorating, I see. That’s good.’ He picked up my lute, already set on the table. Fingered my fiddle. ‘You can play the instruments?’

‘Yes,’ I said. I wondered if he’d come to pry again.

He ruffled through a stack of sheets. ‘What are these?’

‘What, you can’t read?’ I snorted.

From the way he took a step back, I realised that my arrow might have struck true. But he didn’t shoot back.

‘I can see they are songs,’ he said, without a trace of nastiness.

And I felt bad. For the first time since I’d met the Commander, I felt bad about what I’d said, the way I’d said it.

I wasn’t my brother, nor Anselme.

I might not have walked the kingdom, but I’d walked other people’s minds enough to know that it wasn’t their fault if they couldn’t read.

That it was a privilege to be able to.

I moved closer to the table, unsure how to unsay what I’d hurled at him. I wasn’t what he said I was. A fiend, he’d called me.

‘I don’t know all the songs by heart,’ I told him. ‘Only some. It’s nice to have a new song sheet, every now and then.’

He nodded.

And by Sabya’s Darkblades, that made me feel worse.

I shouldn’t have cared, considering what he did for a living.

I should have been glad I’d been able to strike back.

But he’d never struck me.

He’d never said as much as an unkind word to me.

I rearranged the sheets, nearly touching his fingers, but not quite. I couldn’t look at him.

‘Do you have many songs?’

‘Yes,’ I said, a bit stiff.

‘Which songs don’t you have?’

I shifted, so uncomfortable. I had no idea why he wanted to know. Surely my brother couldn’t have put him up to this. ‘I know – or have – all the classics, everything that you might hear at an evening in Court. But there are songs…’ I trailed off, not quite sure how to tell him about what I’d heard during my mindwalking. The snippets.

Our minds are sometimes full of sorrow, sometimes full of song.

‘Yes?’ he said, and he looked at me in a shaded way.

‘Tavern songs,’ I told him. ‘Old folk songs. I don’t know those. Or how I could find them.’

He smiled. ‘You want tavern songs.’

I opened and closed my mouth. Once he’d said it, it sounded ridiculous.

‘Thank you for the chair. And for bringing me the books.’

‘Would you like more of them? Books? New books?’

‘Books? Yes, sure. There can never be too many of them.’

He laid down the lute. ‘All right. Princess. Until next time.’ He straightened and stalked towards the door.

There was something in the air. Something unfinished. Trailing.

‘You could learn to read, Commander,’ I said. ‘It’s not too late.’

He turned around, surprised.

Yes, definitely surprised.

There were two of us in this chamber, shocked by what I was saying. ‘For a man in your position, I mean, it would be crucial. If you saw all that I’ve seen… When it comes to important messages, I wouldn’t trust anyone else to write them. Even a single word can mean…’

Expressions shifted on his face, and I didn’t know why I was still speaking, or what I was trying to say.

‘I think … it would be a way to protect yourself. Knowing how to read. Considering the company you keep.’

His eyebrows shot up in that annoying gesture of his. ‘I appreciate your concern for my safety.’

‘Don’t smirk at me,’ I said.

‘I wasn’t.’ But there was something searching in his gaze. ‘All right then. Princess.’

I opened a window, ignoring him. But he was still standing behind me.

‘And it’s Robert, not Commander. My name is Robert.’

I know. I’d seen it. Before anyone else at the Red Court.

But since every time I opened my mouth, I only said something stupid, I decided to say nothing at all. He shifted, and then moved away. The sound of his steps echoed down the stairs until it was gone.

FIRST SONG

THE PRINCESS

Three years before the Year of the Red Maiden

‘A song for the princess,’ said Robert, having stalked into my music chamber.

I fingered the sheet, while my ears were burning. Words and notes blurred before my eyes.

Not that I hadn’t been expecting him. A fortnight ago he’d sent a crate of books and the messenger had told me that the Commander would be arriving in two weeks.

I couldn’t have possibly told Robert what a relief those books were, even if I’d read most of them already. They were my entire collection of rarities: ballads about knights who moved from warring court to warring court, noble seigneurs putting themselves in the chaste service of highborn ladies (though those were customs that pertain more to the Blue Kingdom than ours), to the entire epos concerning itself with Sabya’s story. An array of books written by scholars dissecting the symbolism of Sabya’s gestures, of her actions, the contrast between the Golden Mother and the Dark Mother, how the Golden Mother disappears halfway through the story without so much as a whisper of an explanation, and, and, and.

There was also an entirely new book, the illustrations barely dry from the scribe’s hand.

A history of our kings and queens, starting from Sabya’s time – the first Queen of the Three Kingdoms – up to my brother and myself. And considering that the author of that book was a man whom I’d seen more than once in Court, it shouldn’t have been surprising to me that King Etienne, my brother, was described as a just ruler, who had defended-the-Kingdom-from-so-many-threats, brought peace and prosperity… On and on and on the drivel went, but honestly it was, if anything, mildly amusing how this lickspittle managed to rewrite history. How, perhaps, that would be precisely the way my brother would be remembered, how he would be seen by unwitting readers who would grab that book a few decades from now.

On the whole, it was a rather annoying experience, but it was to be expected, considering what I already knew about the weaving of legends. Until I reached a certain part – no more than two lines – that described the poor king’s mad sister.

Me.

That was all. A weak-minded sister. That’s who I’d be to future generations. A footnote, a mention to be skimmed through, and then overlooked.

Not a person with a baffling Gift, which had helped my brother so much throughout the years, as I’d come to realise. Someone who had reinforced his reign of terror – though that definitely wasn’t something to be proud of.

There was nothing in that book about how I’d fooled the men who’d thought they could crush anything between their fingers.

Nothing about how I’d pretended all day that I wasn’t waiting for the Commander, while I’d been looking out the window of my tower. Though that was also nothing to be proud of, this desperation of mine for company. The fact that I would have accepted anyone, even him. And nothing about how when he arrived and he brought me a song, I was so put off by his presence, that I didn’t even know what to say.

‘“Thank you” would be nice,’ he said, as if picking up on my thoughts.

‘Thank you,’ I echoed, but the gaze I threw him was unkind.

He put me off even more when he did that, when it seemed that he could read my mind. I was meant to be the mindwalker.

But of course, one needed more than a sure hand with a sword in order to have survived in his position. It also had to be about reading people.

The song sheet came into focus. It was a tavern song. A bawdy one. ‘Is this⁠—’

He bit down a smile. ‘Don’t hit me in the head with it after you’ve read it. You asked for it.’

I raced through it. There were some parts that I would never have had the audacity to sing aloud. With my mouth. Precisely because the woman in the song did certain things with her mouth.

Mothers of the Forest.

‘It didn’t have to be lewd, you know.’ I stopped to consider. ‘How did you know what it’s about?’ Since you can’t read, was the unspoken part of the question.

He shrugged. ‘I asked especially for it. I knew it by heart.’

I blushed, straightening myself. Of course he would have. He wasn’t a creature who had only seen the light of day through the windows of the Royal Palace, like me. ‘Well, thank you. I’ll try it.’

I laid the sheet next to me on the table, holding fast to the lute, unsure what to do with my hands.

He plonked himself down in the seat across from me. ‘How have you been?’

I remembered what he’d said the last time I’d told him how I’d truly been.

I couldn’t begin to explain to him that even between the books and the songs and my instruments, there were still days when I didn’t see a reason to get up from my bed.

I didn’t have one. And lying down all day in my chambers at the Tower made me prone to reach out for my Gift, which, in turn, made me smash my head against walls, which meant that I was spinning around and around and around in my own head, since I couldn’t jump into others.

I hated that life.

But I’d also hated the one I had at the Royal Palace.

I’d been trapped, for as long as I could remember.

And I loathed nothing more than my own powerlessness.

But I suppose I wasn’t starving or dying of cold, so … I settled for ‘Good. How have you been?’

‘Busy.’ He knitted his brows. ‘Truly, now… Princess? “Good”? You’re pale,’ he said.

‘Is that your idea of a compliment?’ I fidgeted. ‘There has been no mindwalking,’ I said. ‘So you can successfully report to my brother—’ He grimaced, leaning back in his chair. Perhaps even shaking his head. ‘Why are you so annoyed? You’re the one with the prodding questions.’

‘Fine, then,’ he said, and raised himself from his seat.

I didn’t try to stop him, instead focusing on reading the notes. He hovered in the doorway for a moment, as if waiting for me to say something, and then left.

* * *

No one could say that I didn’t have an adventurous nature. I ventured out for dinner and breakfast with the Commander. It was a shield against the hail of boredom that assailed me at the Tower.

We tiptoed around the subject of books – and I told him I’d like more chansons de geste and less philosophy, something to escape the stifling walls of this fortress.

He asked me about what I did all day, and I was painfully aware that he might have been the first person in years to do so. Since my mother had died, in fact.

So I told him.

‘That sounds like a whole lot of nothing,’ he said, tapping his knife on the wooden plate. His face scrunched.

‘I can tell you’re thinking hard, Commander,’ I said. ‘And that frightens me.’

‘Well, it should.’ That smirk I’d come to dread spread over his face. ‘You and me, we’re going out for a ride.’

* * *

‘By Sabya’s Darkblades, why are you fidgeting so much?’ said the Commander, rolling his eyes for the umpteenth time since we’d spurred our mounts into an easy pace.

There are levels of irritation that one can gauge from swearing. The lowest irritation would be attached to someone saying, By the Mothers of the Forest. Someone moderately irritated or surprised would say By Sabya’s Morningstar. Someone who is truly, truly annoyed with you would reference Sabya’s own Darkblades, double-edged swords she could summon at will, drawing from the darkness and the shadows around her. Weapons that were indestructible and could cleave a grown man in two.

I wish the Golden Pavilion would have shown me those in one of my nightly excursions.

But the highest insult, in terms of swearing, would be the name we never speak, the Dark Mother’s. Someone would have to be truly, awfully, horrendously upset to let it drop.

It’s generally inadvisable, because she might mistake it for a call.

Oh, and there’s also Lucius’s Flaming Finger, which is particularly foul.

So, judging by that simple sentence, the Commander was highly annoyed at the speed at which my mount was following his into the forest. It was hard enough to concentrate on not steering into a boulder or a fallen branch or a tree in order to keep a pace that might satisfy him.

‘I’m going to fall off,’ I said.

‘Of course you are. Eventually. That’s the entire point. You fall, you dust yourself off, you get back in the saddle. There. Life for you in a nutshell.’

‘I don’t know why you made me do this. I hate it,’ I hissed.

‘I didn’t make you,’ he said. I could feel he was grinning. He was having the time of his life. ‘You agreed to come with me.’

‘Was this my brother’s idea?’ I asked. ‘He’d know to hit where it hurts most.’

‘Have you even ridden a horse in your life?’ he said.

Barely, but that wasn’t relevant to the point in question. I could smell the blood. How he’d evaded answering. ‘Was this my brother’s idea? Did he say I can leave the tower?’

That would have been … interesting. To know that I could have actually left the bloody tower in the nearly two months I’d been here, to take a few steps outside.

It wasn’t as if I’d have run away.

I had nowhere to go.

I had no friends.

And I couldn’t find my way in a forest for the love of me. I did want to ask Robert, though, if he knew where we were going.

The Commander’s bulky silhouette swung on his destrier with a grace I couldn’t match. He seemed to move in rhythm with the horse, without actually moving.

He was a good rider – he was supposedly a tournament champion on both sides of the Alpen. But I knew how it was with rumours.

I was still trying not to fall off, especially when we started going uphill. ‘You aren’t answering my question.’

‘Do you know, princess, for someone who claims she has been isolated her entire life, you are unusually perceptive. I wonder if it isn’t a gift of sorts.’

Curiosity had pushed me to agree to the ride. And the drowning sense of loneliness. But I was starting to doubt that it had been a good idea, after all. I resolved, yet again, to keep my mouth shut, while I clung hard to the horse in any way I could as the path became steeper and steeper.

He turned around, frowning. ‘Don’t cling to the reins like that. The horse thinks you want to stop.’

I glowered at him.

‘We’re nearly there,’ he added, a tinge softer.

We went up, and up, and up, until we reached a sort of clearing in a plateau. The Commander dismounted and I hurried to follow him, landing on my knees. I dusted off the leaves, waiting for him to take a jab at me, but he said nothing, simply took the reins from me and tied my horse.

‘We’re here.’

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘Look behind you.’

When I turned around, I saw it. Mora’s Tower, rising like a challenge in the middle of the pass. So beautifully delineated by the mountain behind, and the cliff across. The stream like a slice of molten silver, weaving between them.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, even though we were, theoretically, not speaking.

‘A point of strategic importance. I told you. This is where I’d place at least a scout if I had to protect the pass. Or gain reports on movements.’

‘You know our kingdom awfully well for someone who has only been here a bit more than a year,’ I commented.

‘And you’re awfully perceptive. As I’ve said.’

I didn’t understand how something that had been my second nature – choosing my words – could simply disappear into the wind.

He sat down on the fallen leaves, and after considering for a moment, I followed his lead. Though I chose a spot at a safe distance.

He can do anything he wants, I reminded myself and my muscles clenched. There was no one I could tell. No one I could complain to.

We were all alone, in a forest.

He drew an apple from one of the pockets and began slicing it with his dagger. He noticed my eyes on him, so I lifted my gaze and studied the clearing. There were four dark blue boulders at its edges, placed at about the same distance from one another.

That was interesting.

I neared one of them and dragged my hand over the surface. Smooth as silk, and a faint glittering trace was left on my hand. ‘Did you know that this is moonstone?’

‘What?’ he said. ‘Unpeeled or peeled?’

‘Unpeeled,’ I said, without thinking.

‘Yes, that’s how I like my apples, too.’ He stretched his open palm towards me.

I hesitated. Every single thing I’d taught myself about navigating the court told me not to trust him. He was only doing my brother’s bidding.

But he would have had a thousand opportunities to harm me, if he’d wanted to.

So I took that outstretched handful and I sat down next to him, nibbling at the slices of apple.

‘Moonstones,’ I said, pointing at the boulders. ‘The ancients laid them in the Sacred Groves. When the Mothers of the Forest walked the Earth, this is where they often met. Or where the people brought them gifts in exchange for the Gifts they had given.’

The Commander sheathed his dagger again, stretched his legs out. ‘Ah, but they didn’t bestow the Gifts on everyone, did they?’

‘There are other gifts, as well. Some have a gift with swords. Some with music.’

He hummed. ‘As for music, how is the new song?’

‘Amusing,’ I said. ‘Though I struggle with singing the words out loud. Less bawdy next time, please.’

‘I could sing the words for you,’ he said casually.

There was a tinge of heat in my cheeks. ‘No, thank you, I don’t like an audience.’

‘How about some company?’

I paused, unsure what he implied.

‘A few fine ladies. To come every once in a while and visit you. How would you like that?’

‘Like who?’

‘I don’t know. Like Anselme’s daughter? Gisele?’

Bloody Gisele. Who wouldn’t talk to me at the Golden Pavilion. Gisele and her coterie.

But then … I supposed coming to the Tower would be somewhat of a punishment for them, too. ‘I think I should like that, Commander.’

‘Robert,’ he said. ‘My name is Robert.’ He leaned back, hands under his head, staring at the sky. ‘Though I suppose as a princess you don’t need to learn the name of all your servants. Clutter your mind with such trivial things.’

‘I know your name,’ I replied. ‘I was the one who gave it to them. To my brother. You know what I do. They sent me out to look for you.’

I knew this was something that I shouldn’t have said, because he rolled on his side in an instant. ‘How often did they send you to pry into my mind?’

My heart started to drum in my chest, in my ears. I should have kept my mouth shut. ‘Once. Only that once.’

‘Don’t lie to me.’

‘I am not lying to you.’ I heard the tremble in my voice, but I couldn’t stop it. ‘They heard that you were leaving the Company of the Lion and Etienne wanted to buy your services before the Guilds did.’

‘The Guilds.’ He drew himself up, standing in front of me. Towering from his full height. ‘You’d also told them about the Guilds.’

‘Yes.’ My cheeks were positively aflame. He saw everything. He wanted to know everything. And I didn’t know if he’d believe me.

And I wasn’t sure why it mattered to me.

Why couldn’t I just shut up?

‘I was forbidden to go into the minds of the Curia. I assumed that you’d been fairly warned. That you’d know to protect yourselves.’

He nodded, slowly. Still assessing me. ‘Yes, we were, but I never knew how well that worked.’

This seemed to settle him a bit. He came down on his knee, his eyes on a level with mine. Holding them tight in their grip. ‘What did you see, Blanche? What did you see when you went into my head?’

I took a deep, long breath. He still bristled at the invasion. Even after all this time.

‘I saw you with your own commander. You didn’t want to meddle between Milena and Genvive. You said that it would cost too many lives.’ Robert’s eyes glimmered with something. ‘You said it wasn’t worth the price.’

‘And that’s what you told them?’

I stared down at my hands. ‘Not all of it. You saw…’ He’d watched me in the chamber of the Curia, when I had to perform. ‘I only told them about the war between the cities south of the Alpen, and how you didn’t want the company to meddle in it. That you might be open for a proposal. I never told them everything. You know that.’

Pick and choose.

That’s what I’d been doing all my life.

Now I had nothing to pick from.

Robert rubbed his face, hard.

A cold shiver crossed my spine, settling in my gut. ‘Do you see why they all hated me so much? It was because of this. I always despised the Gift. I never wanted it. I never wanted to use it for whatever they were using it for. I always wished I had a useful Gift, like Fire-Blazing. Or Water-Twirling.’ The words came unbidden. I knew he wasn’t listening. I was sure that he’d never smile at me again. Never bring me another song.

His eyes were a bit red when he looked at me again. ‘Can people usually tell if you’ve been in their minds?’

‘No. Madame Faucon says they don’t. Not if they haven’t been warned.’

‘What else did you see, Blanche?’

I blinked, considering what to tell him.

Anger shifted in his face. ‘What did you see? I want to hear all of it. No shortcuts. Not with me.’

‘Your mind is a murk,’ I said. ‘Hard to trudge through.’

He bit the inside of his cheek.

‘Some minds are easier, some are harder. It’s as if… You keep a hard grip on your memories. Don’t want to let others in.’

‘What did you see?’

‘I saw a boy in a fighting ring, challenging a grown man to a fistfight and beating him. I saw a boy with no shoes arriving at a mercenary training camp. Looking around in wonder. It was a pisshole, if you ask me, but for him, it felt like the most beautiful place in the world.’ I closed my eyes, trying to remember. ‘I could feel so much, once I reached the chambers, once I trudged through the mud. So much sadness. So much … I don’t know what to call it. I don’t know what it is. And at the very heart of it … I saw a cauldron over a fire, children crying. I think they were hungry.’

It was my turn to look at him, truly look at him. As if the man in front of me and the man inside whose head I’d been in were only now joined. There had been anger, yes. But there had also been so much regret. I couldn’t resist the impulse and I brushed away a strand of hair from his forehead. ‘What does it all mean?’

He smiled, but in a sad way. And for a moment, something passed between us, a sort of understanding, more open and more intimate than a look or a smile between us had ever been before.

But it was gone as swiftly as it had come. He stood up and untied the horses. He stretched his arm back to hand me the reins. ‘Now is not a good time for soul-searching, Blanche. Some other day.’

‘You hate me, too,’ I said, almost too soft for him to hear.

I shouldn’t have cared. It should have been nothing to me, like I was nothing at all to him. Yet, even if I was in the woods, I felt the walls closing in on me, tighter and tighter.

I should have known better than to tell him. One reason to keep people away at all times, I realised, was that they gained power over you. Robert made me like him because he’d brought me a song. I made him hate me because I’d believed him when he’d said that he wanted to hear the truth.

‘I don’t hate you, princess,’ he said, helping me hop onto my mount, mindful where his hands were.

Princess. Not Blanche anymore.

We started the descent in silence. I could tell that what I’d said had given him much to think about. To reconsider.

I could see how it might have opened wounds.

Then, he stopped, and turned to me. ‘You said you didn’t want to use the Gift for whatever they were using it for. That’s a dangerous statement to make, princess. I’d be careful when choosing my words. You don’t know who might be listening.’

‘Is that a threat?’ I said, unsure what he meant.

He recoiled. ‘No. Never. I’m just saying that, if I were you, I’d be careful what I say and to whom.’

My heart pounded, and it wasn’t just fear. He’d asked me to speak to him. He’d convinced me to.

This was what he’d wanted.

I have rules for a reason, I realised. I couldn’t make friends for the same reasons.

He spurred his horse again and mine followed. While we rode in silence, I promised myself this: I wouldn’t break my own rules anymore.

That evening, I dined alone in my own quarters.

GAMBLES

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

We are moving.

Slowly, but surely, Robert’s mercenary company is moving away from Mora’s Tower. The path leads towards both Lafala and Langville, until there’s a fork in the road. One path leads to the Guilds’ bastion city. The other leads directly towards the capital, passing right between the Bencifert lands and the Opal Mountain, where rebellion burns bright.

That’s surely not where we’re going, I think, not that I’d be able to check.

An entire hour must have passed in the carriage Robert has assigned to me, my feet up on the chest packed with my things – one chest, that was all I was allowed to take, the songs wrapped between layers of clothes – before I feel I genuinely can’t breathe anymore.

Henri.

Henri did this.

The last stab of betrayal.

What was he even thinking, delivering us into the hands of the Guilds?

Did I learn nothing in the past two years, about who to trust? There is someone Henri works for, foremost, and that is himself. This is why I was fairly sure he would pick his allegiance to me, find it more important than the allegiance to my brother. But, at the end of the day, Henri picked himself.

I rub my palms on my dress, sweaty and unpleasant.

The heart of the matter is this: in the past year and a half, I’ve been busy brewing a revolution. And that meant having to work with people I couldn’t trust. With people I shouldn’t trust in the first place, and who in turn have no trust, or love for me.

My nephew Charles, for instance. The man whom I taught where to set the kindling. But when the fire had started, it had refused to explode in the way I had anticipated.

We are all connected, but I have failed when it came to connecting the various players to one another.

And I didn’t expect the people to rise in rebellion and lay siege to the Golden Pavilion, even incited by the priestesses of the Mothers of the Forest. Is it truly shocking, though, considering what my brother and Anselme did when they found out about the cults?

In Valserra, the Pretorians and a group of soldiers from Anselmois destroyed the little altars. They seized the people who’d gathered around them, and chopped hands, cut noses. And they grabbed two women with the green fluffed cloaks of the priestesses, and cut out their tongues, so they could never speak of the Mothers of the Forest again. After that, my brother forbade the common people to bear and even own any weapons. But the people took up now whatever they could – pitchforks, sickles, axes.

If only they could be all brought together—the people, Charles’s troops, the Guilds. But Anselme might yet march towards Langville first, to silence the Guilds before he crushes Charles’s troops.

Take the rebels down one by one – is that what my brother intends to do?

Questions, questions, and here I sit, in a carriage, with my arms crossed.

It can’t go on this way. I can’t let this be the end of us.

Because I’ve seen what my brother’s revenge looks like.

There is a reason why I call myself ‘Marchionessa.’ Because the women at Mora’s Tower, we exist at the fringes of society. The Fallen Court is its marquisate – the marcher lands. We inhabit the borders. And because we live at the edge, we have to be stronger. The others may try to erase us from existence, but we will not let them.

This will not be the end of the Fallen Court.

I toss the lid of the chest open and rake through it until I find a pair of riding trousers.

I won’t set anything in motion unless I get out of this carriage. Out in the open air.

For everyone to see me.

* * *

I stumble out of the carriage and ask one of the guards for a horse, as if it’s the most natural thing possible.

He says, ‘Could you please get back in, princess?’ and there I wait, my feet up on my wooden chest, for what seems to be an eternity.

Then the carriage stops again, and the door opens, and Robert pokes his head inside. He looks pleased with himself. ‘I heard you’ve changed your mind?’

I make a non-committal gesture. I refuse to give him the satisfaction.

‘I see.’ He smiles. ‘This way.’

He stretches his hand, but a part of me wants to think that this is an odd, twisted dream and that by feeling the solidity of his flesh, all that’s happening will become real.

I’m not brave enough for this. Instead, I stare at the scratched toes of my boots.

‘Fine, then,’ he says, and moves aside for me to get out of the carriage.

He’s holding something with his other hand – the reins of my mare.

‘Need help with that?’ he says, as I place a foot in the stirrups.

I think about the press of his hands on my body.

‘Don’t even think about it.’

He mounts a white gelding, not by far as impressive as his red destrier.

‘What happened to your warhorse?’

He takes me in, from boot to trousers to my loose riding jacket. My mare falls in step with his horse. ‘Yes, it’s fine, you can ride with me, if you want.’

I didn’t even think to ask if I could ride next to him. I never needed to. ‘I assumed you’d want to know where I am. To make sure I don’t run away.’

He shrugs. ‘I don’t think you have anywhere else to run to.’

It’s cruel, what he says.

It’s also true.

‘Maybe I’ll just start running and see what happens,’ I say.

‘Would you, now? All that planning. All that plotting. You don’t strike me as someone who would run away, Blanche.’

‘Unlike you,’ I say, and watch how my reply sinks into him. How the edges of his smile fall and how his shoulders sag ever so slightly.

It’s a gift, to be able to see these things.

In someone else’s words, A beautiful and terrible gift.

‘I deserved that, I think,’ he says. ‘What do you want me to say? It’s water under the bridge.’

Truly? Water under the bridge?

His gaze latches onto mine. I turn away and study the neatly combed mane of my mare.

Robert leads us to the heart of the advancing column.

So many soldiers, I notice. Many more than when he first arrived in the Red Kingdom, four years ago. Recruiting must have gone well in the Green Kingdom. I watch the badge of his company, fluttering in the wind. The grey background of the banner. ‘You changed your insignia,’ I say.

‘I thought it was bad luck to walk around in the dark blue of your brother’s Pretorians.’

‘I always wondered at his choice of blue instead of red. But who can tell the workings of my brother’s mind?’

Robert slows his horse down. ‘You could.’

I shudder. ‘No, thank you, that is the one place in the world where I don’t care to be.’ If Robert was prepared, how prepared would Etienne be for the intrusion? What would happen? Then I realise what I said. ‘If I could mindwalk again, of course.’

‘Of course,’ he says.

‘Why a brick as your badge, then?’ I say. I’ve wondered this ever since his company struck camp at the foot of Mora’s Tower.

‘A white brick,’ he specifies.

‘Is this detail important?’ Or are you just teasing me, I don’t say.

‘Yes. Very important.’ He smiles again and his entire face lights up and he doesn’t look tired anymore, and the years that have gone by are dust in the wind, and he’s the same Robert from more than two years ago, the Robert…

Who left.

I think, How silly I am. What do I think, now, that we are friends?

‘What about Henri?’ I say. ‘Since you are such staunch allies that he told you precisely what he was about to do and forgot to mention it to me.’

The light is gone from his face. ‘He said you’d be angry. He told me to tell you that he was right to take the risk, and that you’ll see the reasoning, too.’

‘He forced my hand,’ I say flatly.

‘I don’t know the particulars, but so it seems.’ He seems blithely amused by this.

I can’t believe I’m discussing my relationship to Henri with Robert.

But this has always been the thing with us: never knowing how one thing leads to another.

It never, ever added up.

‘He said you worked too hard for this.’

I’m taken aback. ‘By Lucius’s Flaming Finger, didn’t you have an awful lot to discuss about me? And about our latest dealings?’ I can’t believe that Henri has been so forthcoming with the details. And that he has gone to discuss with the Guildmasters without informing me.

I think he forgot about the chain of command in the Fallen Court.

I’m still considering horrible ways to punish Henri, if we make it out of this tangle alive, when Robert says, ‘I think there’s a reasonable explanation for it.’

‘Which is?’

‘We both want the same thing.’ He says this with a sidelong glance at me and, for some reason, my heart starts beating more wildly in my chest.

No, I tell myself.

I’m clever and cool-headed enough to realise that Robert suggests Henri betrayed me because of a mad hope of bringing Charles’s faction and the Guilds together. Trying to solve within days what months of negotiations couldn’t.

The clinging to straws of a desperate man, who loves landing on his feet.

I can see how that would also be in Robert’s best interest. Robert hates to lose, and what chance is there for the Guilds if they stand alone?

‘Aren’t you and Henri fast friends, then?’ I coo.

‘I always liked him,’ he says. ‘Otherwise, I wouldn’t have—’ He clears his voice. ‘We even made a bet last night.’

I grip my reins, hard. I can tell I’m not going to like this.

‘I said you’ll be out of the carriage today, within the hour,’ he says.

‘Did he disagree? Did he tell you that I’ll coop myself up and—’ What? Wait for Henri to sort this out for me, since he took the bloody situation into his own hands?

‘No, he gave you two hours. He said that you’ve become more patient.’

The whoosh of my blood in my ears is unbearable and I try to swallow.

‘You’re growing pink in the cheeks, Blanche. And I can’t tell. Is it shame? Is it anger? Is it a little bit of both?’

I whip towards him. ‘Don’t pretend that you know me, because you don’t know anything.’

He straightens himself. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know who won?’

Of course I would. Of course I’m simply dying to find out. But I will not say another word to him today. No matter how hard he tries to lure me into a conversation.

Robert chuckles, that deep chuckle of his that reverberates in my bones.

‘I wish I could tell you, too. But I forgot to look at the time.’ He says this with such a smirk that I know he’s lying.

He definitely knows who won.

Definitely.

VISITORS

THE PRINCESS

Two years and nine months before the Year of the Red Maiden

No matter what Robert might have thought about me after our last encounter – nothing good, after I’d told him I’d been in his head – he stayed true to his word and sent me company.

Three of them came – Mathilde, who had been my lady-in-waiting for the year I’d spent at the Royal Palace, and Gisele and Amelie, with whom I had studied for years and years at the Golden Pavilion. They gave me the same guarded looks they’d always given me.

I invited them to dinner and after exchanging a few perfunctory words, we seemed to find the contents of our plates much more interesting.

Every time it seemed they were on the verge of saying something, they changed their minds, as if it wasn’t a topic suited for my presence.

I still tried.

‘So you have finished your training at the Golden Pavilion?’ I said, looking to Amelie. I knew that Gisele had finished, she’d been at Court with me in Lafala.

‘Yes,’ said Amelie. ‘Our training is completed.’

I scoured my mind for topics of discussion suitable for young ladies.

I could hardly launch into a thorough discussion about how thrilling it had been for me to be called the Red Maiden.

I could hardly tell them that even if I thwarted my brother on some counts, I did help both his reign and the people on others. There had been things I could say with a clear conscience. With Anselme’s help, an end was put to the robber-knights and their ragtag bands that used to fall upon unsuspecting town-dwellers and villagers. I’d helped with catching some of those loose warbands, and I had given up those names, and the whereabouts of those people, most easily.

But they would have interpreted it the wrong way, as a plea for my brother to forgive me. To use me again. And at the Pavilion, other students had been wary of my Gift.

‘I don’t have a Gift anymore,’ I tried to say. ‘It has been taken away from me.’

Gisele set her amber-coloured eyes on me. ‘We know.’

I wanted to ask what they thought the Gift was, but balked at the last moment.

What other topics were there to discuss among young ladies?

The people who caught their eye, perhaps. Marriage. Even my brother and Anselme supposed that I’d only helped Seigneur Bencifert because I’d fallen in love with him.

‘Are there any … prospects for you? In marriage, I mean?’

I must have put my foot in it, because a pained grimace flitted over Amelie’s face, Gisele looked weary and Mathilde stared right ahead.

It had been months since I’d left Court – which, in terms of gossip and world-changing events that nobody truly cares for outside the Royal Palace, must have felt like aeons.

But I remembered the young man Mathilde was dancing with the last time I’d seen them. Whom she often danced with.

‘Is the young Arnauld faring well?’ I said. Mathilde’s look was one of wild surprise and even fear.

What else is there? I thought.

Amelie’s father had been gravely ill when Etienne and Anselme had found out about my other activities. I could have asked about him.

But—

Chit-chat, a sliver of conversation, and to what end?

Pity, I thought, quite sure that I didn’t want or need it.

There was no common ground whatsoever where these girls and I could meet.

* * *

I counted the days, I kept a tally. It had been nearly a month since I’d last seen Robert, since I’d told him how I’d once used my Gift on him. I’d received the promised books: a stack of chansons de geste and tales of knights and blushing ladies – as if I’d have bothered with the latter. It was the pang of jealousy that cleaved me from these books. I wished I could have been one of those ladies who inspired hordes of knights to faithful service.

And yet, I wondered if Robert had picked the books himself.

I wondered if he’d come again.

And then, while I was taking my afternoon ride – in a pair of trousers I’d refurbished from the captain of the guards, Gwenhael, who was watching me disapprovingly from a safe distance while I rambled through the woods – Robert arrived. His red destrier was in the stables when I passed the mare to the groom.

I made myself slow down as I waited for the men to lower the platform, to pull me back up. I thought about knocking on his door, then remembered what his last words were to me.

So I changed into a dress and beat him to the dining room.

He seemed surprised to see me when he arrived for dinner. ‘Princess,’ he said.

‘Commander.’ I couldn’t help but smile. ‘Thank you for the books.’

He rounded the table and took a seat just a chair away from me. ‘Someone is on their best behaviour today.’

How handsome he is, I thought. That long nose, the full lips. The hard line of his jaw. His green eyes roving over me, taking me all in. Those broad shoulders in the embroidered surcoat. How it suited him.

I wondered how I hadn’t noticed before.

I smiled again. ‘Though I have to say, love stories aren’t quite to my liking. I don’t know if you chose the books yourself?’

‘Oh? I thought every maiden sighed over forbidden love stories.’

I wasn’t even a maiden anymore. ‘Not me.’

He arched an eyebrow in that way that was so his that I dared believe that things were as they used to be. Before I’d told him that I’d been into his mind. ‘How so?’

‘They are not for people like me.’

‘Princesses in towers?’

‘No, Mindwalkers whom everyone fears and hates. There is no love story in the books for us.’ I paused, but he didn’t say a word, didn’t move. ‘We’re not even the villains. We’re the quaint witches in the woods. The forgotten ones. The ones who always end up alone.’

He twisted in his chair so that he could face me better, an arm draped across the armrest. Open, then. We were not enemies. ‘And are you alone? How did you enjoy the company?’

I settled back in my seat. I wondered if he still dreaded the fact that I’d seen his mind. If he was only here at the Tower at my brother’s behest. ‘It was awful. For me. And I think they positively hated it.’

‘So you don’t want us to send them here anymore?’

‘Oh, but please do. Anything to pass the time.’ I didn’t want him to lecture me, though, so I added, ‘And I’m not complaining.’

He dug into his food, obviously in a good mood. ‘I’ve improved your living conditions, then.’

‘You think very highly of yourself.’

He stopped, assessing me. ‘What is it with you today?’

I wondered if I’d gone too far. Why I was as bubbly as a geyser. Why I was so relieved that he’d come.

There were things I didn’t understand about Robert. Things that didn’t make sense. Like his kindness, and how that could be reconciled with what he did for my brother.

His trade was other people’s lives.

If you knew what I did all day, your stomach would turn.

‘How can you stand by my brother when he does all these horrible things?’ I said. And why did you even show me? I meant to say, but I stopped myself at the last moment.

He was taken aback by my question. ‘Why would you ask such a thing?’

It was my turn to fix an unwavering gaze on him. ‘I don’t know what sort of game you play,’ I said. ‘You were clearly unnerved that I went into your head. And yet here you are, dining with me, as if nothing happened. Why?’

He got up and closed the door to the dining room. When he turned again, there was no glimmer of a smile in his eyes. His features were hard, as if set in stone. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because I can’t tell friend from foe. Because I think I never could.’

He sat down across from me. ‘Oh, yes, you could. You could do that better than anyone thought. Yours was a beautiful and terrible Gift, Blanche. I wish you could have used it in a more discerning way.’

‘I thought that was what I did. In the end, look where it brought me.’ I pointed at the white stone around me.

‘You should have told me,’ he said. ‘I would have helped. You tried to do too much. You weren’t ready. You weren’t ready to fight him. Not alone. You needed an ally.’

‘So you’re my friend now?’ I chuckled. ‘You wanted to help? Or do you want me to show my hand, just so you can report back?’

He said nothing at this, but the veins in his throat swelled. Throbbing. ‘This is a very dangerous conversation to have. And there’s nothing I can say to make you trust me.’

‘Should I?’ I leaned forward. ‘Do you know what, Commander, I wish I had my Gift again. So I could get into your head and find out what you’re truly thinking.’

At this, his jaw clenched. ‘You’re alone, princess, because you choose not to trust anyone. Because you think it’s better for you this way. To twist everything with suspicions.’

‘If you saw what I saw … you’d think twice about trusting anyone, ever. Do you know, it’s not a gift, it’s a curse to see what everyone is thinking. To see that darkest part of them.’

We all think horrible things about each other when we think no one is looking. When we think no one would ever know. That was enough to put me off people in general.

I wondered what was the worst thing he ever thought about me.

‘You think I’d do all of this just so I can report to your brother? You have been into my head, and still this is what you think of me?’ He got up, nearly knocking back the seat. He dug about in his pockets and tossed a crumpled sheet on the table.

‘Here you go,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, princess. Take care of yourself. Since you seem to think you’re better at it than anyone else.’

Goodbye, I thought. It was better that way. Without the uncertainties. Better to cut him off not knowing than having to know all the time what he thought of me.

After he slammed the door – so hard that it nearly sprang from its hinges – I took up the sheet.

My own hands were trembling. It was a song. A song from the Bencifert lands.

My downfall.

I read the lyrics, my heart beating wildly, fighting the sting of tears in my eyes.

The song was about a shepherd who lost all his sheep. But he didn’t despair. No, the shepherd said it wasn’t over, not until he drew his last breath.

The shepherd was going to Langville. Because sometimes a kick was just a nudge to go on a different path.

* * *

At the break of dawn, I was dressed in my riding attire, knocking at Robert’s door. Before I lost the chance to fix this. I didn’t know why, but I desperately didn’t want him to go. Not like this.

He opened the door, ruffled, his eyes only half-open. His shirt hung at an angle, showing off the beautifully drawn planes of his chest. ‘What?’ he grunted, and then stopped when he took in my trousers. I cowered before that gaze, knowing that my round thighs, my wide hips, were on display. Nothing hidden by the folds of fabric in a dress.

Do not balk.

‘I wanted to thank you for the song, Commander,’ I said. ‘Very inspiring.’

He scratched his head. ‘Yes, I heard you last night.’

‘You were listening?’ I said.

He set his jaw, but he looked like a sullen child, with his face still swollen with sleep.

I couldn’t help it but grin. ‘Come on, you’re taking me out for a ride.’

‘I am?’

‘Yes, before you leave.’

‘I need a moment to get ready,’ he said, moving to shut the door. ‘Unless you want to come inside…’

I flinched. Had he just…?

‘Better not,’ he said, closing the door in my face.

* * *

I stopped in the clearing he’d shown me the last time he’d been at the Tower. He was clearly surprised by this, as we dismounted and tied our horses. ‘I come here often,’ I said. ‘There’s something about this place… It settles me.’

He nodded, as if he understood. ‘The old magic seeped into the stone. Your blood would feel it.’

There would have been no reason for me to feel it, since I didn’t have my Gift anymore, but I wasn’t there to argue with him again.

I drew out a cloth from my saddlebag, where I’d packed a bit of cold food, and laid it down in the grass. ‘Sit.’

He hovered by the horse, uncertain. ‘Why? Do you want to say some more horrible things to me?’ His tone was tinged with honey.

I smiled. ‘Why? Are you eager to hear them?’

He sat down next to me, his body alert. I could tell. ‘Show me the best you can do. Or the worst. Let’s see if I can take it.’

Fine.

A challenge was a challenge, but he hadn’t reacted particularly well the last time he’d asked.

I can lose a lot if I’m not in his favour. My brother barely gave me a thought, and my stay at the Tower was entirely at Robert’s mercy.

But if I couldn’t peer into his head, there were other ways I could find out what kind of man he was.

I needed to know.

I laid out the food for him, let him dig into his breakfast before I started. ‘That day, at the Royal Palace. When you took me beyond the gates. When you showed me the … Guildmasters. You wanted to. You wanted to show me.’

He looked up as if I’d just punched him. ‘Yes. Though I nearly changed my mind.’

I’d felt that. His hesitation, at the last moment. When he mentioned something about my temper.

But I said nothing, let him go on.

‘I wanted you to see the consequences. To see what happens when you give them what they want.’

I let this sink in. ‘You saw it day by day. What he did. How can you still stand by him? Do his bidding.’

Robert straightened himself. ‘Men like your brother… There’s plenty of them, at the helm. And men like me… They either turn away and close their eyes and let them do what they want – or they stand up to your brother’s ilk and try to do a lick of good. Wherever they can. Whether that is by warning people who work with him of the consequences, or by taking those consequences into our hands. One way or another. The King – I can’t do much more than prevent him from doing his worst.’

I frowned, remembering the smooth way in which he’d tried to calm Etienne in the Curia’s chamber. My brother who saw a threat behind every shadow. ‘Is that what you’re trying to do? Prevent him from doing his worst? How does that work for you?’

He shook his head. ‘How did that work for you?’

It struck me like an avalanche, everything Robert had ever done for me. The books, the songs. The riding out. ‘Does my brother know that you’re letting me get out of the tower?’

‘No. And he won’t, not if it’s up to me.’

‘And the rest? The rest of the things he does?’

Robert took a deep breath. ‘It’s worse and worse. I don’t know how much longer— If the time will come when I think there won’t be much good I can do⁠—’

But what about me, then? I thought. Because there was no mistaking what he was implying. If he couldn’t make a difference, he’d go.

‘Why didn’t you come to me, Blanche? Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing?’

Treason.

This was treason we were speaking about.

Dangerous.

His fingers drifted towards my palm, drawing fire in their wake. I laced my fingers through his, trying not to sink into this feeling, falling deep.

This…

‘Is it guilt? Is it pity?’ I made myself say. His small kindnesses. He felt sorry for me. Maybe a bit guilty. ‘What is it you want, Robert? Do you want to be a mercenary all your life? On whose side are you? I see a man who rooted out his company to stand by my brother’s side. Do you think you’re a hero? An unsung one? Is that how you see yourself?’

That gentle bond, trembling between us for a moment, was gone. Why shouldn’t I have cut it?

I didn’t want his pity.

‘I don’t want to be a mercenary all my life,’ he said. ‘And I’m on the side of the people. I am of the people. I’m not high-born, not a fancy seigneur. Everything I’ve ever achieved, I did it with my own two hands. And there’s nothing harder in this world than keeping my head on my shoulders.’

How poetic, I thought. How full of double meanings.

But I remembered. All that longing in his head. That fear. Not of an enemy, I realised now. Of hunger.

‘A fief, then. Do you want to be a seigneur?’

Robert looked at me as if I’d stung him.

He’d wanted to see my worst, so I let him see it. He’d wanted to see the truth that perhaps he didn’t even dare look in the eye, so I let him have it. I wanted to see, too, the cloth he was cut from. ‘Of course you’d like to be a seigneur. You don’t like doing someone else’s bidding. That’s why you left the Lion’s company. You like to command. Of course you’d like your fief. How about a noble little wife as well?’

Gisele, again. The way she’d leaned towards him, whispering. How they’d danced.

‘Perhaps even Anselme’s daughter. Oh, wouldn’t that be wonderful? What better match would there be?’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘You’re ambitious, Robert. You can tell yourself that you are doing what you do for everyone else, but you forget that I saw it. That iron will, the desire never to be hungry again. You want to reach as high as you can. But take care. The higher you climb, the harder you’ll fall.’

His eyes gleamed with emotions drifting too fast for me to read. ‘I know what I am. And it doesn’t scare me. And you know what you are. But it still frightens you.’ He jabbed his finger into my shoulder. ‘You’ve looked in everyone’s minds, but you’re still afraid to look into your own. What do you think your mind looks like?’

I paused for a moment. I had to admit that I’d never tried to look at myself from the outside.

‘You’re as bad as I am. You want them to love you.’ He chuckled. ‘The Red Maiden. There were other ways, Blanche. But you wanted them to know your name, even one you made up for yourself. You wanted them to worship you.’

He turned around, making for the horses. ‘Yes, you acted upon it. But do too much, and you can’t do anything at all, after that. What do you think your brother would do to me if he knew what I thought?’

‘What do you think, then?’ I said.

He went on, as if he hadn’t heard my question at all. ‘And the worst thing is how you can pity yourself. And that song, yesterday… It was a reminder. Every time you feel inclined to be sorry for yourself. It’s not over until you draw your last breath. You still have your head on your shoulders.’

He strode off with this, and packed the cloth in his saddlebag.

I jumped after him, as if I was on springs. ‘You don’t know how it is. You’re just this great ball of power and fire and look-at-me-how-handsome-I-am. Women hang on to you wherever you go. Whereas no one gives me a second look. No one sees me. You don’t know, you have no idea what it is to be invisible. To be truly alone.’

We were face to face, so close that I could smell the horse on him. And those sweet peach and mint undertones, that smell that was just his. He dropped his gaze to mine. ‘I see you, Blanche. When you were in a room, I could never look away.’

I slid between him and the horse, my chest brushing his, and just that touch, that closeness, made my heart beat even more wildly. I’d told him things I’d never dared say to anyone’s face.

‘I wasn’t scared last time when you told me you saw into my mind,’ he said. ‘Not when I came to think of it. Because you looked, and you know now, and I still don’t see you running away. I see where you are.’

Close.

So close.

Dangerously close.

I should have moved away.

Instead, I laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Where would I run to?’ I said.

He swallowed, his eyes on my lips. Something molten shot through my veins.

And then he turned away. ‘Up on your horse, Blanche. I need to be on my way to Port Lang.’

‘All right, Robert,’ I said pointedly, sauntering towards my mare.

I mounted and shifted in the saddle, watching him lead his destrier in a trot, and followed. I didn’t even know how to touch this yarn of thoughts we’d unravelled.

At least, it seemed, we were again on a first-name basis. It was an improvement.

But I wondered if he knew that I’d called him Robert in my mind long before he asked me to.

I decided it was safer if he did not.

* * *

After that encounter, Robert came once or twice every month. He brought a song or more with him. We talked and we laughed and sometimes we rode out into the woods, but our conversations always skimmed the surface.

Though sometimes I wished things were different. I was always hopeful that I’d find a moment, that I’d be brave and show him what was on my mind, and he’d show me what was in his, and I was so disappointed when we didn’t, and then he left.

But there was always, always next time, and the looking forward to it.

Because his absence was a gaping hole to fill.

As sorry as I was – not at all – to pull the captain of the guards, Gwenhael, from his duties at the Tower, he had to come into the woods with me. I was too terrified that, if I went alone, I’d never find my way back again. And I didn’t think they’d allow me to go anywhere unaccompanied. But he did a terrible job at replacing Robert. Going with him into the forest was nothing like being there with the Commander.

Gwenhael usually sulked and followed me without a word, trailing a safe distance behind me. He was quiet, that one, I noticed as the days wore on, as if to make up for the liveliness of his dogs, whom he whistled back without much fuss.

He led me on narrow paths between overgrown roots, without seeming to do much to guide me.

‘Are you from these parts?’ I asked him, one of those colourless days. ‘You know these trails well.’

‘I like to hunt,’ he said, pointing at the sleek dogs, as if it was self-explanatory. ‘But no. I come from Meranois.’

Charles’s fief, I thought. My watchful, unassuming nephew.

Who was thickening the numbers of his own troops, the last time I’d looked, months before.

I took in Gwenhael’s dignified posture, the neat trim of his captain’s jacket. The careful way his blond strands had been combed away from his forehead, touching the tips of his ears. ‘Was your father a Kennelmaster?’

A very respected position within a seigneur’s household. With children who would have grown up in the seigneur’s home, or close to it, and would have been expected to do well for themselves.

But Gwenhael said quietly, ‘No, my father was a yeoman.’

‘Was? What happened to him?’

I wove through fallen branches, picking my way uphill. The forest was darker, colder, and even the dogs had stopped running wildly around. They were alert. Waiting for something.

‘The same that happened to everyone else, across the Red Kingdom,’ said Gwenhael. He averted his eyes, watching the hounds.

I meant to ask what would that have been precisely, but the hounds picked up a trail. It happened too fast for me to understand what was happening – one moment, they were all around us, and the next moment, they were sprinting between the trees, their powerful bodies coiling and stretching at an impossible speed.

They zig-zagged, drawing further from us, and then pivoted, coming closer and closer. And then, the rabbit shot by my palfrey, unsettling her, and quicker than I could think or shout, the hounds closed in on the animal in the distance. A sharp thud, a leap, a snap of jaws, and it was over just as suddenly as it had begun.

The rabbit hung limp from the mouth of one of the greyhounds. Gwenhael picked it up and stuffed it into a pouch tied to his saddle. ‘Foxhounds would have definitely been more useful in these woods, but I liked the greyhounds so much. They’re so beautiful, aren’t they?’

He fed each of them a sliver of dried meat before sending them on their way. There was affection in his eyes, pure and undiluted, his face relaxed in a blissful expression that I’d never thought him capable of.

And then, it was gone, just as suddenly as it had appeared.

‘We are all in a food chain, aren’t we?’ I mused. ‘Inside the woods and outside them.’

Gwenhael pursed his lips, and I expected him to say nothing, but then he told me, ‘And the farmers are at the bottom of it all.’

I thought about the men and their families whom Robert had shown me on the day I saw the impaled Guildmasters. I remembered what he’d said, about how they had been chased from their lands, when they would not give them up to Anselme.

I remembered what I’d seen in my months as the Red Maiden, the many people who had been chased away from their homes. The ones who had sought refuge in the cities, and the ones who ended up working as serfs tied to the land, on different lands than the ones that had belonged to them for generations. I remembered how the priestesses of the Mothers of the Forest moved amongst them, trying to assuage their grief, their sorrows.

But I still didn’t understand why that was happening.

‘What happens to farmers in the Red Kingdom?’ I said.

Gwenhael sighed. ‘I think we should turn back, princess. It will be dark soon. And you don’t want to be caught wandering in these woods when it does.’

HOLDING COURT: PART 1

THE PRINCESS

Two and a half years before the year of the Red Maiden

When the girls arrived again, I was almost pleased to see them. The silence of Mora’s Tower could be so roaring sometimes, so cruel in leaving me prey to my own thoughts.

It took the ladies a little time to adjust to my presence amongst them, but at least they brought news of the world beyond the tower. There was to be a tournament, I was told.

‘The grandest celebration in the history of this kingdom, to quote my cousin,’ said Amelie.

In the months since they first started coming, I had found out why Amelie had been so reluctant to speak about marriage arrangements when I’d first asked.

Her father had indeed died, leaving her cousin to inherit the title and wealth of Valmons. And this cousin, the new Seigneur Valmons, preferred not to part with any of it, especially not with the share of the dowry that Amelie was due upon her marriage.

No love was lost between them, since he always did his best to thwart her plans in securing a husband.

And Amelie wasn’t one to manoeuvre and beg. Oh, no, that was beyond the little queen that she was.

How self-assured could she have been, to be so certain that fate would, one way or another, sort everything. Without her lifting a single finger.

‘Knights from the Green and Blue Kingdoms have signed up, even,’ said Mathilde.

‘Ah, but we know which one you’ll be cheering for,’ said Gisele.

Mathilde tossed her braid over her shoulder. ‘Who will you be cheering for, Gisele? Who will you give your favour to?’ There was a sharpness in her tone that I didn’t miss.

The favour. The knights asked their lady of choice for a scrap of her clothing – a sleeve or a scarf – for them to drape around their lances when they jousted. For good luck, hoping to win in her name.

I’d never been to a tournament. I thought, No one would ask for my favour.

‘Who says that I will give my favour to only one?’ Gisele popped a grape into her mouth.

We were having desserts, and the conversation was less tense than usual.

‘Gisele likes to have choices, doesn’t she?’ said Amelie, smiling.

‘Will your cousin allow you to come?’ said Mathilde.

Amelie drew herself up straight in her chair.

Mathilde shivered. ‘It’s awful how much power they have. The things they can make us do, even if we don’t want them.’

I realised I might have found a loose thread to pull at. ‘Is this about the marriage with Seigneur Peneric’s son?’ I said. Mathilde had no magic. And her father wanted to see her married into one of the old magical families.

At least I’d been spared that. To be married off just to satisfy someone’s thirst for social climbing. Though some might pity me, as they pitied Amelie, who wanted to find a husband, but could not.

I turned this idea around for a moment. Did I want to be married? It had never quite seemed to be the question, for me. Mindwalking was all that had seemed to matter. Everything that I’d ever been good at. And when that was gone… Then, there was nothing.

Well, there was Robert.

I probably shouldn’t have thought of that.

‘Are you invited?’ said Gisele. To me, shockingly. Though I noted that Mathilde hadn’t replied to my question. That Gisele had taken it upon herself to distract me.

‘No, it’s the first time I am hearing of this.’ I laid my hands on the table. ‘Why would I be?’

‘Would you like to come?’ she said more quietly.

I considered this, for a moment. What it would have meant to me.

I often shied away from social gatherings. What bothered me most was that I felt I’d never belonged at the table. But the tournament itself, with its elaborate dinners and jousting? I didn’t even allow myself to contemplate the possibility. That I could have ever tasted or felt anything beyond this tower. ‘Does it matter?’

‘I could put in a good word for you.’ She nodded at the walls. ‘He could, too.’

I frowned, unsure what she meant.

‘Your … guardian,’ she said.

Mathilde worried at the skin around her nails. And Amelie was still.

‘What does he have to do with all of this?’

Gisele moistened her lips. ‘I think it’s clear to us that he acts as your agent, too.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ My knees grew soft. With the hidden sort of compliment in it. That people assumed Robert cared about my well-being.

But what would have happened if my brother assumed the same thing?

‘He asked me about your instruments, when they sent you here,’ said Mathilde. ‘He knew I’d been your lady-in-waiting. He asked me what you liked to play. So he could bring them to you.’

The blood drained from my cheeks. I’d always assumed that the instruments had been packed by my chambermaid, along with everything else that had been in my rooms at the Royal Palace.

‘He once asked me for songs that have been in my family for a long time,’ said Amelie. ‘I knew the songs weren’t for him. We all know he can’t even read.’

‘I never asked him to do any of it,’ I said, and it was true. ‘Perhaps my brother did.’

Gisele shook her head. ‘If you say so.’

Amelie opened her mouth, but Gisele threw her a warning glare.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘It wasn’t your brother who went to Gisele on your behalf,’ said Amelie. ‘To tell her you are lonely. That she should put herself in your shoes and think if she could find it in herself to spend a few days, every now and then, here.’

The kindness touched me beyond words. And yet all I could say was, ‘Why did he come to you? It was clear you and Gisele weren’t my friends at the Golden Pavilion.’

‘He came to me because he knew that if I accepted, not even your brother could refuse,’ said Gisele, and I knew what she meant. That, coming from the daughter of Prince Anselme, such a request would have been deemed acceptable.

‘Why did you even agree?’ I said softly. ‘It’s clear you’re not my friends.’

‘No, you make that clear, Blanche,’ said Amelie. She met my gaze, her eyes wide and unflinching.

‘What do you mean?’

Gisele said, ‘You’re so tense when we’re here. Always.’

‘Then why do you come? Is it just out of pity?’

‘Why are you so blatantly lying to us?’ said Amelie. ‘Why do you deny Robert is your ally? Because all of us know he is.’

My heart thundered in my chest. Danger, danger. Every instinct in my body screamed for me to run away, to shut up. That was what I’d done all my life: shutting up. Keeping what I thought, what I felt, to myself. I’d tried to open avenues of conversation with them – but never about things that genuinely interested me.

Could they have possibly felt it?

Wouldn’t they have been even more repelled by what truly happened inside my head?

I felt brave. I felt I had to test them. ‘And why do you think I would want to deny that Robert is my ally, Amelie? Perhaps because I don’t want my brother to find out that someone is helping me? You see how I live between these walls. You see how little I have as company.’

I gave them a little truth to hide the uglier one underneath. The one that I wasn’t ready to face about Robert.

Amelie looked scolded. ‘Why do you think you’re the only one who’s keeping secrets? Who is looking for allies wherever she can?’

‘Why do you think you’re the only one who’s being watched?’ said Mathilde.

‘Not by us, I hope,’ said Amelie, her words pointed and sharp.

I never thought that there could be similarities between our situations. What hid behind all the things that they never said.

I took them in as if seeing them for the first time. Maybe they had their own walls, closing in around them. Maybe they were less visible than the ones that Mora’s Tower was made of, but maybe, if I just looked closer, I could see that they were still there.

HOLDING COURT: PART 2

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

Today, Robert’s mercenary company rides on the common path that leads towards both Langville and the Opal Mountain, the fork a few hours ahead of us.

Though no such explanation passes Robert’s lips.

Even riding beside him, I refuse to let him drag me into further irresponsible conversations, after hearing about the wager he and Henri made. To my silence, he replies, ‘Just as well, Blanche,’ and flits to various parts of the column to solve various problems before he returns to my side.

Yes, just as well, indeed. At least it’s quiet. It’s a day of twisting and turning on all sides. What will I tell the Fallen Court, when I finally see them?

Not that I know how to explain the situation we are in.

A guard leads me to the tent where my Fallen Court spends the night, and relief courses through me when I see Mathilde, Amelie and Gisele sitting at a table in the middle of a spacious chamber. There’s a luxurious tapestry depicting Diana, the goddess of the hunt, that separates it from the sleeping quarters. I recognise it from Mora’s Tower, from the chambers that Mathilde used to occupy there.

Diana and her bloodthirsty maidens, indeed.

Though I can’t wield bow or javelin. I favour other weapons. Though look where all that wielding brought us.

I say, ‘Ladies, we are in deep trouble.’

‘You think?’ says Mathilde, worrying the bits of skin at the tips of her fingers.

This is all that remained of the Fallen Court when Charles, the Guilds, the people and Seigneur Gerard Bencifert rebelled against my brother for various reasons and with various agendas that, unfortunately, do not coincide.

The rest of my Court, the other young women who had been imprisoned with us, returned to their families, afraid – and with good reason, it turned out – that a tower in the middle of nowhere might be attacked by whatever faction happened to pass by.

I know why Mathilde and Amelie stayed, but I can’t quite make out why Gisele did. Why her father Anselme allowed her to.

‘Honestly, what was Henri thinking?’ says Amelie, her beautiful features set in a pout.

I’m wondering how they even heard that Henri was the one who opened the doors for Robert. What Gisele might make of the fact that my lover was headed to see her father, to ask for help.

Yet Amelie is looking at me as if Henri’s faults are mine, also, to the last. He’s your cousin, I want to tell her. Why should I be held accountable for his choices?

‘How do you know about Henri?’ I say, pulling myself a low stool.

Mathilde gets up. ‘You can sit, I can’t anymore.’ She takes a deep breath, shaking her arms, as if to release the tension coiled up in them.

My life is divided between before the Tournament and after the Tournament. And so is theirs. Before the Tournament, these girls were my guests, reluctantly coming to visit. After the Tournament, they became prisoners, like me.

Well, except Gisele.

With Gisele, matters are rather more complicated.

‘I think you should ride with me tomorrow,’ I say, looking at Mathilde. ‘It might do you some good.’ She’s wearing a dress, I see. I haven’t seen her in one in a long time.

Of all the Fallen Court, even if we’re not so close, I have probably the most fondness for Mathilde.

When she came to stay, it had been only weeks after the Tournament, and Robert had left for good.

I spent most of those weeks at the Tower making lists of all the people who would find my brother’s reign as disagreeable as I did. And wondering what kind of jailor Henri would make, a man whom I had chosen myself to fill the position.

When he brought Mathild into my new and yet untested existence, I took in the trembling girl, tightening her plain cloak around their shoulders. She didn’t look much like the formidable lady-in-waiting who had served me when I was at the Palace, but alas, in the time that had passed since then, we had both fallen from grace.

The simple truth was this: Mathilde had tried to escape an arranged marriage, to run away with the young man she loved, the Arnauld boy. The Beastwhisperer.

And she had failed.

They had hurt her. I could see that in the way she avoided my touch, and my chest tightened.

She would not leave her room for days.

I pleaded, I entreated, I asked her to make the best of it. I explained there was nowhere left for her to go. Not even Gisele and Amelie were able to help. In the end, it was a mix of threats that I’d send her back to her family and sheer stubbornness that persuaded Mathilde to come out of her chamber.

I set a table in the courtyard. Small steps, I told myself.

‘My life is over,’ she said to me in a flat tone while we watched the guards sparring on the training ground. ‘Well and truly over. And if you can believe me… I don’t know. I don’t know if I prefer this prison to the alternative.’

‘Which would be?’

‘I suppose my father would find a sort of … husband for me. At some point.’

I remember thinking then, There must be more like us. And there must be ways to help them. I told her, ‘Mathilde? This is a prison only if you want it to be. If you’re not brave enough to turn it into something else.’

She said, ‘What is there for me to do?’

I suggested the first thing that came to me. That she, perhaps, should let Gwenhael take her into the woods. I pointed with my chin, where the captain, sans shirt, was teaching another guard how to properly hold up his guard.

His blond mop of hair was sticking in all directions, ruffled and wild. He had a natural grace as he moved about with the sword in hand. ‘He is the one with the dogs,’ I said, unsure if she remembered him from her visits.

Mathilde’s deep brown eyes sparked with fury. ‘If you think that throwing myself into the arms of the next man I see is an answer to my problems, than I don’t care to know what you actually did at the Tower all these months.’

I laughed. Honestly, I couldn’t even imagine Gwenhael taking interest in anything except his dogs. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘If that’s what you think.’

It hadn’t been much of a conversation, but it set the footing for our future relationship, her doing her own doings, and me quietly supporting them.

Which reminds me. I turn away from Mathilde, pacing. ‘Is Gwenhael also with us?’

She would be aware if he is or not. And Gwenhael is a pillar of my Fallen Court, even if he doesn’t know it in so many words.

Gwenhael isn’t a man of many words, in general.

Amelie widens her eyes in a way that suggests I should drop the subject.

‘I wager Robert could tell you, if you ask nicely,’ says Gisele sweetly.

‘I’m currently not speaking to Robert,’ I say.

‘I know,’ says Gisele, again.

‘Aren’t you very well informed about Robert’s moves?’ I say, knowing how that might seem.

But even after all this time, I can’t help but think about those early days at the Royal Palace, how they danced together; of what has been said on the theme of the Commander, in the past.

And what happened later at the Tournament.

Amelie and Gisele exchange a glance.

‘He spoke to all of us,’ says Gisele, eventually. ‘In the carriage. And said you have more to tell us.’

‘Well, I don’t.’ I settle in the armchair.

Amelie is half-seething and I certainly know why. What else is at stake when it comes to Charles.

Gisele is the only one who seems halfway calm. Well, she’s the one who has no real reason to worry, which is paradoxical, if you come to think of it. The Guilds hate, absolutely hate Anselme, but out of all of us, their illustrious prisoners, she’s the only one that my brother and his right hand care about.

Our relatives would rather throw us to the wolves.

Except that Henri has already done that.

Mathilde fidgets.

‘What is it with you?’ I ask her.

‘I saw Arnauld today.’

I take in a sharp breath. I did not expect this. Arnauld is here, with us. And Mathilde has seen him.

After two years.

I try to read her expression. I would have expected unbridled joy. I remember how she used to gush about him, before the Tournament.

But all I can see on Mathilde’s face is disquiet. Deep, wrenching disquiet.

My chest tightens when I think, She believes that someone will tear them apart again.

I exchange a glance with Gisele and Amelie, but this leaves me none the wiser.

‘How did that go?’ I ask, trying to keep my voice neutral.

‘Good,’ she says. ‘He looked well.’

I lean back into the seat, waiting, hoping for her to offer more details. Gisele shrugs, a faint expression of dread on her face.

‘How about Charles?’ says Amelie. ‘What does he think about what happened to us?’

My attention snaps to Amelie’s question, though a thought directed at Mathilde still lingers.

Something is wrong.

Did Arnauld reject her? After all this time?

My heart thumps in my chest as Gisele’s eyes widen at what Amelie has said. It is so unlike her to ask such an imprudent question about my nephew, in the presence of our common friend. Whose father is, in fact, our common enemy.

‘I don’t know, Amelie.’ I prefer not to tell her about the maze of his mind. How shielded his intentions are from me. How I was interrupted last night, when I tried to look. Besides, I’d have to explain to my Fallen Court that I can mindwalk again. No need to stick a hand through that viper nest.

‘Shouldn’t we try to find out? If we are to establish contact between the Guildmasters and Charles’s rebellion, shouldn’t we let him know?’ says Amelie.

I drum my fingers on the table. I can see that the girls have been brewing the same thoughts as I have. That all these disjointed sides have to come together. Which is perhaps what Henri had in mind – I hope, at least, that he didn’t trade my life for a deal with the Guilds.

Though, come to think of it… If my life is the price for peace in the kingdom…

A part of me always knew that I was bound to be dragged down by my brother. To either rise against him or perish with him.

And then, there’s Gisele presence here.

The side she is on. She did not leave us when she could, like the rest of the young women at Mora’s Tower. When the day came, when Gerard Bencifert lit the first fire, she decided to stay.

A part of me chides me for not trusting her, still.

For being jealous of her, still.

Gisele says, ‘What did Henri have to say for himself? Or did you agree with him to deliver us to Robert?’

I shake my head and answer her, so relieved that it can be truthfully, ‘Henri and I didn’t agree on anything except that he should seek out your father. He left last night to do so.’

At this, Amelie takes a sharp breath. ‘You couldn’t have.’

‘It was the only option.’

‘No, it wasn’t.’ Her blue eyes flicker with anger and she lifts her chin. She is one of Charles’s staunchest supporters, that much is clear. ‘It obviously wasn’t.’

I realise that Amelie would rather risk her own life than return to the way we lived before the rebellion. Than go back to her family.

Mathilde turns to face us. ‘Henri seemed to have disagreed.’

‘Henri will receive a mouthful when I see him,’ I say.

‘You should have asked us, Blanche,’ says Mathilde. ‘Why didn’t you ask us, too?’

I take in the weariness in their eyes. The exhaustion. And I know why it’s there. ‘I’m not like your families,’ I say. ‘I wouldn’t force anything upon you. But I am responsible for your well-being. For your lives.’ I glance pointedly at Amelie. ‘And I knew what you would have said. To negotiate with the Guilds, with Robert.’

‘Was that the only reason, Blanche?’ Gisele studies me from beneath lowered eyelids.

I’d rather not think what she believes my other reasons could be. ‘The Guilds have refused to negotiate with us for months. With me, specifically.’

‘But this is different,’ says Mathilde. ‘I think none of the parties gained what they’d hoped for. The Guilds might be more willing to talk.’ Clearly they’ve discussed this among themselves. At length. ‘Unless they want to be caught in pincers between your brother’s armies and Anselme’s.’

Caught in pincers.

It’s one of Gwenhael’s favourite manners of speech. She must have spoken to him, only yesterday, when we were still at Mora’s Tower, worrying about our defences.

I spoke to him yesterday, too, and now I don’t even know where he is today.

‘Perhaps we can all agree that you should ask us next time,’ says Amelie. ‘Before you make any decisions that may or may not upend our lives.’

‘You trusted me with your lives,’ I say. This day has been challenging, to say the least. ‘Before we start tearing into each other, could we just look at what there is still to be done, and analyse what I did wrong, bit by bit, later? Not that it would matter if we all die in the next couple of days.’

Mathilde looks so stricken, as if it hadn’t even occurred to her that it could happen. Amelie seems to soften a bit. Gisele is the only one who seems unconcerned.

I wouldn’t be, either, if I was her. Maybe this is why she sticks with us, knowing that her father is on the other side and won’t allow anything to happen to her. I wonder if, as always, Gisele has her coin on all the horses, to make sure she doesn’t lose the bet.

‘All right,’ says Amelie. This is the best concession I can receive from her.

‘Good,’ I say. ‘Excuse me now. I need to go and talk to Henri.’

CANTOR

THE PRINCESS

Two years and three months before the Year of the Red Maiden

Robert came a few days after my little Court left. I allowed him to find me in the music room. I’d tried not to jump into his path when he arrived, not to appear too much like an eager puppy.

Though that’s precisely what I felt like.

‘An old song from the Green Kingdom.’ Robert laid a music sheet on the table, settling in a chair.

What the girls said during their last visit had remained with me. How they insisted he cared.

My eyes lingered for a moment too long on his short-cropped nails, the flex of his fingers. I wondered what those fingers would have felt like, tight around my waist. Their warmth. How far they would stretch across my back.

I often did.

His gaze followed mine and our eyes locked for a moment. I turned away, flushed, examined the piece of parchment he’d laid in front of me. ‘Is this a dialect? It doesn’t seem like I know the language at all.’

‘No, it’s something much older and more powerful,’ he said. My eyes slid to his and the green in them sparkled like the surface of the sea. He seemed very pleased with himself, for whatever reason.

I shifted in my seat.

‘So?’ he said.

‘I can’t read that.’ I tried to roll out the strange sounds on my tongue. ‘It doesn’t sound like anything. What were you thinking?’

Robert’s eyes narrowed. ‘Someone’s certainly in a mood today.’

I gripped the table. I never knew where I was with him.

He shrugged. ‘I thought that you might like it. Since you’re a collector of songs and all⁠—’

Another thought snapped at me. ‘You were in the Green Kingdom? When?’

‘Someone sent it for me. A lady of cultivated taste. I wrote to her, asking after things like this.’

I looked over to the pile of sheets on the table, scattered next to my flute and my lute. Amelie had told me he’d asked her for songs. But this… ‘A lady of cultivated taste. Did she send the songs from Genvive you gave me last time?’

He nodded, careful. I wasn’t sure he was telling the truth. ‘Does it make a difference?’

I wrapped my hand around my flute. He knew ‘ladies of cultivated taste’. And wrote to them.

Wrote?

Something twisted in my chest. Why did I even care? I was too secluded at the Tower. It had been too long. ‘I think I have to hold court soon,’ I said, even though I just had.

Gisele never told me who she’d meant to give her favour to, and I was certainly curious.

‘I think so, too,’ he said gently.

I rearranged the sheet. He sat still, waiting. As if he knew. As if he knew that I knew, that I could play the song, without even throwing a second glance at the notes. He never did this, the waiting. He usually gave me the song and let me wrestle with it, then ask me later to play it for him.

But the gods of fire and music damn him, he felt that I could play the song. He watched me bring the flute to my lips.

A note, sweet and low, ripped into the air. And without a second thought, I launched into the rest of the song. High and low and high, rippling through the room. High and low and low, the thrum of beaten earth. Scuffed boots marching, the grunts of men walking away from their homes. Stepping into a valley at the foot of a great mountain, forests closing around them. Robert started beating the rhythm with his hand on the table, a thrum of the war drums spurring the men into battle, the low sounds matching every beat.

High and low and high, high as the screech of swords on swords. I saw it. He must have seen it, too. His eyes glimmered with it. The slash and clash, the thump of the bodies falling lifeless to the ground.

He blinked, and the battle was gone, and so was the army, and whatever unseen, distant shadow that we’d let into the music room.

I tried to catch my breath, hitched up in my throat.

‘Why did you stop?’ he said.

I opened and closed my mouth, gazing at the sheet. ‘It’s not finished,’ I said. ‘It’s not done.’

Robert tilted his head. ‘Do that again. But take the fiddle.’

I reached out under the table, without even thinking of not complying. Whatever that was, whatever was written on those sheets…

I pushed a foot to my side to jab the drums towards him, and he watched as my ankle slipped out of my full skirts. ‘Only if you take this.’

‘I can’t play,’ he said, but he was already bending to pick it up.

‘Do what you just did.’

‘I don’t know what I just did.’

‘You’ll know.’

Without even waiting for him to settle the drums in his lap, I launched again with that first note.

The very air shivered with it. Ripping. Ripping back to that place.

Robert kept up. The drums thrummed in all the right places, sending the armies again to war. Every time we played this song, the men went into battle. The pain twisted and ripped into my chest. And this time, I felt her.

The woman who sang this song. Watching from afar, fear writhing in her chest, her gaze cast upon her lover.

The song dipped. Robert beat the drums, hard and slow.

Shields crashed upon shields, swords screeched on hard steel.

And I felt her, still. In the din of battle, how she reached out for him, her lover. She found him in his dreams, in that distant, shadowed corner of his mind. In his wildest fears. I felt her feel him, his pain, his anguish that he might never see her again. The sheer worry for her. I felt her feel his kiss, sent on a distant wind.

Robert thrummed hard again. The song rose. It rose, and bodies fell to the ground again and the soldiers stepped on them, continuing their fight.

And I heard her words. I heard what she told him. The lilting sounds. And in Robert’s eyes, his hand stilled on the drums as my fiddle arched back up into the song, I heard her sweet voice. A voice not of this world. The voice of this hollowed-out woman with shadows under her eyes, reaching out a hand towards her lover’s shoulder.

Pulling him forward in this new world they’d forged for themselves in that great battle at the foot of the mountain, so many years ago.

I laid down the fiddle, Robert’s gaze was unwaveringly fixed upon mine.

‘What was that?’ he said.

‘What?’ I shuddered.

‘You sang with her. You sang the song. The end of it. You spoke her words.’

Those last notes still rang in the air between us.

‘What are you talking about?’

Robert leaned forward, his eyes scanning my face. ‘Oh, you sang. And that wasn’t your voice. It was as if—’ He reached out for his words, swallowing hard.

I slammed down the fiddle onto the table.

I had sung. The voice I’d heard, it had been mine and it hadn’t been mine. It had been ours. And the world had come crashing down around us, around me and that woman, and I had been that woman for a brief moment, worrying for her lover, and together, we’d hoped.

I forced myself up, though my knees were trembling. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said, standing and marching out of the room.

Robert didn’t say a word. He stayed in his chair, rooted to the spot. Rooted by those last few notes, still shimmering in the air, cleaving light with darkness.

* * *

In the evening, he was waiting for me in the tower’s dining room. His hands rested on the spoon, as if waiting for a signal to start eating.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked. I thought he’d left. He rarely stayed overnight lately, called by who knows what errands my brother kept him busy with.

My bloody brother. Bloody in all the senses of the word.

‘I was waiting for you,’ he said, lifting the lid on the large bowl of soup.

‘I can help myself.’ I marched towards the table, shoving back a chair as far from him as I could find. ‘And I don’t remember inviting you to dine with me.’ I levelled a challenging gaze at him. In the end, I was the King’s sister. He was just his Bladehand.

‘I can go.’ His tone was edged like flint. ‘I thought you might want some company after⁠—’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

I poured myself two ladlefuls of soup, slowly. Delicious smells wafted up to me. It was lamprey with cream and garlic.

‘What’s troubling you, Blanche?’

‘Right now?’ The fact that I’d performed some sort of magic in that room. With him. The fact that he’d caught onto it and spurred me on. The fact that he’d seen, felt, heard it.

The fact that my powers were bound and all of that shouldn’t have happened.

Robert dragged back the chair next to him with his foot. A slow, controlled move. The muscles in his thighs flickered underneath his tight breeches. It reminded me of some sort of predator, posing to strike. ‘Sit down, Blanche.’

I bristled.

‘Please,’ he added softly, grazing a finger along the armrest of the chair he was offering me. Almost tenderly.

I thunked down my bowl next to him and we ate in silence for a while, the clank of the spoons on the silver bowls the only sounds in the room. Tendrils of the song wafted in my head. Those last lines, those last lines that hadn’t been on the sheet, those last lines that I’d somehow known how to sing. The hope in the woman’s voice, after they had both come out the other side, unscathed. The way Robert’s eyes had widened, how utterly still he’d been, his fingers spread wide on the leather surface of the drums.

‘That was magic,’ he said.

I knew he meant the song.

I whipped my head back to him. ‘No, it wasn’t.’

‘Yes, it was. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were a Light-Cantor.’

My fingers froze on my spoon. That had been exactly what I’d been thinking all afternoon. But my Gift had been mindwalking. ‘How would you know? You’re not a mage.’

‘Is this why my opinion doesn’t matter?’ He half-turned towards me, as if uncoiling. His eyes stopped on my lips. ‘I think I—’ He drove a hand through his short-cropped hair. ‘A long, long time ago⁠—’

‘Your point is?’ My heart hammered in my chest, its thud a roar in my ears. I could barely hear him above the dim.

He was my brother’s Bladehand. He was there to make sure that I didn’t escape. That I did not engage in any sort of funny business. That I didn’t do any of the things that I wasn’t supposed to do.

Like what he’d witnessed.

He gripped the arm of his chair, as if holding something back. ‘I won’t say a word to him. If that’s what’s troubling you. I won’t whisper a word to anyone.’

I gulped, unsure if I’d understood. ‘Why?’

‘Because it will cause a lot more stir than it’s worth.’ He rose to his feet.

My fingers ached and I realised I’d been gripping my spoon hard. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I hate lamprey. I truly, deeply hate lamprey. I’m going to the kitchens to see if they have anything else for me.’

* * *

By the time he returned, dumping a wooden platter in the place between us, my fear had turned from a roaring beast to a thread, tightening my limbs. I couldn’t eat any more, the garlicky smell a sting in my nose. He’d said he wouldn’t tell. I didn’t know how much I could rely on his word, not when it came to steel on steel, but he’d said, at least, that he wouldn’t.

There was bread on the wooden platter. Some smoked sort of meat, probably game. Hard cheese. I worried some of the ham slices with the tips of my fingers. I grappled for an end of rope that could, at least, give the semblance of a normal conversation.

He beat me to it. ‘And have you been … riding out a lot lately?’

My eyebrows shot up. I wonder if he’d heard how often I went with Gwenhael out into the woods, if he imagined something about it.

Then he mustn’t have known Gwenhael very well. I said, ‘It depends.’

My brother wouldn’t have allowed any noblemen in the tower with me, no matter how much he tolerated my little court.

And there were days… There were days when I’d caught glimpses. The arm of one of my guards, bathing in the river, slashing through the water. The bare torsos of two of them, facing each other off in a fight in one of the training grounds between the stream and the tower. Muscles rippling on a man’s back.

There were days when I wondered.

What was it that my brother was so keen to keep me away from.

It had been somewhat interesting, I remembered, from back in the day when I was still at the Opal Mountain and engaged in that sort of activity with my two-time lover.

‘On what does it depend?’ said Robert, his eyes narrowing.

‘I’ve been trying to remember the exercises they made us go through, every morning, at the Golden Pavilion.’

‘What exercises?’

‘I don’t know what you’d called them. We named them Morgen Movements. Some stretching. And strengthening in arms and belly. A bit like a dance, but without music. Just a few slick moves.’

All the students were to train in matters of the body. We were mages, but we were also fighters. Some of us more than others.

‘It helps with the—’ I waved my hand in the air. ‘Restlessness.’

‘I can ask those fine ladies, if you want. About the movements.’

I couldn’t help but remember what they’d suggested when they last visited me. That Robert was my ally. ‘I think perhaps I could do that myself. Ask them, I mean.’

He reached out for a pile of parchment gathered in a corner of the table, for the quill and the pot of ink, and pushed them towards me. ‘You can start writing to them now. I can make sure that the summons are delivered when I leave tomorrow.’

I took in the way he braced his forearms on the table, the straight column of his back. His scent. Horse and game and something sweeter, hidden underneath all that.

Against my will, my neck, my shoulders twisted towards him. If I could have just— I toyed with it for a moment. With wondering what he would say if I allowed myself to slip closer.

What he would do.

Yes, I had thoughts, and they were much worse when I was with him.

That hunger in me… Was that what my brother was afraid of? That if I acted upon it, something might come unleashed? I remembered with a shiver the exchange between Anselme and Robert on the day they’d tethered me. Chained me like a dog.

But they’d thought I was a maiden, hadn’t they? Which I most definitely was not.

I snatched the quill. ‘Maybe, next time the girls are here, I’ll ask them all to train in the morning. And I’ll sit next to them, without even moving a finger.’

‘That’s my Blanche,’ he said with a smirk.

‘I’m not your Blanche,’ I whispered. My Blanche. The words rolled in my mind. His Blanche. His princess in the tower.

I inked on the piece of paper, Robert is a nosy know-it-all. It was cruel and petty of me. Since he couldn’t read.

But he leaned forward, following the movements of my quill. The warmth of him, so close, made my skin tighten. ‘Know-it-all?’ he said. His eyebrows jutted upwards. ‘That is the sweetest compliment you ever gave me.’

I twisted my head so quickly that it nearly collided with his. ‘You can read.’ This was all I could think of saying. Illiterate halfwit, that was what Anselme had called him on the day they’d tethered me, and the insult had rankled with me. It still did. ‘You lied to me.’

He levelled his gaze with mine, and his eyes roved over my own, in that searching way of his, the way he’d always looked at me, since we’d first met in the Curia’s room.

I wanted to ask if he ever found what he was looking for.

My breath came faster in my chest and I couldn’t tell if I was annoyed, or ashamed, or just wanted him to bloody touch me. To know how that felt.

‘I’ve been taking … lessons,’ he said. ‘At your suggestion. I suppose your words struck something in me.’

It makes you vulnerable, I’d told him. At the mercy of anyone who could read.

‘Ah,’ I said, scrabbling for words.

‘I have a tutor. Among my captains. His name is Henri Valmons.’

I laid down the quill, looking away.

I’m just a little girl, I told myself. Aching for someone to see me. How could he possibly have looked at me in the way that I was looking at him?

And he was a legend. He had a life beyond these walls, and what a life that was.

The women who must have crossed his path, while I sat here, waiting for him. To make my days better. Fuller.

What a fool I was. They should have hired me at the Royal Court, to amuse them with my stupid thoughts.

I planted my hands on the table, ready to rise.

‘Going somewhere?’ he said in a low voice. A rumble. Reverberating under my skin.

‘I’m tired,’ I said.

He laid a hand on my arm. And it was that touch, that single touch, the warmth and weight of his large, scarred hand on my skin, that almost made me cry. I wanted it on my face. Roving across my back, my hips.

I wanted his fingers on my most intimate parts, doing what I did when I thought of him.

‘Blanche,’ he said, the last letters of my name a whisper in the wind. ‘Did I say something?’

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Considering what I should say. I looked at the hand on my arm, and he let it go, slowly.

And I was so bereft of his warmth that I felt I could cry again.

And then, I threw all caution to the wind. ‘Show me,’ I said. ‘Can you sign your name?’

I took the quill and pressed it into his hand. The tips of my fingers caressed his.

I withdrew quickly, my cheeks ablaze, searching for the pot of ink. But that touch still bolted through me.

He was quiet, so quiet. I laid the piece of parchment in front of him, searching for something to do, something to fill the silence.

He smirked. ‘I will.’ He pushed the parchment aside and reached out for my elbow. He drove two fingers up and down my forearm, so tanned and bright with sun. Up and down. Drawing tingles, so many tingles in its wake. Shooting into my spine, and from there, down into the bones of my hips. My gaze met his and I didn’t dare to move, but my lips throbbed, so full of blood.

And not just my lips.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘I want to write my name here.’

I hesitated. I thought about where I wanted him, where I wanted his hand. ‘Not there,’ I said. ‘Everyone will see.’

And without thinking twice about what I was about to do, I pushed my chair back and lifted my skirts up to my knees. Pointed at my calves. ‘I think here might be better.’

He smiled, but there was something of a hunter in that smile. In the gaze he fixed upon my legs. He pushed against the armrest of my chair and, in one swift move, thrust the chair aside and pulled my leg into his lap. He prised the slipper from my foot, his hand slipping from my ankle, higher and higher and higher on my leg, searching. Behind my knees. Touching. Caressing.

I leaned back, my body arching with the sensations he sent through my skin, directly towards that pulsing core of me. I laid my hand on top of his, stilling it on the sensitive flesh of my inner thigh. ‘Maybe here,’ I managed to say.

‘As the lady wishes.’ He pushed up my skirts and I swallowed at the whisper of them against my skin. He watched me, then. Watched me as I took in the movements of his hand.

I pressed his hand between my legs and he groaned, shifting. ‘Blanche.’ The way he said it was part question, part plea.

Yes, I thought. Yes. But I couldn’t say a word.

He picked up his quill, dipped it in ink. His tongue flashed over his lips as he began drawing the R in his name along my thigh. And it wasn’t the scratch of the quill that sent small bursts of sensation into my entire body, but the pressure of his hand spread on my leg. His little finger almost grazing my intimate parts, but not quite. He worked the o quickly, the b with a flourish. I watched his every move. He dipped his quill in ink again for the e.

‘This is by far the most exciting thing I’ve ever written,’ he said. ‘Are you rewarding me, Blanche? For listening to you and learning to write?’

Was that what he wanted? A reward?

From me?

In spite of knowing him for such a long time, for having been into his head, Robert was still difficult to read.

But if there ever had been a time to be bold…

I slipped my other leg in his lap as he inked in the small r and the t. I didn’t spare a glance for his handiwork, my eyes on his face. He put down the quill once he finished.

‘What kind of reward did you have in mind for the finished job?’ My voice was inexplicably throaty.

He looked almost startled. But there was something else, too. A darkness that pulled me forward, leaning farther and farther. So far, that I could have fallen.

But he didn’t let me. He reached out and pulled me into his lap.

I settled across his legs, while he snaked one of his powerful arms around my waist. My hands fluttered and settled on his shoulders. For a long moment, time itself seemed to have stopped as we gazed into each other’s eyes.

Close, so close, closer than ever. I was aware of everything. Of the coiled strength of his body; of each and every one of his breaths, coming faster and faster, like my own. Of my own sense of yearning, balled and wrapped up and pushed aside for so long, now breaking free with a vengeance.

Of the soothing motions of his other hand, making its way up my back, drawing heat in its wake, before settling on the bare skin of my nape.

Of his hands, rough and callused and so strong. Of what shimmered in his own eyes. Of that feeling in my chest, just as bright and shimmering. My fingers made their way upwards, enjoying the warmth of his own skin, the roughness of the stubble on his jaw.

All this time, he kept me tethered to him with his eyes.

His thumb drew a lazy circle on my cheek right before his mouth dipped towards mine. The first brush of his lips against mine felt like soft lightning.

Something burst free. His lips were gentle, and mine became hungry.

His touches were restrained, probing and coaxing, but my fingers tangled in his short hair, dug in his scalp, tilting his head back. I devoured his lips with mine, and his hand travelled lower and tightened on my hips. Pulling me into the hard strength of his body.

It felt like triumph.

Like we’d been waiting for too long.

It felt like nothing I’d ever felt before, like I could never get tired of it. Of him and all the closeness.

I needed more. I needed to know what every patch of his skin tasted like. A heavy sort of heat pooled in my belly and it unsettled me. I wriggled and writhed, rubbing my chest against his.

My lips broke away from his, and made their way down his chin, his neck. He groaned, throwing his head backwards. ‘Blanche,’ he said, and it sounded a bit desperate. ‘Blanche.’

I took it as a plea to keep going.

But his other hand dropped from my face to my waist and slowly forced a bit of distance between us. His green eyes were a storm and his mouth shivered into an expression that I instantly disliked.

Was it regret? I couldn’t name it.

‘We shouldn’t, Blanche. It isn’t right.’

I felt as if he’d taken a hammer to my chest. That wondeful, melting heat turned into icicles.

‘What do you mean?’

He untucked me gently, setting me on the table. He drew my skirts back down, before any of us could take another look at the finished result of his scholarly pursuits. His hands rested on my thighs for a moment, as if he was aware of the shape of his name written on my skin, hidden underneath all that fabric.

His head lowered, his breath ghosted down my cheek.

And then, he left. Retreted from the room without a single glance backwards.

There was a knot in my throat.

I didn’t understand what had just happened. And his name written on my skin was no more than a string of letters that wouldn’t give me the answers I needed.

* * *

On a crisp autumn afternoon, two gilded carriages arrived at the Tower, accompanied by the assortment of guards usually associated with my little court.

I spurred my mare back towards my home.

I’d told Robert I wanted to hold court. Before The Incident, as I’d come to call it. Before he’d left at dawn the next day, without looking me in the eye again.

Though I preferred not to sink into the mortifying shame that threatened to throttle me every single time I thought about The Incident. I tried not to wonder when he’d visit again, and what we’d say to each other.

The truth was that I’d never managed to write that letter we spoke about – since we’d been somewhat distracted – but the fine ladies had come.

As the three young women greeted me with the usual assessing stares in the courtyard, I was still dusting myself from my ride. Brushing fallen leaves off my trousers.

‘What a surprise,’ I told them.

Gisele arched her eyebrows. ‘A surprise? We were told we were wanted.’

‘Who told you that?’ I say, trying to coax Robert’s name from her lips.

‘Are you implying we’re not wanted here?’ said Amelie. ‘That’s fine. We can go back to Lafala.’

Mathilde had a lopsided smile on her face. Of the three, she was the one I liked best. Gisele, I couldn’t trust. I was rather convinced that her father sent her only to spy on me. She was competent in that way, I could tell. She was competent in many, many ways.

And Amelie thought much too highly of herself. No one had dared knock her off the high pedestal she’d set herself on. Not even Gisele.

I turned to Mathilde, pointed at the heavy conical hennin on her head, the veil trailing behind it. ‘You can take that down. No one cares here.’

Mathilde laughed, taking it off and gazing at it, as if in wonder. She was in good spirits. I wondered if it had anything to do with what we’d discussed last time, about the favours.

‘So are you hungry?’ I asked.

‘So are we invited?’ said Amelie, smoothing an nonexistent crease on her richly embroidered dress.

I shrugged. At least, when they were at the Tower, they took my mind off … other things that were troubling me. I remembered what I’d mentioned to Robert, the reason why I picked up that troublesome quill in the first place. ‘How about we stretch our legs a little?’

* * *

I dragged my little court to the clearing. The one I’d named Robert’s Clearing, but that wasn’t something that I needed to share with them.

We dismounted, Gwenhael and the dogs and two of Anselme’s guards waiting at a respectful distance.

Mathilde bent down, quite friendly with one of the greyhounds – her lover, Arnauld, was a Beastwhisperer, I remembered. I clapped my hands, trying to radiate excitement. And openness. And all the things they told me last time that I was not.

I thought, Today, I’m willing to try. To be someone different from the Blanche that I’d so carefully crafted. I’d thought about what they’d said, how I never gave anything away. How being so guarded might have been the very thing that had repelled everyone.

Besides, I didn’t exactly regret being bold with Robert. I just wished his answer would have been somewhat different.

‘So, I was wondering, do any of you still do the Morgen Movements?’ I asked.

Gisele tilted her head. ‘Not really. I hated that part.’

‘I do them,’ said Amelie, straightening the skirts of her dress.

Mathilde pouted at a greyhound. At the edge of the clearing, Gwenhael was glowering. He didn’t like it when somebody else touched his dogs.

I turned to Amelie. ‘Can you show me? I haven’t done them in years. I thought we could do them together.’

Gisele looked thunderstruck.

The greyhound licked Mathilde’s hand as she asked, ‘Why?’

I considered what to tell them. The Blanche I’d crafted wouldn’t have told them anything. But I had to learn to show bits of myself. So I said – quite clumsily – ‘Because I’m lonely and there isn’t much for me to do here except read. And maybe play the flute or the fiddle. And take rides in the woods.’ I excluded any mention of Robert and it felt like a small betrayal. ‘I’m trying to occupy my days.’

Amelie’s deep blue eyes were set on me. Weighing. Considering. And then she rolled her shoulders. ‘This is how I like to start.’

* * *

Afterwards, we lay in the grass, catching our breaths. My entire body felt alive in a way it did after a long ride, in the way it did when Robert was there the last time and…

No, no, no.

Gisele shifted. ‘That wasn’t as bad as I remembered it.’

Mathilde had skipped the Morgen Movements and gone off in the woods, trailing the dogs, who’d caught some sort of scent. Gwenhael had rushed off, scowling, after them.

Gwenhael told off every guard who made any attempt to approach his dogs, but he couldn’t say anything to one of my guests. He couldn’t say anything to me, either, and a part of me always delighted in his vexation.

Above the rustle of leaves, I heard whines and a solitary bark and Gwenhael explaining something.

‘The movements help me settle into myself,’ said Amelie, stretching her arms. ‘And when I feel that it’s all too much and I want to jump from my own skin and run and be someone else and do something, this is what I do.’

‘I understand better than you can imagine,’ I said.

‘I knew you would,’ she replied quietly, staring at the boulders lined around the clearing. ‘I’m so lucky to have my friends. If I wasn’t allowed to stay at the Royal Palace, as Gisele’s companion – I don’t know what I would have done.’

‘You’re so lucky to have each other,’ I said. ‘At the Golden Pavilion, I was so jealous to see how close you were. Everyone wanted to be one of you. Hardly anyone spoke to me.’

‘That’s because we all thought you were a Necromancer,’ said Gisele so softly that I almost didn’t hear her.

I was so horrified by the mere mention of the name ‘Necromancer’ that my eyes went wide. Not to mention how I felt about it being uttered about me.

There hadn’t been a necromancer in more than five hundred years. And the name of it, and what it could do, was almost as terrible as mentioning the Dark Mother – who had, in fact, been a necromancer.

I didn’t doubt that a necromancer might have been born at any point since the Dark Mother, but I did believe they’d been smothered in their crib, or when showing the first signs of such a Gift.

‘Why would you think that?’ I asked. ‘Even if I was one, it’s more likely that Madame Faucon would have obliterated me, and not, in fact, trained me.’

‘We sort of knew that, too, but you have to understand, Blanche, that there was so much secrecy around you. You never told us what you were.’ Amelie was arranging the hem of her dress, which, for once, really was creased.

Fear rose like dark bile in my throat. ‘By Sabya’s Darkblades. If someone catches word about this – they’re more likely to kill me than anything.’

‘Don’t worry, Blanche,’ said Gisele. ‘No one is concerned with you now. It’s as if you hardly existed.’

‘Fantastic, thank you. Being forgotten was just what I was aiming for.’

‘What are you aiming for then?’ she said, her soft brown eyes fixed on me.

The same as everyone else, I supposed. Love. Friendship. The opposite of loneliness. Finding a fulfilling way to pass my time, to feel that what I did made a difference. I say, ‘I suppose you know now what my Gift was?’

Gisele shrugged. ‘Vaguely. Something to do with giving information, which my father and your brother needed.’

Amelie was quiet, but in the way her breath hitched, I could tell she was listening.

‘And what did they tell you about my trespass?’ The urge to pry was irresistible.

‘You’re doing that thing again, when you ask questions, and say nothing of yourself,’ said Gisele. ‘If you want friends, you’ll have to be ready to give as much as you take.’

Fair point. Which they’d already made. ‘My Gift was being able to walk people’s memories,’ I said, without looking at either of them to see what effect my words might have. Before I might manage to spit them out. ‘I used to take from people – their secrets, what troubles them, their hopes. However, no one asked what I hoped for. What troubled me. I was, as far as everyone was concerned, never even there. This is why, perhaps, I take and don’t give anything back.’ As I was finally phrasing what was on my mind, the truth that had always fogged my thoughts took shape. ‘Of course I hardly say a thing. I’ve always felt I had nothing to give.’

‘A Mindwalker,’ said Amelie, her lips pursing. ‘That was what you were?’

‘No one could ever know,’ I said, ‘because people would have been guarded against me. Would have looked out for me. Everything I ever did was kept a secret.’

‘Do you ever miss it?’ said Gisele. ‘Your Gift.’

I clenched my fists. ‘I’m no one without my Gift.’

‘I thought your kind was a legend,’ said Amelie. There was something else in the way she spoke. Unabated interest. Respect.

Coming from her, this was unusual, and gave me a pleasant tingle. ‘I know. There hasn’t been anyone like me in centuries.’

‘But why keep you a secret?’ said Amelie. ‘Your kind were revered, in times of old.’ What she didn’t say was, In the times when my kind used to be kings.

Of course they’d kept me a secret. They’d had their own plans for me. But I was too careful to say any of that.

Amelie went on. ‘Mindwalkers were mouthpieces. Conduits.’

‘For what?’

Amelie drew lines on the ground. ‘The ancient scrolls say you can speak with the Opal Mountain. I read about your sort. They always fascinated me.’

‘Then you must have read different scrolls from the one I read,’ I tried to joke, and made to get up.

Because I remembered.

How time stacked upon itself, at the heart of the mountain. The part of the Gift that Madame Faucon and I had rarely spoken about.

This is the thing about a Gift. It isn’t a fixed, immovable thing. It can be trained to do more than one thing at once, or to do one thing more than another, especially when it’s a Gift like mine. There are many aspects of the Gifts that might seem straightforward. Take Fire-Blazing, for instance. A Fire-Blazer can learn how to wield fire to hurt or to attack. Or they can learn to wield the fire to change their shape into something else entirely, or create flames, to light up a castle at night.

It was the same with my Gift. I always knew it wasn’t limited to mindwalking. It had a Cantor side to it – my recent interactions with Robert had been proof of that. It had a side that allowed me to look into the memories of the Opal Mountain. Into a cave of light and shadow, to a throne with a golden figure upon it.

From between two trees, Mathilde reappeared, two dogs at her heels. Gwenhael was following her, frowning, and I had to admit that I’d never thought the captain was a pretty boy, even with his lean figure, his ruffled blond hair and that pout, until that moment.

‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure about you, but the Morgen Movements have made me hungry.’

* * *

Something had, without question, changed, as we sat down to eat in the courtyard, watching the guards exercising. Amelie was flushed, arranging her chair so her back was to them. ‘This borders on indecent,’ she said.

‘So what?’ I said. ‘Who is here to judge? They’re pretty. Like flowers.’ I cocked my head, exaggerating my examination of two young guards who were at it with swords.

Mathilde chuckled.

‘Nobody seems to mind when we’re judged as cattle, when it comes to suitability for marriage,’ I said. ‘Why shouldn’t we judge them by the way they look?’

‘I know,’ said Mathilde, topping up her goblet with wine. ‘You’re so right.’

Ah, she would agree, I thought. Considering that her father had other marriage plans than the ones she’d have liked for herself.

Gisele snapped at her, ‘We all know what you think of your marriage prospects.’

Mathilde flushed. ‘Why are you holding them against me?’

‘I certainly hope,’ said Amelie, unruffled, ‘that you won’t be silly enough to give your favour to Arnauld, if he comes seeking it at the Tournament.’

There it was. The conversation I’d been waiting for.

‘It is, sadly, none of your business what I give and when I give to Arnauld when he comes seeking it.’

I stifled a laugh.

‘Your father will never agree to it,’ said Amelie, her eyes shifting to me, as if suddenly aware I was sitting with them.

Mathilde bit her lip, realising that she’d said too much.

‘Who will you give your favour to then, Gisele?’ I asked.

She seemed to consider this, swirling her goblet. ‘You may laugh, but in my case, it’s as much a political decision as any gesture I make.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, since I’m my father’s daughter, I cannot appear to favour one party more than the other.’

I thought how they’d said they were also watched. All the implications of their gestures. ‘I won’t laugh at you. In fact, I think you’re absolutely right. People will dissect every single thing you say, especially something as significant as a favour.’

Gisele smiled. ‘I’ve spent more time than I should admit thinking about this.’

‘As opposed to thinking about what you’ll wear.’

Mathilde laughed, a deep, crinkling laugh. ‘That’s Gisele for you.’

‘You know, Blanche, now that you’re speaking your mind, I’m not sure if you’re someone I like or not,’ said Amelie.

I stared at my plate. ‘Said everyone who ever knew me.’

Gisele cleared her voice. ‘I decided to split it.’

‘Split it?’ Even Amelie was surprised.

‘Yes,’ said Gisele. ‘Among five or more young men who come asking for it. This way, it won’t cause too much stir.’

‘Splitting it will cause a stir,’ said Mathilde.

‘Yes, but less than if I give it to a single man.’ Gisele splayed her fingers and began counting on them. ‘One for Valmons.’

Amelie rolled her eyes when her cousin was mentioned. The one who wouldn’t let her marry.

‘My friend, you know this is the wise move to make,’ said Gisele, noticing. ‘Though I don’t particularly like it.’ She went on counting. ‘One for Prince Louis of the Blue Kingdom.’

I whistled. ‘Blue Kingdom, as well. Fancy.’

‘Keeping good relationships with the neighbours.’ Gisele blushed. ‘One for the Goderic boy, to keep my father’s seigneurs happy. And one for the Commander.’

I tried not to react to this. But ice flowed into my stomach when I heard her words. So my suspicions had been correct. There was something going on between her and Robert. Why else would she have given him her favour? ‘A mercenary?’ I said. ‘Won’t the others feel offended?’

‘I have to pick someone from the household,’ she said, and I didn’t dare look into her face to see if she was honest or just finding an excuse.

Of course, Robert had an entire life I didn’t know about at the Royal Palace when he wasn’t at the Tower.

‘He won’t be a mercenary, though,’ said Mathilde. ‘The King is making him a seigneur on the second day of the tournament.’

Ice. I felt more ice, freezing my limbs. I’d told Robert, not long ago, that this was what he wanted. To be a seigneur.

He never disputed it.

‘He’s to receive the Bencifert lands,’ said Mathilde.

The Bencifert lands.

My downfall.

The reason I was at Mora’s Tower.

What an interesting omission on Robert’s part, to forget to tell me he wouldn’t be a Bladehand anymore. That soon he wouldn’t have a reason to come to the Tower at all.

‘But she must already know this,’ said Amelie.

I shuddered. ‘As opposed to what all of you think, we’re not fast friends. I knew nothing of this.’ I lifted my head, challenging them to confront me.

‘Oh,’ said Amelie.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘So.’

Gisele gave me a curious look, as if something that hadn’t made sense before had suddenly become clear.

I was desperate to turn their attention away from me. Not to let them consider why, exactly, I was so dumbfounded. Perhaps even somewhat devastated.

I looked to Mathilde, quickly driving words through the uncomfortable silence. ‘Let me give you a piece of advice. If you want someone more than your family wants him, just tell him to steal you. Get married. I’m not sure if you’re acquainted with the part of our kingdom’s laws which says that if you don’t protest against the marriage, and don’t ask for it to be annulled, there isn’t a lick your family can do about it, no matter how much they hate it.’

GHOSTWALKER

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

There is something about me that only the Fallen Court knows. And one other person, beside them.

It’s like mindwalking, but the opposite of it. It’s a hidden side of the same coin.

It’s called ghostwalking, I’ve been told, but how I discovered that I could do it, and the particulars of who helped, are not things that I care to remember today.

I take in the tapestry hanging in the tent, the tense faces of the women surrounding me. I need to do this. They need me to do this, today. To find out where we are.

I lean against the hard wood of my seat, my hands pressed to my sides. Readying myself.

‘Perhaps you should change,’ says Mathilde, fully aware of what I’m about to do.

Which is projecting an image, a shadow of myself in a completely different place. Walking it, as if I was truly there, without touching anything.

I dust off my trousers. ‘No, I think this might be better. I could go to Langville as a messenger boy.’

‘You’ll need something to cover your hair with,’ says Gisele, and in the blink of an eye she finds something in the tent that looks remotely like a cap, and a folded piece of parchment.

I smile at her, and I hope she sees how grateful I am that she is here, before I close my eyes. And I am gone.

I’m not sitting in a tent anymore, I’m already in Langville.

I remind myself, Henri, and start walking towards the Guilds’ Houses.

The city is shuttered and very few people are outdoors at this time of evening, which is unusual, to say the least, but I suppose I have to consider the unusual times we live in.

I think about change. I think about the Mathilde I first met at the Royal Palace, the Mathilde of easy smiles and easy retorts for the young men who circled her. And I think of the Mathilde who came out of the woods close to Mora’s Tower, followed by Gwenhael and the greyhounds. The way she barked her orders at them.

And yet. The way she tensed, today, when I asked if he was with us. They were such good friends. What they did in the woods was never up for questioning, with Gwenhael being so Gwenhael, so quiet and morose.

I never looked closely at the two of them, because there was so much I needed to look to.

And Arnauld… What happened with Arnauld?

As I rush on the cobbled streets, I make a note to pry into the matter. Though I know already that Mathilde would hate it.

I pass by burnt sanctuaries to the Mothers of the Forest at the larger crossroads. Anselme left the debris in place as a warning. As a reminder of what his wrath might do.

I hurry past the destroyed altars and towards the riverbank. This is the quarter the Guilds’ Houses are in. I slip into the courtyard of the Weavers’ Guild House, and spot a female servant, running about. I tell her I have an urgent message. In this shape, I can look like a normal person, if I’m careful enough. And even though I don’t have a sense of smell or taste, I can hear and speak.

Two things I have boldly used to the Fallen Court’s own advantage.

The servant says, ‘You’ll have to ask someone else.’

‘It’s very urgent,’ I say, ‘and the Master will be livid if he doesn’t receive it on time.’

It’s baffling even to me, sometimes, what a skilled liar I’ve become. I wonder how it never occurred to me that I could do so before that dinner at the Royal Palace when I lied to my brother’s face.

The woman decides to lead me into the house and I’m so, so careful not to touch anyone or anything that would show there’s no material substance to myself in this shape. In the end, one of the liveried men tells me that their master is up at the Tanners’ Guild House and opens the door for me, though it’s not really necessary.

Nothing is an obstacle to me while I’m like this. I can move even through stone. Yet appearances matter, so I thank him and go on my way.

The man straightens, as if remembering, ‘And on whose behalf did you say you were bringing the message?’

This answer is easy.

‘On behalf of the Fallen Court.’

* * *

Once I reach the Tanners’ Guild House, I find that Henri and the Guildmasters are indeed gathered there. The House is an impressive building made of stone, with dark wooden beams and a roof so slanted that I wonder if you’d have to walk on all fours in the corners of the rooms on the upper two floors.

In the cavernous hall on the ground floor I catch a glimpse of the enormous, heavy table where all the Guildmasters have gathered. I hear the booming voice of Berengar, the Master of the Tanner’s Guild. His brother had also been a Guildmaster – one of those who had ended up on a stake in the Fischermarket in Lafala.

I catch a glimpse of Henri’s shoulders, his fine hand as it rests on the table, his long fingers curling, the edge of his wrist, and something soft fills my belly, even though I try to remind myself that I should, in fact, be angry with him.

He is skilled, Henri, and cunning, and this is what brought him here, in this house; even if these are the same things that made him betray me. It’s like hating a wolf for hunting and killing the sheep.

But, alas, I’m certainly not a sheep. Nor do I wish to be.

A servant passing by asks me what I want and I tell him it is to inform Commander Henri Valmons that I have an urgent message for him which I’d like to convey in private.

‘From whom?’ says the servant.

‘From the camp,’ I say, staring into his eyes in that unflinching way that makes it clear that I mean business. ‘Could you lead me to a private room now, please? I think it would be very unfortunate if someone saw me.’

The servant complies and leads me to an audience room with a desk and a few chairs and not much else, except wood-panelled walls. I’d like to lean against the wall, crossing my arms, in a posture that shows that I’m relaxed, but I know I’d probably fall through it.

When I discovered the Gift of Ghostwalking, it took me days to master the art of hovering just a fraction of an inch above the ground, not to seem as I was floating and scare the wits out of anyone I encountered.

The door opens and Henri stalks into the room, his eyebrows bunched, his button nose pinched in concentration. My heart thuds in my chest watching that pretty face, and at the same time I can’t believe how he told me he was about to do one thing, and went on to do precisely the opposite.

I can’t believe that this is the man who would gamble with my life.

His eyes widen when he sees me. He rushes towards me, taking my hand – which is just as substantial as air – before he realises that I’m my ghostly self.

‘You’re here,’ he says, and doesn’t even try to contain his smile.

‘I wouldn’t be so pleased about that if I were you,’ I say. ‘I think you have some explanations to give.’

His smile turns sly and he says, ‘I’m not sure I do. On the whole, I’m rather pleased with how things are turning out.’

This is enough to twist everything in me towards anger. I liked his ruthlessness, because I knew Henri could navigate this world. But even I know where to draw a line. ‘You lied to me,’ I say.

That bond of trust between us is trembling.

Though Henri and I always seemed to find it so easy to speak, trust had been hard-earned between us. And it took me almost nine months after the Tournament to realise that I was actually happy to see him when he came to the Tower.

During that time, he had brought many women for various trespasses perceived as such by their families.

But the woman who came down from the carriage on the day when I decided to trust Henri, clutching her silver-grey Valmons mantle around her, was Amelie.

I would have thought she had just come to visit, had it not been for the defeated look on her face.

Henri slung an arm around her shoulder, protectively, and I felt the pang of something before I told myself, He’s her cousin. He’s known her all his life.

I stopped a foot from them, unsure. Amelie lowered her eyes to me, taking in my plain clothes. I had just come back from ghostwalking in Port Lang, and I always donned unassuming dresses to do that. Her chin lifted in that queenly way of hers, as she looked down on everyone, and regretfully, I became less concerned about her plight than I had been a moment before.

Henri fought back a grin.

‘Amelie,’ I said, ‘What a pleasure to see you.’

‘I’m sure the pleasure is all yours,’ she said and Henri stiffened at this, letting his arm drop.

‘What is she in for?’ I said, perhaps more harshly than intended.

‘My dear brother found that Amelie was catching too many eyes at Court.’

She flinched at this and I felt sorry for her again. To be thrown into this desolate place, just because she was young and pretty and wanted a husband.

And since the young Seigneur Valmons and Etienne were such fast friends…

Oh, Etienne did love to do his friends favours.

‘I’m sorry,’ I murmured. ‘But perhaps you’ll find that Mora’s Tower isn’t such a hopeless place as it was.’

Amelie looked around. Three women embroidered at a table in the courtyard. Another, above us, hung out sheets for airing. Behind us, Mathilde and Gwenhael were emerging from the woods, surrounded by a pack of worn-out greyhounds.

‘So it seems,’ she said.

‘Come on,’ I said, brisker, ‘let’s get you settled in. I have no more spare rooms, but you can double up with Mathilde tonight, until we can work out an arrangement.’

I headed for the platform. Henri and Amelie followed, their arms linked.

‘I hope you don’t have too many things,’ I said. ‘Mora’s Tower is now crawling with them. I said last time to Henri that my brother should consider building another tower just for the bric-a-brac everyone brings with them.’

‘This is Blanche actually telling you that she can’t wait to see what you brought. She’s generally very fond of books, but there have been occasions when a nice throw pillow was known to cheer her up,’ said Henri.

I scowled at him, even though I didn’t mean it.

I did like the things. I liked to stumble on them. I liked to touch them. And, most of all, I liked it that there were so many of them by then that you couldn’t see the white stone of the tower underneath.

‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘Tell my brother that I have no more room. If he wants to send someone else here, he should back it up with another building.’

‘Noted,’ he said, donning again the serious face of the commander of the Pretorians.

We stopped at the levered mechanism, analysing it as if it had grown wings.

‘Who’s first, then?’ I said.

Henri helped Amelie onto the wooden platform. ‘We’ll be with you in a moment. You know how this goes, don’t you?’

She nodded.

There had been one time when she and Gisele and Mathilde had come here, to provide some sort of consolation.

Now I was that consolation.

I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about it.

Once Henri pulled at the bell, signalling that they should bring Amelie up, I took him in again. There was a rush of something, like water foaming in a waterfall.

It had only been nine months since the Tournament. Nine months since he’d become the Commander of the Pretorians, in Robert’s stead. I repressed that thought, and said, ‘You know, you could let me know a few days in advance that someone is coming. It would give me time to prepare.’

Henri grinned. ‘What, and miss that look on your face when you see who it is, and when you scramble to make sleeping arrangements? I couldn’t miss that.’

‘You like to surprise me,’ I purred in a way that wanted to be false, but felt so true.

‘You like the rush.’ His grin became wider.

I tilted my head, not confirming, but not disputing, either. ‘Seriously. Tell him it’s enough. They’re tetchy as it is, without having to share chambers.’

‘And how do you suggest I convey this to your brother?’

Above us, the platform came to a halt.

‘Oh, make it up, concerning the safety and not being able to look after so many prisoners something-something. He won’t know the difference, anyway.’

He appraised me in a deliberate way. ‘Something-something. Yes, I wager your brother would be thrilled.’

I huffed a laugh.

‘If there’s anything I like here, it’s that I don’t have to see his face every day anymore.’ I stopped, nearly biting the tip of my tongue, observing.

Henri smirked, and it seemed like he was about to say something, but the platform had returned and I climbed on before I found out what it was.

We squeezed onto the wooden structure, sitting so close, but not quite touching. I made myself look ahead, disbelieving how I had allowed myself to get carried away. I could have gone up with Amelie and let him follow us, yes – it would have been the right thing to do – but I was so looking forward to speaking to him…

I glanced out of the corner of my eye, noticing he had gone still. He wasn’t smiling anymore, he was watching me with intent. I turned my head, just slightly, and our eyes locked.

I remember thinking, He’s so pretty.

And so close. I had to extend a hand, and my heart was drumming in my chest, thinking, What if. What if I did just that, when he moved, just imperceptibly, and his fingers grazed my wrist.

I took in a sharp breath as the tingles buried themselves deep into my skin. He cocked his head, slightly, as if asking, More? when the platform abruptly came to a halt, making us shudder. I was thrown against him and he laid a hand on my arm, stilling me. I looked up to him again, but the men on the keep’s floor were untangling the net and I was reminded that we were far from being alone.

I stepped down briskly and took Amelie’s arm. ‘The dining room first,’ I said, leading her. ‘Just until they bring up your things.’

Something had shifted with Henri when I had glimpsed merely the possibility of it. And I let him in because I thought I could trust him.

Until he betrayed me yesterday.

‘The Guilds are open to discuss matters with Charles. Once Robert’s army arrives and secures Langville,’ he says, pulling himself a chair. ‘For now, I claimed the city in the Guilds’ name, using the Pretorians under my command.’

Clever man, I think. But he knows it. He seems pleased by this, and that incenses me.

‘We have matters to discuss,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘And I will apologise to you. And we will discuss it at length. But now, we need to speak to Charles. Swiftly. And you’re the only one who can go back and forth quickly enough.’

Ghostwalking, he means.

Ghostwalking into Charles’s camp and passing on messages between him and the Guilds.

Henri has it all sorted out.

By Lucius’s Flaming Finger, my head is on fire.

Doesn’t he know how difficult it is to work with Charles? ‘You’re not even trying to apologise.’

‘When Robert arrives and secures Langville for the Guilds, they’ll have to think about their next steps. I’m trying to help them see that it’s impossible for them to hold an independent position within the Kingdom. While trying not to meddle in the rebellion.’

I throw my hands about me in exasperation. ‘Henri, by Sabya’s Darkblades, are you even listening? I’m livid. You went against my wishes. The ones of the Fallen Court. You manipulated me. You lied.’

I hate it, hate it, hate it that he completely ignored what I asked him to do and did what he thought was best.

Henri pouts. ‘Against the wishes of the Fallen Court? Is that so, Blanche? Did you tell your friends what you were planning to do? What did they make of it?’

There isn’t a single answer that I could give him and that wouldn’t damn me, so I stay quiet.

And he knows this.

Sometimes, I wish he weren’t so smug.

‘I thought as much,’ he says. ‘I will not apologise, not yet. If we end up dead, then, perhaps. But everything we’ve ever worked for... ’

I knew he was calculating. Merciless. ‘Do I even matter to you, Henri, or am I just means to an end?’

His smile breaks at this. ‘Blanche, how can you even ask this?’

‘It wouldn’t matter if the Guilds⁠—’

‘I gave them a gift, Mora’s Tower. I am the High Commander of the Pretorians, still, so I used them to take the city for The Guilds. The Guildmasters owe me on quite a few accounts.’

‘But my Fallen Court. Gisele, and Amelie and⁠—’

Henri snorts. ‘Blanche, do you have an ounce of patience?’

I narrow my eyes.

‘If you did,’ he drawls, ‘I’d tell you that Amelie is in no danger whatsoever. In fact, the Guilds need her.’

I cross my arms, trying very hard not to interject.

He clears his voice, for increased effect. ‘The Guilds want me to rally the seigneurs to my side and against my brother. Against Etienne. Claim Valmons for my own.’

If my ghostly self needed to breathe, I’m sure the breath would have been knocked out of me.

Valmons. The second province in the Red Kingdom. Larger than Meranois, even, and only dwarfed by the now gargantuan extent of the Anselme lands.

Valmons, that controls Port Lang, the most important trading centre of the kingdom. Once, the pride of the Guilds.

‘Amelie is an asset,’ he goes on. ‘She’s well-loved in Valmons. And I have no doubts she’ll choose to support me against my brother.’

If I even mention Charles’s name, and how Henri suggests we help his cause, Amelie would jump at it. And by the way Henri looks at me, he knows this, too.

There are things that pass between us that don’t need words. It’s not just feelings, it’s the way we see things, Henri and I. The way we can work together.

Well played, I have to concede.

Wherever this might leave me.

‘It is all very nice, but these things will need time. Do we have that time?’ I ask. You can’t raise a fief overnight, can’t have people strike sides with just the snap of a finger. ‘Charles has perhaps days to make a final move at the gates of Lafala, before Anselme arrives and crushes him. And with just a company of mercenaries, I don’t think that the Guilds⁠—’

‘I know,’ he says, softer. ‘I knew you’d see how important it was to go back and forth between Charles and the Guilds. Swiftly. And with me going to Valmons, you’ll need to take care of the negotiations.’

‘The Guilds won’t trust me,’ I say. ‘They never will.’

‘The Guilds would trust you if you were my wife.’ His voice is barely a whisper.

He’s nervous. It’s in the way he bites his lip. In the way those blue eyes of his shimmer.

‘You’re asking me to marry you,’ I say, and it comes out flatter than I meant it to. ‘You want to marry me, because it will make everything in your plan fall neatly into place.’

And although I know it’s a good plan – it’s the best one that we could expect in these circumstances – although I know it’s beyond reasonable, something inside of me arches and rears like a horse whose reins are being put under too much strain.

I don’t want to marry him because I have to.

He senses this. Stretches out his hand. ‘I know that you can’t take my hand, but I’d still like to offer it to you, Blanche. There’s no other woman whom I’d want to be my wife. Not one. I’ve said this to you, one way or the other. And you led me to believe you felt the same. We can marry as soon as the mercenaries bring you to Langville. I don’t understand why you’re balking.’

I let the weight of what he said sink into me. I like so much being with him. I want to be with him. It’s that companionship, the feeling that there is much between us that we could say, but that we don’t always have to.

And yet…

‘I don’t want to,’ I say, ‘because you’re making me. Because you feel you have to.’

He takes in every single crease on my face. ‘Is this all there is to it?’

‘Do you even want me, or do you want what I can do for you? My Gifts?’

He frowns. ‘Blanche, I don’t know how anyone would be able to tell apart one from the other. You are your Gifts. And I want everything.’

‘If I was just the sum of my Gifts, I would have been nothing after my brother had my abilities bound and tossed me into Mora’s Tower.’

‘Were you really nothing? That wasn’t what I saw the first time I came to the Tower.’

My chest squeezes. I wasn’t lost to nothingness anymore because someone had clawed me out of it, visit by visit. Kindness by kindness. Harsh truth by harsh truth. If Henri had found me in the first days of my imprisonment at Mora’s Tower, could he have done for me what Robert did?

For a long time I haven’t allowed myself to think about Robert. But he’s unavoidable, and his name hangs now unspoken between me and Henri. I couldn’t possibly ignore Robert – he must be merely feet away, in a different tent, from my physical body that I left with his army’s encampment.

Henri clenches his jaw, even if I’ve said nothing in reply to his statement. ‘I see. Perhaps I’d misjudged. Perhaps I shouldn’t have left you alone with…’ His lip curls. ‘The mercenaries. Perhaps I should ride out from Langville and meet you.’

My eyebrows shoot up. Has it come to this? He doubts me? ‘There’s no reason to,’ I snap. This is illogical. And his plan does have a head and tail. ‘We worked so hard for this.’

His gaze is still assessing when he says, ‘We did, didn’t we?’

I’m a bit scared of what we’re prodding at. ‘I’ll go to Charles, then,’ I concede. ‘The Fallen Court must be waiting for me.’

‘Where are you now? Physically?’

‘We’re coming. We’re camping somewhere not far from the crossroads.’

‘Did you⁠—’

I have a feeling that I don’t want him to ask the next question. Or that I wouldn’t be able to answer truthfully – not even towards myself.

Mercifully, Henri shakes his head. ‘Be careful. I don’t think he will like the idea of you pulling strings behind his back.’ Robert. ‘He’s proud in that way.’

I know he’s right. He wouldn’t like it if he knew I was here. And I wonder if Henri was about to ask if I rode out with Robert today, or if I waited in the carriage.

I remember the wager they made. And I don’t even want to know who, after all these years, knows me better. Who knows the inner workings of my mind – and of my heart.

I feel like I don’t even know myself.

SUMMONS

THE PRINCESS

Two years and two months before the Year of the Red Maiden

After my court had packed up and gone back to the Royal Palace, I sought distractions. I swam farther, faster in the river; I went on longer, harder rides. Gwenhael shadowed me. ‘Don’t worry, if a wolf eats me, I think my brother would be more likely to commend you,’ I told him when he kept following me into the woods.

But the white walls grew tighter around me, and I was happy even with the quiet company. Gwenhael and his dogs trailed me for hours and hours. I told him that the Mothers of the Forests were returning. I wondered out loud if, should we have walked deep enough in the heart of the forest, we could have encountered one of them. One of the real Mothers, with their earth-magic, and the ability to turn the crops, not just one of their priestesses who’d started roaming the Red Kingdom again.

‘Perhaps. They’ve never left us,’ said Gwenhael in a soft voice.

I turned around, surprised to have startled him out of his silence. I tried not to show it. ‘What do you mean?’

‘This land, all of this, it used to belong to the Mothers and their people. The Mothers were here even before Sabya herself. And the people never forgot them.’

I eased my mare into a slower pace. ‘The people still pray to them?’

‘Always.’

I let this knowledge sink into me. That made sense. It explained why the yeomen who had been driven out of their lands had so easily sought solace with the priestesses. How far the seigneurs had drifted from the people.

The mages had always revered two figures above anyone else: Sabya and the King of Kings, Lucius. In other kingdoms, there were priests who guarded this sort of knowledge, but all we had were the scholars and the Golden Pavilion.

The Red Kingdom has no temples to speak of. There had been none since Darg, the Dark Mother’s general, destroyed the beautiful places of worship that dotted the Red Kingdom, some of them housed in converted Romannhon temples.

According to the legends, after this, Sabya said that she didn’t need marble buildings for the people to honour her. That we worshipped her by learning to wield our Gifts at the Golden Pavilion, to protect the Three Kingdoms from outer threats. And that’s what the young men with powers did at the magic school – they were trained as fighters. The girls, not so much.

People remembered Sabya as someone practical.

But then, the Blue and Green Kingdom distanced themselves from us, the magic seemed to be contained in the Red Kingdom more than anywhere else, and, in time, the Golden Pavilion became quite unconcerned with the Mothers of the Forest.

‘People say, if we pray hard enough, they will come to our aid,’ said Gwenhael softly, with a grimace that told me that he knew he’d regret this conversation later.

I had so many questions. How the common folk worshipped the Mothers of the Forest. What prayers they said.

How come I didn’t know any of them.

I settled on the most burning question. ‘What sort of aid do the people need, exactly?’

I’d seen the effects of my brother’s reign.

But I didn’t know what would help us all out of this impasse.

I looked back to Gwenhael, his face shadowed by confusion. Or perhaps indecision.

‘It’s not as if I’d tell,’ I whispered. ‘I don’t have anyone.’

He sighed. ‘The land is being taken away from the people. The Mothers have seen and they have heard and they are coming to right the wrongs.’

‘Your father?’ I said.

He nodded.

‘What happened?’

‘The same as it happens throughout the kingdom.’

This was what he’d told me the last time I’d asked, but this time, I was determined to push further. ‘They’ve been driven out. How?’

‘It’s clever, in fact,’ he said and I had the feeling that I was drawing his words out one by one, with pincers. ‘It started in your father’s reign, and all the seigneurs do it now. They say it was Anselme’s idea.’ At this, he spat on the ground.

Anselme. He’d been my father’s adviser, too, as part of the Curia. The high council of the kingdom. Which consisted of a few of the foremost seigneurs. Amelie’s cousin was part of the Curia, I realised. The one who didn’t allow her to marry.

‘What are they doing?’

‘Raising the taxes on the harvests.’ Gwenhael’s words were clipped. ‘So much, that the peasants either have nothing to feed their families through the winter, or they have to sell a part of their lands to the seigneurs.’

I curled my hands into fists. ‘That is cruel.’

‘The seigneurs have taken everything that the yeomen had been entitled to since the beginning of our kingdom. Pasture rights, hunting rights. They used to belong to the villages. But now, the seigneurs say they belong to them.’

‘Can’t they … can’t they dispute that? In a court?’

‘In the King’s court, you mean?’ There was steel in Gwenhael’s voice. ‘What justice do you think the King serves, when the yeomen complain?’

Only the justice that served the seigneur. The justice that served Etienne himself.

They are trapped, I thought. Just as I was.

‘The people are losing their own lands.’ And to feed their families they had no alternative other than to work in even worse conditions on another seigneur’s lands.

And this, this was happening in Valmons, and Anselmois, and Meranois. For all his brooding moods, my nephew wasn’t even slightly better than the rest of them.

‘If the yeomen refuse to pay or sell, they are driven out.’ Gwenhael snapped his fingers. ‘Like that.’

The people had no one to defend them.

I’d looked into these people’s minds, but that walking through someone’s thoughts doesn’t equate to seeing the truth. Perhaps not even they had realised why this was all happening. Perhaps worrying about the next day had been more in the forefront of their minds than how, precisely, they came to be in this situation. Perhaps they’d accepted what was happening to them as inevitable.

For as long as Etienne and Anselme were at the helm of the kingdom.

* * *

Robert came back later than I had come to expect him, but that, also, had been to be expected, considering what had happened the last time between us. The way he’d scrawled his name on my skin. He didn’t come alone, though. From my chamber I watched him dismount and then lead a tall, lean, elegant young man into the tower.

I was summoned to dinner soon afterwards.

They waited for me on chairs opposite at the bulky table. ‘Good day, Messere,’ I said, taking in the elegant cut of the young man’s grey surcoat. The small nose, those light blue eyes, studying me. ‘And … Commander.’ I stifled the roll of his name on my tongue at the last moment. It was enough that my little court suspected that Robert and I were too close. ‘I see you brought a friend.’

Robert made a lazy move with his hand. ‘This is Henri Valmons. My tutor. Henri, this is the princess.’

Henri gave a deep bow and his eyes were bright with delight when he stood. ‘Princess. A pleasure.’

‘The pleasure is all mine.’ I drew myself a seat on Henri’s side of the table. ‘Your brother has inherited Valmons, has he not?’ The man who prevented Amelie from marrying.

‘The princess is right,’ he said.

‘A tutor. How eager you are then, Commander, to continue your lessons, everywhere you go.’ I hadn’t considered the implications attached to the act of Robert writing, so I blushed after the words flew from my mouth.

Robert smirked. He had the look of someone who was waiting to see what his opponent’s next move might be. His fingers drummed impatiently on the table. And I couldn’t take my eyes off him. The way he filled that chair. Those deep green eyes.

‘My presence can be explained by the fact that I’m an apprentice to the Commander.’ Henri sat back down. ‘As a second son, I have to find an occupation. I’m currently looking for a high position within the Pretorians. Robert is showing me the workings.’

‘Ah, those of my prison, then, too,’ I said.

Henri seemed to hesitate at this, but then he smiled. ‘The Pretorians serve the Crown. The Royal Household does include you, princess.’

Skilful.

I liked him.

I cleared my voice. ‘So what recommends you for the position, then, Messere Henri Valmons?’

‘Not much, except the fact that I can hold a sword and I’m fascinated by the kings of old.’

And a sense of humour. I smiled, and this time, it was with relief. That this encounter with Robert wasn’t as much of a shipwreck as I’d expected. ‘How about a fascination for the current ruler?’

Henri’s lips played between a smile and uncertainty. He must have been aware. That I could have little affection for my brother, the man who had imprisoned me at the Tower.

‘You will find, Henri,’ interfered Robert, ‘that the princess simply adores asking lots of questions. And sometimes, to place people in impossible situations.’

In spite of myself, I looked and looked and looked, wondering what he could possibly mean.

* * *

For some silly, inexplicable reason, that evening, I waited for Robert to come to my rooms. He’d grown sulky when he saw how easily I spoke to Henri. It had upset him.

I waited and fidgeted, the walls of my room drawing in, and still he didn’t come.

I ransacked my trunk for clothing for a fine shift, drew it on, and a velvet dressing gown on top of it.

My pride said not to run after him, but what my little court had said, in unison, the last time when they visited… He was to be a seigneur. And he had told me nothing about it. I suspected he had his reasons, and I wanted to know for sure.

I couldn’t not know.

Before I could change my mind, I was stalking up the winding stairs. And when I’d almost reached the upper floor, my courage deflated. Fizzled out.

I couldn’t do it. I turned around and was winding down the stairs when I heard the scuff of steps behind me. I slowed down, thinking, What if it’s not him, but something told me that it was.

I continued so slowly that he caught me before I reached the landing.

He was surprised. ‘Blanche? What are you doing here?’

He closed the distance between us, and then some more, coming to a stop two steps lower than me.

We were almost head to head, and he was so distracting, in a shirt open at the collar, his hair ruffled in all directions, as if he’d raked it over and over again. He took in what I was wearing. I couldn’t sum up any explanation for what I’d been about to do.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, my heart thudding.

He shrugged, but it wasn’t a careless shrug. It was almost an embarrassed one. ‘I was thinking to check the shutters in your chambers? But, perhaps, I should give them over to Henri. You seem to have taken quite a liking to him.’

I recoiled at this, not sure how to read what he’d said. ‘You brought him here, though.’

He said, ‘That I did.’

‘Then—’ But he was here. After such a long time.

I couldn’t finish. I didn’t know what I wanted him to say. All I felt was that pull and the closeness and the feeling that I was about to do something reckless.

It isn’t right.

So I steered back towards my chambers, staring straight ahead. I couldn’t look at him. My shoulder brushed against his, and just as I twisted away, his hand came up to my waist, spinning me around.

My breath hitched. The heat of his body was something I couldn’t deny. He lowered his head. Our lips almost touched, and then something shifted again.

He let me go, shaking his head.

He turned to leave, but I was so tired, so sick of not knowing, that I called after him, ‘Why?’

‘We can’t,’ he said. His eyes were fixed on me, and there was no mistaking what I saw in them when they moved across my face.

The same that I felt.

I remembered something. An explanation that might have been easier to bear than all the others. ‘That day, when they bound my powers.’ I wrapped my dressing gown tight around my body. ‘When Anselme wanted to…’ I shuddered the thought away. ‘When Madame Faucon told you that it could affect the binding of my powers. Is that it? You’re afraid of what you might set free?’

He drew himself up. ‘Madame Faucon said no such thing.’

‘Of course she did. You left me in the Curia’s chambers with Anselme, so you could ask. And you told him he shouldn’t when you came back.’

He sighed. ‘I did say that. Yes. I needed to take you out of there, fast. I wasn’t about to stand by and watch while he—’ His eyes sparked with anger.

My mouth opened and closed. He’d lied to Anselme. He’d lied to Anselme to save me.

And still, he pushed me away. ‘He wouldn’t have made you watch,’ I said flatly. ‘Not even Anselme is so full of himself. He would have sent you to guard the door.’

Robert clenched his fists. But he didn’t utter a word.

The silence was a ball with spikes, rolling between us. And I seized it, hurled it back. ‘Do you have nothing to say to that?’

‘I think…’ His words came out laboured. ‘Maybe you should return to your chamber.’

I felt like I’d let myself fall, hoping he would catch me, and instead he’d let me drop to the ground. ‘What, then?’ I hissed. ‘Is it that you’ll be a seigneur soon, and don’t want to tangle with the King’s sister? Upset dear Etienne?’

‘That’s not at all what it is.’

‘Then tell me.’

He said nothing.

‘You’re a lackey, Robert,’ I said, angrier than ever. And so bitter that I could have poisoned a well. ‘You’re my brother’s lackey. And you always will be, a seigneur or not. Never lie to yourself about what you truly are.’ I turned on my heels and strode back to my room, not wanting to hear if there was anything he had to say for himself.

* * *

They didn’t show up at breakfast.

From the Tower, I watched Robert and Henri scurrying about the courtyard. They stopped by the training grounds, and Robert, in his chainmail and mantle, towered over the other guards as he explained something to them. I couldn’t see anything else but him. The way he stood, his feet planted firmly in the ground.

As if he felt me, he looked up. Our gazes met for a moment. He then turned his head away, barked an order.

My chest twisted. I couldn’t even begin to untie the ball of feelings in my head. Shame? Anger? Pain? All of them, and more.

I had to know. It was a need.

So when they cleared off to another part of the grounds, I sent Gwenhael with a mission.

An invitation that not even Robert would have been able to refuse.

* * *

I laid down the sheet myself on the carpet of fallen leaves and grass of the forest. Henri and Robert watched me, dumbstruck. From my saddlebag, I extracted the treats that the cook had prepared for us: cured meats, cheese, even a few squares of jellied rooster. Bread, of course. And radishes. I set it all on a wooden board.

‘What is this?’ said Robert.

‘The kitchens were out of lamprey,’ I shot back. Even the sound of his gruff voice scratched something in my chest. ‘And raw garlic.’

‘Lamprey, indeed,’ he said, and I could swear he was rolling his eyes. But I didn’t dare look at him. It took an enormous amount of will to be within feet of him, and be still.

I turned to Henri, fresh and prim in his dark grey hunting jacket, cleanly shaved. Quite the gentleman.

‘I didn’t know if you’d eaten today,’ I said, pasting a sweet smile on my face. ‘Since we didn’t eat together.’

‘We’ve been busy,’ said Robert. ‘Mora’s Tower … things.’

‘Things, yes, indeed,’ I said.

He was toying with his dagger. ‘Perhaps you’d care to cut the cheese, then?’ I said.

I looked to Henri again, even as my mind screamed at me to stare at that tower of a man who had just knelt on the blanket and had taken to slicing the cheese with wild precision. ‘This clearing, it’s quite nice, isn’t it? Someone once told me it offers a very good viewpoint of the valley and the strategic location of Mora’s Tower.’

Next to me, Robert’s hands stopped moving.

‘If I had any gifts in that sense, I’d have loved to be able to paint this view,’ said Henri. ‘It’s breathtaking. How the two cliffs narrow down to the valley of the brook. The Opal Mountain in the distance – it looks unreal, as if it’s made of cloud dust.’

‘You may not have a gift with the brush, but you certainly have a gift with words, Messere Valmons,’ I said.

‘Henri, please.’

‘Henri.’

Next to me, the cheese-cutting had resumed. Slowly.

I carefully arranged the folds of my green dress over the tips of my riding boots.

‘I have always been fascinated by you, you know,’ said Henri.

‘By me?’

He laughed and there were dimples in his cheeks. His blue eyes glimmered with mischief.

He likes me, I thought. It was an unusual feeling.

Henri said, ‘By mages, I mean. By people with Gifts. This is why I went to study at the Opal Mountain.’

‘I never saw you at the Golden Pavilion,’ I said, frowning, before I remembered that the men didn’t inherit the Gifts in the Valmons family.

‘You wouldn’t have noticed me,’ he said. ‘But I saw you. In the mornings, especially. When the students were practising. I knew who you were.’

Robert plonked the wooden board in my lap. ‘Here you go.’

‘Thank you.’ I turned to give him the same charming smile I was giving Henri, and saw that the arse was smirking.

‘My pleasure, princess,’ he said, lifting an eyebrow.

For a moment, I saw red.

‘I wasn’t a student, in the usual way,’ said Henri, and I scrambled to remember what we’d been speaking about. ‘But I was granted access to the libraries. Like some scholars are.’

‘I used to love the libraries.’ The quiet. The books allowing me to escape to any world I chose, within the blink of an eye. I’d never truly lived at the Opal Mountain, I realised. It was always the mindwalking, the studying, the books. ‘I miss that so much.’

‘You’ve said so, last night. Let me choose some books for you,’ he said.

I was pink with delight. ‘I’d love that.’

‘I bring you books,’ said Robert, rather defensive.

I felt my ears catch fire. He had brought me books. And he had brought me my instruments. And he had brought me songs. But he hadn’t given me one this time. He hadn’t given me one since the Incident.

He also hadn’t asked me to play for him.

If I’d wanted to hurt him, I could have told him now that he didn’t bring me the right books. Which wasn’t true. The truth was that… ‘I just want more books,’ I said, trying to blink out the too-much that I felt. ‘It’s…’ I pointed with loose movement of my hands at Mora’s Tower. ‘You’ve seen now how this place is. And you could have thrown me anywhere before, when I could still mindwalk. I wouldn’t have minded. But without –’ I saw Robert from the corner of my eye, arching slowly towards me ‘– my life feels so empty.’

I wanted to swallow back the words the moment I’d said them. Henri’s hand twitched, as if he would have taken my own in an offer of comfort, then changed his mind.

I could still feel these things. And the pity drifting like heat off of the arsehole next to me. Pity, and something more.

Henri bit his lip, seemed to consider. ‘I have a few books I always carry with me. I could leave them for you to read, until we come next time.’

I glanced at Robert, who was cheekily raising his eyebrows.

‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t want to⁠—’

‘Oh, yes, of course.’ Henri gave me a tentative smile. ‘I’d love for you to read them. And then, we could talk about them.’

I answered his smile with my own. ‘I’d love that.’ I cleared my throat, startled. I wasn’t quite sure about what.

‘What were you saying about the Gifts?’

‘Yes,’ said Henri, his voice somewhat uncertain. ‘I was fascinated how they came to be. Why they seemed to be allotted to just a few, and why they started vanishing from this world. Pantagorius outlines excellently the way that the concentration of people with Gifts is so high in our kingdom. There’s even a map which shows that. In fact, people with Gifts have barely been reported to exist in the last centuries outside the boundaries of the Three Kingdoms.’

I huffed. ‘Except for the mages who married into other kingdoms, I suppose. And their children.’ And the Green Kingdom, which was an entirely different story. I assumed the Order of the Mage-Hunters had taken pains to eradicate them. And the few who were left must have been in hiding.

But we didn’t know much about the dealings of the Green Kingdom. Or, if my brother did, I wasn’t told. There were magical shields surrounding the Green borders that hadn’t allowed me to pass through when I mindwalked.

‘Precisely,’ said Henri. ‘Did you also read Pantagorius?’

‘No, but it wasn’t hard to infer.’

Henri nodded, visibly excited. ‘And even then, even when women marry into other regions, the Gift disappears after a generation or two. It seems that something within the essence of our kingdom keeps the Gift alive.’

Robert started lazily picking ham from the board I was still holding. He must have been so bored by our conversation.

Good.

‘Here, have some bread, too,’ I said sweetly. But I tried to put murder in my eyes as I passed it to him. He slipped a corner of bread into his mouth, staring at me. I simply couldn’t bear it, so I looked to Henri for comfort. ‘So I assume the princes and dukes who brokered those marriages in order to breed the Gifts into their own lines must have been very, very disappointed.’

Henri said, ‘Are you sure you haven’t read him? That is precisely what Pantagorius points out.’

‘Blanche is very clever,’ said Robert. ‘She … infers, as she said.’

If Henri hadn’t been there, I would have punched Robert. Hard. Where it hurt.

‘Do you infer, too, Robert? Is this something you enjoy?’ I asked.

‘I prefer hard facts,’ he said, ripping at a bit of ham with his teeth. My skin flushed and I struggled to look away from him.

‘Which view do you agree with, then?’ I asked Henri. ‘Caecilius’ or Sertorius’?’

‘Are you asking if I think that mages are fundamentally different? In a biological sense?’ Henri bit his lip. I could tell I’d struck one of his favourite subjects. ‘Sertorius’s theory is tempting. But no, I think I have to agree with Caecilius that we are, in the end, the same. And that the only thing that makes us different is the absence or the presence of the Gift.’

‘Caecilius did have excellent access to other resources. They used to practise dissection in Antiquity. This should have offered them some insight into the workings of our bodies. Though I shudder to think.’

‘Squeamish when it comes to blood, Blanche?’ said Robert. I pretended to ignore him, but I couldn’t help but think that it was his trade. The impaled bodies of the Guildmasters still haunted me in my sleep.

I wondered how, doing what he did, he slept at night.

I knew he wasn’t a terrible person. I knew he wasn’t quite like the legends that had grown around him.

The undiscerning killer.

I gave him a sidelong glance. I would have liked to rake his mind. If I’d had my Gift back, even for a moment, he would have been the first person I visited.

If only to answer some questions about the last time I’d been in his head.

Henri said, ‘Many scholars are convinced that Sertorius is more modern than Caecilius, but are we truly wiser than the people of the Antiquity? We are just beginning to rediscover some things that our forefathers knew more than five hundred years ago.’

‘That’s so sad, isn’t it? That we should have gone backwards, and not forward.’ I began to nibble at a piece of cheese. ‘But I suppose we are the same. After the Gift was taken from me, I became just as you, didn’t I?’

Was I? Light-Cantor. I begged Robert, in my mind, not to say anything.

‘Yes, and if a Gift can be taken just through the power of a spell⁠—’

‘That’s not what the Mothers of the Forest say,’ interjected Robert. ‘About the Gifts, and how they’re bestowed.’

Could he not just— Shut. Up.

‘Their priestesses, you mean?’ Henri mused. ‘Yes, one does see them everywhere these days, does one not? If one knows where to look.’

‘I haven’t heard anything about this,’ I said, pretending to know nothing. ‘My little court hasn’t mentioned anything.’

It was, theoretically, not a lie. The girls said nothing, but Gwenhael had plenty to say. And I’d seen for myself.

Robert speared me with a look thrumming with disbelief. But then I wondered, if his Bladehand knew, did my brother know, as well?

But something else grated on me in what Robert said. He’d implied that he’d been in contact with the priestesses. And that he might have asked about my Gift. And Robert didn’t say ‘priestesses’, either. He’d said ‘Mothers’.

‘Your little court?’ said Henri.

I blinked, my thoughts still with the Mothers of the Forest. ‘Ah, this is what I call the fine ladies of this land, when they come to visit.’

‘And he calls you Blanche.’ Henri tilted his chin at Robert. ‘It’s as if … you’re friends.’

‘I have no friends,’ I said. ‘In any case, not him.’

Robert rolled on his back, his hands under his head. Staring at the sky. ‘You can call me what you want, Blanche. There’s no stopping that.’

Was he alluding to the night before, by any chance? When I called him my brother’s lackey?

This was … imprudent. To say all these things. I hadn’t even realised that he didn’t call me ‘princess’ anymore, like he’d done at dinner the day before.

How much could we even trust Henri? I examined his seamlessly tailored surcoat, the pretty face with the small nose. I said, ‘You can call me Blanche, too. Since everyone here seems to do so.’ And then, I said something perhaps even more imprudent. ‘Isn’t my brother worried about the Mothers of the Forest?’

‘Do you think he should be?’ said Robert, his tone even.

‘Someone could use this. Against him,’ I said, pondering.

‘Someone could.’ Robert smiled.

A few months before, he’d mentioned my Gift. How it could have been used. But my hands were tied. I couldn’t, even if I’d wanted to. And for that… The people would have had to be presented with a counter-option. To my brother, that was.

Henri said, ripping me away from my thoughts, ‘The priestesses are saying that the Golden Mother has been imprisoned wrongly at the bottom of the sea, so that the mages in the Red Kingdom can feed on her power. They say that the Golden Mother should be released, so that she may yet once again bring peace to her people.’

‘The Golden Mother,’ I mused.

At the bottom of the sea.

Oh, I had plenty of questions for Gwenhael.

My vision blurred around the edges and I fell silent for the rest of the meal.

* * *

I woke up the next morning with the bitter taste of disappointment coating my tongue. I didn’t know why, but I’d absurdly hoped that Robert would come to me the night before. He did not, and I didn’t feel like facing them at breakfast.

Something between us was broken, and I didn’t know how to fix it. So I hid in my chambers until it was almost noon, when I was sure they’d left.

I didn’t know what I’d expected, but it had been more than this.

No. That was a lie. I knew what I’d expected, what I’d wanted, but I couldn’t cross that chasm between us.

Instead, I’d called him my brother’s lackey.

It wasn’t until late afternoon that I wandered into my music room. Something stopped me in my tracks. On the small table, there was a pile of books that didn’t look familiar. A note in handwriting I didn’t know, reading:

With compliments,

Henri Valmons

Henri. He’d remembered. How sweet.

It would have been reasonable to think that the gift should have cheered me up, but that wasn’t at all how I felt. Not until I noticed a piece of parchment under the pile. I shifted the books, struck by the shape of the pointy scribble, even before I was able to make out a single word.

I’d have known Robert’s handwriting anywhere. It had been on my body for days.

A song. He had brought me a song, in the end. Transcribed by him. And he’d left it for me, regardless of what had passed between us.

I wondered what could have been, if conversation hadn’t steered in the way that it did when we’d met in the corridor.

I wondered⁠—

No, no, no.

It took longer than it should have for me to be able to settle, to read.

It was a parting song, from Valmons, of all provinces.

Valmons.

I sat down, trembling. Yes, that one needed a flute. The pleading notes, tearing through chests and hearts. I started hesitantly, putting into it whatever was in my blood.

The song’s mournful notes carried through the wind. But no matter how loud I played, I knew that he couldn’t hear me.

* * *

The next day, the only one who was in a position to cheer me up was Gwenhael. As odd as it may have seemed.

I gulped my breakfast in haste and then dragged him into the woods. There was plenty to mull over at Mora’s Tower and I certainly didn’t want to do any of that.

We were barely into the first patch of trees when I opened my mouth. ‘The Mothers of the Forest,’ I said.

Gwenhael looked like he’d rather I hadn’t.

‘I’ve heard—’ I studied him from the corner of my eye. He pursed his full lips. ‘How far is the cult in being reborn, and how far are we from the actual Mothers re-emerging?’ My fingers tingled even to speak of this. That the real Mothers might walk among us.

‘I told you,’ he said.

‘You most certainly did not.’

He gave me a sly smile.

‘You didn’t tell me the Mothers were … here again,’ I said.

‘They are,’ he said. ‘And this gives hope to many.’

‘Where? Where are they?’ A gust of wind bothered the leaves. I steered my mare towards a less steep path.

‘Priestesses live in the villages, especially the ones closer to the woods. The people assume they do so, so they can be closer to the Mothers themselves.’

I chuckled. ‘They are called the Mothers of the Forest, aren’t they?’

He bit his lip. I believed he was unsure whether he should reply to my question or if, should he ignore me long enough, I would just give up and let him be.

‘Did you ever see one of the Mothers of the Forest?’

The woods resounded with clops of our horses’ hooves. The greyhounds stalked on quiet legs, as if the very mention of the Mothers had hushed them, too. But the captain said nothing.

‘Gwenhael?’

I turned my mare around and hopped down, tying her to the nearest tree. Gwenhael stared at me, puzzled. I lowered myself onto a fallen tree trunk.

I needed to speak with him. And I needed to put him in a position where he wouldn’t be able to evade me.

‘I’m tired,’ I said with a sweet smile.

Blatant disbelief shone in his eyes. But again, he said nothing.

I patted the trunk. ‘Come sit with me.’ And before he said anything, I added, ‘It’s an order.’

‘Why do you want to know about them?’ he said.

Why, indeed?

I said, ‘Because everyone who was ever close to me in my life has failed me.’ My family, Madame Faucon, even Robert. ‘Because I don’t have anyone else to turn to. Because, on some days, I need to know that if I pray, someone will listen. That someone will answer.’

‘Someone will answer,’ echoed Gwenhael, tying his horse. ‘The people, they need someone to listen, too. Someone to answer.’

Answer, I thought. And answers.

‘What are the Mothers saying?’ I asked again while Gwenhael eased himself onto the log, still at a safe distance from me.

‘That the land belongs to the people. That it always has.’ He stared at the forest floor.

This was nothing new to me. I’d heard echoes of this in the minds of the displaced yeomen, when I could still nightwalk.

But the land didn’t belong to the people anymore. Even their lives belonged to the King, and he did as he pleased with them. The same was as true for me as it was for the farmers and the shepherds and the blacksmiths and the guildsmen. ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I had a Gift.’ I kept my voice low. ‘And it has been taken away from me. This is why I’m at Mora’s Tower.’ I pulled at an edge of skin on my lip until I felt the sting. The saltiness of blood. ‘I miss my Gift very, very much. I suppose – it feels like I lost a part of me. And I have questions about that Gift.’

Gwenhael shifted, his hands hanging between his knees. One of the greyhounds curled at his feet. ‘We have lost much, too. My family had land once. As a third son, in the olden days, I could have become, perhaps, a shepherd. But the pastures don’t belong to us anymore. Not even the woods. So I put all I have into the service of the King. And I suppose I have to count myself lucky.’

‘I’m sure he expects you to.’

His eyes widened, and then they were set on mine. I let him see what I carried inside of me. How much I despised my brother. The power he had to govern so many lives, mine included, and how he chose to use it.

‘What do you need?’ Gwenhael searched for something on my face.

The truth?

‘I was wondering if they could… If they would come here. To the Tower. One of these priestesses. If there was a way I could ask some questions.’ Robert had mentioned that the Mothers would know something about the Gift.

And it would be the sort of knowledge that the Golden Pavilion had forgotten.

Perhaps, even, the sort of knowledge that they’d never had.

‘It would be imprudent,’ said Gwenhael and my words clotted in my throat. Yes, I knew how it would have seemed. ‘To have someone come here. And I’m not sure… I don’t think we should be seen speaking to them.’

‘The guards, you mean?’ I said. Not just guards, but Pretorians.

He nodded, then bent down to stroke the greyhound.

He was thinking, I could tell.

Making a decision.

‘Do you think they would come to me if I pray to them? If you show me how to?’

All I needed was someone to listen.

His hand stopped, frozen, on the greyhound’s head. ‘I think they would. But I have something even better in mind.’ He coughed. ‘There are moonstones here.’

‘In the clearing,’ I said, something lighting up inside of me. ‘They hold power, don’t they?’

‘We’ll need saplings,’ he said. ‘Twelve or so of them.’

‘Saplings?’

‘Saplings.’

I made up my mind quickly. ‘Can you procure them? From whatever budget my brother allows for Mora’s Tower.’ I considered. ‘Is it you who administers it?’ I’d never given the matter much thought, how much coin comes, and how often, for the expenses.

Gwenhael grinned. ‘I think it can be arranged.’

* * *

Gwenhael brought me to the western edge of the forest, where the soft hillside that melted into a field was peppered with tree stumps. I’d never been there before. I’d never seen this wreckage.

This side of the hill, the forest was gone. ‘Who did this?’

Gwenhael unpacked the saplings we’d so carefully brought with us. ‘Where did you think the wood came from for the barracks at Mora’s Tower? For the new Guild Houses in Langville?’ He untied the shovels he’d precariously – I thought – perched onto his mare’s saddle and ceremoniously handed one to me.

I turn it about in my hands, unsure of its weight. ‘I don’t know how to use one,’ I said.

I could have sworn a smirk rippled on his face before he stifled it. ‘I’ll show you, princess. I’m sorry, but I’m not sure if the sacrifice works otherwise.’

He showed me how to find patches of ground between the roots. How to push my entire weight into the shovel as I made its tip bite into the ground. I admired his fluid, settled rhythm, the moves of a man who was used to hard work, not my constant gasping and huffing while I barely scratched the surface of the earth. He worked in just his shirt, the sleeves rolled up, showing the snaking of his slim yet powerful forearms.

‘I can hear you’re not digging, princess,’ he said. ‘Tired already?’

I puffed my cheeks, a headache coming down already to shutter my senses. ‘Why saplings?’ I pushed the head of the shovel down with my foot, the metal slicing through the thin leather soles of my boots. ‘Sabya prefers it when we gift weapons to someone who needs them, a guard or a soldier in training.’ But then, Sabya was a goddess of war.

The people had turned to the goddesses of the earth to right this situation in the kingdom, not to Sabya. But perhaps what they wanted couldn’t be gained with weapons. Perhaps the people were wiser than me. In the end, Sabya was the goddess of mages and of the seigneurs.

The muscles in Gwenhael’s back rippled, as he weaved the tool in and out of the earth. ‘How do you know that Sabya favours weapons? Who told you that?’

I considered all the things that I’d taken for granted, which had ultimately proved themselves untrue. ‘Fair point,’ I conceded. ‘But saplings? The ancient people of Greece sacrificed bones and fat. And the Romannhon⁠—’

‘What good does burning flesh ever do? Why should the Mothers of the Forest care for it?’

I nearly told him that he was awfully wise when he decided to speak, but refrained from it. Just in case he decided to stop speaking. ‘What do they care for, then?’

Gwenhael peered at the hole I was digging. ‘This needs to be a bit deeper.’ He chose another spot, a few feet from me. ‘Two more, and then we can start planting them.’

‘Why saplings?’ I repeated.

‘Because the Mothers care about the land and the people and the forest. Because they don’t like it when someone takes and takes and takes and doesn’t give back. There’s a balance in life – no, life itself is that balance. And they appreciate it when someone stops and looks and takes note. And does something.’

‘To restore that balance. And what my brother does, and the seigneurs, the Curia – they’ve ruined that balance. Over the years. The one that allowed the farmers and the guildsmen and the noblemen to live in relative peace.’

‘You don’t expect me to reply to that, do you?’

‘But then – how do the mages fit in with this balance? Is that what the Mothers of the Forest have against the mages? That we have – I had, at least – too much?’ Thoughts were coursing through me, thick and fast. ‘And weren’t the Mothers of the Forest the ones who granted the mages the Gifts, at least partly?’

Gwenhael let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Do you see why I didn’t want to plant these saplings with you today? To avoid this sort of questioning.’ He gave me one of his rare smiles and I began to suspect that we were becoming something like … friends. ‘Don’t worry, princess. If the summoning works, then perhaps someone might be able to answer.’

* * *

Dusk was settling by the time we’d arrived at the moonstone circle in Robert’s Clearing. I picked out the leaves of the saplings from the pockets of my jacket. Two for every sapling, Gwenhael had instructed me.

‘And now?’ I asked.

‘Place them on the moonstones,’ he said, his face grim again.

No, focused.

‘Have you ever done this before?’

He shook his head.

I should have asked how he knew about the ritual, but perhaps even I didn’t want to know. And as I walked from stone to stone, putting two leaves atop each, the rocks began catching the fading sunlight and glowed with it.

I looked to Gwenhael and his lips tightened. ‘Go on,’ he said softly.

My shoulders and my arms ached and there was a roiling in my chest, tightening my breaths, making each of my steps harder. It felt like trudging through mud. And as I reached the last of the stones, Gwenhael came up to my side, his dagger drawn. ‘Palm or wrist?’

I shivered. The sacrifice, the summoning, involved blood. I pulled up my sleeve, showing him the tender flesh on the inner side of my forearm. The slice was swift and brutal. Blood licked down my skin, making me shudder.

‘Stone to stone,’ he said, as I angled my arm above the last two leaves I’d deposed, spattering the green with red.

‘Stone to stone,’ I whispered back.

‘Blood to blood,’ he said, ‘and Gift to the earth.’

I repeated after him the words and there was a buzzing in my blood, as if bees were swarming under my skin. The moonstones shone brighter for a moment, and then dimmed again.

‘Pray,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget to pray.’

Dizziness enveloped me as I made the trek back, retracing my steps as I laid the leaves down. ‘For what should I pray?’ My mind was empty of thoughts. There was just the ache and the dripping blood and the cool air whispering against my skin.

‘For whatever matters to you,’ said Gwenhael, who had become a blur against the shimmering dark blue of the stones laid in the clearing.

I clenched my teeth. What mattered to me. Whatever mattered to me.

‘Pray, princess.’ Gwenhael’s voice was an anchor while I felt more and more hollowed out. Like the holes we’d dug that day.

Fill them.

Fill the holes with my words.

With my wishes.

With my hopes.

‘Listen,’ I ground out. ‘Please, listen. If you are there—’ I stumbled on a stone, tilted my arm, letting the blood splatter against the leaves. Drew a pattern to congeal them in place, like Gwenhael had instructed me. A lock on top, sealing them to the stone. ‘I need – I need someone to listen.’

Who would ever listen to what I had to say? Who would reach out into my heart, to wrench out my greatest fears, and my greatest desires?

Who would reach to pull them out and show them to me?

Not the one who had turned away last time he was here, I thought, a painful squeeze in my chest. No, not him.

Not the women who came to the Tower unwillingly when they were summoned.

Not my brother, not my own blood.

No, my blood, it spilled upon the stones, smearing the patch of green. I was hollowed out without my Gift. A shell residing in a tower. A ghost, walking between tight walls.

‘Listen,’ I said again, my voice raw. ‘Please listen.’

The wind caressed my cheek, worried a few strands of my hair. What are you, princess? it asked.

A ghost. I’m a ghost, a ghost. No one.

The wind bit at my temples. Who are you?

No one, I hummed back.

You are the princess. Mindwalker, Light-Cantor, Outcast. Ghost.

The edge of my mind was a storm, and I couldn’t grasp the flighty thoughts.

I called to the wind, ‘Listen! Just listen.’

There was a solid touch on my shoulder, a scrub of raw cloth against my skin. I looked down, and Gwenhael was wiping the traces of blood from my arm. His fingers were shaking slightly.

‘Did you hear it, too?’ I asked.

He avoided my gaze. ‘No, but I felt something. Stirring.’ He wrapped the cloth gently around the wound.

I drifted slowly back into myself. ‘What now?’ I asked.

Gwenhael sighed. ‘Now, we wait.’

ROBERT’S BED

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

When I come back to the tent from my conversation with Henri, even Amelie is pacing. Mathilde stares blankly at a jug of wine. And Gisele is sunk in her own thoughts.

‘What did he tell you?’ says Amelie, her arms folded neatly in front of her, in a tone that wants to appear even, but doesn’t quite manage it.

This is her version of dishevelled – even more so than she was on the day her family dumped her at Mora’s Tower.

It seems she’s about to come back with a vengeance, judging by what Henri has told me. If I were to ask her to raise Valmons against the very man responsible for her banishment… I know how Amelie would jump at this opportunity.

Gisele snaps to attention. Even Mathilde seems to forget she’s supposed to breathe.

I say the first thing I’m able to think of. ‘Henri wants to marry me.’

Mathilde comes down in a whirl and embraces me. ‘Congratulations.’ I hold on to her, surprised.

Amelie lays her hand on my cheek. ‘Honestly, this gives everyone hope. I suppose things are going better than expected?’

Gisele barely moves. ‘And what do you think about it?’

Mathilde unlaces herself, and Amelie takes her hand away, as if stricken that it hasn’t occurred to her to ask.

‘Honestly? I’ll have to think about it.’ I rub my eyes. ‘No secrets,’ I tell them. ‘We’ll unwrap this. But for now, we have to speak to Charles.’ I extend my hand to Amelie. ‘I think you should come with me.’ I’d prefer to tell her about her role in the planned Valmons uprisings when it’s just the two of us. So she can make up her own mind.

I promised, just a few moments ago, that I’d ask them when it comes to making decisions. And I promised them freedom to choose.

Amelie takes my hand and sinks into a chair next to mine, pretending she’s not stifling a smile. ‘Should I change, too?’

‘Oh, no, I think it would be rather unnecessary.’

The Gift of ghostwalking allows me to take other people with me, too, for as long they hold on to me in my physical shape.

Henri wanted me to act as a mediator between the Guilds and Charles, but first, before I blurt out anything to my Fallen Court, I have to see with my own eyes what Charles is up to. And it’s always a good idea to take Amelie with me whenever I have to speak to Charles.

So I tell her, ‘Hold on tight,’ and before anyone can ask any more questions, I transport us to a hill overlooking Lafala from a distance. I’m still not sure where precisely Charles’s camp is. And looking at the low outer walls of Lafala, I see he hasn’t reached it yet.

Amelie points in the opposite direction, the road to Meranois. ‘There,’ she says.

And I see it, in the distance, the column crawling towards us. ‘They’re not here yet.’ I say, somewhat unhelpfully.

Her shoulders, usually so straight, as if they’re carved from marble, sag a little. ‘Can you take us there?’

I’m not sure if Charles would appreciate the intrusion while he’s still on the march, nor if this is the right time and place to explain to her that maze of his mind.

How surprised Charles had been the first time I ghostwalked into his residence on the top of the hill, that marble palace that looked like a Romannhon villa. He had looked at me, the first time we spoke, with such disbelief. We faced each other in that council room in his home with the chequered black-and-white marble.

That first time we met in private, he asked if I was doing my brother’s dirty business again. I knew I would need time to gain his trust, so I asked him to do one simple thing.

To watch and listen. To do what I had been doing for nearly half a year already.

Because not long after Robert had left the Red Kingdom, when I was schooling Mathilde that the Tower was a prison only as long as we wanted it to be, I’d realised I had to apply those lessons to myself.

And so I started to ghostwalk the streets of Port Lang, to watch the bustle in the docks, the tired faces of men unloading the ships. The too-young girls offering themselves for much too little. The guards, walking without purpose.

I saw the crowds gathering in the marketplaces, the little altars at the crossroads. Nothing that would have drawn much attention, at first. A sapling, here. A small herb garden on a side street. Small figures made of burnt clay, or sticks – hidden.

The hungry huddling around these spots, waiting for the priestesses to come with tiny gifts: a loaf of bread, a wool scarf.

I walked until I was lost and then found myself again.

Until I found a purpose – to pull at the strings. And it had begun with Charles.

But it might end here, too, looking at the desolate state of facts, at how my nephew hasn’t even reached Lafala yet.

I sigh. ‘I don’t think we should surprise them while they’re on the march. I think it would be wiser, on the whole, to wait until they make camp for the night.’

‘But why didn’t they do so already? We came to a halt hours ago.’

‘Who knows?’ I pat her hand. ‘Anyway, there was something I wanted to tell you,’ I say before I notice a weight on my shoulder, a weight I’m not meant to feel, because I’m my ghostly self. Amelie balks and I look to my right and there stands bloody Robert, his eyes promising bloody murder.

Robert, as his ghostly self, has his hand on my shoulder. Which means that Robert’s towering physical self must have stepped into the tent and transported himself with us.

He, of all people, would know how ghostwalking works.

He sweeps a gaze around, at Lafala’s walls, and Charles’s troops in the distance, and then barks, ‘What in Sabya’s Darkblades are you doing?’

‘I think you can see what we’re doing,’ I say, brazenly. I certainly don’t feel that way. We were caught, and I remember Henri’s warning.

‘Pull us back,’ he manages to say, and I transport us into the tent. The warmth of his hand is a brief weight on my shoulder before he takes it away. Amelie’s fingers snag through mine as we disentangle.

Mathilde’s and Gisele’s faces are frozen in shock.

‘By each and every one of the Mothers of the Forest, what did you think you were doing?’ A vein bulges in Robert’s neck and I can tell he’s beyond himself with fury.

‘You saw what we were doing,’ I say, willing myself to be calm, though I can hardly hear anything above the whoosh of my own blood in my ears.

‘Get out,’ he shouts, but strides before me, signalling me to follow.

‘You didn’t tell me that it was forbidden.’

He turns around, his nostrils still flaring. ‘I didn’t think I had to.’

* * *

Robert leads me to his tent. ‘You sleep here tonight,’ he says.

I scoff. ‘Yes, sure.’

His green eyes sparkle in a way that tells me he isn’t joking.

‘How about your secret meetings with your captains? Am I allowed to be in the tent then, too?’ I try to school my face into innocence, but I think I’m failing. He wasn’t meant to find me. Oddly enough, I’m on the edge of giggling, just looking at how furious he is.

‘You’ll be put under guard then. And I swear to you, Blanche, a single absent gaze, and I’ll tell them to throw a spear at you. Just to snap you out of it.’

‘You wouldn’t,’ I chuckle.

‘I advise you not to test me.’ He sweeps around to the entrance of the tent. ‘Stay here,’ he says, before he barks some orders at some unwitting guards who are standing outside.

He then positions himself in front of me. I sink onto the edge of the bed, exhaustion washing over my bones in waves. I can’t believe that only yesterday, at this time, I was still at the Tower.

‘Where did you go?’ he says. ‘Were you looking for your nephew?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘And did you go anywhere else?’

I pull at a loose thread from one of the wool blankets on the bed. It’s a travelling bed, and an expensive one, the kind that the rich seigneurs carry from residence to residence for their exquisite bedchambers.

‘Blanche.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where were you?’

I toy with the idea of telling him all of it. After all, oddly, we’re in this together. Me, him, Henri and the Guilds. He’s bound to hear about the plans from the Guilds himself, but I don’t know how much they would tell him.

Let them handle all the rest, then.

I reveal only as much as I did to my Fallen Court. ‘Henri asked me to marry him. As soon as we reach Langville.’

So many expressions change on his face. ‘Oh,’ he says.

I can’t look him in the eye. ‘Yes.’

He doesn’t say anything for a long time and I return to toying with the strand. ‘So.’

‘So.’

‘So.’

Isn’t it absurd, I think, that my fate should be decided in Langville? And that I’m here, face to face with Robert, while someone else decides what we are, in fact, to each other. Whether I’m a prisoner, or the betrothed of the next seigneur of Valmons.

Too many have too little power in the Red Kingdom.

Our brilliant conversation is interrupted by the panting of two guards, carrying my wooden chest. They stop in the middle of the tent, hovering, and Robert indicates to them a spot close to the bed.

They thunk it down with a resounding thud. ‘Good,’ he says, and they part without a single word.

He is serious about me sleeping in his tent tonight, then.

I prefer not to examine how I feel about this.

There is so much I have to think about already.

* * *

Robert’s tent is cold. I’m trembling as I wash myself in a basin and pull on a shift for the night, the thickest I can find. I’m tempted to pull another one, on top of it.

Robert is standing with his back turned to me, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. ‘Are you done yet?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘You could have found something else to do while I changed.’ I’m close to tears and I don’t even know why.

Why did he have to watch me all the time since he wrenched me out of the Fallen Court’s tent? We ate in silence. And then most of our evening was sitting in more silence, without a single thing to say to each other, while we were interrupted by one captain or another, invariably shocked to find me in their commander’s tent.

Henri will hear about this and he’ll ask me useless questions.

Robert knows bloody well what he’s doing. But why?

‘I don’t trust you,’ he says. And there’s my answer to my unspoken question.

‘Well, good, because I don’t trust you, either. You’re in the habit of doing what suits you best, regardless of other people’s—’ He swirls to look at me, and even though I’m done dressing, I tell him, ‘Did I say that you can turn around?’

I sit on the edge of the bed and wait for a few more moments before I concede, ‘I’m done.’

He starts undressing himself. Mantle, sheaths of various weapons, surcoat. His powerful shoulders snake with every move and I can’t take my eyes off him. He turns around to watch me watching him as he takes off his shirt and I can’t bear the sight of his naked chest, the sculpted quality of its flesh. I look away and it seems incredible to me that⁠—

By Sabya’s Morningstar, some of the things I lived through, they seem to have belonged to another lifetime.

My belly warms and I hate him and I hate myself for that.

He washes, too, draws himself clean shirt and trousers. I turn my back completely to him.

I hear him.

I hear his steps, coming closer to the bed, the clink of something metallic, the creak of the wood as he sits down on the mattress.

‘You can’t be serious,’ I say, swirling on him.

There’s something careful about his expression. Guarded. Also, something ruffled in the way his hair – slightly longer than he used to wear it – sticks out. He lays down his sword in the middle of the bed.

And I remember what he said once about the heroes of old, and how they laid swords between them and the princesses they saved, to preserve chastity. And how we tried to do the same, once, and what happened afterwards.

I dig my nails into the sheets. ‘No.’

‘I’m not sleeping on the floor,’ he says. And then, ‘Don’t flatter yourself.’

There is nothing I can say to make him change his mind, and I’m on the verge of tears again. It’s making me physically sick to be so close to him, and something more.

So before I lie down and turn on my side, I make the only gesture of defiance I can think of. I loosen my braid and let my long red hair float around me, spreading on the pillow.

* * *

We lie for a long time in the dark, me on my side, he on his back, hand gathered beneath his head.

We say nothing, feeling the cold and the sting of that sword between us.

I think of everything and nothing and I replay every single conversation I had with anyone today, and what a long day it has been, and sleep still eludes me.

When his breaths have steadied and he has settled himself with his back turned to me, I’m finally free to do as I please.

It’s an infringement of trust, and Mathilde would resent me if she knew what I’m about to do, but I must know. It’s not as if I’m interfering with anything. I’m simply taking a peek.

Too busy have I been with plotting, walking faraway cities, that it has been too long since I looked to my own Fallen Court.

I must know what Mathilde spoke of with Arnauld today. I close my eyes. Orange and pink shades flutter at the edge of my vision, and I reach out for the tent I vacated earlier this evening, feeling out for Mathilde.

Fortunately, she’s already asleep. I pounce and throw my mindwalking self into her head.

Her mind is a castle, tall and overgrown with ivy. But we are not within the castle, we are outside, right behind the mighty wooden gates. The drawbridge that spans the moat is open, and just beyond it, doubles of Gisele, Amelie and me are chatting in richly embroidered dresses. But for me, it’s far more interesting what’s happening within the castle’s courtyard.

Mathilde and Gwenhael are standing in a corner, Gwenhael with his arms crossed, leaning against the wall.

A deep, displeased frown creases her forehead. And he is shaking his head.

Mathilde’s world is a rather quiet place, with only the captain close to her.

I once asked Mathilde what she wanted and she told me that she wished to be free. She said, ‘And I don’t just mean from Mora’s Tower. Imagine a world where a woman could be free to move as she wishes, where she might be able to make her own choices.’

I knew that she meant, mostly, the choice of whom she might want to spend her life with. I knew she meant Arnauld, whom she hadn’t seen for months at that point, nor could she hope to ever see again.

But Arnauld isn’t here, in the fortress of her mind.

I will my mindwalking self to move from the courtyard to one of the battlements right above the spot where Mathilde and Gwenhael are speaking. They’re so deeply entrenched in their conversation that they have no eyes for me, lurking.

Mathilde says, ‘Arnauld is meant to be here, with Robert’s troops,’ and Gwenhael replies, ‘Ah.’

I think, Oh, this must have happened today. And the captain has definitely marched on with us from Mora’s Tower. I can understand why this has the front bench in Mathilde’s mind.

They must be such fast friends. Considering how many hours they spend together, in the woods.

I can’t quite gauge the captain’s feelings – his jaw is set and his eyes betray nothing. But I remind myself that this isn’t the true Gwenhael, it’s the version Mathilde saw.

She goes on to say, ‘Nothing at the Tower was real, Gwenhael. It was an in-between. A world that exists only there.’

Gwenhael says, somewhat disjointed, ‘Of course. If you never came to Mora’s Tower, we’d have never met. And even if we did, I would have been to you something like the chair you’re sitting on at breakfast. A piece of furniture.’

I think of all the secrets that Gwenhael and I share and wonder if he told any of them to Mathilde. I can’t judge from what I’m seeing.

‘We never existed,’ she says, and something about her shape becomes fuzzy. A Mathilde melding into the stone. ‘But we are in the real world now. And here⁠—’

The castle warps, as if swallowed by a whirlpool, and in the blink of an eye, I’m thrown back into my body.

Into Robert’s bed.

Mathilde has woken up, I realise. She must sleep so fitfully. Gwenhael’s words sting, with their edge of truth. Mathilde, the seigneur’s daughter, would have never had anything to speak about with a guard. Except to send him on an errand.

And Arnauld is here, and she saw him, and she didn’t seem to be half as pleased as I thought she would be.

While Gwenhael is at the front of her mind.

I think, I need to speak to her.

If only to find out how much she knows about Gwenhael’s doings and mine.

Beside me, Robert moves in his sleep, hugging his pillow closer. A strand of dark hair falls over his forehead and I’m sorely tempted to brush it aside, but I’d have to move past the sword, which would mean crossing a certain boundary. A nest of wasps and grievances, that’s all that’s waiting on the other side.

CALLED: PART 1

THE PRINCESS

Two Years and a bit before the Year of the Red Maiden

Gwenhael went to the moonstone circle every day, a few times per day, to see if anyone had answered the summons. No one did, and we were running out of time.

I was to be away for a few days, for the famous Tournament. Robert and Henri came to pick me up for the festivities, and we had gathered in the dining room. While they were enjoying the fare laid in front of us, I looked out the window, hoping that the answer to my call wouldn’t come when I wasn’t there.

There would have been a beautiful irony in that, for someone who hadn’t been anywhere but at Mora’s Tower for almost an entire year.

‘What have you been up to, Blanche?’ said Robert, impaling some sorry pieces of meat on his fork.

I wondered if he thought the same as me, how I’d called him my brother’s lackey the last time he was here. How he’d never heard me sing that last song.

‘I’ve been reading.’ And summoning ancient gods. And feeling sorry for myself. And lonely.

The usual.

‘Yes?’ said Henri, eager to cut into the conversation.

‘About the King of Kings.’

‘Ah,’ said Henri.

Robert gave a non-committal sound.

Where do we stand? I wondered.

Nowhere at all, I supposed.

A few days from then I’d have to face masses of people – my brother, Anselme – and, on top of it all, Robert would become a seigneur.

Focus, I told myself. ‘Funny how the stories don’t coincide when it comes to the relationship between Sabya and the King of Kings. Some call him Sabya’s lover. Some say he was the husband of the Golden Mother. And some say he was the consort of the Dark Mother herself.’

Henri watched me eagerly. ‘Yes, but isn’t that a beautiful metaphor? How time corrupts and changes these accounts, how maybe different features become subsumed into the same person?’

‘Maybe he was with all three of them,’ grunted Robert.

‘Was that your favourite tale, Robert? The man who was loved by three goddesses?’

He barked with laughter. ‘No, I favoured a different figure. But the King of Kings didn’t do badly, as love lives go.’

I wondered how we came to talk about this, of all things. ‘I suppose.’

Henri was amused, but I couldn’t tell why. ‘So what do you think? Is the King of Kings a metaphor for Lucius or Darg?’

‘Do you mean was the King of Kings the enlightened Lucius, or the evil, treacherous Darg?’ I pondered. ‘As you said, the sources are quite conflicting. I couldn’t tell you.’

I didn’t know anything anymore. I’d lost some of my passion for ancient stories. They didn’t matter now, did they? The truth had been what it had been, and it had reverberated in what we had become. Did it really matter how it had all started?

‘Why does Darg have to be evil?’ said Robert. ‘That’s not how I see it.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Perhaps, as a soldier, you might have some admiration for the man who is called the greatest general of all time, but truly, now – the man tricked Sabya into believing he was her friend, and then went to the side of the Dark Mother in the last battle.’

‘Is that what everyone thinks happened?’ said Robert, lifting a brow.

I frowned. ‘It’s a well-known fact.’

Robert returned to his meat. ‘If you say so.’

Robert had spent quite a long time in the Green Kingdom, I remembered. There were some who claimed that he’d been born there. Perhaps this story was told differently in Xante, at the Green Court.

Henri studied him with a curious look. ‘Anyway, considering everything they say about Sabya, I wish I could have met her. She must have been a sight.’

I snorted. ‘She wasn’t real, Henri.’

I said this, even though I knew it wasn’t true. Because I’d seen her. And I could have peeked more at the truth behind the stories, if I’d been braver, if I’d known where to look.

Robert was preparing to say something, when Gwenhael tentatively opened the door. He looked … ruffled. I got up from my seat in a heartbeat, pushing the captain back into the corridor, feeling the sear of Robert’s curious gaze at the back of my head.

Let him wonder. What did I care?

Not when every muscle of Gwenhael’s body was so tense.

‘What happened?’ I whispered.

He motioned to take my hand, but then checked himself, perhaps remembering who stood in front of him. ‘The clearing,’ he whispered. ‘If you’d follow me, Princess Blanche.’

* * *

Still so early in autumn, I didn’t see much of the moonstone circle until we entered it, on huffing mounts. There’s someone in the clearing, was all that Gwenhael had said. A woman.

A girl, rather, I thought as I caught the first glimpse of the silhouette sitting on top of one of the moonstones, her legs dangling. Her arms were braced behind her slight body, covered by a green, worn cloak. Beautiful, I thought. Her eyes set on us, blue like the sky on a summer morning.

We tied the horses on the edge of the circle of moonstones and approached on foot.

The air was different within the circle. It smelled of baked chestnuts, wet mushrooms and crushed hopes.

‘Greetings,’ I said, only a few feet from her. ‘I am⁠—’

‘I know who you are,’ she said. Her voice was clear like morning dew. ‘I’ve seen you. We all have. The Princess and the Hunter.’ She reached behind her, gingerly picking up two leaves of the saplings, still soaked in my blood. ‘You called.’

A priestess? Of the Mothers of the Forest?

‘I hoped…’ I swallowed, still unable to believe that my summons had been heard. I risked a side glance at Gwenhael. He was just as baffled as I was. ‘I hoped someone would hear.’ Listen. I wanted someone, anyone to listen.

‘I go by the name Gelda,’ the woman said, faint amusement on her lips.

Gwenhael fell to his knee. ‘Priestess, if I may have your blessing.’

The women – Gelda – drifted to our side. ‘Priestess? Yes, I suppose.’ She laid her hand on Gwenhael’s head. ‘Rise, Scion of the Forest. You need not bow before me. There is someone else who will bring you to your knees.’ Something cruel flitted on her lips as she said this. She directed her eyes to me. Cold and bright. ‘What is it that you want, princess?’

‘I wanted—’ I had questions. So many of them. Who she was. Why she’d come.

‘Someone to listen, I’ve heard.’ She turned her back to me, heading for one of the stones. She dislodged one of the sapling’s leaves I’d laid there a few weeks before, the blood crusting it to the stone like glue. ‘But did you ever listen, princess? Did you ever know how to do that?’

‘My Gift,’ I said. ‘I listened through my Gift.’

‘Did you, truly?’ she replied. ‘Or was it just a tool? For others?’

‘How do you know?’ I said, clenching and unclenching my fists.

She chuckled, laying down the leaf on the stone again. She rummaged in a small leather pouch, extracting a phial with blue powder, peppering it on top of the leaf. ‘We were curious, too, you know. If you were indeed deprived of your Gift. But since the doyenne seems to be as magical as ever—’ She tilted the leaf and I saw the blue powder colouring green. ‘Here’s your answer. You still have your Gift.’

‘No, I don’t,’ I retorted, every other thought vanishing.

My Gift.

My Gift.

‘I think you don’t even know what a Gift is. It will be in your blood, in your very nature, until someone binds their own Gift to take it away.’

This rang familiar, even Robert had said as much⁠—

Oh, Robert could go to dust. ‘They bound my Gift.’ I remembered. How much it hurt, like claws raking through every single one of my veins.

Gwenhael shifted next to me. Uncertainty dripped off him in waves.

‘They bound what they trained your Gift to do,’ she said, lifting a finger. She arranged her cloak, soft and worn with time. ‘You don’t need answers from me, princess. You have to look within yourself to find what you seek. And you’re the one who needs to learn how to listen.’

‘How do I do that? If I can’t use my Gift?’

Her gaze flitted to Gwenhael. ‘What did they tell you about your Gift, anyway?’

‘How much do you know about it?’

Gelda sighed. ‘I can still smell it in your blood. There hasn’t been one like you in many, many years.’

Your kind used to be revered, Amelie had told me once.

‘A Mindwalker,’ I said.

‘Yes, that’s what the mages call it, I think.’ Gelda pocketed her pouch. ‘What you feel out for are impressions. That is what your Gift is. You can weave the light into songs and wield it. You can feel out for the imprint that the world leaves on people and follow it back to their minds.’

Yes. It has been explained to me a bit differently, but that was what it was.

‘But there are so many ways that the world leaves impressions on living beings. Impressions that might be more permanent.’ Gelda tapped her fingers to her lips. ‘I’m no Mindwalker, but— My life is tied to all living beings, and so is yours. I ask you this, princess. If the world leaves an impression, who ever told you that you can’t follow that impression back to the world that created it?’

I frowned, unsure what she meant.

Riddles.

Groping in the dark.

This wasn’t much different from my lessons at the Golden Pavilion.

She frowned. ‘You don’t understand what I mean. Was your Gift ever tied to a place, and not just to people’s minds?’

‘No,’ I said, and then I remembered. ‘Yes. The Golden Pavilion.’

Gelda nodded. ‘Great magic has been trapped there. What did you see?’

‘Memories. Of the Pavilion itself. Students and teachers.’ And once, cracked tiles, and blood, pooling.

‘Was that all? Did you ever go deeper?’

For the first time since she came to us, everything seemed less of a joke to Gelda.

Next to me, Gwenhael wrung his hands.

It would have been, perhaps, unwise to mention what I’d seen. I didn’t know if I could trust her. But then, again, she was the only person who might hold answers to my questions. Or the only one who was willing to provide me with answers.

‘How did you know that I wielded my Gift?’ I asked.

‘There are ripples,’ said Gelda. ‘Of the power you use. A Gift like yours, it is felt, for those who are able to read the signs. And I think you went to the heart of the Opal Mountain. I felt the shift. What did you see?’

It had been felt.

I had never been as unseen as I was led to believe.

‘A cave,’ I said. ‘A boulder made of amber. A throne, and a golden silhouette.’

At this, Gelda’s eyes widened. ‘The Golden Mother. That’s where she is. Not at the bottom of the sea. Of course, it all makes sense.’

I should have been shocked, but I wasn’t. I’d known the Mothers of the Forest were looking for the Golden Mother. And it made sense that the Golden Mother would reside at the heart of the Opal Mountain. And that perhaps she’d still be feeding the Red Kingdom with magic.

Gelda’s eyes fell on me again. ‘I asked because I wanted to show you that you can use your Gift for anything, including things you were never trained for.’ She rose to her feet. ‘You can call me again, should you find out what you can do with all that I’ve told you. If you want me to tell you where to look, I think we could help each other a great deal, in the future.’

CALLED: PART 2

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

After sneaking a peek into Mathilde’s mind, it’s time I stopped fiddling.

It is time to do what I set myself to do. I turn my back to Robert, sleeping in the bed we share. If I can’t see him, some part of me seems to think that he won’t see what I’m about to do, either.

I close my eyes and take the plunge – mindwalking into the heart of the magical school.

Ever since I’d told Gelda about what I’d seen at the heart of the mountain, I’d wondered. Even more when I saw how her eyes flickered at my description of the cave. Much more so since last week, when I’d heard that the people had besieged the Golden Pavilion. I wonder if they know what they’re all skirting around. I don’t know either – and, after all this time, I can finally plunge in there, and have another look.

Discreetly, I hope.

Behind my closed lids, I dive into the darkness. The Golden Pavilion, I think. The darkness recedes in wisps, like a fog, and I find myself in the middle of the piazza. I don’t know what moment in time this is, because it’s deserted.

The water in the fountain is stagnant. Around me, the pavilion is covered in mud, the marble chipped. The tower where the doyenne’s office used to be is nothing but a ruin.

‘Not this way,’ says a voice. ‘Deeper.’

I freeze.

I’ve been felt.

‘Who are you?’ I ask.

‘You know me,’ she says. ‘You have seen me.’

The memory flashes before my eyes. The cave at the heart of the mountain. The throne. The glow of the golden armour. A head, turning slowly towards me.

‘Yes,’ she says.

The legends.

The many versions of them.

Locked in the heart of the mountain should be the King of Kings. To rise once again when the Three Kingdoms need him.

Locked in the heart of the mountain could be the Golden Mother. To rise once again when the Three Kingdoms need her.

‘Who are you?’ I ask.

‘Deeper,’ says the voice.

I hesitate. Answers. So many answers are waiting for me.

If I’m brave enough.

‘Red Maiden,’ she says, startling me. ‘We have no more time. Unless we act now, this is the future. And much worse.’

‘I could never see the future,’ I say.

‘Oh, yes, you could. But only here. If you never knew what you were looking at, it doesn’t mean that it wasn’t true.’

‘Who are you?’

She sighs, and there’s a certain amount of annoyance in her voice. ‘You know me. I have many names. Sword of Truth. Blade of Darkness. Sky-Hopper. Shadow-Dancer. Light-Cantor. The Dagger in the Dark. Slayer of Nightdragons.’

Fear, liquid and cold, surges through my blood.

‘Ghostwalker!’ she calls. ‘You are the master of your own power.’

It’s not her, it can’t be, she’s a legend.

I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

‘Light-Cantor! You are the master of yourself.’

My teeth clatter. I am on the precipice of something dark and terrible.

‘Yes, you feel it, too,’ she says. ‘What they’re about to do.’

‘Who?’

‘You know who. The doyenne. And the Mothers of the Forest. Come, Mindwalker.’ Her voice is even more commanding now. ‘We have much to discuss. And time is not on our side.’

* * *

I plunge.

The cave inside the Opal Mountain is just as I remember it. The unnatural light coming from knife-shaped slivers buried in the walls, reaching towards a golden throne. A silhouette in golden armour, sitting on top of it. And beyond, a great sphere of amber. I squint towards it, thinking that I saw something flutter within, when the silhouette on the throne moves.

A head at first, angled towards me. A neck cracked towards one side, and then the other. Shoulders, rounding. Stiff knees moving.

Terror grips me again.

She steps into the light.

Not the King, then. ‘Are you the Golden Mother?’

She snorts. ‘I don’t know what you’ve been told, but there’s no such thing.’

She’s shorter than I am, much shorter, and her armour is beaten gold. She has no helmet. I see her simple, dark braid, the straight, long nose. The thin upper lip, the huge, dark eyes.

She carries no weapons.

She’s much prettier than all the depictions I’ve ever seen of her, and not beautiful in the way that one would usually consider a woman beautiful.

She is the same woman I saw in one of the Pavilion’s memories. The girl on that skinny horse, launching herself towards the Nightdragon with its frayed wings. But her face is sharper, just like the look she gives me.

She is grace. She is power.

She is our goddess.

‘Sabya?’ I say.

She swivels her wrists, as if she’s just remembering how to use her hands. ‘It’s been too long,’ she says. ‘Time passes differently here.’ The greatest goddess in our kingdom, made flesh again. The way she speaks her words is rough, like unpolished stones. ‘You shouldn’t be afraid of me.’

‘You have no weapons,’ I point out, and I want to smack myself in the head. The first time I meet a goddess, and I ask her about the weapons. The sword, the Morningstar she’s always depicted with.

But.

I have so many questions about truth and legend that I hardly know where to begin.

She half stretches her hand, and a dagger appears, its blade made of pure light. ‘I don’t need any steel. Not anymore. Mindwalker, you know this. You read the legends. I can summon light and dark at will, hone them into weapons.’ She makes the dagger disappear. ‘I’m sure there’s much you want to know, and I’ll tell you one day, but for now we have pressing matters to attend.’

‘Can you see into my mind?’ I ask.

This is a much better question, surely.

‘I see some things. That come to pass in the kingdom. And you and I, we share a bond.’ She takes a few steps across the cave and they echo against the walls. ‘We are related, in terms of Gifts. For centuries, Mindwalkers have been my mouthpiece. But there hasn’t been one of you in such a long time. I don’t know why.’

‘You called me Light-Cantor.’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘You can make the light dance at your will. You know this.’

I remember Robert, and the lament he brought me. Just before he brought Henri. How the song came alive.

I remember what Gelda told me in the clearing, two years ago.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I suppose.’

‘I saw glimpses of your life. You do know that a Gift is what you hone it into? You should have looked for me earlier. The doyenne didn’t do her work properly.’ Annoyance plays over her face. ‘I’m glad she didn’t take your Gift. It would have been a mistake. Like what she’s about to do.’

I remember Gelda said that a Gift could not be taken without sacrifice. And a Gift had many aspects.

Sabya says, ‘But enough of that. You’re here now. You’re listening. And we have no time.’

I think how I’m, in fact, pretending to sleep at Robert’s side, and that if he senses something is amiss, he’ll pull me back again. ‘Agreed.’

‘Let me tell you the truth.’ She gestures for me to sit on the throne, while she walks up closer to the great boulder of amber, pressing her hand to it. ‘A short version of it. What you see here is the Dark Mother.’

Not the Golden Mother, then?

But the Dark Mother was meant to be defeated. Killed by Sabya a long, long time ago.

My heart drums in my ears.

‘She’s just as awful as the legends make her,’ Sabya says. ‘Even worse. I could not defeat her, so I sealed her into this, until I had the power, and the support to kill her. The Golden Pavilion was designed precisely for that purpose, to train the army I needed for such a thing. But the doyennes have forgotten. It’s been more than five hundred years since I locked her into stone.

‘Now, that fool of a doyenne, I don’t know what you call her, is trying to release her.’

I think, Madame Faucon?

‘She and her mages are preparing a spell. If you don’t want the Dark Mother to utterly destroy the Red Kingdom, you have to stop them.’

I reel at this, struggling to take it all in. My scattered thoughts begin gathering. ‘I don’t understand. How does—’ I remember Gelda. And how convinced she was that the Golden Mother was locked here.

But Sabya just denied she was her. ‘It doesn’t— How about the Golden Mother?’

Sabya furrows her brows. ‘I told you. The Golden Mother never existed. Pay attention to what I’m saying. The doyennes have forgotten what lies at the heart of the mountain. Why things are the way they are. And since there wasn’t one of you to act as a conduit between me and the Three Kingdoms…’

I take this in with a pinch of salt. The Golden Mother… So many speak of her. Of all the good she has ever done. Even the Mothers of the Forest never cease to praise her.

But the woman in front of me, she’s certainly Sabya. I’d seen her in the Pavilion’s memories, with the Nighdragon, the Morningstar in her hand.

Sabya says, ‘The legends have as many lies in them as truth. Who did you think was waiting here?

‘The King of Kings.’ Maybe. It would be pointless to say The Golden Mother.

She waves her hand. ‘I’ll tell you about Lucius some other time. If the doyenne has her way, not even I will be able to contain the Dark Mother anymore. Listen. Blood has been spilled in the Pavilion.’ She looks up, as if she could see through the stone.

My lips move, but it takes a moment before the words come. ‘The folk who are besieging the Golden Pavilion.’

‘Two things. The mages have been attacked. You’ll find the doyenne by the Opal Lake, protecting the Crystal of Power. Ghostwalk, you can reach her that way. Though you’ll have to mindwalk to come back to this in this chamber. In any case. The doyenne has been attacked.’ She points at the boulder of amber. ‘I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but what she will do is awaken the Dark Mother. And we’re not ready.’

I let this sink in. What a horrible, horrible misunderstanding.

‘Secondly, there are two sorts of Mothers of the Forest, and the corrupted sort still supports the Dark Mother.’

Darkness swims in the amber, shifting.

‘You should go,’ she says. ‘Even talking to you, it’s distracting me from what I have to do, which is keeping her in check.’ She steps back towards the throne, ready to regain her seat. ‘It makes it easier for all of them to release her.’

I’m rooted in place, trying to put my thoughts in order. ‘One moment. Have I understood this correctly? You want me to stop the mages from doing their spell, and to scatter their besiegers?’

‘Yes,’ she says, already sitting, folding her hands over the armrests.

‘Do you think I have armies at my disposal, as you once did?’ I say. ‘It’s impossible. I can’t do what you ask. I can’t.’

Sabya clacks her tongue. ‘Do you think I had armies at my disposal to do what I did? I didn’t have any until I did. Mindwalker, you will have to find a way. The fate of the kingdom depends on it.’

* * *

When I wake up, I’m shivering with dread, pulling wildly at the covers. This is mad. This is mad. This can’t be true.

I have just spoken to a goddess.

And yet I know that something terrible is happening right now at the heart of the Opal Mountain. I wasn’t aware just how terrible, though.

And I don’t know how to stop it.

Robert sits up in an unnaturally quick move, like a lion rumbling from sleep. He blinks slowly at the sword that still lies between us and asks in a thick voice, ‘Blanche, what happened?’

I grapple for words but I don’t know where to begin and I don’t know if I even should, but he’s here, isn’t he? He’s here and, of all the people in this world, perhaps he’s the only one who might truly listen.

‘Blanche, what did you do?’ he says, and there’s some fear in what he says, and I want to reach out, to hold him, but I know I shouldn’t. It would be like throwing myself into a waterfall and hoping that I won’t crack my head once I reach the bottom.

And yet.

I curl my fists, and say, ‘Robert, I need to tell you something.’

GIFTS

THE PRINCESS

Two years before the Year of the Red Maiden

I’d just returned from the moonstone circle, where Gelda had given me plenty to think about. I was slipping out of my clothes when there was a sharp knock on the door and he barged in.

I raised the shift to cover myself from a fully dressed Robert, who hovered in the doorway, obviously as shocked as me.

‘I didn’t say you could enter,’ I hissed.

He planted his hands on his hips, smirking, taking in the bits of naked flesh that were showing. ‘Didn’t you? I was under the impression that you did.’

‘Shut that door,’ I said, blushing.

Well, this.

This sounded just like him.

Like he hadn’t sounded in months, since the Incident, when he scribbled his name on the inside of my thigh.

There was a pit in my stomach. I was teetering at the edge of a deep ravine.

He moved to back out of the room, and I said, ‘Just shut the door.’

He complied, hovering. I held his gaze, challenging him to look anywhere lower than my face as I dropped the dress to the floor and felt for my nightclothes at the edge of the bed.

His gaze wandered from my breasts to my rounded belly, the line of my hips. He shifted as I lifted my arms, allowing my nightgown to flow down my body.

‘Yes?’ I said.

He cleared his throat. But said nothing.

‘Why are you here?’

I sat down at the small table, facing him, while I began to undo my braid, unlacing the tangled hair with my fingers.

‘Checking the shutters,’ he mumbled, and set himself in motion from window to window.

It would have been impossible not to notice him. His towering silhouette, stomping about the room. But even if he’d been surrounded by a dozen people, I was sure that I would have only seen him. How his huge hands wrapped themselves around the handles of the shutters, almost as if he wanted to strangle them. The uncertain flex of his broad shoulders.

I willed myself not to feel so aware of him as he stopped at the shutter behind me, pulling at the latches. He stood so close to me. I could have reached out an arm and⁠—

No. No more of that. No more reaching.

I concentrated on brushing my hair, tilting my head to gather it over my shoulder. I let it cascade over my left breast, my finger snagging in the thick curls. It was impossible to sit still while he watched me from behind.

‘Stop staring at me,’ I said. ‘I can feel it.’

Again, he said nothing.

‘What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you were going to send Henri to check the shutters.’

‘Why? Were you going to meet him in the corridor? Did I interrupt something last time? Blanche.’

No, I told myself. Don’t.

‘And what was that about with the handsome captain today? Who whisked you away?’

‘Gwenhael isn’t that handsome,’ I replied.

‘Gwen? Hael?’

There was a question for every part of his name.

I whirled on him. He was standing with his chest pumped, arms crossed, his jaw locked, ready for battle. He looked like an ancient god of revenge.

I breathed deeply, chasing away the feelings writhing in my chest. ‘It’s not what you think.’

‘What is it, then?’

His eyes. His eyes were fire and the sea in a storm, the beginning and the ending.

So close, and yet so far away.

‘Isn’t he, also, your brother’s lackey?’

‘You don’t know the first thing about him.’ Listen, Gelda had told me. Listen. Perhaps listening to Gwenhael, unravelling his story, had been the first step.

‘And what is it to you, anyway?’ I challenged. ‘Or do you have your orders?’

His breath hitched, as if he was struggling with something.

The noise sawed the silence in two. Something was shifting. Something was about to break. I didn’t know if that was a trace of my uncanny gifts, or if it was what I wanted to tell myself.

‘I always knew it, you know,’ he says in a rough voice. ‘About your temper.’

I laid my hands flat on the table, the hairs on my back standing on end.

‘About the burning thoughts in your head. Do you think I was surprised you called me a lackey? Not in the least. When you finally realise what you could do…’

My hands curled on the table. ‘I’m powerless,’ I said. ‘Trapped.’ I’d said as much to Gelda earlier that day.

He recoiled at this, as if I’d slapped him. ‘Yes, that’s true. You’re in my power. That is why this isn’t right. What did I tell you that men do to women who have no one to turn to?’

Understanding dawned on me. ‘Is this what it was about? You fear you have too much power over me?’

His jaw locked, and he was about to say something, then changed his mind.

‘You. Don’t,’ I said, and then I wasn’t so sure. He did have power over me, but not in the sense that he could have compelled me to do something I didn’t want to do.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s not⁠—’

Around and around we went, talking, but never speaking our minds. ‘You know what, stop,’ I interrupted him. ‘Shut up.’ I got up on my feet, moving towards him. I reached out a hand. I didn’t know, I wasn’t sure if I was brave enough, and yet, what I said, it was never what I meant, and— ‘Just hold me. Can you do that? Just hold me.’ My voice wasn’t quite my own. It was trembling. All I wanted was in those few words.

They carried everything.

‘I’m not sure⁠—’

‘Just hold me.’

I, for one, held his gaze for one more moment and it felt like the tower was shaking beneath me, because I’d taken that step, I’d jumped again, and he wasn’t ready to catch me. But then, he reached out an arm and coiled it around my waist and pulled tight, and in the next moment, my head was resting on his shoulder and he was all around me, so warm, so solid, so much better than anything that I could have ever imagined, that I was close to tears.

I buried my nose in his chest and inhaled. He pulled me closer, one hand in my hair, angling my head towards him. He was smiling. ‘Like this?’

‘Just like this.’

I sank into the sensation, wrapping myself around him. I felt safe and loved. Loved? I didn’t know. But I’d ached so much for the feel of his arms around me, for the warmth in his eyes, that it hurt.

Something in my chest was about to burst. And my hands wandered up and down his shoulders, as if I wanted to map the shape of his body, to always remember.

He cupped my face, his thumb caressing my cheek. I was burning where his skin touched mine and my head tilted into his touch, into what it said.

‘I can’t take care of you, Blanche.’

‘You are already taking care of me.’ And he was the only one.

‘I can’t give you⁠—’

‘What can you give me, then?’ I asked, and on a whim, I rose on the tips of my toes, kissing the edge of his lips.

My heart skipped a beat. The rush was unbearable.

He took a sharp breath, as if he was surprised, but then he leant into it, into this thing I’d started, and kissed me softly. I could have disappeared into him entirely.

He nipped at my lip with his teeth and I opened my mouth for him. When our tongues brushed, heat scorched through me, pooling in my stomach and below. He moved his hand to my nape, and tilted my head, deepening the kiss. My hands searched for more, more of him, more of his skin.

This was all familiar. We had been here before. In my mind, I begged him not to stop.

I slid a hand under his shirt and he groaned, pulling me closer. I arched my back, craving more of that, whatever it was. His hand slipped lower, pressing me into his hip. Something rubbed at my sensitive bud and the throbbing between my legs became unbearable.

I only wanted, needed, could think about one thing, and that was him.

But he broke the kiss. ‘Blanche.’ His voice was low. ‘We shouldn’t do this.’

He still held me tight. I traced the shape of his jaw with my finger and his eyes told me the opposite of what his words did. They wouldn’t leave my face. My lips.

‘Did you decide that we shouldn’t do this, or was it somebody else?’

His hands travelled up and down my back, pressing me into him. I flicked open the buttons of his surcoat and relieved him of it in a quick move. After I’d undressed him, his hands returned to my body, but lower, and he tilted me towards the table. The wood buried itself into my backside. He grinned. ‘You shouldn’t have done that, I think.’

‘I don’t have much idea of what I’m doing,’ I said. But I didn’t want him to be under the wrong impression, either. ‘There was someone before,’ I told him, flushing, questioning if this was the right moment to tell him.

‘Someone at the Tower?’ There was a deep furrow between his eyes and his grip on me softened.

‘No, no. Long before. And it didn’t—’ I shook my head. ‘Honestly, is this what you want to talk about?’

Uncertainty played on his face for a moment and I wondered if I’d said the wrong thing.

I wished we were back to where we’d been before I’d opened my mouth to do anything else but kiss him.

So I did the only thing I could think of, which was to pull at the threads of his shirt. I expected him to say something, but he helped me take it off, his brow still furrowed.

I was breathless at the sight of his naked chest. The sheer beauty of his sculpted muscles, the skin marred by scars. I drove my hand across the breadth of his shoulders and he was burning beneath my touch and there was so much of him. He laid a hand on top of mine, and held it in place, rubbing his thumb across it. That little gesture told me everything I needed to know.

And then he kissed me again, pushing me back onto the table, and there was nothing I could do, nothing except sink onto it, gasping for breath like a drowning woman.

‘Wait,’ he said, breaking the kiss. I breathed into his chest while he took my fingers gingerly, lacing them through his. Pulled me gently towards the bed.

‘There’s so much I still want to tell you,’ he said, as I climbed on top of the soft quilt, tugging at him to follow me.

‘Honestly, I would have never, ever pinned you down for a talker.’

He laughed, easing himself on top of me.

By Sabya’s Darkblades and all the Mothers of the Forest and their progeny.

The feeling of him, on top of me. His fingers, tucking a wisp of my hair behind my ear. His lips nipping at mine, coaxing, caressing. I arched into him, hungry for what he had to offer.

‘Blanche,’ he said. ‘Blanche.’

I melted into that. My insides were a flame, flaring to life. I was all tingling sensations and throbs.

His fingers, so deft, so quick, unbuttoned the laces on his breeches, sent them sliding onto the floor. Then his huge, callused hand drove up my thigh, lifting my shift with it.

I moaned.

And then, he ground his hips into mine, and every single thought eddied from existence.

I wanted, I wanted, I wanted. ‘I want you,’ I whispered into his lips.

He grinned. ‘Well, if you’re so sure about it,’ he said, his eyes pinning me while he slipped a finger inside me.

That.

Oh, that.

It all broke and spun from there. It was a whirling dream of his lips on my neck, my ear, his hot breath travelling down my chest, his tongue, flicking around my nipple. It was a fractured mirage of me moving into his hand, of me melting around him, or myself, reaching for him. It was a broken mirror of the fullness of him inside of me, pushing, pushing, pushing me towards a place where I’d never been before.

And in the midst of all that, I sought his mouth, to kiss him.

It’s not just want, I realised, this is love. I tried to hold onto that thought and failed as I dissolved into a Blanche born of fire.

* * *

I curled around him, completely limp, without any intention of ever moving again or thinking another thought. He stroked my back lazily, my legs tangled with his. I couldn’t move, I didn’t want to move, I wanted to feel him, all of him, around me.

I wanted to seize this moment and freeze it and I wanted to feel like that every day of my entire life.

‘You’re quiet,’ he said.

‘I’m happy.’

He squeezed my shoulder. ‘I wish I could do this every day, Blanche,’ and I was startled by how much this echoed my thoughts. ‘Every single day, I want to wake up next to you.’

I buried my head in his chest. ‘I think we should hold tight to what he have.’

‘Even if that might not be much.’

I looked up at him, trying to unwrap his statement.

‘You should put that on my tombstone, by the way,’ he said, his face darkening. ‘He was happy to take everything fate threw his way.’ He kissed me on the top of my head, perhaps noticing something shift. ‘Which is to say, I’ve received a few gifts in my life, and I’m not sure I was worthy of any of them. Not of you, in any case.’

‘This isn’t true,’ I said. ‘Why wouldn’t we deserve each other? Who is there to decide except you and me?’

‘You’re a princess, Blanche. A proper princess. And I – I was born in a hovel. A bloody hovel.’ He chuckled, but it was bitter. ‘If you saw the state of it⁠—’

I wanted to say⁠—

But he cut in. ‘Do you know why I brought Henri with me?’

I shook my head.

‘To prevent me from doing something stupid. Do you know how the heroes of old laid a sword in bed, between them and the princess they rescued, so they wouldn’t do anything that would have offended their modesty? He was meant to be that sword.’

‘I didn’t need to be rescued,’ I said, though how sorely I still did.

‘No, you didn’t.’ I kissed his wrist. ‘Eventually, you will have to rescue yourself. I can only give you the tools. And the songs… I saw what happened last time, Blanche. Your Gift… It’s still there, somewhere. You have power. You just have to learn how to use it again. To learn to trust it.’

I thought, Gelda. How she’d told me that I already had everything I needed, that I had to search for that imprint of the world, but backwards.

I thought how wrong they both were. How I couldn’t save the world with a song.

How I wouldn’t even have known where to begin.

But I didn’t need to tell him that. What I wanted from him… ‘Well, my modesty went to shambles, anyway.’

He laughed a deep, throaty laugh that made my blood froth in answer.

‘I saw it, though,’ I said softly. ‘That hovel. I saw it. I’m not scared of the place you came from.’

He seemed to consider this, perhaps surprised. Perhaps he’d forgotten that I’d seen inside his mind.

‘Fine,’ I said, reaching for my night shift. This was the effect of actually thinking about the bloody situation.

He pulled on his shirt, too, then he searched for his doublet.

‘You’re going?’ I said, hoping it wasn’t true.

But he didn’t pull it on. Instead, he reached into a pocket and extracted a piece of folded parchment. Another song? I thought. But when he unfolded it, I saw it was a sketch. Of a hovel. The roof was slanted and didn’t even look whole. There were no windows, just closed wooden shutters. I touched the contours and some of that coal smudged the tips of my fingers.

‘Did you draw this?’

‘This is the house I was born in.’

‘Where is it?’

He laughed, a low, rattled laugh. ‘Would you be surprised if I told you it was in Anselmois?’ I would, but I didn’t show it. He seemed ready to say more. ‘The last time I saw it was when I returned to help my father. Except that my father wasn’t there anymore. Nor were any of my siblings.’

‘What became of them?’

‘After I ran away, you mean?’

He’d run away, yes. That was what I’d seen. He couldn’t bear the life he’d been living anymore, and he’d run, and he had been, for a while, with travelling artists. Letting grown men punch him for coins. Until he’d enrolled with the mercenaries.

And though he was the one who suffered, there was so much sadness etched upon his face. So much guilt. ‘My eldest sister survived. She married in a nearby village. We were in touch, until—’ He rubbed his face. ‘It doesn’t matter anymore, I think. It’s been too long.’

‘I wouldn’t have been too high a lady to go there with you,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t.’ I closed my eyes, trying to imagine the hovel. As he’d drawn it, the last time he’d seen it.

The world leaves an imprint, Gelda had told me that day.

Sometimes it’s more solid. Like a drawing? A drawing that had come from Robert’s mind, an impression that had been committed to paper. Reaching somewhere deep inside the fibre of my being, I traced that impression to his own head, and back to where it had come from.

Back to the hovel.

Doing the opposite of mindwalking.

Behind my lids, light burst into darkness and the contours of the hovel became clearer and clearer. Above me, the heavy canopy of the bed was replaced by a sky dotted with stars. A half-moon illuminated the shapes around me.

The hovel was now reduced to a mound of molten mud bricks, thrown about, a crumbled roof shaped like a V. The deepest point must have been in the middle of the house, the place where I’d seen the hearth while mindwalking in Robert’s mind.

The courtyard was littered with clumps of mud and dirty straw. There was a deserted dog’s house made of rotten planks, a chain still tied to it. This was the house and this wasn’t the house. I blinked at the stars above my head. I was there and, at the same time, I wasn’t there.

In the distance, an orange light twinkled through the open window of another hovel. The wind picked up, rustling the wheat in the fields.

Everything seemed so real, and I knew it couldn’t have been. I’d been in my bed but a moment ago.

‘Blanche?’ said Robert and then there was his grip on my shoulder and then he was there, next to me, too. In his shirt.

He looked around, his green eyes wild.

‘Do you see it, too?’ I said. ‘The house? Is this⁠—’

‘This can’t be,’ he said, bending down to touch one of the straw-and-mud bricks that used to be the foundation of the hovel.

I held on tight to his arm. ‘Don’t let me go, don’t let me go.’ His hand was solid where we touched, I felt its warmth through the thin layers of fabric between us, but as he swiped the other hand through the bricks, it was nothing. As if he was made of thin air.

‘Blanche?’ he said. ‘What is this?’

I took a deep breath and willed myself to return. To leave this place. But nothing happened.

Robert took quick, shallow breaths. ‘Blanche, what’s happening?’

I thought hard about the Tower, my own chambers, and we were thrown back at the foot of the bed. Standing side by side, I was still clutching Robert’s arm.

Watching the two of us lying on the bed. Our eyes were open, staring into nothing. The double on the bed held the parchment with the drawing. Robert was lying next to me, his hand on my shoulder.

And yet we were standing at the foot of the bed and in the bed, at the same time. There were two of each of us, in my chambers.

I muffled a scream and Robert’s grip around me tightened. ‘Blanche—’ he said, and leaned forward, making to grab one of the bedposts. But the same thing happened, his hand drove right through it. I looked to our feet and noticed that we were hovering a few inches above the floor.

This couldn’t be. This was a dream.

‘Open your eyes, Blanche,’ said Robert, stifling a tremor in his voice.

I looked to him, unsure what he meant. My eyes were wide open, and so were his. He pointed to our duplicates on the bed – the real two of us? ‘Those eyes,’ he said. ‘Open them.’

Open, open.

Get back.

Feel my way into myself.

There was the resistance of a door sealed shut with a chain on the other side, but I pushed hard against it, and then it gave way and I tumbled⁠—

Back.

Back, back.

I opened my eyes, felt the crunch of the down in the pillow underneath my head, Robert’s arm on my shoulder.

At the foot of the bed, where we’d stood a moment ago, there was nothing.

Thin air.

Robert was watching me. ‘This is… I’m… You know what this means, don’t you?’ He bit his lip. ‘From now on, wherever you go when you’re not here, you don’t have to be alone anymore.’

CROSSROADS

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

After I tell Robert about my little conversation with our goddess, he comes round the bed with two goblets of wine and sits by my side, not touching. There’s perhaps an inch between our thighs and I almost feel his warmth, but not quite.

I still haven’t mastered the art of how to be around someone who used to be the centre of my world before the Tournament. I doubt there are any words to describe the entire heaped mess of it.

He hands me one of the goblets, and I gulp the wine, while he says, ‘So, let’s see if I understood this correctly: there’s something terrible at the heart of the Opal Mountain. And the mages are preparing to release it and unleash it upon the poor souls besieging the mountain. And someone, perhaps Sabya herself, has warned you.’

‘Yes,’ I say, hearing for the first time how mad it sounds.

Robert considers, then sips from his goblet. ‘And you’re sure you didn’t dream this?’

‘Yes,’ I hiss.

He raises his hands, palms up in defence. ‘You do have a penchant for legends.’

‘I don’t find this amusing,’ I say. ‘That thing will turn against all of us, according to Sabya.’ The Dark Mother, as our goddess revealed. But I’m not ready to speak that name out loud. ‘That thing should never be released.’

‘And how did you reach the heart of the mountain? Did you ghostwalk, even if I told you not to?’ He gives me a smile that tries to seem sweet, but it’s actually a sting and a challenge.

‘No,’ I say. ‘It’s a sort of mindwalking I used to do before, when I could see events that had once played out at the Opal Mountain. It’s something about time and how it’s stacked on top of itself in that place, something I read long ago in one of the ancient scrolls.’

‘Aha,’ he says. ‘So you can mindwalk again.’

I avoid his gaze. ‘Yes.’

‘How long has it been happening?’

‘A few days,’ I say. ‘You were right, it had been someone at the Opal Mountain who undid the tethers, but it wasn’t Madame Faucon. It was Sabya herself. So she could speak to me. I’m the only person she can speak to. The only one she can warn.’

Robert rubs his face, hard. I relieve him of his goblet of wine, drinking it to the dregs.

His green eyes lock with mine, as if suddenly we’re both aware of what I’ve done, of the intimacy of it, of the way I touched the spot his lips had touched just moments before, and I don’t know how to get away from this, except by saying, ‘Sabya is real, Robert. I always knew it. She’s real.’

But he’s not ready to let go. ‘So last night⁠—’

‘Yes,’ I say, wishing there was some more wine I could gulp. I push the empty goblets into his hands. ‘Yes, I was there. In your head.’

‘Ah,’ is all he says, and he hesitates for a moment before he gets up to fill them.

‘I didn’t know what you were about to do,’ I say, as if this makes everything right. ‘If you wanted to attack Mora’s Tower.’

‘Did you think, even for a moment, that I’d do something to harm you?’ The wine sloshes.

Drip drip.

‘But the Guilds⁠—’

‘That wasn’t what I asked,’ he says.

He drifts back to the bed. ‘When I left, I made you a promise,’ he says, handing me one of the goblets. I don’t know whose it is, mine or his. It doesn’t matter. ‘That I’ll be back before they manage to drag you down with them. I take my promises very seriously, Blanche. How about you?’

My face flushes when I remember the last promise I made him.

That.

No, no, no.

Not now. Not today, when Henri has just asked me to marry him.

And I love Henri. I do.

‘Be that as it may,’ I say, ‘if that thing is unleashed upon us, no promise we ever made each other would matter. According to, you know, the goddess we worship above all others.’

‘You mean to do something about this.’ It’s not a question, the way he says it.

‘You would just stand by?’

He empties half his goblet in a single gulp. ‘What do you have in mind?’

* * *

We wake up before dawn, dress in silence, eat a quick breakfast. I don’t care where he’s looking, what he sees. I just want us to take care of this.

He agreed, reluctantly.

But he did see the absurdity of the situation, the besieged trying to awaken something that isn’t even there.

We discussed it at length and there is so much that we didn’t discuss at all.

But when I take a seat, poised for ghostwalking, he takes the chair beside me.

‘Are you ready?’ he says.

‘No. But what will you do?’

He stretches out his hand.

Such a simple gesture.

He’s here, and he will do what I ask him to.

Knowing that ties impossibly tight knots in my throat.

I haven’t seen him in such a long time, and yet, now that he’s here, it’s as if he never went away.

I reach out and the mere brush of his fingers sends tingles up my arm. And when he closes his hand around mine, the simple weight and shape and warmth of it, it’s something so familiar that it rakes up things in my chest that I had thought long lost. I turn my own hand around his, settling into this feeling, and before I know it, tears spring to my eyes.

He watches me, waiting to jump to our ghostly selves, but I am stuck, frozen here, in this sensation of his hand in mine.

I haven’t laid a finger on him in two years.

Yesterday, all day, we did not touch.

His eyes grow soft and he whispers my name. ‘Blanche.’

And that’s when I can’t hold it back anymore and it comes spilling out, like a broken dam. The tears, the sobs. That feeling in my chest. He draws his chair closer, lays my head on his shoulder.

He says nothing. He breathes. Deeply.

My entire body is shaken with sobs.

He kisses my temple and laces his fingers through mine. He drives one finger along my cheek, stopping at the edge of my lips.

I look up and there’s so much tenderness in his gaze that I feel I’ll never be able to breathe again.

‘I know’ is all he says. ‘I know.’

* * *

Robert and I step hand in hand as our ghostly selves into the great chamber that holds the Crystal of Power. There are about a dozen mages and students, in the teal robes of the Golden Pavilion.

And most of them are ready to strike.

Let them do their best.

I say, ‘Before you try to do anything, spare yourselves the trouble. Nothing can touch us in this shape.’

It’s hard for me not to think that the first time I ever ghostwalked he had been at my side. It’s hard not to think about what he said: that I didn’t have to walk alone wherever I went when I wasn’t there.

It’s hard not to think of that night, and how surprised we were, both of us. After seeing the remnants of his house, we tried again, and found ourselves on the streets of Langville. We laughed, and then he made an offhand comment about the stench he couldn’t detect anymore. ‘If there was an ideal way to walk through Langville, this is it,’ he said.

My hand is locked into his safely, in the way set out in the tent. We didn’t speak after I started to cry. There was nothing I could tell him that he didn’t already understand, and, as always, words would have done more harm between us than good.

We are sinking as it is with all that is happening around us; we didn’t need to dive deeper into things that should be left to rest.

Into this. Whatever it is.

But Madame Faucon looks disapprovingly at our joined hands.

‘Ghostwalking,’ I say, before she can add anything. I found out, later, after Henri procured some scrolls for me, that it’s a sister Gift to mindwalking. Much as Gelda had told me.

Madame Faucon swipes an invisible strand of hair from her face. ‘Blanche. Is this truly you? Your Gift⁠—’

I take in the others, watching us wearily. As if our presence here is what seals their fate.

I have already taken a great risk by coming here today. By showing my hand. And so did Robert. ‘Is there somewhere private where we can speak?’

* * *

Madame Faucon brings us to what seems to be the Golden Pavilion’s pantry, a room dug in the mountain, with shelves full of foodstuffs. She’s still watching our joined hands. ‘I always thought⁠—’

‘You are wrong,’ I snap, thinking about Henri. ‘I needed to bring the Commander here with me today.’

‘Can you take anyone you want with you? You can go anywhere?’ Her tone is the teacher’s again. Who has discovered something previously unmentioned.

It’s pure, unbridled curiosity.

‘I’m sure there are some scrolls about it somewhere, but yes, I can go anywhere if I can picture it. And I can bring anyone with me, as long as they hold on tight.’

‘What happens if you let go?’

I squeeze Robert’s hand. ‘We weren’t so curious as to go that far.’

‘Humph,’ she says, and I deduce that, in my stead, she would have been.

I hold him even tighter, desperately tight. I’d never, ever let him go.

‘You should find a scroll,’ I say.

‘I can’t,’ she says sharply. ‘We can only hold the caves against our besiegers. And it costs us so much to keep them shut.’

I reel at this, even though Sabya told me as much yesterday. ‘Why would they even⁠—’

It’s shocking, the violence with which the people are attacking the mages.

‘The folk have been told that the mages are holding captive the Gifts that belonged to them. To their land. I have no idea who incensed them. But I can tell you that they have the Golden Pavilion,’ she says, so much wrath in her eyes. ‘They came at night, overran us—’ She purses her lips. ‘What you saw, the mages gathered there, we are all that there is left.’

I shudder. The men and women gathered in front of the Pavilion have done this. Children were killed, young mages studying here. But how could the people have even known there was something or someone at the heart of the mountain?

It doesn’t even matter. It’s all a huge misunderstanding, based on false presumptions.

And so much depends on the conversation I need to have with Madame Faucon. Robert’s grip on my hand tightens.

‘You need to stop whatever you’re doing,’ I say. ‘Please.’

‘If we don’t wake the great Power inside the mountain,’ Madame Faucon says, her voice now cold, ‘we are dead. We cannot defeat them.’

A thousand echoes ring in the storeroom. Dead. Dead. Dead.

And what can I do about it?

I only came with a warning. ‘I don’t know what you think is inside. I don’t know if you think you’ll help the Golden Mother rise, but I can tell you that isn’t true. What is enclosed in amber, down there, is far more terrible.’

It’s Madame Faucon’s turn to recoil. ‘How do you know about the amber?’

Your kind were conduits, Amelie once told me. Now I can see for what.

‘Because I’ve seen inside the mountain.’

‘Tell me,’ she says.

I consider. But admitting that I have this sort of power, when I don’t know what Madame Faucon is about to do… And then, there’s the matter of my brother. What he would do with this, if he ever found out. If this tide that has turned against us swallows us all.

I say, ‘There is – I will tell you. But for now, there are more pressing matters at hand. You need to stop doing the spell. In fact, you need to do everything in your power to undo it.’

Madame Faucon shakes her head, her tight curls bouncing. ‘And who will save us then?’

Robert says, ‘I will.’

I look to him, shocked. ‘You will?’ I say. I don’t know what I hoped to achieve by bringing him with me, but I knew he would be good and do the honourable thing and he wouldn’t leave me. Alone.

‘Your armies were pledged to the Guilds, Commander, the last time I heard,’ says Madame Faucon, assessing him. Overall, perhaps thinking of him as a good idea.

‘My armies were mine to pledge to whoever I want to, last time I heard,’ says Robert. ‘And they will be here, at your doorstep, if you stop this madness. I will free you of your besiegers, if you let that thing under the mountain rest.’

Madame Faucon seems to consider this and her black eyes stop, again, at our joined hands.

‘We don’t want any unnecessary bloodshed,’ I say, though if I come to think that Henri is arranging my marriage to him in Langville, while I’m planning to take the Guilds’ armies on a detour – future bloodshed is certainly a problem to be considered.

Robert throws me a disbelieving look, but then directs his attention to Madame Faucon. ‘We need two days. In two days, we’ll be here. But only if you promise to stop this madness.’

I think, Promises. Mother of the Forest, all the promises we’ve ever made to each other.

A ROYAL TOURNAMENT

THE PRINCESS

Two Years before the Year of the Red Maiden

By noon on the first day of the Tournament, I wished I’d never come in the first place.

The girls and I left the jousting grounds to have lunch in one of the nearby tents. I took my seat of honour two chairs from my brother’s, while Gisele, Amelie and Mathilde sat down on the other side of the table.

It was as if everything that had passed between us at their last visit had been wiped clean. That thread of understanding. Amelie’s awe as she’d spoken of me as a conduit.

Conduit of misfortune, more likely.

We’d barely settled when Robert, stripped of his armour, folded himself seamlessly in the chair next to me. Of course my brother would have wanted him here, so he could guard me. I was forever his prisoner.

Hot tears burned in my eyes.

His prisoner, that was all.

He hadn’t come up galloping to me to ask for my favour, the scarf that I’d so carefully prepared that morning. No. He’d gone running to Gisele, just like everybody else. It had been a scrap of her silk scarf that fluttered down his lance as he’d thumped down his opponents. The flash of green, and not the glint of red and gold.

I looked away from him, my gaze narrowing on her. Oh, didn’t she always, always get what she wanted?

He pressed his thigh to mine. Hard. Not by accident.

It was a demand. A question.

I flicked my head to him.

‘All right?’ he asked, his voice barely audible above the clatter of cutlery, the raised voices around me, commenting, laughing.

‘The winner of the day,’ called my brother, from where he sat, so close to me.

In the seat next to mine, Charles, my nephew, ran an assessing glare over Robert. Up and down his fresh jacket, the pale green of the quiet sea, embroidered with much too much gold for it to be considered tasteful. ‘Not even a scratch on you,’ he said in that too-still, too-quiet voice. Darkness sheathed his every word, every dagger hidden in it.

Robert drove the back of his hand over his cheeks. ‘The ladies appreciate a pretty face.’ His tone was low, full of hidden meanings.

My guts twisted and I felt that I could howl. My brother snapped to attention. ‘You seemed to win the favour of Mademoiselle Gisele today.’ His eyes glazed over Anselme, who sat right next to him. The Prince shot arrows of fire at Robert with his glare.

I remembered the way the girls spoke of their favours, the last time I’d held court. How they’d lilted Robert’s name, casting it towards Gisele, like a snare.

Oh, she’d made good of that, hadn’t she? Gisele always won. It was a given.

Something dark spun in my chest.

‘As did a few others who asked for it,’ said Charles.

‘I think my fair daughter likes to tease,’ said Prince Anselme, looking to where Gisele was seated with Mathilde and Amelie.

Gisele caught the stares and directed a broad smile at all of us. Her head twitched when she noticed Robert.

And then, her smile widened.

I couldn’t look into his face. I thought, Where is Henri? I searched for his reassuring smile, the amused glint in his eyes, among the guests.

Not there. He wasn’t there.

Robert shifted in his seat, his shoulder angling towards me. And then, hidden by the table, his hand was on my thigh, driving slowly up and down. Warm. So warm. Heating me up, from the inside.

My cheeks caught fire and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stand that anymore. The teasing with Gisele while he was teasing me. Whatever odd, twisted games he played. I thought that I’d be fine, but no, it was too much.

I shot up to my feet, dabbing at my lips. ‘I’m sorry, I’m quite unwell,’ I said. Nothing that would surprise them. From the odd sister of the king.

So ill-suited. So mismatched. To everything.

I didn’t wait for their replies as I hurried out of the tent. And I didn’t look back to see what Robert made of it.

* * *

Of course, while everyone was lounging and sleeping and making merry in their luxurious tents, they’d given me rooms in a tower. A bleak guardhouse looking over the field. That was where I was headed, weaving through the crowd, through the smells of sour ale and piss and charred meat, roasted chestnuts and honey.

A clang of boots resounded from behind me, and Robert laid a hand on my wrist.

‘Leave me alone,’ I said.

‘I can’t.’ He pulled at my wrist and I snatched it free, rubbing where he’d touched it. I grabbed my skirts and stalked away.

‘Go back to Gisele.’

‘I have to see you to your chambers,’ he said. Every word was pointed. And as if not directed quite at me. ‘I’m still to see to your safety.’

‘As my brother’s prisoner, you mean?’

‘No young woman should walk the camp unaccompanied, anyway.’

‘I don’t remember asking for your company.’

Nonetheless, he followed me to the tower’s door, nodding to the stationed guards. Up the winding stairs and into my room. ‘Get out,’ I said, whirling to him as I reached my bed.

He began closing the shutters, one by one. Just as he always did when we were at Mora’s Tower.

Ignoring me.

‘Get. Out,’ I said. Anger was coiling and broiling inside of me, preparing to strike.

‘What happened, Blanche? What is it?’ He leaned back on the wall, crossing his arms. He tipped his head back, studying me from under his lashes.

I squared my shoulders, straightened my spine. Ready. To dust the floors with him if he tried to make me move an inch, to admit that he was the one who had worked me up into this fury. That I had been unable to peel my eyes off him while he was spurring his horse towards his opponent, my heart leaping every single time before the impact came. How I’d sought his gaze, a flicker of something in it, while he’d been looking towards Gisele.

‘It was too much,’ I said. ‘Too many people. Too loud. I’ve been locked away for too long.’ Even before I’d been sent to the tower. Even before I’d left the Opal Mountain.

His voice was a growl. ‘You mean to tell me that you’re afraid of them?’

I made a non-committal gesture with my hand.

‘You’re afraid of your brother, the King? You’re afraid of sleek Anselme? You’re afraid of Gisele and Amelie?’ He took a few steps towards me. ‘Are you afraid of them, Blanche? Are you afraid to look into their eyes and laugh at a few jokes?’

He was dangerously close. So close that I could smell him. Peaches and mint, covering the scent of blood and horse on his hands. ‘Are you a lamb now, Blanche? Is that what you are? A lamb, soft and whimpering in their hands?’

The anger whooshed in my head, whipping around. Afraid? I wasn’t afraid anymore. Not of my brother, riding hard towards his own end. I could hear it in the wind. The moans and grumbles of the discontented people. I could scent it in the fire burning in their homes. I could feel it from the sea to the most remote woods in the mountains. I may not have been able to mindwalk anymore. But we were all connected. And these tethers, they burned, brighter and brighter. Brighter until they were brittle. Brighter until… They. Would. Snap.

I’d felt it. Just a few days before, as we’d ghostwalked through Langville. In Gwenhael’s stories about the Mothers of the Forest, and their followers. In Gelda’s wrath.

I wondered how any person who walked the Red Kingdom couldn’t feel it.

But I didn’t know anymore if I could trust him.

I’d thought that I could, and I’d thought that what was between us was more tangible and real than the white stone of the very tower I was locked in.

But I’d been wrong. So, so, so wrong.

Nothing was real. I was a stepping stone for Robert. That was all.

And that hadn’t been obvious to me, until I’d watched how he moved in the wide world beyond the Tower.

He took a few more steps towards me. ‘I will go, Blanche. Very, very soon. I have to go,’ he whispered, drawing even closer to me.

He’d go. Of course. He’d leave me. To become a seigneur.

And I? I was never the one to make them stop whatever they were doing.

Always Gisele. Was that it? Was he drawing plans with Gisele, behind my back? Just like Mathilde was drawing plans with Arnauld? Were they waiting for my brother to bestow the lands on him, finally landing him into the nobility of the Red Kingdom?

I pushed him back. I was allowing him to come too close. He recoiled, letting my hands guide him away from me. ‘Why are you raging, Blanche?’ His voice edged into irritation.

‘Go to – Gisele,’ I said. ‘Just go to her.’

Feelings danced across his face, from surprise, to something like pain, to something more. ‘Gisele?’ he chuckled. ‘Is this about the favour? Are you jealous, Blanche?’

He placed a finger under my chin, lifting it. I slapped it away. ‘I had to, Blanche. I could hardly strut around with your favour around my lance.’

Your favour around my lance. The bald arrogance. The sheer claim in his words. Red coloured everything.

‘I didn’t want her favour.’ He cocked his head. ‘Anyway, she gave it to me and half a dozen others. I didn’t matter.’

I wonder if he knew. That she’d wanted him to ask her.

‘Why, then?’ I asked, in spite of myself.

‘I’m just trying to do a good job of hiding all of this.’ He bit his lip. His wonderful, soft lips. I felt a deep tug in my belly. A pull of yearning.

‘All of what would that be, precisely? A few tumbles in the sheets?’ His gaze roved across my face, as if he didn’t quite know where to grab what I was saying. ‘How your male pride must suffer. You rode the King’s sister and you can never tell a soul⁠—’

He gripped my waist, pulling me to him. Fast. And hard. I quietened, each breath thrusting my chest into his. He looked at me, looked and looked, and I couldn’t stand the burn in that gaze. What it did to me. He stroked the back of his hand down my cheek, and the feeling sent so many tingles in my face that I could cry again.

And I didn’t even know why.

He lowered his head, and his breath travelled down my nose and towards my lips⁠—

I pushed him away.

‘Blanche,’ he said. There was pleading in his tone.

‘No tumbles today,’ I said, retreating.

I stopped by the chest at the foot of my bed and started riffling through the clothes. I laid down the worn cloak I used when I rode and a plain, comfortable dress.

He stiffened when I started pulling off layer after layer of my clothes, until I was wearing nothing more than my shift.

One word. One word, one single gesture from me, and— His arms would have been around me. Roving all over my skin. Touching, probing, feeling. My hands would have been on his chest, pulling him closer⁠—

No, no, no.

I furiously slipped into the dress I’d selected. And drew on my cloak.

‘Where are you going?’ he said.

He was bloody amused.

‘Out,’ I said. ‘You’re taking me to the fair.’

* * *

They say that revenge is petty. Fine. On that day, I was petty. I made Robert follow me where I wanted to go. I gave him a run for his life, taking him away from them: my brother, Gisele. To see how he liked it, being chained to something.

We wove through the crushing crowd that had amassed around the fighting grounds. The extent of it was breathtaking. The smells were absolutely overpowering. Sellers had set up their stands and were praising their goods: tanners, jewellers, potters, carpenters with small objects carved of wood.

Women were selling hot pies and there were long benches, scattered, where men and women sipped from ales or flasks of spirits that they’d brought from home. Judging by the grimaces they made after drinking, I didn’t want to know what they tasted like.

I danced around, while Robert struggled to keep close to me, not losing sight of me. In the few empty spaces between the crowds, artists were showing their skills. Fire swallowers. I wondered if there was a single trace of magic within them.

Singers. Jugglers.

Robert laid a hand on my arm, stopping me by a stand selling baked apples. ‘Do you want one?’

I swayed.

‘I love them,’ he said.

I realised that I never took any coin with me. That I never, ever had any coin. That my brother saw to it. That I shouldn’t have had the means to come by it, even if⁠—

‘Come, Blanche.’ He reached into his pouch and drew out a copper. ‘Let me treat you to it.’

He gently handed me a baked apple on a stick and I bit into it, turning to watch the juggler next to the stand. Juice dribbled down my chin and the apple was so sweet, so warm, that I couldn’t help taking one bite after the other, revelling in the taste.

‘I bet I can do that, too,’ he said pointing at the artist, nipping at his own apple. As if he didn’t want to finish too fast. To be done with it. As if he wanted to savour every mouthful, like it was something rare and precious.

The balls swayed and danced in the air, so many that it seemed impossible that someone could even keep count of them. But not one of them fell.

‘Yes, I bet you think you can,’ I said.

‘Don’t roll your eyes.’

The crowd pushed us closer into each other, side by side.

‘I am most certainly not. You can’t even see my face.’ Our eyes were glued to the artist and his spinning balls, on their dance.

‘I know you are. I can feel it in your voice.’

I shifted my shoulder, pressing it into his arm. I could feel his motions, the way he dipped his head and bit into his apple. Then he half-turned, throwing his stick away, and I couldn’t look, I couldn’t look at him as I felt the stomp and the to and fro of the crowd thrumming in my belly, the joy of tasting so much freedom.

So many people at once, everywhere and going nowhere in particular.

So much to see and taste and feel, such a vast world beyond the confines of the white stone walls.

And then Robert shifted, wrapping his arm around my waist. Pulling me closer. With my back I could trace every rise of his chest, the padded softness of his jacket and the strength of his muscles underneath, the dip of his stomach and those squares of hard flesh, his hip digging into my backside. I nestled closer, settling into all of him. Letting him envelop me. Letting myself pause and soak up all these feelings twinkling inside me.

The artist added another ball. The balls moved so fast that they were a swirl. The clamour of the crowd rose, so many people buzzing with life, with the sheer joys of it, and I could still taste the apple in my mouth, feel the stickiness of the juice on my chin.

Robert lowered his head and planted a soft kiss on my temple.

The world exploded into a burst of starlight. It was so much, it was too much, how rooted I was in that moment, so that I’d be forever anchored to it, its imprint rippling beyond who I’d ever been and who I’d ever be.

I couldn’t bear the feelings that were coursing through me. ‘Let’s go,’ I told him, taking his hand. ‘Let’s see what else there is.’

We rambled through the alleyways around the stands, watching in wonder, while I kept him at a distance that was safe.

I’d been here. I’d thought that tumbling through the sheets was more than tumbling through the sheets, and I’d been wrong. I should have known better than to let Robert come too close.

I will go, Blanche. Very, very soon.

The meaning of his words struck me with the breeze of autumn air. Tears threatened to cloud my eyes, so I looked up at the derelict garrison wall that enclosed half of the length of the fair. A chunk of the parapet was visible, stairs crawling up its height, leading nowhere anymore.

I remembered the legends. There used to be a great city here. Before Lucius and Sabya shifted the lands, making them clash, and raising the Opal Mountain out of nothing. Trapping the King of Kings underneath it. Other stories said that Sabya alone washed up the waters, drowning the island of King of Kings, and that was how the sea came to sit on the edge of Lafala.

Ancient stories never seemed to agree about anything.

‘The tower of Sabya, they called it,’ said Robert. ‘Though it was never a tower. Always a fortress. Sabya, who waits in the mountain.’

‘For what?’ I said.

Robert threw me a dazzling smile. ‘Who knows? Maybe for some company.’

The air shimmered and I glimpsed the shiver of golden armour in the shadows. I remembered what I’d seen inside the mountain.

‘What do you think she was?’ I asked.

‘Who?’

‘Sabya.’

Robert pulled us over to the edge of the crowd, which had the forward motion of a rushing river. ‘There are many names for her. Sword of Truth. Light Cantor. Shadow-Dancer. Blade of Darkness. Sky-Hopper. The Dagger in the Dark. Slayer of Nightdragons.’

‘Mother of all nightmares. That seems an awful lot of things to be and to do in a single lifetime. I wonder who she truly was.’

‘Mother of all nightmares?’ Robert seemed to consider. ‘Perhaps she was called that, too.’

I tssked. ‘It’s just a saying. I was marvelling at that array of impossible names.’

He shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe she was all of that. Maybe she was none of what the stories call her. Does it still matter?’

‘No,’ I said, though it felt like something had struck a nerve, a chord in a harp playing the same words in my head. Shadow-Dancer. Liar. Sky-Hopper. Trapped. Dagger in the Dark. Blind. Blade of Darkness. Watching. Watching. Waiting.

Not yet. Not yet.

Floods the world with light.

‘Blanche?’ said Robert, his voice a whisper.

It’s a song, I realised.

A song. Just like the ancient one that Robert had brought to me on the night when he’d written his name on my thigh. A song so ancient, so forgotten that the world had walked past it.

You were born to do great things, Madame Faucon had once told me.

And what did I do? Nothing.

Nothing at all.

I lingered between the walls of the Tower, counting the days, hoping that Robert might come. That he might throw me a crumb of his attention.

Gelda had told me to listen. I wasn’t doing even that.

I blinked, realised that Robert was glaring at me. ‘Yes?’

‘You had that face again.’

‘What face?’

He curled his fingers tighter into mine. ‘The one that I imagine you always made before, when you were mindwalking. The one where you stare at something, and yet, through it. When you’re here, and, in fact, not here at all.’ He pulled me into him. ‘The face you make when you travel through time and space or whatever it is. But, you know, I prefer you here, with me. Among the living.’

I didn’t even think I had a place in this world. And I wanted to tell him as much, but then, he turned away from me to shake hands with a man. He was lean and the veins on his bony arms were like ropes. He wore the dark blue cape of the Pretorians. They started to bang on about the number of guards around the perimeter and the change of shifts.

The pulse and throb of the crowd called me. Not far away, a tanner was selling his wares. On the table, there was a corner with small objects woven from tight strips of leather, belts. ‘I’ll be right there,’ I told Robert and he nodded.

I turned the smooth bracelets, examining the work. The tanner watched the tips of my fingers with wary eyes and I was preparing to tell him I wasn’t a thief, when I remembered that I had no coins.

I’d never seen such things. I supposed they were common enough in villages and towns, but when had I ever walked the streets of a town, freely? Never, except two days before with Robert, in Langville, and that was only as my ghostly self.

I rambled past an armourers’, lifting a sword, just to check the feel of it in my hand.

It wasn’t right.

No, swords weren’t my weapon of choice.

I walked down, deeper into the fair, stopping to admire an acrobat, tumbling and leaping on her toes. I couldn’t help but wonder at such skill and grace.

And when I’d reached a stand with roasted almonds and my stomach was grumbling, I looked back, intending to ask Robert if he’d be kind enough to treat me to that, too, when I realised I’d lost him.

I’d lost him.

I searched for the place that we’d been standing in only a few moments ago, but I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t orient myself through this bramble, I couldn’t see where I’d come from, where I was going. I could barely see past the people.

I needed to see. I needed to see if I could find him.

I pushed through the bodies, young men, old women, children hanging to their mothers’ skirts. I pushed and pushed towards the wall of the old garrison, the only point that didn’t move in this snaking crowd.

I pushed until my hand touched the old stones of the wall, and I leaned my back to it.

I’d lost him.

I’d lost him, and I didn’t know how I could come back.

How I could ever find him again.

He’d been there just a few moments before. I pushed back the hood on my cloak, the air suddenly too hot, too stifling.

I’d lost him. My knees nearly buckled underneath me.

But then, if I’d lost him, he’d lost me as well, hadn’t he?

He’d lost me.

They’d lost me.

My brother would be furious. Beside himself. And I couldn’t even imagine Robert trying to explain to him that he’d taken me to the fair.

My heart leapt in my chest. What would have Etienne done to Robert once he found out that he’d lost me? Their illustrious prisoner.

My hands felt clammy and I wasn’t sure I could do this to him. Regardless of his plans to run off with Gisele or not. Plans that would never come to fruition once Etienne got his hands on him.

Robert was clever, I told myself. Cleverer than anyone gave him credit for. Someone didn’t survive as a captain of mercenaries for so long just because of sheer, brute force. No, it took something else, too.

Robert would know what to say to my brother. If there was someone who could survive Etienne, it was Robert.

Definitely.

I pushed myself along the wall, edging for the stairs that led nowhere, examining the infinite possibilities.

It seemed my possibilities led nowhere, as well. I had no coin. No relations that might have harboured me, offered me a roof over my head.

I had nothing and no one.

I was alone.

And just as I thought this, someone else realised it, too. A man stared at me thoroughly. I snatched back up my hood, but it was too late. He’d seen me.

I swirled, making my way along the wall, but the man caught up with me, caught my wrist. He was of middling height and wearing good quality velvets. A well-established craftsman or a merchant, perhaps. ‘What’s a pretty thing like you doing here, alone?’

‘I’m not alone,’ I said. ‘My friend is right over there.’

‘Where?’

I pointed behind him and he turned around. I used the moment to snatch my wrist free and run towards the stairs. I was quick. I rode, I swam, I did my Morgen Movements. I hurried to the stairs, going up, up, up, not giving him a chance to catch up with me. I didn’t stop until I reached a platform at the very top. I crashed my back into the wall, watching the great swarming fair beneath.

I was so high up. There were so many people, so many faces, so many stands. And yet my gaze went, like an arrow aiming true, towards Robert, who was sitting down on a large barrel, next to the tanner’s stand where I’d looked at the bracelets. I could see where it was. Not far off from where I stood.

Robert rubbed his hands up and down his face. As if he were at the end of his wits.

He wasn’t looking for me, I realised.

He was just sitting down, thinking about how to deal with the aftermath of this.

And the breath was knocked out of my lungs.

He was letting me go.

He was setting me free.

HAND IN HAND

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

Once we return from the Opal Mountain, back to our physical selves in the tent, Robert unwraps his hand from mine. He scratches his head. ‘How sure are you that the mages are about to release the Dark Mother?’

‘Very sure,’ I say. ‘I spoke to Sabya herself.’

Robert’s gaze snags on mine again, and he considers, and rakes a hand through his hair. There’s a tinge of darkness in his gaze, in the way he studies me.

I shift. ‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ he says, and he rises to his feet, sighing.

There’s something too deliberate in the way he turns away from me, strides out of the tent. There’s nothing of that tenderness with which he held me. My tears must not even have dried on his shirt yet, and it feels like he’s running away from me.

‘Robert?’ I call out, following him.

The sunlight blinds me, as I try to keep up with Robert and snag at his mantle, pull him back. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I ask, just as I notice Mathilde.

She’s standing at the edge of the Fallen Court’s tent.

She’s not alone. Arnauld is next to her, draping an arm around her waist. But she doesn’t lean into it, and while her face is obscured by his shoulder, I see her entire body stiffen under his touch, her back ramrod-straight.

Yesterday, in her dreams, there had been no trace of Arnauld.

No trace of him, after she’d been waiting to see him again for two years.

They had caught them, after the Tournament. When they tried to run away, they’d caught them, and, according to Henri, they were dragging them back to Lafala, literally dragging a half-dead Arnauld, tied to the back of a cart, when there was a storm. During the confusion and the panic wrought by the hail and downpour, Arnauld was whisked away by an unseen hand.

A Shadow-Dancer? I didn’t know. Their kind hadn’t been seen in years. But the storm made me think about my nephew Charles, the quiet Storm-Caller. And how he might not have been as meek as everyone supposed him to.

But Mathilde was discarded on my doorstep, at Mora’s Tower.

And Mathilde, she told me, just yesterday, that it had been good to see Arnauld.

I can now see the edges of the lie that I had sensed, that had made me want to look into her dreams.

Last year, at this time, I wouldn’t have even questioned her.

Perhaps I have to look even deeper.

First things first.

The present conundrum.

But by the time I turn back to Robert, he has vanished.

* * *

The tables have turned today, and Robert is the one who is morose and quiet while we ride. And disappears just as often under the pretext of one job or another.

‘So where are we going?’ I ask, making my mare step in stride with his mount.

‘We’ll stop tonight at the Griffin Inn.’

‘This is not an answer,’ I say, and he looks down at me.

His gaze frightens me, simply because of the lack of affection in it. It frightens me because I shouldn’t care, I don’t want to care, and yet what bothers me most – when I have an entire array of problems that may or may not affect the future of our kingdom – is the question of why he is so cold to me today.

Because the Griffin Inn is at the crossroads. Two roads, both leading to Lafala. One leads through Langville, where the Guilds want him, and one leads through the Bencifert Lands and the Opal Mountain.

Where I want us to be.

Where I need us to be, where he promised we would be, when we spoke to Madame Faucon.

So we can stop the madness at the Golden Pavilion.

‘How about your wedding, though?’ he says, and it’s that uncanny thing again where he seems to pick a thread of my thoughts and unspool them.

Speaking to Henri was always easy. Speaking to Robert was always a road full of bloody traps and poisonous snakes.

For both of us.

‘I will think about that later.’

‘Not fair on anyone, though,’ he says, and I’m trying to unravel that, when he adds, ‘What are you thinking about the wedding now?’

‘That I bloody hate Henri’s guts for pressing it on me.’

‘We all know, Blanche, that you don’t like to have to do something because someone tells you to,’ he says. And it maddens me, because he knows me so well, because every single exchange with him feels like looking at a bruise and pressing hard into it just to see how much it still hurts.

‘But,’ he goes on, ‘otherwise?’ He raises his eyebrows in that excruciatingly annoying way of his, and honestly, I’m hot and hungry and so, so tired after the night we both had and I wish I had anything, anything else to say, except ‘What is the point in asking and what right do you have, since, need I remind you, you vanished for two years without giving me a sign?’ He grunts at this, as if I’m the one doing him an injustice, so I feel the need to press harder, by saying, ‘Not a bloody word.’

Oh, if he was angry before, Robert is just a giant ball of fury now, from the way his hands clench in fists, the way the veins in his neck bulge. ‘I couldn’t take you with me. I couldn’t take care of you. I said as much then, and I say as much to you now. No one would have employed me if I was a fugitive who had taken the sister of the King.’

This slices through me, through my own anger, fed and groomed to the size of a monster eating me from the inside. And yet I say, ‘But you were a fugitive, anyway. My brother was furious.’

His stare is unyielding. ‘Yes, but I’d left for an honourable reason. Leaving with my charge, Blanche, in case you haven’t realised, would have been a reason for war.’

I have to see the sound reasoning behind this. And yet— ‘You could have sent word.’

His frown deepens. ‘And whose fault do you think it was that I didn’t?’

‘I can’t believe you’re saying it was my fault, that it was something I did.’ I’m nearly blind with fury. How I cried those first days. Stared at the walls. If it wasn’t for Mathilde, who was in a worse state than I was, forcing me to rally, I would have been a complete wreck. But this was the thing about my Fallen Court. They forced me to march forward.

Not that Robert would know. ‘How dare you even suggest it?’ I say.

‘Why don’t you ask your betrothed how come I didn’t give a sign?’ He turns his horse around, ready to leave again, but then decides he does have something else to say. ‘And you know, I suspected why he told me it was better to leave you alone. But I can’t decide if you knew from the beginning, and decided to accept it, or if he just bought himself enough time to manoeuvre.’

I feel the lifeblood leaving my face, leaving my body. The grip on my reins grows soft.

I never spoke to Henri about Robert. I assumed he suspected something, but not enough to take it seriously. For a long while, Henri and I had been just friends. He helped me establish connections.

Late, very late, did we realise that we could be more.

That we’d been more to each other, during all this time.

‘Don’t act so surprised,’ he growls, before spurring his horse in the opposite direction. ‘You know that’s the sort of thing he’d do.’

* * *

I’m a cloud of anger most of the day, as we ride towards the Crossroads, knowing that Robert will defer any sort of decision until tonight.

That someone should think they can make the decisions for me.

That that someone should be the person whom I had relied on more than anyone during the past year or so.

So I decide to rain my fury on someone and that particularly unfortunate someone is Mathilde.

I stop by the side of the Fallen Court’s carriage and unceremoniously ask Amelie and Gisele to get down. ‘The guards will help you find the back of a cart or something.’

Amelie seems like she’s ready to say something, but Gisele pulls her down. ‘Later,’ she says.

I scoot across Mathilde in the carriage. She’s wearing a dress today again. ‘So,’ I say.

‘So.’ She pushes back a few dark locks from her half-braid. She looks so beautiful today. Like a woman who has finally grown into her stark, unapologetic features.

A pity she wants to throw all that growth to the wind.

‘How are your dogs doing?’ Probing and feeling. There’s no point in asking her anything about Arnauld.

She flinches, and then starts pulling at a cord in her dress. ‘I don’t have any dogs.’

‘Oh?’ I say. ‘You know, I never, ever questioned you about what you did in the woods with the dogs, and⁠—’

‘How about you don’t start today?’

‘I didn’t question because it was fine and nobody truly cared what you did with Gwenhael and you seemed happy.’ And, honestly, Gwenhael is someone safe to be with.

She snorts. ‘I wasn’t happy. How can someone be happy who is locked in a tower, and can never go anywhere?’

‘Was there anywhere else that you wanted to be?’

‘Why are you pushing me against a wall? Are you enjoying this?’

Mathilde stretches her fingers, in wonder, as if she’s seeing them for the first time. They’re covered in calluses and blisters. I didn’t notice this in the past months. Granted, she and Gwenhael did bring rabbits, and sometimes even a deer, but I never questioned if she had participated in the hunt or if it was something that just Gwenhael did.

‘What is the problem, Blanche? You never cared, why now?’

The problem is that I saw her with Arnauld. And she didn’t seem happy. She didn’t seem like herself.

And yet, I can’t help but wonder, what does it mean when Mathilde is herself? Who is she, what has she become, how has she closed the gap between that girl in velvet dresses and the one in the worn riding jackets? ‘I always cared. That was why I wanted to take you in. And if I didn’t question your choices, or meddle in whatever you were doing, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t care. I just wanted everyone to live the version of their lives that suited them.’

Mathilde scoffs. ‘We were locked in a tower, Blanche. I don’t know what you did, and I know you were up to something with Amelie, because the two of you are certainly thick as thieves, and don’t think that I didn’t see the smouldering glances that you and Henri kept throwing each other, but don’t think that we all got what we wanted. It was a tower in the middle of nowhere.’ By now, she is almost screaming.

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Fine. But what is it you want?’

‘I wanted to be together with Arnauld,’ she says, much softer.

But I have seen her with him. And even her refusal to speak of it… I remember how she used to gush about him. Before the Tournament. Before everything was ruined.

‘Mathilde, please contradict me if I’m wrong now, but you seemed so … stiff around him.’ Nothing like the way she is around Gwenhael, when they stride off to the woods.

I knew he would be good for her.

He wouldn’t ask questions, he wouldn’t pry, he wouldn’t try to make her snap out of her brooding. He would have provided quiet brooding of his own, and some instinct told me that perhaps she needed that even more than she needed someone like me.

And there had never been signs that it was more than that, never a hand on an arm, not a finger straightening a curl. Mathilde leading the way, Gwenhael and the dogs following them. Mathilde telling him something at the edge of the training grounds, with Gwenhael shaking his head, pressing his lips together to stifle a smile.

‘You’re so different when you’re with Gwenhael.’

Her eyes are bright now. ‘You don’t know the first thing about Gwenhael and me.’

Fine, I think. Fine, it might not be at all what I made it to be. I may be wrong. This conversation might be out of place completely. ‘I’m sorry, then. Forget I even asked.’

My hand is on the carriage door when she says, ‘I think Arnauld and I need time. To get re-accustomed to each other. I’m not myself anymore. I’ve grown feral, what with hunting and so little company.’

I can’t help but roll my eyes at this. ‘Honestly, Mathilde, if anyone heard you speak, they’d think you’d been wandering in circles in a forest for two years and haven’t been surrounded by dozens of people and enjoying truly every comfort someone could wish for.’ I remember Robert’s lesson about complaining and hunger and what others have to endure. I remember what I’ve seen on the streets of our kingdom.

We might have been isolated, but we had everything else.

We had the tools.

‘Self-pity doesn’t suit you, Mathilde. And don’t say that you’re not yourself. I saw you at the Tower, and you seemed quite fine.’ I open the door, not wanting to allow her the chance to contradict me.

Something I saw in her mind stops me in my tracks. How Gwenhael had compared himself with the stool she was sitting on. And this is, perhaps, how she has been treating him since Robert took us from Mora’s Tower.

‘Did you even see Gwenhael since we started marching?’ I say, knowing that I am guilty of this, as well. ‘Is he an object you can discard the moment you find something shinier? I never judged you to be the sort.’

I close the door softly, and behind me, I can swear that I hear something like a hiccup.

* * *

I find Amelie and Gisele in a nearby cart, intending to send them back in the carriage. But then I see Amelie’s face, so I send Gisele to find Mathilde first.

I settle myself at the back of the cart, careful to drop my voice to a whisper. ‘If you want to ask about Charles, no, I haven’t spoken to him, and no, I have no intention of doing so until I settle with Robert where we’re going tomorrow.’

Amelie’s eyes flash, but she says nothing. Mathilde was right. Amelie and I are close. We tell each other things she wouldn’t admit to Gisele, who used to be her oldest and closest friend.

‘Is it bad, then?’ is all she says.

‘It’s worse.’

She laughs at this, and coming from her it’s so surprising, or it would be, if I didn’t know her better.

‘So. My cousin wants to make an honest woman out of you.’

‘That aside, how he’s arranging my own wedding without actually proposing first⁠—’

‘That is so like Henri,’ she says. ‘Always the man with the master plan.’

‘He tends to forget who is the head of the Fallen Court.’

She purses her lips, but she’s amused. ‘You and your Fallen Court.’

I lay a hand on her arm, and she lays her hand on top of mine. I was preparing to go on about Sabya and the Dark Mother, but this stills me.

‘I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I’m so grateful for you, Blanche. You take care of your people.’ She gives this with an even rarer gentle smile and I’m so swept off my feet by it that I forget completely what I wanted to say.

She pats my hand and then lets it go. ‘So. Mathilde. You took the bull by the horns?’

‘I suppose,’ I say, ‘but I had the distinct feeling I was … blundering. Did she and Gwenhael have also a more … physical relationship?’

Amelie chuckles.

‘I never asked any questions. I suppose I never wanted to know. I think – that she appreciated the privacy.’ As much as I liked Mathilde, a part of her must have always blamed me for calling Mora’s Tower into existence.

It reminded her of everything she wasn’t anymore.

‘I don’t suppose she would have offered any details.’ Amelie sighs, arranging a wisp of hair that had escaped her half-braid. ‘Blanche, the thing is this…’ She bites her lip, hesitating. ‘She told me this in confidence, and I don’t want to say it, but since you’re meddling now, and showed no intention of doing so before…’

‘I did care,’ I say in a tone that tries to be light, though the hairs on my arm stand on end. This isn’t good. I can already feel it.

‘Yes, it’s just that you were away so much. In Valmons, Langville. Meran.’

‘Your point is?’ I say.

I can’t stand the suspense anymore.

‘Mathilde is pregnant.’

The breath is knocked out of my lungs, coming out in a long wheeze. Mothers of the Forest. No wonder she didn’t say a word to me. ‘What?’

Amelie drops her voice to a whisper. ‘Gwenhael doesn’t know. Yet.’

I open and close my mouth, struggling to say something. ‘But she told you.’

‘She only told me yesterday and because I insisted on knowing more about her and Arnauld. I know that things aren’t quite right. But I told her—’ Amelie puffs out her cheeks, in the most unqueenly gesture I ever saw her make. ‘I told her she should marry him. Arnauld asked for her hand, you know. If they move quickly enough, there is still time to save this. To pretend that the baby is his.’

I take her in, this sliver of a woman, with her piercing eyes and her perfect manners. Who seems, on the outside, to be the perfect image of what a young Demoiselle in the Red Kingdom should be. Who had to learn to manoeuvre, herself. Who is made of something harder than it might seem, at the first glance. ‘I can’t believe you.’

She gives me a sharp look. ‘Don’t become self-righteous with me, Blanche. You know – just as well as I do – that she either accepts this, or she’s doomed.’

‘But she… I don’t think she loves Arnauld as she once did. And she can’t⁠—’

‘By all the Mothers of the Forest, Blanche. Honestly, now. She loved Arnauld once, she’ll love him again. She should do the only clever thing she can do and become his wife. Arnauld has a nice estate. She can take care of her and her child.’

‘I can’t believe this. You’re advising her to lie to him.’

Amelie clacks her tongue. ‘There are worse things in this world than a handsome husband and a nice estate to preside over.’

‘But not everyone is you, Amelie. Not everyone wants the same. To Mathilde, it was never about “presiding over a nice estate”. If it was, she would have married Seigneur Peneric, as her father wanted her to. Mathilde wants to be free.’

Amelie seems to think that Arnauld would soon come into the estate that is rightfully his. That we’re on our way to a sort of victory, whatever that might be. I think she doesn’t fully understand the complicated situation we are in. Aside from all the other bright sparks of rebellion, I don’t think I told her yet about the Opal Mountain.

‘The mages are trying to release the Dark Mother,’ I say. ‘At the Golden Pavilion.’

Amelie sucks in a sharp breath. ‘What?’

‘Just think,’ I say. ‘The Dark Mother was a powerful Necromancer, yes? Think of all the bodies that would be left scattered everywhere when Anselme starts marching with his armies, and confronts the rebels.’ Seigneur Bencifert, Charles. The Guilds. He could take them out one by one. ‘What then? If the Dark Mother breathes life into that which has none – like she breathed life into the Nightdragon, all those years ago⁠—’

‘Then she’d have an army in the blink of an eye. An unbeatable army,’ Amelie says. She stops, her eyes widening. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

She taps her nails lightly on wood. ‘Then I’m sure you can see how there are worse things for Mathilde than marrying Arnauld.’

‘I can’t believe you,’ I wheeze.

She shrugs. ‘Blanche, it’s your job to think about the worst possible outcome. And it’s my job to think of the best possible outcome. And, frankly, I don’t see Mathilde being able to feed an entire family off Gwenhael’s wages. We weren’t raised for that.’

I have to concede that Amelie is right. There was a moment in my life when I realised that I wasn’t trained to do anything of use. Mathilde is the same.

‘But what do you think she wants?’ I ask. ‘What would make her happy?’

‘I thought of that, too, you know.’ Amelie sighs. ‘I think she was truly happy in the woods, at Mora’s Tower. With Gwenhael. But you can’t tell her that. She’d tell you she was just a prisoner, and she had no choice, and so on.’

By the Mothers of the Forest, she knows Mathilde well.

Amelie goes on, ‘That aside, I’ve never, ever seen Mathilde so … content. At peace with herself. But she got into her head that Gwenhael should never have happened, or that he happened because she had nothing better to do. That it could have been anyone.’

‘You don’t believe that,’ I say, reading beyond her words.

‘I don’t know, Blanche. I just don’t know. How would this be different from the people who live in a remote village? They marry someone from the same village, in the end, from their own small world. Does that make their happiness worth less? I don’t think it truly matters, though.’ Amelie sets her jaw. ‘Regardless of anything, I think she should do the only clever thing she can do now. Which is to marry Arnauld. Quickly. If I were her, I would pick Arnauld, without a doubt.’

* * *

Late in the afternoon, we pitch camp at the crossroads. The fork in the path glares at me.

One of them leads, obviously and incontestably, to Henri. Henri, who is working to pave the way with the Guilds.

And where would that lead to? By themselves, even with Robert’s troops, the Guilds can’t win. And even if they do win a day in a battlefield, for how long would they be able to pay Robert, for how long would they be able to keep city rights that they would bleed for?

My brother has no patience, but he will only have to wait to win.

And the other path. The one that might lead to something else. The one that might lead nowhere.

Except, perhaps, towards saving us all from the thing inside the mountain.

I shudder and make for Robert’s tent. He’s alone, poring over a set of maps. ‘What are you doing here?’ he says.

‘Where am I supposed to go? In the end, what am I to you? Your prisoner? Prospective ally? Even I don’t know.’

He makes a gesture with his hand and I can’t quite make out if it’s to stay or to leave, so I stand my ground. ‘You know, we have no chance to win, in the long term, if we don’t bring them together.’

‘What do you mean?’ he says, with an air of not even listening to me.

‘I mean the Guilds and the Golden Pavilion and Charles and even the folk who are squatting at the Opal Mountain. They may hate each other, more or less, but they hate my brother even more.’

‘Honestly, Blanche, do you think that’s something I didn’t think of?’

‘Do the Guilds know that they can’t win?’ I say, and Robert makes that gesture with his hand again.

That’s it. The storm starts to brew again inside me. ‘What is wrong with you? What is your problem?’

He looks up at me for the first time and he says, ‘Frankly, you.’

‘You don’t believe me,’ I say, as if it’s occurring to me for the first time since he started sulking this morning. ‘You don’t believe that the thing inside the mountain can destroy everything.’

He chooses his words as if they’re stones to be hurled. ‘I believe it’s terribly convenient for you to say so. And, honestly, Blanche? An ancient goddess? Who spoke to you?’

‘I wish I could show you, but I can’t. Sabya said I can only mindwalk to her.’

‘Again, awfully convenient, isn’t it?’

Honestly, I want to toss myself on the floor and throw a tantrum. I know I’m not mad and he used to know it, too.

‘And why do we have to believe her every single word? Even if it is Sabya, why does she hold the truth? I think you don’t realise what going to the Opal Mountain would mean,’ he says.

‘To the Guilds? To Henri?’

‘No, Blanche, to the bottom of it, to slay a host of poorly armed people who have had enough of everything.’

There’s a hollow in my stomach and I realise, Yes, I knew this. I knew what the cost would be. I didn’t want to look it in the face.

‘If I am to do this,’ he says carefully, ‘I have to be sure that there is no way that you are wrong.’

‘Sabya could lie to us,’ I say. Of course I’ve thought of this. But she is our goddess. I’ve seen her slay the Nightdragon.

‘She could,’ he concedes.

‘In the end, all I know from all the legends is that the thing inside the Opal Mountain is feeding our powers.’

Robert nods, waiting for me to continue.

‘Except that – I see no obvious reason why Sabya would lie. She has been enclosed there for more than five hundred years, Robert. Why would she do that, if she wasn’t afraid of that thing?’ And why are the people so intent on destroying the mages, I wonder.

Robert says, ‘I think, Blanche, the matter is less clear cut, and this is simply a problem of who we choose to believe.’ He pauses. ‘And there’s something else. You do know who else will be waiting there, on the other side of the mountain. Are you ready to cut through the Bencifert armies, as well?’

I think, I am not. I’m not ready for any of what might come.

‘We can reason with them,’ I say. ‘With the people, the priestesses of the Mothers. With Seigneur Bencifert.’

‘Do you know how I survived to this age?’ Robert smooths the maps in front of him. ‘I’ve learned to think of the worst possible outcome. And to plan, keeping that in mind.’ So do I, I nearly say, but Robert goes on. ‘And I don’t like what the worst possible outcome looks like. Not this time, Blanche.’ His eyes are on me. That gaze I can never hide from.

Fine.

Let him see.

Let him see that, knowing what I know – ‘I can’t step back,’ I say.

I have in mind what Sabya told me. What Amelie said that I was always meant to be. Catching a glimpse of something larger, more powerful than our squabbles in the Red Kingdom. ‘If you don’t like where I’m headed, you can always leave, Robert. Or let me leave. Look away. You did that once, didn’t you? There was one time, one moment, when you set me free.’

Robert stands, then stalks closer, stopping abruptly a few inches from me. Towering. No, I won’t let him intimidate me. He doesn’t scare me.

He lowers his head, his breath now rustling the hair on my temple. I tilt my face towards him, just a bit.

‘And how did that work for you, Blanche? When I tried to set you free?’

LOST

THE PRINCESS

Two years before the Year of the Red Maiden

I stood at the top of the platform for what seemed to be an eternity, watching the fair below. So much life, so many possibilities, and I had nowhere to go.

In theory, I could have gone anywhere I wanted.

A pretty thing like me, the man had said, the one who’d tried to chase me.

I could have found employment somewhere, but I didn’t really know how to do anything.

I could have sung, like the artists at the fair. Or played an instrument. Though, to be honest, I’d never heard about many travelling flute players.

I had no coin, but I could have, I could have⁠—

Would I have even survived in this world?

You were born to do great things, Madame Faucon told me once. But there was only one thing in this world that I wanted to do. One thing that mattered.

As if summoned by my thoughts, Robert looked up. Locking gazes with me. I didn’t need to be a mindwalker to see what he thought. What he tried to tell me.

Go. Go, then, if that’s what you want.

I unclenched my fists, not realising that I’d been keeping them tightly closed. The knuckles hurt, a jab of pain.

There was also pain etched into his face. And a silent supplication.

If I went then, I’d never see him again.

Among other things.

If I went then, I’d never be able to do the great deeds that had been promised to me. Because being born a princess had indeed been a whim of fate. So few were chosen, so few were lucky enough to be born without having to worry about the next day or what food they could put on the table.

I’d seen enough of the world through other people’s eyes to know. To know that the surge of happiness in this crowd was a fleeting thing in their lives. To know that even here, among us, there were so many hungry children who eyed apples – like those I’d just eaten – with so much yearning. That there were so many women who didn’t know what they’d put on their tables the next day, and that it would be that way for every next day of their lives.

And I knew that to rise above it, above that constant battle with hunger and overbearing seigneurs and even neighbours who would have taken what was yours, be it a goat or a sheep or a piece of pottery or even an unmarried daughter, to rise above it and truly make something of yourself took huge amounts of luck and determination.

I knew that those like Robert, who’d managed to do just that, were few and far between. The seigneurs kept them down, the men like Robert, like his father, chained to the little, the very little that they had. Men like my brother and Prince Anselme wished to perpetuate this way of life and take, take, take from those who’d had the bad luck to be born less than a prince, less than a seigneur.

And I knew that to leave then, to run from my station as the trapped princess, would have been to sentence myself to a life of such worries, day to day. How could one have time to walk minds when the stomach grumbled, when one was overcome with worry if there would be enough to eat, if there would be enough firewood to keep one from freezing in the winter?

No, thinking and dreaming and moving chess pieces on a table, this was a luxury that few of us had. And even if there were dreamers, their power was so limited, there was little they could do to effect the change that was needed.

And I thought about the Guilds, with their gold and power and influence spreading into all the cities of the Red Kingdom, how even they had been crushed underneath my brother’s heel. How’d I worked, myself, to effect this.

I began stiffly descending the stairs. At the bottom, I glanced at the man from earlier. Perhaps he’d been afraid of a scene, up on the platform, in the view of everyone. Things would be a lot easier in the press beneath. But I knew he couldn’t hurt me, as Robert’s eyes followed my every move.

I leapt down from the second stair and darted in Robert’s direction. I slipped past men and women, avoiding them. I looked behind and the man was following close, pushing his way through the people between us. Shoving them aside. I ran and ran until I recognised the stand with the swords.

Left or right?

Left, I thought, I hoped, as I swerved that way. The stand with leather objects was a dozen feet in front of me, so close, and yet so far, as the man’s fingers finally gripped my cape. He pulled me back so hard that I nearly lost my footing.

I looked up at the leather stand, desperate, wondering if Robert had seen me.

Robert, I had to reach Robert. I would be safe there.

Where was he?

I looked around, frantic, as the man pulled me towards him. And I turned to spit in his eye, to scratch it, to scream, to do whatever I had to do to set myself free. I turned just in time to see a fist crash into the man’s jaw, sending him toppling backwards. And Robert’s face, his lovely face, burning with anger, as he swept me into his arms.

‘Did he hurt you?’ he said, more of a growl, more animal than man. That towering bulk of muscles, ready to go to battle on my behalf.

But I didn’t want him to go to battle. I wanted to wrap myself around him and to hold him and I wanted him to tell me that everything would turn out just fine, in the end. Like it had for the woman in the song, and her lover, and their new, wonderful world.

I felt what Robert wanted to do to him. And that would’ve attracted far more attention to us than we needed. So I pulled him away from the fray, back into the flow of people, mumbling, ‘I told him I was here with my friend.’

Robert tugged back, his gaze still narrowed on the man, who at least had the sense to stay on the ground, trying to staunch the flow of the blood that trickled through his nose.

I rose on the tips of my toes, whispering in Robert’s ear. ‘Let’s go. It’s unwise. Let’s go.’

‘I should⁠—’

‘Take me home, Robert. Just take me home.’

* * *

Robert rushed us back through the fair, while I held on tight to his arm. He shoved people aside, his eyes promising murder. No one was foolish enough to challenge him. But we were drawing all the attention I’d hoped to avoid.

When we finally reached my chambers in the tower, I was so relieved that I felt I was exhaling for the first time in hours. I crumpled onto my bed, while Robert leaned on the table. There was something haunted about his stare.

‘You didn’t come to look for me. I saw you.’

Robert rubbed his face, hard, as if he wanted to peel his own skin off. ‘I thought you… When you’d vanished… I thought you did it on purpose. You could have stayed by my side. You were gone so I thought⁠—’

‘You thought that I’d left.’

Robert clenched his jaw. ‘I’m sorry, Blanche. I’m so sorry. I don’t even know how… Why—’ He took in a deep breath. ‘I almost lost you, Blanche. I’m so⁠—’

‘Where was there for me to go, Robert? Tell me? Where could I have possibly gone? I have no coin, no relations except for the ones that my brother allows. And as soon as I sought shelter somewhere, anywhere in this world, my brother would make sure that these people would be skinned alive. Because that’s the sort of person Etienne is.’

‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘That is why I can’t take you with me. That is why⁠—’

Anger boiled and coiled in my veins. I had nothing to rely on, except my own wits.

My brother and Anselme had taken everything from me, not just my Gift.

And I clung on to the man whom my brother had set as my jailor. ‘Who said that I would go anywhere with you?’

Robert straightened at this, but some wild touch of fear still wasn’t gone from his eyes. ‘Fair enough.’

We stared at each other for a long, long time. He was searching my face for some cue, some hidden line. There was something unshackled about his gaze, something that came from deep within him, and I couldn’t help but say into the silence, ‘I didn’t get lost. I left. I mean, I got lost at first, and then wanted to leave. When I saw you, sitting on that barrel, I wanted to leave. I was sure that I would.’

Robert shifted in his place. ‘What held you back?’

I sat up in my bed, the fire of my determination burning bright. The path so clear before me. ‘Because this house, sooner or later, is coming down. And I want to see them all crawl in the end.’ I closed my mouth, afraid of what had just come out of it.

The things I said to him were dangerous.

So dangerous.

But then he tilted his head, and smirked. That awful, self-sufficient smirk. ‘That’s my Blanche.’

I wanted to tell him I’m not his, but then thought better of it. I should have uttered no more words at all.

‘What’s wrong, Blanche? You swallowed your tongue? Afraid of what you’ve just said?’

I could have told him how that day made it so clear to me what I needed to do. How I had already started doing it, though perhaps I hadn’t been so sharply aware of it. How I’d started pulling the first threads. Unwinding. And I’d pull, pull, pull until the very rug under their feet was swept away, no matter if I’d be swept away with it or not.

But not if I kept on blabbering like a fool to my brother’s acolytes.

Dangerous, so dangerous, this game I played with Robert.

‘You don’t need to be afraid,’ he said, crossing his arms. ‘Because I know. Because I saw you for what you were from the first moment you came into the Curia’s chambers at the Royal Palace. Because I had known it, even before, when I felt you walk into my dreams.’

‘You … felt me?’ Impossible. Impossible. Madame Faucon had told me so.

‘I felt you because I never let down my guard, not even in my sleep. And I felt you because I know myself, and I knew something felt different. When my thoughts were pulled down a path I certainly didn’t want to go down. I felt the ties to the Red Court and when your brother made me an offer … I couldn’t resist finding out why. Why you had looked into my head.’

I couldn’t breathe.

‘And when I came into the Curia Chambers … I knew. And then I saw how you chose your words. How you were on your guard, too. They said you weren’t quite right in your head. That it was hard for you to speak. That your mind was too full, too brittle. Too dangerous. But all I saw was their fear. Of you. Do you think it surprised me when they bound your powers?’

A cold shiver travelled down my spine.

‘I will tell you now that it did not. Not even a bit. They were too afraid of you. Far too afraid.’

‘And you are … not?’

He chuckled, a deep, throaty chuckle that rattled through his chest. ‘I’m too smart not to be afraid of you. Of what you can do.’ He took a few steps towards me. Careful. And then jabbed a finger in my shoulder. ‘But unlike them, I didn’t see a shattered mind. I saw you holding your guard up behind those roving eyes, taking every one of us in. And I saw you trying to make up how much to reveal, what the implications were. You made mistakes. You were punished. But life goes on, doesn’t it? It has a beautiful way of doing that. And even if you can’t mindwalk anymore, you see what they are. And what is bound to happen.’

I straightened up, trying to put distance between us. This was the Robert I hoped I knew. Not the Bladehand. But the boy who’d risen from being someone who didn’t even have a pair of breeches to the most feared captain of mercenaries across the Three Kingdoms, and to the south of the Alpen.

‘If you see me for what I am, then I see you, too,’ I said. ‘I know what you are. You are no more and no less than a climber. You refuse to content yourself with whatever life throws at you. And you, Robert, are not done. You are certainly not done.’

I remembered that first time I went into his mind. I remembered expecting the blood and the cruelty, but finding none of it. Finding just sadness, drifting on autumn winds. Finding the traces of the times when he’d had to step on his own instincts, on his own wishes, in order to do what had to be done.

And I remembered the ice-cold determination coating his own path.

‘I know that you see,’ he said, leaning into me. His warmth in my breath. ‘Because unlike most of them, you treat me with respect. And that, darling Blanche, makes a whole world of difference.’

His words fell between us, charging the air. And suddenly, everything was different. We were different. The footing had changed. We stood on the same ground now, head to head. The poor boy and the sparkling princess.

And I felt so afraid. So, so afraid. Of myself. Of what I might have done. And said.

I will leave.

I cleared my throat. ‘If you have even an ounce of respect for me, you’ll respect my wishes. And I wish you to go now.’

He stepped back, surprised. I’d caught him off guard. He hadn’t expected this.

Yes, swords weren’t my weapon of choice. Because there were other ways to cut into people.

I pushed into it. ‘Go, Robert. I want to be alone now.’

He nodded, slowly, and retreated. In the doorway, he threw me a glance. But I couldn’t bear to see it. I couldn’t bear to feel what it would do to me, while my entire body howled at him to come back.

So I wrapped my hands around my legs and lowered my head onto my knees. And when that door closed, I finally started to cry.

ALONE, AGAIN

THE PRINCESS

Two years before the Year of the Red Maiden

I’d known Robert was becoming a seigneur. That he wouldn’t forever be a Bladehand. And he’d never made promises when it had come to the future. I’d have to learn how to find my way without him.

I would not be someone who cried because she was scared of what had happened when she’d been a face in the crowd at the fair. I had my Gift again, which I’d discovered a few days prior. I only had to think of the best ways to wield it. To do better than what I’d done last time, when I’d made myself into the Red Maiden.

What Robert had told me felt truer than anything I’d ever heard: I’d tried, I’d made mistakes.

But I was still there.

And I was a princess of the Red Kingdom.

That evening, I’d dress accordingly.

I chose the cloth-of-gold mantle which once belonged to my mother, its weave drawing the light from the candles and reflecting it back. Underneath, a slick dress of pale blue silk, the skirt cut in generous folds that danced around my legs when I moved, like waves teasing the sand. A belt of gold with opals at my waist, and a golden circlet on top of my half-braided hair, the great oval stone resting on my forehead.

Yes.

That evening, they’d see the princess. And she would dance and sit in her carved chair on the dais. On the surface, as calm as the deep waters of the sea.

I was sitting on the edge of my bed, tapping my slipper, impatient, when Robert arrived. I drew myself up to my full height as soon as the door cracked open, making myself become something princely and intimidating.

Something he couldn’t touch.

But Robert was a prince himself. Dressed in a jacket of red, deeper and more alive than blood. Embroidered with so much golden thread, glinting, coiling around his chest and his arms. The trousers, the colour of sand, were so tight, showing the snaking shapes of his muscles as he walked towards me.

He was beautiful, this prince. Beautiful, and so cruel as he roved his eyes across me and his lips parted slightly. Like a hunter, poising to strike. ‘Nice dress,’ he said, extending me his arm.

I hesitated.

To walk, together, arm in arm into that overfull tent. To appear at his side…

‘Won’t Gisele mind?’ I sniggered.

‘Who bleeding cares what Gisele thinks?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Or are you trying to impress her?’

‘I am not trying to impress anyone,’ I said, wrapping my hand around his arm. Pressing my fingers more decisively than I’d intended. Feeling his hard flesh underneath.

He raised his eyebrows. He didn’t believe me and that annoyed me beyond words.

I saw you for what you were.

‘Wait a moment,’ he said, coming around behind me. He arranged the folds of the cape over my shoulders. Gently. His hands lingered more than they should have, drawing lines of fire wherever he touched me.

I swallowed, hard, while he halted his hands on the tops of my arms, waiting.

A test. A challenge.

I could feel him, standing still beside me. Wanting. Wanting this, the princess.

But I wanted, too.

I wanted him.

I unlaced the threads that held my cape together at the front, slowly. He let his arms fall, pulling down the cape with him. The cloth of gold puddled at my feet. I couldn’t see his face, just feel his hands. Travelling down my back, down the silk of my dress. Hooking themselves around my belt, pulling me to him. Undoing it, steadily. Every movement precise, deliberate.

I gasped and he stopped. He drew a finger along a stray curl, down the side of my neck. Tingles fired through my body. This closeness and not-closeness were unbearable. My blood screamed for him.

‘What do you want?’ I asked, not moving.

He chuckled. ‘What do I want? I want to say that their fancy dinner can go to dust. I want to get you out of this dress and spend the night in bed with you. The things that I want to do…’

He trailed off, pressing both of his hands around my waist, drawing me to him until I didn’t know where the silk of my dress ended and the velvet of his jacket began. I half-turned my head and met his lips in a soft kiss. Probing. Testing.

With one hand, I loosened the buttons on my shoulders that kept my dress in place. ‘We can’t not go,’ I said.

‘I don’t know what you’re suggesting.’ But he helped me with the buttons on the other side.

If he wanted to play this game… I slid my hand, backwards, feeling for him. His hardness pressed against the laces of his trousers. I drove my hand up and down, and he groaned.

‘Are you toying with me, Blanche?’

I wished I could have said that I was. But I wanted him so much. His entire body, that beautiful body, flush to mine. I wanted his lips, his hands, his chest on top of mine. I wanted him inside me.

‘Are you going to open those laces or are you letting me do all the work?’ I said, with a boldness I didn’t feel.

He laughed and breathed into my temple again, his lips feeling my skin, but not settling into a kiss. ‘You scared me today,’ he said.

‘When? When you thought that I’d left, or when you realised that I was lost?’

‘All the bloody time.’

Dangerous.

‘I can’t stand it, Blanche. I can’t stand the thought that someone might try to hurt you.’

Dangerous.

Such a dangerous statement to make.

If my brother or Anselme ever caught a whiff of it… If they saw even a glimpse… They’d make sure we’d never see each other again.

I took a step back. Starting to close my buttons, pulling my dress in place. Bending to pick up my belt.

‘So you were toying with me,’ he said. Anger hooded his gaze.

‘You don’t talk to me tonight,’ I said. I was lacing up my cloak. ‘You don’t touch me, you don’t ask me to dance, you don’t even throw me as much as a look.’

‘Don’t bother,’ he said. It was a little more than a growl. ‘I won’t.’

I straightened my dress. And then I pressed a finger to his lips.

He recoiled.

‘And then, when the dinner is over, we come back here and we’ll do everything you want us to do. Everything.’ His breath caught. ‘I promise. But not a move, nothing before the dinner is over. Because if we do, if we…’ I shuddered. ‘They will know. And they can’t know. They can’t even suspect it.’

He nodded, slowly.

No, they couldn’t see this. A dove, her eyes set on her dark prince. A girl with trembling knees, pining for him.

They couldn’t see. I’d show them someone else entirely.

I took his arm. And he bent down and kissed me. Demanding. Staking a claim, as his tongue rolled around every inch of my mouth. I sucked it in, teasing him, and his eyes widened. ‘I promise,’ I breathed into his lips. ‘I promise.’

* * *

To my surprise, the crowned heads of the realm were barely looking at us as we stepped into the tent.

Something was wrong.

Something was terribly wrong.

My brother fidgeted in his seat, his head bent, talking in loud whispers with Anselme. At the other end of the table, Gisele and Amelie were pale and quiet. I squeezed Robert’s arm, but he still led us to the table, easing me into the seat next to my brother.

Etienne whipped his head towards him. ‘By Lucius’s smouldering finger, where were you?’ he hissed.

‘I was—’ Robert squared his shoulders. ‘I was taking care of business.’

‘Well, here’s another piece of business for you to take care of. The young Seigneur Arnauld is gone. And he took Mathilde Champy with him.’

I sucked in a breath. She’d done it. She did what I’d been encouraging her to do, these past few weeks. She’d run away with Arnauld. They couldn’t force her to annul the marriage, if he kidnapped her. It all depended on her, only on her.

And I’d played a part in this.

‘Take care of it,’ hissed my brother. ‘Find them. Before word spreads. Take care of it before it’s too late.’

Robert’s hand went to the dagger at his belt. My heart started racing. If Robert was on to them… If they sent him to deal with it…

I could tell that it wouldn’t end well for poor Mathilde.

But it never would have.

‘Go,’ said Etienne.

Robert turned on his heels, grabbing me by the arm, pulling me with him, heading out of the room. Fast.

Etienne’s eyes crinkled with displeasure. ‘What are⁠—’

‘I’m putting her back,’ said Robert. ‘I can’t mind children tonight.’

My brother meant to add something, but we were out of that tent faster than he could object. And I knew better than to contradict Robert. He rushed me to the tower, slamming the door shut once we were inside. He did his ritual of checking the shutters, the exits, as if buying himself time before planting himself in front of me.

‘You keep quiet,’ he said. ‘You don’t say a word. To any of them. About anything. You keep quiet and it will blow over, eventually.’

My heart raced and I wasn’t sure why I was so scared. He went on, ‘Keep Henri close. I think you can trust him. I think he’s quite sweet on you. I think I’ve put him in the best position to take over, but you might have to manoeuvre a bit. Use Gisele, if you can. She might help. I suspect some of Gisele’s interests collide with her father’s, but I’m not sure, and that may yet change.’

He stopped in front of me, tense. I wasn’t even sure what he was talking about. ‘They don’t think you’re as important as they once did. They forgot you. It might be time to move, soon. But be careful. Be very, very careful not to rile them.’

‘What are you⁠—’

‘Your Gift, Blanche. Use it wisely. And don’t ever allow them to suspect.’

He was leaving, I realised. He was saying goodbye, in his own way. Tears flooded my eyes. He leaned down, wiped them with a scarred finger before they spilled. ‘Don’t,’ he said.

He glued his cheek to mine, breathing into my hair. I turned my face until my lips were on his and kissed him. I kissed him as if I could melt into him. I kissed him as if none of this would end.

He was the one who broke off, his hand still on my face. I lowered my eyes. ‘Look at me, Blanche. Look at me.’ I glanced at him, his call stronger than my reason. ‘I will come back. I will come for you, before they can drag you down with them. That, I promise.’ He planted another soft kiss on my temple.

Then, he let go. And in the blink of an eye, he was gone.

DEBTS OF BLOOD

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

Year of the Red Maiden

Robert has asked a question, which isn’t a question at all. He asked how I fared when he tried to set me free, when I clambered on top of a platform, and watched the breathtaking mass of people at the fair.

He knows what I will not say, will not concede.

That I came back to him. Only for him to leave me, for good, on the same day.

But the Blanche and the Robert who stand here aren’t the same as two years ago.

There are things that I did, after he left. There are ways in which I used my Gift.

It took me weeks after the tournament to summon the courage to start ghostwalking by myself. Only after Gelda nudged me again, after we met in the clearing one more time, by the courtesy of Gwenhael and even more saplings. And just after Mathilde had arrived, having been caught by my brother’s men.

It seems that neither Etienne nor Anselme felt they had to uphold old laws in our kingdom, when it clashed against their interests. Mathilde’s marriage to Arnauld was still annulled, and she’d been shipped off to live with me.

But, a few weeks later, I’d told Mathilde that the Tower was only a prison as long as we allowed it to be. And I’d decided to apply the advice to myself.

I walked and walked the cities and villages of the Red Kingdom, seeing them through my own eyes, rather than filtered through someone else’s mind. I saw our people. I saw what they needed. And then, only then, I went to Charles. His only question was if I was ‘doing my brother’s dirty business again’.

I wasn’t sure how much he knew about what I’d done for Etienne.

Our second meeting wasn’t any easier. Anger flashed in my nephew’s face when I saw him again, when I imprudently stepped onto the terrace of his villa, where he was in discussion with a man. Judging by his uniform, a captain of his famed Crossbowmen. I retreated to the shadows and waited for him in the council room, the one with the chequered black-and-white marble.

He came in alone, shutting the door with a thud behind him. ‘I’ve been expecting you for a while,’ he said, instead of a greeting.

So many words from such a quiet man.

‘I didn’t know if I should trust you,’ I said.

‘The feeling is mutual.’

He paced up and down. The sound his shoes made on the white marble tiles was hollower than on the black ones.

I didn’t have any time to waste. And he seemed little inclined to make idle conversation. ‘Did you look?’ I said. ‘What did you see?’

‘The people are miserable. And afraid,’ he said. ‘So desperate, that they prefer to swallow half-baked stories of gods coming to save them.’

I thought, The Mothers of the Forest had listened when the seigneurs did not. It used to be different. It used to be what the ballads were singing about – the people yielded a part of their crops to the knights and seigneurs, so that the latter would ensure protection. So they would care for those who didn’t have the means, or the power, to defend themselves.

How far we had strayed from that.

How the people needed a champion. Someone high-born, a man with a right to the throne, rising for his people. There was no such man in the Red Kingdom, but I was about to make one.

Manufacture him. Out of Charles.

He’d been the same as every other seigneur – I just had to remember that Gwenhael’s father used to be a yeoman, and then he lost his lands, too.

But I reasoned that perhaps Charles had enough ambition, or fear that my brother would have his head, in the end, to allow himself to be guided.

‘Only hope helps them through their days,’ I said. ‘I, for one, understand.’

He studied me again, from the top of my head to the tip of my boots. I grew bolder. ‘Considering the situation I have been in for two years now.’

‘You want to be freed.’

‘I am free,’ I said. ‘Just not in all the ways I’d like to be.’

‘You used to be quiet. Just like me.’

‘I want things. Just like you.’

He fixed his eyes on me, searching, but I wasn’t afraid. I knew these gazes. I knew how to face them.

‘What do you want from me?’ he said.

‘I don’t want anything from you. But, you’ve seen how things are. The people hate the mages, more and more. How long until they think they should be rid of us altogether?’

‘It’s impossible.’

I crossed my ethereal arms. ‘How long until Etienne and Anselme push them so hard that they’d be willing to try?’

He looked around, as if trying to make sure no one is listening. ‘You are speaking of treason.’

‘I am not,’ I said, raising my voice. It was so exhausting trying to say what I wanted but without saying it, for fear of being misinterpreted, of provoking, of being too upfront, of inducing suspicions. I had a feeling it might have been easier to dance on hot coals. ‘I am speaking of making yourself known to the people. As someone who is on their side.’

That was the only way. The only way I would ever be rid of my brother. The people were stirring, they were ready, but they had to be given an option. A competitor for the throne.

‘And how do you suggest I do this?’ he said.

I remembered everything I’d ever seen. The misery. The sadness. How even a small gesture could make a huge difference. How the people would revere anyone who would be ready to help, even if it was with only the promise of a goddess with a basket of wildberries. But Charles could do so much more with all his wealth.

He could become a hero before we even made the first move. I remembered what I had seen a few days before in an orphanage in Langville. What the children had had for dinner. What had happened in a corner of Valmons where the crops had failed that year. ‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘And bring a parchment and ink. This will take some time.’

And it did take some time, but look where we were now. In the middle of a bloody rebellion.

It’s just that, unfortunately, I still made some mistakes. But, again, I’m not the Blanche from two years ago. I don’t run away from my mistakes anymore.

I look them in the face.

Just as I look Robert in the face right now. And to do so, I have to take a step back. Being so close to him does things to me that I cannot control. ‘Yes, I came back when you set me free,’ I tell him. ‘So what? You left. You left on the very same day. What I could never, ever understand was why then, of all times – and why.’

Robert shakes his head. ‘I told you I was about to leave. I only stayed as long as I’d stayed—’ He exhales noisily, averting his eyes. ‘I was never going to be a seigneur, your brother’s vassal, Blanche. All the good I could do… It had come to an end. And I would not, did not, hunt down a girl who had tried to make a stand for what she wanted. That was the last straw.’

‘That was the last straw?’ I huff a disbelieving laugh. ‘Out of all the things that my brother has ever done⁠—’

‘If I hadn’t left then, I would have gone the next day. Or the one after that. I couldn’t put it off any longer, Blanche. I had to leave.’ There’s something almost pleading in his tone.

I try not to read the meaning in his statement. I try to ignore what it does to me.

I’m not that Blanche from two years ago.

‘But I made you a promise,’ he says. ‘And I came back.’

‘Coming back is not enough, Robert. Ferrying me to what you think might be safety. You don’t know me anymore. You don’t know what I did, and how I did it. How I’ve made mistakes, and how I had to right them.’

He opens his mouth to say something, but I interrupt him. ‘You are here. And so my question is this: What will you do with that company of yours, Robert? Who will you stand by, when this mountain of turd that has been gathering in this kingdom blows to pieces? Will you stand by me, or will you stand by your word to the Guilds? I never asked you for much, but today, I’ll ask you this: Help me finish what I started. Help me do what needs to be done.’

* * *

Robert tilts, Robert ponders, Robert gives in. From the crossroads, we follow the road north, into uncertainty.

And so we find ourselves before Castle Bencifert, the banners flying upon its battlements in two shades of blue: azure with the mermaid’s tail of the Blue Kingdom, mixed with sky-blue with the silver pin of the Benciferts.

There had been a small nest of a traitors’ court in the Blue Kingdom, and they are all here now, guarding the path that forks off ahead of us, and to the left, towards the Opal Mountain.

We have to go through their troops to reach the Golden Pavilion.

It had also been my suggestion, a few months before the Red Kingdom was set ablaze, that Charles should contact Seigneur Bencifert, in exile. Charles wrote to the man I’d saved, the man who had cost me my freedom, and asked him if he would like to regain his lands.

Too soon had he come.

‘Stick to my side,’ says Robert, as he and a few captains of the mercenary company advance under the golden flag of parley. ‘Don’t say a word.’

I look in the distance, beyond the splash of Bencifert troops, at the disarrayed camp of the folk at the foot of the Opal Mountain. Their green banners float on top of something that’s more a makeshift village than a military camp.

If we want to stop the Dark Mother from being released, we will have to slash through these people.

Nausea rises and I swallow hard, to keep the contents of my stomach down. Robert doesn’t miss it. ‘This will be the price, Blanche. This is why I have to be sure,’ he says, from the corner of his mouth.

Maybe we don’t have to do this. Maybe they’d listen to reason. I hold that hope close to my chest.

When we have almost reached the arrayed captains of the blue faction, Robert says, ‘Stand behind me. Hood yourself.’

His warning from this morning rings in my ears. The Blue prince is not to be trusted. He may yet reach an agreement with your brother.

‘Commander,’ says Gerard Bencifert, when the parties meet. He has grown into his armour, I notice, in the years when he’d been a fugitive. He isn’t the quiet young man who lived in a library anymore.

He stands taller, stronger, more present in the saddle as the ruler of his own lands.

Once, Anselme had asked me if he was worth it.

Now we would see if he was worth it, in the end. When the trap I set has been sprung on me.

I don’t want to battle Seigneur Bencifert here, and neither does Robert. He doesn’t want to measure himself against the famed knights of Bluefort, their gallantry and prowess with arms unrivalled in the Three Kingdoms. But we might have to, so we can fight our way to the Opal Mountain.

I think, Corpses in a field.

We’d do nothing more than create an army for the Dark Mother, should she be released.

Prince of the Blue Kingdom removes his helmet, dark blonde ringlets falling on his shoulder. He has thin lips, I see. A sharp nose, like a falcon.

I have seen this man before, I realise, just as memories of the Tournament flood me, and I push them hastily back where they came from.

‘Seigneur Bencifert,’ says Robert. ‘We have no quarrel with you.’

‘Why are you here?’ says Gerard Bencifert.

‘As far as I know, the road through Langville doesn’t pass through the Bencifert lands,’ says Prince Louis. Robert had unhorsed him during the tournament, I remember. Louis’ pride must have taken a serious blow. ‘Aren’t you a creature of the Guilds?’

‘I am my own creature,’ says Robert. ‘Who keeps its own counsel.’

That is not true, I think. He didn’t want to come here, and I swayed him. He allowed me to.

‘Why are you here?’ Gerard Bencifert repeats his question.

In these games between the kingdoms, only those who harden themselves survive. That dreamer boy who paid for the pamphlets seems to have done just that.

‘We are here to free the mages from the Opal Mountain,’ Robert says.

The only way which Madame Faucon would stop casting the spell to unleash the Dark Mother.

‘You don’t mean to attack the folks that squat here,’ says Gerard Bencifert.

‘We hope it doesn’t come to that.’

A hushed sound of disapproval goes through the ranks. Including our own.

‘These people are under our protection. We will not move,’ says Gerard Bencifert, throwing a look to Prince Louis.

He nods. ‘These people are under our protection.’

‘You do not understand the consequences,’ says Robert. ‘If you fight me and I win, you die. If you fight me and you win, you die.’ I calculate what the chances are that we should lose today and I think they’re in the realm of possibility.

Robert had to send half his troops to Langville to appease the Guilds, with the order to march north from there to Lafala. To see if there was any way for the Guilds to ally themselves with Charles’s troops. We could defeat Gerard Bencifert’s troops, but should it come to blows…

‘We will not balk,’ says Prince Louis. He makes a move to retreat. ‘This conversation is over. You will have to fight us to reach the mountain.’

No, no, no.

More bloodshed.

Too much.

Too many people will die on both sides, as is wont to happen when the forces are almost equally matched.

And then, I think.

Prince Louis has brought a small invading army into the territory of the Red Kingdom. But why do they squat here, too? Why don’t they join their forces with Charles’s, as I expected them to do? In the end, it was Charles who instigated Gerard Bencifert’s return.

Unless they, too, like the Guilds, are waiting for the victor to emerge from the battle at Lafala, to see who is the winner they can negotiate with.

And instead, we offer more fodder for the crows to pick over.

Prince Louis and Gerard Bencifert are riding back towards their camp.

No, no, no.

Robert raises his voice. ‘Seigneur Bencifert, we have matters yet to discuss.’

‘No, we don’t,’ the seigneur shouts over his shoulder.

No, no, no.

I step in. ‘You will stop.’ I make my voice loud and commanding. The Marchionessa of the Fallen Court. Asking for the respect that is due to her.

And I remove my hood.

Gerard Bencifert stops, surprised. But it’s nothing like the way his eyes widen when he sees my face. ‘You have a debt of blood to me. And we will speak.’

* * *

Reluctantly, Seigneur Bencifert agrees. He cannot forget that he owes to me the very fact that he’s even alive.

So we make our way onto the plain at the foot of the Opal Mountain, stopping short of the Mothers’ camp.

The heavily armoured knights of Robert’s company draw up in battle formation, the lines of pikemen spread out behind them. A reminder of what we could do, as three of us stride towards the meeting place in the shade of a copse of trees.

Everything, everything hinges on this conversation we’re about to have.

Not just Robert trails me. I whipped out from our ranks a rather weary-looking Gwenhael. So weary, in fact, that I want to give him a hug.

But touching simply isn’t something that Gwenhael would do. Not with me, at least.

Before heading here I asked him if everything was all right, though I knew it wasn’t and had no idea how it could ever be, knowing what I knew about Mathilde and her pregnancy. Another thing I should look at, when all of this is done.

He shook his head. ‘Yes.’

I left it at that, knowing better than to press Gwenhael for answers he didn’t want to provide.

So here we are, awaiting parley. Shock washes over me as I notice who are the chosen leaders of the people: a wiry man with veins like ropes. A farmer, probably. And Gelda.

Gelda.

It doesn’t make any sense and it makes all the sense in the world that she should be behind this. It was her I looked to for answers. Does it truly amaze me that she is a leader among the priestesses of the Mothers of the Forest?

‘Well?’ she says, cocking a blonde eyebrow above those clear, blue eyes.

‘I don’t suppose you think everything is well,’ I say, pointing at the shadow of the Opal Mountain. ‘For all your talk⁠—’

She lifts a hand, as if to pacify me. ‘I’m sorry. None of this was my intention.’

I cross my arms, holding my ground. ‘What do you mean, exactly?’ I always wondered why the people had chosen to attack the Pavilion. ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘To give people their due, of course,’ she says serenely.

‘And what is it that you’re trying to achieve?’

The farmer replies. ‘The mages are keeping prisoner what is ours. They have chained the Golden Mother. It is time for her to be released. For her Gifts to flow back to the land.’

I swallow.

I should have known better.

Gelda managed to cause a bloody massacre within the Pavilion, and to instigate another impending massacre, which we’re trying to avoid.

And it might have been my fault that this is happening. Didn’t Gelda ask what I’d seen at the heart of the Opal Mountain, the first time when we spoke? How could I have ignored the flicker of interest in her eyes?

‘That is not what is going to happen,’ I say. ‘There is no Golden Mother at the heart of the Opal Mountain. I don’t know what you’ve been told—’ I level a stare at Gelda. ‘But that’s not what you’ll achieve.’

I’m not sure how I manage to get the words out. I’m a tight ball of desperation and guilt. That a few words I threw two years ago should have such dire consequences.

‘You need to tell your people to back out,’ I growl. ‘Now. Before this field turns into a bloody slaughter.’

At this, Gelda winces.

But the farmer interferes. ‘We will do no such thing.’

I whip my head towards him. ‘I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure.’ Oh, I’m furious. Absolutely furious. With myself, mostly. ‘I’m⁠—’

The man bows his head. ‘I know who you are, Princess Blanche.’

Of course he does. I take a deep breath. There will be a time to blame myself. But now, I have to handle the present situation with care. It is our only chance. ‘Then perhaps you’ll give me the honour of telling me your name.’

The farmer frowns, and Robert drifts closer to my side. I snap my head towards him, to tell him he should stay well and truly out of it. But I’m stopped in my tracks by the look on Gwenhael’s face.

Utter devastation. These are his people. The sort of family he would have come from. Even though he wears the dark blue cloak of the Pretorians, I know where his allegiances lie.

My heart bleeds for him. I wonder if he’ll ever understand if we do what we might have to do.

If he’ll ever forgive me.

‘Albert,’ says the man. ‘My name is Albert.’

‘Well, Albert, if you don’t tell the people to pull back, something terrible is about to happen. Something will be unleashed that will be the end of us all. And I don’t mean his troops,’ I say, tilting my chin at Robert. ‘There’s something in that mountain. Gelda was wrong about what that might be. Unfortunately.’ These words are also for Gwenhael’s benefit. Asking for his forgiveness before we even do a single thing.

Gelda’s gaze drifts towards me.

‘The mages are prepared to strike back,’ I say, lowering my voice.

Albert frowns. ‘And why should we believe you?’

But Gelda replies, understanding dawning on her face, ‘That which has not already walked the earth cannot be unleashed. What has once walked, will walk again. And the people will receive their fair share.’

‘You don’t want the people to receive what the Dark Mother is prepared to give,’ I snap. ‘And that’s who you’ll unleash.’

Shocked silence surrounds me. We do not even speak that name.

A small voice within me asks, yet once more, if Sabya is to be believed.

I know the legends, and I know how far they can end up from the truth.

Next to me, Robert shudders. ‘We are not your enemies. I am of the people, like you. But this must stop.’

‘But you do act like our enemies, don’t you? Since you speak of attacking these poor folk?’ says Albert.

Gelda’s gaze drifts towards the mountain. Towards its heart.

‘You leave us no choice,’ I say.

‘There is always a choice.’ Gelda shivers.

‘There is no Golden Mother,’ I blurt, although I certainly did not want to say a single word about what I had seen within the mountain. ‘You will not find what you seek. Please. Stop this madness.’ I glance at Robert, looking for support for what I’m about to say. ‘Your enemy isn’t here, it squats in Lafala. That’s where we are marching towards.’

I hope. I don’t know what the Guilds will do, if they’ll feel forced to listen to Robert. To Henri, who is trying to make them work together with Charles’s forces.

‘You will say what you want us to hear.’ The farmer is wary. ‘You are of them.’

Them. Their enemies. The seigneurs.

‘She is nothing like them.’ Gwenhael’s voice is soft and it startles me more than a bellow. ‘If she says what she says, then it is true.’

I try to convey my gratitude to Gwenhael. For his words. For being here.

‘And who are you?’ says Albert.

‘Someone just like you.’

The farmer takes in Gwenhael’s smart jacket, the cape of the Pretorians. The King’s insignia has been cut out, I notice for the first time. He’s not my brother’s man anymore, then.

But whose is he, in the absence of their Commander, Henri? The mercenary company may have dragged the Pretorians with them when they left the Tower, but their allegiance may yet be something to be bestowed.

Gelda turns to us, finally. ‘What you ask for, it is impossible. These people want justice. These people want what is theirs. I can see you believe in what you told us, Mindwalker. But it is out of my hands. I will do my best, but I cannot promise that it will be enough to make the people move aside. For too long have they been ignored. For too long they had no one to listen to them. Do what you must do. Cast the dice. We will speak in the aftermath.’

* * *

The afternoon is quiet and sombre. We wait on the plain, the camps of the people standing between us and the Golden Pavilion. We will cut our way through them tomorrow, and I asked Gelda and Albert to tell the people as much.

There have been those who have quietly left the camps, women and children, mostly, loading their carts. We opened pathways through our own defence lines for those who would seek safety elsewhere.

With one eye, I watch the long array of old carts, creaking on their way back into Anselmois. Next to me, Robert, Mathilde, Amelie, Arnauld and Gwenhael are watching as well.

Behind our lines, on the road that leads back to Mora’s Pass, Albert and Gelda have started setting up a different camp, for those who don’t want to be caught in the clash.

But there are those who would not budge. Those who, as far as I can see, are preparing for battle. Preparing to close our path, when we make for the Golden Pavilion tomorrow.

‘Some of them aren’t moving,’ says Gwenhael, resignation stamped in his tone. ‘Some of them will still give battle in the morning.’

‘Yes, some will,’ says Robert, his jaw hardened into something almost immovable. He throws an almost accusing glare towards me.

Mathilde, standing next to me, throws a few twigs on the fire around which we have gathered to watch the proceedings. She’s wearing trousers again, and she’s absently twisting a short hunting javelin, as if testing its weight.

‘We shouldn’t even be here,’ says Amelie.

I pin her with an unforgiving glare. I’ve promised to be honest with them, and so I was. I explained what happens if we don’t release the mages from the Golden Pavilion, how they intend to free themselves of the besiegers.

‘I’ll fight with you whenever you want me to,’ says Mathilde, staring into the fire. ‘You’ll always be able to count on me. But not tomorrow.’ She throws Gwenhael a quick look, so quick, that I would have missed it, if I wasn’t paying attention. Then she gets on her feet, planting her javelin into the ground. ‘Not tomorrow.’

She’s stalking towards her tent, and Arnauld makes to follow her, before I snatch him by the sleeve, and make him sit down.

Something tells me she wouldn’t want him to go with her.

Gwenhael twists his heel into the mud. ‘I hope you don’t expect the Pretorians to fight, either.’

‘I don’t expect anything from you,’ I say, and by the look that Gwenhael throws me, I realise that it may have come out harsher than I’d intended.

I bend forward, across Robert, and lay my hand on his arm, preparing to explain to Gwenhael what I mean, which is that their loyalty and their pledge is not something that I expect, but something that would do me great honour, when a shrill cry cuts through the shimmering dusk.

It’s halfway between a hawk’s screech and a wolf’s howl, just much louder. Something so ancient and wicked that it makes my blood curl. Robert is on his feet in an instant, pointing towards the Golden Pavilion. ‘There.’

Three dark, winged silhouettes are circling around the highest towers of the Pavilion, sweeping down to attack between the buildings.

My breath catches.

No.

It can’t be.

Madame Faucon promised to stop her spell.

‘Nightdragons,’ says Amelie.

Robert barks, ‘Everyone inside. Now,’ as the screeches multiply and the beasts bear down again and again and again.

Amelie and Arnauld hurry towards their tents, while Robert begins shouting orders at his troops. Gwenhael follows him quietly. ‘Where do you need my men to be?’ he asks.

Robert rubs his eyes. ‘I don’t even know what we’re facing. Gather them in compact formations,’ he says. ‘I don’t know how they attack, if crowds would make easier targets, if they’d rather go for scattered soldiers, if⁠—’

I dust my traveling dress, walk up to him. ‘We could find out. We could look.’

‘Why aren’t you already inside?’ he snaps at me, but then seems to understand what I’m trying to say.

I turn around on my heels. ‘Fine, if you don’t want to see, I’ll have a look by myself.’

* * *

In the piazza of the Golden Pavilion, mayhem has broken loose. The few men left in the open, scantily dressed and even more scantily armed, are seeking refuge in the nearest buildings. Shrill shrieks pierce from the three towers facing the plain. Faces peer from the main building of the Pavilion.

Nightdragons are dancing in the air, sweeping towards invisible targets.

They are huge – as large as five horses put together, with snouts full of teeth. I can see them when they open their mouths to screech.

But there’s something stilted, almost choreographed about their moves, I think, when there’s a warm squeeze of my hand and Robert materialises, also in his ghostly form, next to me.

He gives me a quick smile, and then turns his attention to the dragons. They look how the old scrolls describe them. Slick, dark skin. Long necks. Thin snouts.

But they don’t look like the one that I’ve seen in the Pavilion’s memories, the one I watched Sabya kill. The wings are smooth, not frayed. Rotten flesh doesn’t hang in strips, clear bone isn’t visible at the joints. The one I saw looked more like a … lizard.

‘Interesting,’ says Robert.

‘What?’

‘They—’ He frowns, as if trying to remember something. ‘They don’t attack like a predator would. They attack like – like they don’t even know what they’re attacking. They should be locked on their prey. Instead…’

‘They look like what someone would think a Nightdragon would look like.’

Robert nods. ‘Wait.’

‘What for?’

The men caught here, in the Pavilion, seem to think there’s something odd about the Nightdragons, too. More faces appear in the windows. And then, one of them throws a pitchfork precisely as one of the beasts is sweeping down.

It goes through them as if they were made of air.

I think, Are they ghostwalking, too? when Robert says, ‘Thought as much. Illusions.’

I almost smack myself. ‘Madame Faucon. Let’s see what she’s up to.’

I take a deep breath, pulling Robert directly into the cave around the Opal Lake with me. Madame Faucon and the remaining mages are gathered in a circle around the Crystal of Power, holding hands and reciting old words in a language that I don’t know. But the chant of it, that chant, their rhythm … I recognise it from the Pavilion’s memories.

The door behind us, the only access to this great hall dug into the heart of the mountain, is shaken by pounding from the other side. The people who have besieged the Pavilion are trying, yet again, to barge in. In spite of our entreaties and warnings to leave. Before Robert’s company takes the Pavilion back.

Magical shields reinforce the door, but magic can only hold out so long, especially when the casters are concentrating on weaving a spell, a spell that fills the air with a heaviness that makes my ears pound, my limbs feel leaden. I tilt sideways, further into Robert, while my tongue feels almost tied, and yet, and yet, I manage to shout, ‘Stop, stop, stop.’

Madame Faucon turns her head towards me, still speaking the words. I trudge forwards, as if walking through thick molasses, dragging Robert with me. Up close, I see shadows shifting in the essence of the crystal of power, a tainted light emanating from it. ‘Stop, stop,’ I say. ‘We’re in the valley, we are coming, we are coming tomorrow morning.’

Madame Faucon falters in her chant, then presses her lips into a thin line. Her eyes go to the shaking door. ‘We don’t have until tomorrow. You have to come now. Come now, or none of us will stop.’

‘We’ll come,’ I say, not waiting to hear what Robert has to say. ‘But stop whatever you’re doing and focus on holding that door.’

BATTLES

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

The battle of the Opal Mountain isn’t swift. It’s very bloody. It’s everything I expect it to be, and much, much worse. It’s the cries. The sounds that will haunt me in my nightmares, when all of this is over. The unescapable horror of what we have to do.

‘Wait in the tent,’ Robert tells me. ‘Seal your ears.’ There’s something beseeching in his gaze.

I shudder. ‘That is the last thing I will do. This is happening because of me. I cannot, should not look away.’

‘I will try to avoid bloodshed, as much as I can.’ He squeezes my shoulder.

I don’t know if it was in admonition or approval, and he turns away from me before I can tell. I long for a reassuring touch while I watch the troop of mercenaries cleave the hastily assembled lines of common folk. With their pitchforks and axes and rusted swords – and whatever they had in their homes when they decided to leave them and fight for a better life for themselves – they try to hold the line.

And just before that line is broken, there’s a great thud from behind. From some of the carts that left the Mothers’ camp earlier that day, armed men spring, trying to attack the mercenary tents. Those of us who were left behind. I see them racing towards us, frozen, knowing full well that I can’t wield a weapon. Not even if it would mean the death of me.

In spite of our warnings, in spite of what we talked about with Gelda, that we’re not the enemy, but that the real enemy is hiding behind the walls of Lafala, they still attack us.

But the people never counted on those who stayed behind and refused to take part in the battle. Gwenhael barks a few orders and the Pretorians assemble, fully armed. I see them for the first time for what they are – an elite force, trained to perfection to protect the Royal Household. It’s dizzying how quickly they form a line and how swiftly they begin to retaliate.

Mathilde takes position beside me as I stand in front of my tent, unable to move, unable to look away. She swings her javelin like a fiend towards anyone who comes near us. A stray pitchfork flies through the air, and she raises her shield to protect us both.

She’s not a trained fighter, but, sadly, nor are they.

The assault on our camp seems to take an eternity, as I watch every one of those poor, haggard men trying to descend on us, and the Pretorians slashing them down.

That is the thing about starting a fire. Even if Gelda tried to persuade her people to stop, she couldn’t – not with a snap of fingers, with a change of heart.

These people coming to attack us, they believed what they’d been told, and they were ready to fight for it.

What happens in the alleys between the tents is a reflection of what happens in the valley, where Robert’s mercenaries surround the rest of the Mother’s people. Forcing them to their knees, forcing them to surrender, before Robert, leading a division of his troops, pushes his way into the Golden Pavilion.

Far behind us, Bencifert and Prince Louis’ troops stand aside at the foot of Bencifert Castle, as they had promised.

This is the aftermath that Gelda spoke of.

Some run.

Some flee.

Some yield.

Some are shredded to bits.

It was all a huge misunderstanding, but I can’t explain that to the bodies of the folk and of the mages that litter the road to the Opal Mountain, and the Golden Pavilion.

What everyone will see, and will know, and what I know, is that I brought Robert here, his soldiers.

It’s my fault that this is happening.

This swirling pool of blood and darkness, this will always taint me.

* * *

In the aftermath, the Pavilion looks precisely like I once saw it when mindwalking in that place where time has no significance. I rememeber the cracked tiles. The stagnant water. The marble smeared with blood. The cries, now silenced, which still seem to echo from within the walls.

When Robert finds me again, it’s evening, the Golden Pavilion reeks of blood, and I’m emptying my stomach in a pail, up in the chambers where I once used to sleep.

The moon makes the white-gold marble shimmer in shades of blue and purple, the blood taking on a deep shade of red. Robert’s mercenaries are still dragging the dead and alive away.

He stops a few steps behind me. ‘Do you – need anything?’

I whip around, gulping for fresh air. I rinse my mouth with water from a cup and spit in the pail, pushing it aside. ‘Yes, please, could you take all of this away, everything that happened today?’

His face is grim. ‘I told you that you shouldn’t watch.’

‘How could I not watch?’ I shout. ‘I made you do this.’

Madame Faucon steps into the room, her heeled boots echoing on the marble. She’s pale. She’s swaying.

I close my eyes and I see what I’ve seen all day. Faces contorted in pain. Fear. So much of it.

People fighting because they believed in the lies they were told. Somebody’s child, somebody’s husband, somebody’s brother.

They died because they were led to believe that killing the mages at the Golden Pavilion would give them a chance at a better life.

‘There was no other way—’ the doyenne begins.

‘Oh, shut up for once. Just shut up.’ There isn’t a bed anymore in my former chambers, just the marble floor, and I crash on my bottom on it. Cradling my face. ‘Was it right? Why should I decide what is right? Who am I?’ I look at their stunned faces. ‘Who am I?’

Then Robert steps forward, his eyes clouded. He grabs my arm, and I try to wrench it free, but his grip only tightens to the point of pain. ‘Let me go,’ I shout.

‘Get up on your feet,’ he shouts, pulling me. ‘Get up right now.’

I try to free myself from him. There’s so much intensity in the way his eyes glimmer. ‘You are what you are, and you have never turned away from it before. Now isn’t the time to start. With your Gifts comes great responsibility. It’s not your fault that you had bad counsel in the past.’ He turns his gaze on Madame Faucon and I see her flinch.

‘I don’t want this Gift. I never wanted it. It’s a curse,’ I scream, thrashing, willing him to let me go.

He does. ‘You are magnificent, Blanche. I wish you could see it. You are better than all of them. But that is the thing.’

He bends down, his face so close to mine. He smells of blood, I notice, and it makes my stomach twist. ‘If you shy away from it, if you are weak, that is when you do the things that you will regret. Grow a spine, Blanche. Grow it. One that does not bend. You asked me once how I sleep? That’s how. I do what I know I must. When I lay my head on the pillow, I, for one, know I couldn’t have done differently. That I might be a monster, but also, that I just slayed a monster greater than me.’

This makes me pause.

Had we not come, Madame Faucon, in her desperation to survive, would have awoken the Dark Mother. I know that it would have been her. I know it, I felt it in the foul magic pulsing around the Opal Lake.

And the worst thing is that the mistake that started this had been mine. It was I who had told Gelda of what I saw in the cave at the heart of the Mountain. It was because of me that she was led to believe that the Golden Mother could be released.

Robert grabs a corner of his cloak and wipes my tears. ‘You are the master of your own power.’

I shiver, wondering how he knows the words. But he has always provided so many answers about me, about my Gift. He has asked the right questions. I slide my eyes to Madame Faucon. ‘It was Sabya, wasn’t it? She gave us the words, as well as the power.’

Sabya, who dwells at the heart of the mountain. Sabya, who guards the unspeakable, and has done so for more than five hundred years.

The goddess. Who would have not shied away from this.

Would that I were more like her.

‘You are the master of yourself,’ says Robert, gritting his teeth. ‘Act like it.’ He stretches out his hand to me, and this time I take it. Once I’m up, his fingers clasp around my forearm, lingering there.

Steadying me.

There is more, I think. Ever since I shouted the Red Kingdom’s name into his head. Ever since he came, answering my call. His eyes have always been set on me, even while he kept quiet, in the Curia room at the palace.

Watching. Weighing. Stepping in.

We are more to one another than I can yet comprehend.

I didn’t fall in love with him because he happened to be there, at the Tower. He made sure he would be there. Like he made sure that he would be the first one to reach the Tower, when the rebellion broke.

I look again at Madame Faucon, not letting him go. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I wanted to—’ She clears her throat, watching us hold onto one another.

‘Yes?’ I say.

‘I wanted to thank you,’ she says.

‘Thank me? Thank. Me?’ I let go of Robert’s arm, take a step towards her. ‘Did you see what we did? What we had to do, because you threatened to awaken something that could obliterate all of us from existence?’

Madame Faucon seems surprised by this. ‘According to the information we had⁠—’

‘Your information was a pile of turd!’ I scream.

She flinches. Again. It feels good to have this power over her.

You are the master of your own power. In my head, Sabya’s and Robert’s voices weave. Act like it.

‘You don’t get to thank me,’ I say. ‘You are in my debt.’ I pause, considering. ‘You. And what’s left of the mages of the Pavilion. You march with us to Lafala.’

Robert’s approval is a shield behind me.

Robert is my shield.

Has always been.

‘I most definitely shall not,’ says Madame Faucon. ‘My loyalty is sworn to the Crown, laid down by the laws of the Pavilion, and I will not raise a hand against your brother.’

I weigh this. Robert takes a sleek step, and he’s next to me, his shoulder nearly touching mine. He folds his arms. I know what he’s trying to say. Do not balk. Grow a spine.

No, I cannot balk. By the look of her, I won’t be able to persuade her, either. Since she was always the one to tell me what to do, she won’t take orders from me.

Not yet.

‘I didn’t ask you to fight Etienne,’ I say, toning myself down. ‘Pay attention. I said you march with us. What happens there, that remains to be discussed.’

She prepares to say something, but I lift my hand. ‘Enough. You have a debt of blood. And you will pay it.’

‘I will not⁠—’

I straighten my spine, the muscles in my back rippling. I am so tall, compared to her. She is so small. I never noticed until now. ‘Tell me, Madame Faucon. What stops me, now, in this second, from unleashing him upon you? He is sworn to me,’ I bluff, though I’m not so sure that Robert is. I only promised him I would pay him back for what he had to do today. ‘Will you stop him with an illusion?’ Her eyes weigh him in. ‘Too close for comfort, I know.’

Robert doesn’t even move.

‘Do not threaten me,’ she says.

‘I can finish what these poor people started,’ I say, pointing to the piazza, now cleared of bodies, ‘and then I don’t have to worry you’ll run to my brother to fight with him.’ She has tried so hard, for so many years, to curry favour with the Crown. This is why she bound my Gift when Etienne bade her. ‘You march with me,’ I say, and stomp away from the room, though I’m not so sure myself, either, where I might go.

* * *

‘No, we will not march with you,’ says Gerard Bencifert. ‘That will be tantamount to siding with you, or with Charles. Do you speak for Charles, on his authority?’

We are in one of the dining chambers of Bencifert Castle. I decided that I couldn’t spend the night at the Golden Pavilion and that I could abuse Seigneur Bencifert’s hospitality for one evening, after all that I’ve done for him.

After what it had cost me.

‘No, I will not, either,’ says Prince Louis. ‘The point wasn’t to ignite a war with the Red Kingdom. That is not what we want.’

Robert breaks a piece of bread. ‘Then why are you here?’

‘Call it, perhaps, an error of judgement.’ The Prince sips his wine, concentrating on the delicate engravings etched on his goblet.

I know what he doesn’t say. That, perhaps, things didn’t go Charles’s way, as he would have wanted them to. The Guilds are rampant, looking after their own interests. Half of the Guilds’ army is marching with the mad princess, anyway, and has just attacked the people attacking the Golden Pavilion.

Charles is squatting in Lafala, with probably not enough forces to start an offensive, while Anselme prepares to press him from behind.

The situation is not ideal to throw the lot of the Blue Kingdom into the mix, and risk a war later, with my brother.

If he wins.

I tell them the same thing I told Madame Faucon. ‘You don’t interfere,’ I say. Not at first. ‘You march.’

‘We will do no such thing,’ says Gerard Bencifert.

I rip a bit of cold meat with my nails. ‘Do not, think, Seigneur Bencifert, that a debt of blood is paid just by standing aside. Do not think that I cannot enter your mind again, find your deepest secret, and dangle it in front of your—’ I prepare to say ‘enemies’, but I realise this isn’t right. We keep our deepest secrets locked well away from our loved ones. Because of what they can do to them. ‘Friends.’

His hand closes round the silver knife.

Robert moves his cape aside, showing the pommel of his sword. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

I think, We make a formidable pair.

Together, there is nothing to stop us.

Except, perhaps, my brother and Anselme.

But this isn’t over, not by far. Out there, one or two days’ march from here, if we are lucky, I have yet another reunion to think about, the one with the Guilds.

I’ve been here before, I try to remind myself. I clawed myself out, after the worst had happened.

THE AFTERSHOCK

THE PRINCESS

Two years before the Year of the Red Maiden

It had been but a night since Robert left – for ever, I feared – but it seemed like aeons had passed. The Blanche of that morning was trudging through a murk, and she’d have to find her way out of it alone. When the door creaked, I jumped up from my chair. My heart leapt, hoping, praying to Sabya and the Mothers of the Forest and whoever else might be able to lend a helping hand that Robert would open that door.

But it wasn’t him.

It was Henri. Of course they’d have sent him, in Robert’s absence. His right hand when it came to the Pretorians. Henri stepped in, slightly hesitant. ‘Blanche?’

I made myself smile. They didn’t know that Robert wouldn’t return. Not yet. Maybe he wasn’t even gone. Maybe he’d changed his mind. And my instincts urged me to protect what he’d told me the day before.

Keep Henri close. I think you can trust him. I’ve put him in the best position to take over, but you might have to manoeuvre a bit. Use Gisele, if you can. She might help.

‘Henri, what a surprise. I didn’t see you yesterday.’

‘No, Robert asked me to take some guarding duties around the King’s residence.’ He smiled, offering me his arm. ‘Are you ready?’

I took whatever he was giving me. ‘Are you betting today?’

He laughed. ‘No, I’m not the betting sort, though I’m tempted to put my coin on Robert.’

He didn’t know. Or Robert was still here. Looking for Mathilde. My chest tightened.

‘All your coin?’ I made myself say.

‘Perhaps I’ll do that. Perhaps I’ll start taking risks.’ He turned towards me, a curious look on his face. He was handsome, this one. Handsome, as if he had been chiselled by a talented stonemason. With his coppery hair, his small, pointed nose. The blue-grey eyes.

I tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Robert has been rubbing off on you, I see.’

‘Oh, I learned a great deal,’ he said, casually. ‘Haven’t we all?’

I wondered if he suspected. After all, he’d been there, in the tower, the first time when⁠—

No, I couldn’t think of it. I couldn’t allow myself to. ‘What do you have for me?’ I asked.

He tilted his head, as if he was unsure what I was trying to say.

‘Books,’ I said. ‘I was just asking about books.’

* * *

In the special corner reserved for fine ladies in the King’s box, the atmosphere was grim. Tight. Like a rope pulled to the point where it would snap. The others looked calm enough, but our little group, the remnants of my little court – Gisele and Amelie – were still pale, watching everything with eyes that had deep shadows underneath them.

They hadn’t slept well, I realised.

Just like me.

They’d wept, probably.

Also just like me.

‘Who will you give your favour to today, Gisele?’ chirped in one of the fine ladies.

‘No one at all,’ she said, so softly that it was barely audible.

I inched closer on the bench. Underneath us, on the panel that showed the upcoming battles, a squire took down Robert’s shield. He would not be competing that day, then.

I cared about my little court, about what they did. Even if they’d acted like strangers since the Tournament started, I couldn’t forget that there had been a time when they showed me kindness, when we did the Morgen Movements together in the woods.

I took Gisele’s hand, and whispered, ‘You will do no such thing.’

She stared at me. ‘You can’t order me around. Princess or not.’

‘No, but I can ask you to be sensible, at least.’ I touched her shawl, the one that had been especially prepared for tearing. ‘So be sensible.’

The first competitors of the day prepared in the arena below. But I saw through them. This was the day when Robert should have entered the landed gentry of this land. A small fief, indeed, Bencifert Castle, but would he have passed on the chance to become one of the nobility?

I thought, If I were Robert, captain of mercenaries, ready to fight for who offers more coin, would I truly want to be tied to a small fief? To allegiances and loyalty for a King I do not love or respect?

One of the knights below ripped his lance to shreds in his opponent’s shield, but I hardly took in any of the proceedings, because I’d come to realise that Robert hadn’t meant to stay for ever. What we’d shared, whatever I thought it was…

He was always, always, going to leave.

The next competitors took the ring and Amelie’s cousin, the young Seigneur Valmons, strutted on a bay warhorse towards the royal box. Towards us.

‘Mademoiselle Gisele, would you grant me your favour?’ He was grinning underneath that helm.

A good match for Gisele, indeed. His lands in the mountains stretched far and wide, with pastures and woodland and lonely peaks. Amelie’s father had made a fortune in trading hides and salted meats and cheeses via Port Lang, in the south.

I glanced at Amelie, growing paler in the row behind us. What a foolish man her father had been, not to provide for her while he’d still been alive. Too choose, instead, to rely on the honour of his nephew, that he’d see his daughter married. And just as I knew that it couldn’t have ended well for Mathilde, I knew this couldn’t end well for Amelie.

But what was going on between Gisele and the young Seigneur Valmons was even worse. Gisele pressed her lips into a thin line, and I could see the hard retort coming. I leaned towards her and whispered in her ear. ‘Grant him your favour. And grant it to two more knights.’

She snatched her head away, giving me a look so wild with anger and surprise. ‘No.’

I tilted my face half away and burst into sharp laughter, as if I’d just said something terribly funny. ‘Don’t be a fool. You’re not a child throwing a tantrum. Protect her. Do what you can. Don’t let anyone see that anything is amiss.’

‘Everything is amiss,’ she said. ‘What they will do to her⁠—’

‘Maybe they won’t find her in time,’ I said, bursting into laughter again. Below, Seigneur Valmons looked like he wanted to strike me with his lance. ‘And Robert wouldn’t hurt her⁠—’

‘I’m not worried about Robert,’ she said, but then forced a smile onto her lips. ‘I’m sorry, seigneur Valmons, my friend, the princess, has been distracting me. Of course I will grant you my favour.’ She ripped her scarf, tearing it in two.

Two, not three pieces, as I’d advised her. A little jab at me.

Let her have her way.

As long as she did what she had to.

Seigneur Valmons tied the favour around his lance, pleased at having received a larger chunk of her scarf than the day before. And I realised, perhaps Gisele had been dividing her favours among so many knights to make sure that at least one of them won.

I realised that Gisele truly didn’t like to lose. And that she always wanted to have the last word. She whispered to me, ‘I worry about what her father will do to her.’

* * *

The day stretched and stretched and stretched, my bones grinding on the bench of the box. But it was worse when Henri led me back to my chambers, in silence. I wondered if this was how things would be. Now Robert was gone.

Keep Henri close. I think you can trust him.

I made myself speak. ‘So did you bet?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t quite settle on who I thought the winner of the day would be.’

‘That’s no surprise,’ I said, sharper than I intended. ‘That would always be my brother. And Anselme.’

Henri’s lips tugged upwards. ‘I think next time, Blanche, I will give you all my coin. And you can do as you see fit with it.’

Robert’s words floated towards me.

I think he’s quite sweet on you.

* * *

Dinner took place in my brother’s private chambers, not in the large tent where they’d dined for the last two days. To keep up appearances, I realised, as I took in the sour miens. Seigneur Champy’s face promised death. To whom, I didn’t know. Even my brother was more jittery than usual. And Anselme was so rigid that I wondered if he’d swallowed a plank.

Henri deposited me in my seat and walked down to the end of the table. For a moment, I wondered why they’d even bothered to invite me.

Perhaps they were so furious that they couldn’t even think. One look at their faces was enough for me to know that they hadn’t found Mathilde yet. The stilted conversation revolved around whether to raise the taxes in Port Lang. Seigneur Valmons nodded keenly, but Anselme said it was a matter still to be discussed. Then, Seigneur Peneric asked about some guarantees on the vineyards in his lands.

My brother scoffed. ‘Vineyards? You’re worried about vineyards, of all things?’ Mathilde’s lover had vineyards, too, I remembered. ‘And you had your guarantees, but you were too⁠—’

‘We should have to think about it, Seigneur Peneric.’ Anselme cut in smoothly. ‘In due course. We cannot make any plans, as long as we don’t know what the situation is.’

I watched, soaking it all in, while trying to appear that I wasn’t listening. But I didn’t miss the searching gaze that Seigneur Valmons gave Gisele. Nor the way that Amelie was avoiding looking at him.

The servants had rolled in the next courses and smells of fish and red wine sauce and garlic wafted towards us, when a tall, cloaked figure burst in, pushing his way through them. One of the high-ranking captains, I realised. As far as I could remember from my time at court. He fell onto one knee in front of my brother. ‘My King. The Condottiere is gone.’

It had been so long. It had been so long that I’d forgotten this was the name they’d given him, when they hadn’t known his true one.

The fools.

‘Yes, I know he is gone,’ said Etienne. ‘I sent him on an errand.’

The captain’s face showed absolute stupor. I wondered if my brother also saw this. I wondered if everyone saw all that I could see. ‘No, no, my King. He is gone. He and his entire company, they made for the Green Kingdom last night.’

My brother’s face was pinched with uncertainty.

And then, the captain extended a piece of parchment to him. ‘He left this.’

Etienne read quickly, purple spots blushing in his face. ‘The no-good son of a whore. The utter piece of cow shit. By the Dark Mother.’

‘What? What?’ Anselme craned his neck, as if he could read sideways.

I lowered my head, watching them. My knees were trembling. This was it. He was gone. He was well and truly gone. And the first thing that came to my mind was that I should have allowed him last night, before the dinner, to⁠—

That I should have ripped that lovely jacket off him.

If I’d known. If I’d known that we wouldn’t make up for it. If I’d known that would be the last time, the very last time, I would be so close to him…

Etienne tossed the parchment to Anselme. The prince’s eyes moved so quickly when he read that I wondered how he wasn’t dizzy. Then he cursed through his teeth. The seigneurs began to timidly ask what the fuss was about. And my brother roared in anger.

Anselme’s lips pursed into a pout. ‘I did not expect this.’

‘Backstabbing piece of horseshit,’ said Etienne. ‘I hope the Dark Mother eats him.’

I wanted to snap, The Dark Mother wouldn’t eat anyone, her Nightdragon would.

‘Get up.’ Etienne’s voice rose. ‘Get up, all of you, you useless cunts. Let’s go and see if there’s anything to be done.’

Even Seigneur Valmons had the decency to look worried.

‘I’m not sure if it’s wise…’ interjected Anselme.

‘Oh, let him go to dust, Anselme. And you, too. We might as well tell them. Our darling Condottiere says that our contract is void immediately, as a result of a breach of terms. Tell them, Anselme.’

The prince laid the parchment on the table, smoothing it with his hands. I recognised the handwriting. The pointed letters, the bubbly ‘g’s. I almost smiled. Robert had written this little letter in his own hand. ‘The breach of terms, in his own words, is that it is none of his business to chase about young ladies who are in possession of full maturity and their full senses and can reach their own decisions. To make them bow to the will of their families. To make them come to heel.’

The words twisted in my chest. This had been as much for the ears of Champy and his ilk as it had been for my own. Had he known that I’d read this? Had he hoped?

The letter was a warning.

Full senses. Don’t bow to the will of your family.

And that was the moment when I knew that the time for being swept away was gone. I’d been lucky, the first time. Lucky that fate had landed me in Robert’s arms. But there was no telling what might have happened. Not if I didn’t at least try to regain at least an ounce of control over my own life.

Over what they planned to do with me in the aftermath.

So when they scrambled to their feet, my brother adjourning with them to the war room, I stayed. Considering. When Gisele and Amelie got up, linking arms, a slight bob of their heads towards me, I stayed, grabbing the arms of my chair hard. I stayed as everyone in that room got up and left.

And when finally Henri came to me, and said, ‘Come on, Blanche. Let me take you to your chambers,’ I didn’t move. I didn’t relent. I didn’t budge.

‘Sit down, Henri.’ I watched the servants clearing the last of the plates. ‘Messere Valmons and I will have each a glass of wine,’ I said. My voice felt scratchy, not my own. ‘And some sweets, please. This might be a long wait.’

The maid bowed her head and vanished from the room.

‘What are you doing, Blanche?’

‘If you ever wanted to take a risk, Henri, and put your coin on me, this might be the time,’ I said softly. ‘For now, we don’t do anything. We don’t move a muscle.’ And just as I said this, I watched the staircase at the back of the dining room leading to my brother’s bedchambers, the only way to access them, unless he wanted to pass through the servants’ quarters.

Which he wouldn’t.

Sooner or later, Etienne was bound to come through this dining chamber again.

So, instead of retreating before the battle even began, I saw only one option: to stay.

* * *

Out of sight, out of mind. I had to do everything in my power so that my brother wouldn’t forget that new arrangements had to be made before I returned to Mora’s Tower. I considered countless ways to approach him, as Henri and I sat, a few chairs away from each other.

He tried to strike up a conversation, but my own thoughts held me too tight in their grip. ‘Not now, Henri. I’m sorry.’ I could barely hear him above the storm in my head. ‘I’m trying to think.’

He tilted his head, watching the empty threshold behind us. ‘What are you planning to do?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ I said. ‘I think I need…’ I shook my head. ‘If anything, try not to appear too keen. Try not… Etienne smells weakness. He thrives on it. And that’s where he always sinks his teeth.’

Henri nodded, slowly. He was quiet for a long time. A servant laid down a jug of ale on the table. And then Henri said, ‘All my coin is on you, Blanche. All of it.’

* * *

The darkness was at its deepest point, halfway between midnight and dawn, when my brother finally marched back into the dining room, Anselme at his heels. ‘What are you still doing here?’ Etienne barked.

I made myself move slowly, so slowly. Like someone who wasn’t quite aware of what they were doing. I pointed at Henri. ‘He insisted we wait here. He’s keen to please you.’

Etienne whipped his head in the direction of my finger.

Henri cleared his voice.

‘He said he wasn’t sure about orders,’ I said. ‘And he didn’t want you to think he whisked me off somewhere.’

Etienne’s gaze lingered on Henri’s jacket, the midnight-blue of the Pretorians. ‘You’re Robert’s lapdog,’ said my brother.

‘His … disciple,’ said Henri. ‘He was just showing me how everything works. Around the Royal Household.’

‘And Mora’s Tower,’ said Anselme, his gaze roving from Henri to me.

I gathered my hands in my lap.

‘And that, too,’ said Henri, softly. ‘The lie of the land.’

‘Do you also happen to share his … loyalties?’ said Anselme.

‘I know very well where my loyalties lie,’ snapped Henri.

Fire. This one had more fire in his veins that he allowed us to see.

‘You’re a second son,’ said Anselme. Weighing him. ‘It would be easier for you to make a way with your sword at Robert’s side.’

‘Knowing how to wield a sword isn’t everything though, is it, Your Highness?’

Anselme gave him a coy smile.

‘Take her to her chambers,’ said Etienne. ‘We’ll have to see about you tomorrow.’

I lowered my eyes. Trying to hide my hand. ‘Now that the stingy one is gone, I want more freedom.’

‘What?’ said Etienne.

‘I want more freedom. Why do you keep me locked up like an animal? I’m nothing to be afraid of. I’m nothing, no one at all.’ My voice trailed because I was putting so much into those words. Risking everything.

‘Why would we do such a thing?’ said Etienne.

My guts tied into a knot. There it was. The beginning and the end. ‘I am your sister, by Sabya’s Darkblade. Our mother would twist in her grave, if she saw how you treat me.’

‘We cannot choose our family. We are born into it,’ said Etienne.

‘Yes, but we can choose how we treat them. And right now, you’re treating me as someone very dangerous. Which I am most definitely not. But keep me locked away, and someone, someday might start asking questions. As to why that is. Even if you have a reason for it. Or not anymore.’ I underlined the last word.

I had to make them think I was harmless. I had to.

‘The lady does quite have a point,’ conceded Anselme.

‘What do you want?’ said Etienne.

I tried to put some softness in my gaze, focusing it on his nose. ‘I want to live my life. Peacefully. I want to have people around me, and wandering singers, and poets, and freedom to move around the tower.’ The freedom that I already had, the freedom that I had always had with Robert, but I didn’t tell him that.

In his chair, Henri had gone very quiet, but his shoulders were tense. Etienne considered.

‘It might be wise to loosen the leash,’ said Anselme. ‘Avoid drawing attention.’

‘You want to hold court,’ said Etienne.

My little court. Yes. ‘Of sorts,’ I said. ‘I want someone to talk to in the evening. Someone to embroider with. And I want entertainment.’

Make yourself small, make yourself harmless. Hide the dagger in a velvet glove.

‘All right,’ said my brother. ‘You can hold your court. But no men.’

I blinked. No men. No, he didn’t want to take the risk. ‘No men,’ I said softly. I shifted in my seat. I had to offer him something in exchange. And fast. ‘I’ll even take Mathilde in for you.’

Anselme knitted his eyebrows.

Anger blotched my brother’s face at the mention of Mathilde’s name. ‘Why would I want you to do that?’

‘Because, once you find her, you’ll have to put her somewhere,’ I said, carefully. ‘You can hardly leave her with her family after what she’s done.’ I shivered to think what they’d do to her. Yes, I had to take Mathilde out of there. And make it look like I was the one doing them a favour. ‘It will be a stain on their honour.’

Etienne’s eyes flashed and I fear I’d pushed him too far.

But Anselme shifted behind him. ‘That might actually be a decent idea,’ he said. ‘There might be other … stray lambs who will need a roof above their heads. Out of everyone’s way.’

My court, my own court, the women rejected by my brother’s reign.

Women and girls who had all the reasons in the world to hate them.

This was playing so smoothly into my hands that I didn’t dare believe it.

I saw you for what you were.

Not even I had seen myself for what I was.

‘All right,’ said Etienne. ‘Now scuttle off.’

I rose to my feet. ‘There is also the matter of who will be in charge of my guards.’ I didn’t dare believe that my brother would lighten his grip on me. That he wouldn’t want his eyes and ears at the tower. ‘If you allow, I will make a list of who I deem suitable.’ I forced myself not to look Henri’s way.

My brother’s patience, the little he had for me, had rubbed entirely off. ‘You will do no such thing.’ I turned away, knowing better than to push. ‘He’ll do for now,’ he said, probably pointing at Henri. At least, I hoped so. ‘Afterwards, we’ll see.’

* * *

I fought the urge to crash, to dissolve into a puddle on my floor as Henri hauled me back to my chambers. I was trembling with elation. I’d done it. I’d gained…

I’d gained nothing that might not yet be lost. And from then on, every step I took, I’d have to consider it carefully.

Henri led to me one of the chairs in my chambers. ‘That was⁠—’

I rubbed my face, hard. ‘That was pure luck, that’s what it was.’ I had to remember. If the entire fiasco with Seigneur Bencifert had taught me anything, it was that I couldn’t overplay my hand.

Henri’s gaze roved across my face, across my crumpled dress. Calculating. Assessing. For a moment, I wondered how much I could trust him. How much I had to offer. It would have been so easy for him to go back to my brother and exchange⁠—

‘What is it?’ I asked softly.

‘There is much more to you than meets the eye,’ he said.

I laughed. A hard, bitter laugh. ‘You say this about someone who has made a habit of ransacking other people’s minds, in the dead of night?’

‘But… There are no more powers, are there? They bound them.’

I considered.

I remembered my walk with Robert, in Langville. Hand in hand.

It seemed like it had been in another lifetime. Not just a few days past.

And I didn’t trust Henri. Not yet.

Maybe I would, eventually.

‘No, there are no powers,’ I said. ‘None at all.’

THE GUILDS

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

If Robert finds it difficult to face the Guilds once we join on the common road to Lafala, I wager he has no idea how hard it is for me to face Henri.

In the end, the Guilds did agree to march on, once they’d secured Langville. On the pretence of going to Lafala, to negotiate terms for themselves both with Charles and Etienne.

To wait for a victor to emerge, I suppose, just like Gerard Bencifert and Prince Louis.

But this is more than I’d have ever thought possible even a week ago, and I’m sure I have plenty to thank Henri for.

I find him perched in a silver tent, already waiting for me. He’s not angry. That is not a reaction to draw quickly from Henri.

But he is displeased.

To the point that his fingers are shaking. ‘You didn’t come to our wedding,’ he says.

I dust my riding dress. It was enough that I did what I did, I needn’t inflame spirits over matters of etiquette and stride around the camp in trousers.

Though leaving your betrothed to organise a wedding you did not plan to attend is a heinous crime, when it comes to breaches of etiquette.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘It was—’ I sit down at the table, even if he didn’t invite me to. ‘We had to prevent something worse from happening.’

‘We?’ Henri raises a single eyebrow in a controlled gesture, whereas Robert would have shot up two.

So different, the both of them.

‘I suppose you mean your Robert, then? Oh, the Guilds are absolutely livid with him.’

‘I hope the Guilds, as well as you, will understand.’

Henri’s blue eyes are cold. I shrink from it.

I’ve done him wrong.

I wish I could say that I’m still angry because he tried to force my hand, but what he did, it had set me on this path. It was the right thing to do, even if he carried things too far and tried to strike an understanding with the Guilds in my name. Which reminds me. ‘Are the Guilds ready to join Charles?’

He shakes his head. ‘No. There is still work to do.’

I lay my hands on the table, observing my dirty nails.

‘You seem to have collected a few more people along the way,’ he observes. ‘But collecting is a little passion of yours, isn’t it?’

I know what he means. He always laughed about how I collected young women at Mora’s Tower.

I wonder if he sees himself as a part of that collection, too.

Henri rubs his chin. ‘The mages, I understand. Why you would want them to follow you. And Bencifert’s troops.’

‘They’re technically not with us,’ I correct him.

If anything, Henri seems amused. ‘If you say so. But the Mothers of the Forest?’

I had spoken with Gelda after the battle. She was genuinely horrified at what had happened, or so she made me believe. She said she never wanted to see so much blood spilled. She said she had truly believed that the Golden Mother was trapped in the Opal Mountain, and that she could not believe that the people she had gathered would not turn back, once I told them the truth about what was on the verge of being released.

She said, as a gesture of goodwill, that she could persuade many of those who had left the camps before the battle, and those among our prisoners, to march with us towards Lafala, to face our real enemy, the King.

I’m still not sure whether to trust her, but I’m not in a position to be picky about the allies who would march with me. And whatever work of convincing among the prisoners still needed doing, Gwenhael took upon him most of that, and, for the love of me, I do trust him.

‘I’m not sure any would fight with us,’ I tell Henri, as truthfully as I can. ‘I have no idea, either, what it is that I’m collecting, exactly.’

I study the way his features are set in an assessing, unsure mask. I reach out in my chest for whatever it is I feel for him, and I discover some of the trust is gone. I had taken such a leap in the immediate aftermath of what happened at the Tournament.

Often did I wonder, in the beginning, if I had done well to do so. I remembered the time when I prodded Henri about his loyalty to my brother – and how he told me that I’m asking the wrong questions. That the true matter was what his alternatives were.

As I take him in now, I have to ask myself, what are his alternatives today?

He taps his lips with his fingers, those lovely, lush lips, and I think about kissing him. Would it be terribly inappropriate in this situation?

And how can one want to kiss two different people at the same time?

No, no, no, I tell myself.

I do not want to kiss Robert.

Not him.

Henri says, ‘You are thinking hard about something, I can tell.’

I laugh, in spite of myself.

Everything with Henri is easier than it should be. Even after I’ve jilted him.

No, he is too smart not to play the last of his cards. And then reveal a sleight of hand that helps him win the game. Like he did when he told me he would speak to Anselme, and then gave me over to Robert.

‘I asked you once about alternatives,’ I say. ‘Do you remember what you told me?’

‘I’m not quite so sure, but I don’t think it can be good, if you mention it.’ He grins.

‘You said that a Valmons doesn’t serve another house. Just the royal household.’

‘Ah,’ he says, something lighting up his face. ‘And then, you said that was why I pledged my sword to the King. And I said that you were wrong. That in fact⁠—’

‘You pledged your sword to me at the Tournament,’ I say.

Henri bows his head in amused agreement. ‘And then you made that terrible accusation that my sword was only pledged to myself.’ He leans forward in his seat, his challenging gaze fixed upon me. Somehow, Henri has turned a situation where the ground was slipping from under his feet into one where he juggles at least two different balls. ‘And is that what you still think?’

I turn my head away, blushing. ‘I think, for better or for worse, we are in a much more interesting situation now.’

This man said he would marry me. This man wants to raise Valmons, and lay it at my feet. Even in the best outcome of this tangle – if Charles wins and my brother no longer sits on the throne – I have to think about what I would do with myself. What place there would be for the mad sister of a displaced king, and her little court.

I have to remember that, according to the laws of this kingdom, any male heirs that I might have would pose a threat to Charles’s own heirs. If he, or his progeny, only ever produce women. Women cannot inherit crowns, or fiefs in our kingdom. But their boys could.

So an unbroken male line, from my side of the family… They could claim the crown for themselves, displacing a princess of Charles’s line.

But Charles is young and may yet have many children. So such thoughts are, perhaps, unwarranted.

The fact is that, as Madame Valmons, I would be rich and could bestow favours on those who were faithful to me. As Henri’s wife, I could make sure that Amelie’s dowry is paid in full. That Gwenhael would be made a seigneur, with a small fief that could plentifully feed a large family.

Perhaps then a certain lady would choose him.

But if my head is full of Henri, my heart screams another name.

Robert, who took his troops where I asked him to. Who also made no promises beyond joining our troops with the ones he sent to the Guilds.

Robert, who never spoke of love, not in the days since we’ve been reunited after two years, not in the days before the Tournament.

Not once.

What he said was that it wasn’t right, and that he couldn’t take care of me.

What he said was that he would be back before my brother drags me down with him.

And beyond? Uncertainty.

I cannot build bridges on moving sands.

I watch Henri, carefully.

At least, this one, he has made his intentions plain. At least, this one, he sees a way. And if my hand in marriage should be a guarantee for peace, for bringing the factions together…

I cannot balance the fate of a kingdom on the memories of a feverish, lonely young girl.

No.

I am Princess Blanche of the Shadowline. The King’s sister. Forger of plans in the dark. King-breaker, I hope.

I was an outcast, pushed to the edge of this kingdom. To its marcher lands, in a tower, all but forgotten.

And I came back as the Marchionessa of the Fallen Court.

* * *

And since we speak of matters of the heart, and since a certain commander of a mercenary company has been blatantly avoiding me since we left the Golden Pavilion, and since there isn’t much for me to do until the Guildmasters arrive tomorrow, I can finally turn my attention to the Fallen Court again.

Towards another who has been forging plans of marriage.

I settle in the bed in a small tent that Robert has put at my disposal – away from the Fallen Court, but away from him, too.

It seems he doesn’t need to watch my moves closely. It seems that he doesn’t want me to watch his.

Fine, I tell myself. He wouldn’t want to know that I’m doing this anyway.

I close my eyes, slip into Mathilde’s mind. The fortress, the open gate, she and Gwenhael, are the same.

Three dogs are about the courtyard, one of them sniffing a pile of garbage. I whistle softly at him. ‘Come here,’ I say. ‘The woods. Show me Gwenhael and Mathilde in the woods.’

The greyhound’s ears fold behind, but he starts with a jump. I hurry to follow him into the castle, leaping from place to place, trying to keep up. The gate to the fortress. Two flights of stairs. Third door down the corridor. And there, I pass the threshold towards a grove.

Mathilde is trudging forward, on foot, Gwenhael following closely behind. A bow is slung around his shoulder, a bag of arrows strapped to his back. They’re quiet, which is unsurprising. I needed ages of wandering with Gwenhael to get anything out of him.

The greyhounds are leaping about, and the one who brought me here joins them. A fine dusting of snow coats some of the tree trunks, gathering at the roots.

It must be soon after she arrived, then. Judging by the rings under her eyes, the way her shoulders are rounded forward.

I know. Just by looking at her, I know. How she doesn’t take in anything around her. Lost in her own mind, in her own misery.

She stops, blinking, as if arrested by something terrible going on in her head. Gwenhael waits, a few steps behind her. He waits and waits and waits. And then, he closes the distance between them, stalking forward on silent feet. He touches her elbow with the tip of his bow.

She just looks at him as if she’d forgotten altogether that he was there.

‘I could show you how to use this,’ he says.

She frowns. ‘Now tell me, captain, why would I want that?’

I think I’ve seen enough. I make to retreat from the room, to walk through the open door, when the greyhound that brought me here runs in front of me, and then stops, as if to make sure that I’m following.

‘There’s more?’ I say, and he bounces forward.

He leads me to a lower level, towards the large door that seals the great hall. Scratches at it, whimpering. I touch the handle, warm, as if someone had been holding on tight to it until just a moment before. As if someone has gripped it, while leaning in the doorway.

I push into the door and it opens into a vast expanse of woods. Mathilde and Gwenhael are right in front of me, before a clearing. There are no dogs here. Just a hart, carefully stepping forward from a patch of trees to our right.

The woods have exploded in a symphony of golds and browns. It’s autumn, I realise. Almost a year later.

Mathilde’s hair has been arranged in a simple braid, trailing down her back. Gwenhael flicks it aside with his fingers, while I hide behind a tree trunk, so that they won’t notice me. This memory belongs to the two of them, alone.

‘Oi, you’re going to frighten it, even before I take my shot.’ Mathilde half-turns and I can see she’s holding a javelin now, as if this is what she’s always done.

Gwenhael smiles from the corner of his mouth. His features are lit up so bright, like I’ve never seen him at the Tower. ‘You would make the most terrible poacher in the history of the Red Kingdom, anyway.’

She scoffs. ‘I bet you were such a fine one.’

‘Poaching?’ he says. ‘Who said anything about poaching?’

‘Oh, yes, I wager Charles Meran allowed you to hunt on his grounds just out of the goodness of his heart.’ She snorts. There’s elegance in the way she holds her shoulders, there’s power, as if she, herself, is a strung bow. ‘Remind me where you learned to hunt.’

Gwenhael averts his eyes. ‘Watch the hart.’ A smile is in his voice.

But Mathilde’s gaze slides to him. ‘That girl you like. The one you won’t tell me anything about, except that she’s in love with another man. Did she come with you when you were poaching?’

‘She doesn’t poach,’ he says, his tone becoming flat. ‘She doesn’t need to.’

Mathilde touches him with the butt of the javelin, in a movement similar to the one that Gwenhael made with the bow, in the scene I saw just moments ago. Almost a year before this. ‘Does she live in your village, then?’

‘No.’

‘Does she live in Langville, where you completed your training?’

‘No.’

‘Where does she live?’

‘I’m not going to tell you.’ Gwenhael sounds exasperated. Which is quite a feat.

‘You’re annoying. You never tell me anything about her.’ This sounds so much like the Mathilde I used to know at Court that it makes my heart ache. That self-assured Mathilde. Her easy banter.

‘Well, I’m sorry I even mentioned it.’ He draws back a step. As if he’s trying to run away. ‘I only told you because you said you were sure I was never in love with anyone, except my dogs. I should’ve lied. You’ve been hounding me for weeks.’

The hart steps into the clearing, half-forgotten by the two. Mathilde watches Gwenhael for a moment, her gaze roving from his face to his hands. Skidding gently, almost like a caress. Gwenhael notices, and swallows hard.

He’s so alive, when there’s just the two of them, alone.

‘The hart,’ he says.

Mathilde’s attention snaps to the clearing. She takes in a sharp breath, lifting her arm, preparing to strike.

‘Higher,’ he says. ‘You’ll miss the mark.’

‘No, I won’t,’ she insists, just as the javelin hisses through the air. And lands inches from the hart’s hooves. It breaks into a graceful leap.

By the time Mathilde curses under her breath, it is gone.

She crosses her arms. ‘Now look at what you made me do.’

Gwenhael turns around. ‘I only told you your aim wasn’t right.’

‘No, you distracted me with talk of this girl.’ Mathilde looks genuinely frustrated.

‘What is it to you?’ he says, and there’s something uncertain in his tone.

‘Fine, then. Is there someone else? A girl in a village close to the Tower, someone you might visit from time to time? Like the rest of the guards do?’

Gwenhael shifts uncomfortably on his feet. ‘There are no girls at the Tower.’

‘I’m here,’ she says, her tone rising. ‘I’m right here.’

‘Believe me, I… I’m painfully aware of that.’ There’s something in the way he says it. As if something has broken. There’s something in the blood that rises to his cheeks.

Mathilde senses it, her mouth gaping open.

They are standing so close, by now. Time seems to stand still, and even I can feel it. That something is about to shift.

Such a simple gesture. So small, and yet, so large.

Mathilde rises a hand to Gwenhael’s cheek.

Slowly.

His breath hitches and he watches her with wide eyes, before he closes them, shaking his head slightly, settling into her touch.

‘I’m right here,’ she says, softly.

‘You’re also in love with another man.’

She chuckles, closing the distance between them, her head leaning into his chest.

Gwenhael shudders, before wrapping his arms around her back. As if he doesn’t even dare to believe this.

‘Gwenhael,’ she says, ‘I have no idea who might have told you that.’

* * *

Robert has smoothed things over with the Guilds, apparently. Not that he has told me so. And again I don’t know what I am to this motley group of advancing troops: if I am still a prisoner, or leverage, or a sort of glue, keeping things together.

I expect Robert would know.

It has been a day since we joined the others, and I’ve spent it thinking about how I could help Mathilde. Considering what I’ve seen. I know what this means, if she still keeps that memory of her and Gwenhael at the heart of it all.

The Great Hall of her mind.

What I don’t know yet is what I could offer her, what I can do.

Not much, I conclude. Not until we know how this ends.

We are half a day’s march away from Lafala, when we all stop. Robert trots up to me. I’m riding with Mathilde, next to the Fallen Court’s carriage.

‘You need to come with me,’ says Robert, without so much as a word of greeting. But he nods in Mathilde’s direction, at least. ‘They can’t agree.’

‘What? Who?’

He leads his gelding towards a bald spot that has been cleared in the midst of the marching column. A few guards are erecting wooden pillars and stretching a wide, white canvas above it. Another soldier is bringing chairs, whipped from only Sabya knows where.

From the other side of the no-longer-marching column, I see Madame Faucon and two Fire-Blazers approach. Two leaders of the Guilds, among whom I recognise Berengar – the brother of the former Guildmaster whose face I’ll never forget from the Fischermarket – in a richly embroidered dark velvet doublet.

Albert and Gelda also approach the circle. Today, she looks no more than a girl my age. Like someone who couldn’t have possibly impelled a group of people to attack the mages, to cause that massacre at the Golden Pavilion.

I shudder, looking for signs of Gerard Bencifert or Prince Louis, but there are none.

Someone else is here, though. Henri leans against one of the wooden pillars, his dark blue cloak of the Pretorians fluttering in the wind. There’s a hole in it where my brother’s insignia has been cut from it.

Henri dips his head and smiles from the corner of his mouth at Robert and me.

Who are they guarding now?

‘Everyone came,’ I mutter.

Robert groans. ‘Get ready for a bleeding headache.’

‘What am I doing here?’ I whisper, turning to him.

‘You are dealing with it,’ he says, biting his lip to stop from grinning.

Behind us, the people who gathered are beginning to take their seats.

‘What?’

‘There are difficulties. Things to smooth over. I suggest you get on with it. They’re staring at us.’ He points at the people in the chairs. There are two free – one for me, and one for him, I suppose.

‘Why don’t you deal with them?’

Robert’s eyebrows jut up. ‘Did I tell myself I had to go to the Golden Pavilion? No. Did I grab the mages by the collar and insist they should march with us? No. Did I do the same to Bencifert? No, no, no. We stopped and that’s your problem, so I suggest you deal with it. Princess.’

I have no idea what he thinks I should do. What keeps these people together, after all?

‘You had… plans,’ I hiss. ‘You must have had plans when you came from the Green Kingdom. When you accepted the contract from the Guilds.’

He must have thought of something, and not have blindly followed the Guilds to this position of endless teetering. I know him. He must have seen a way out of this situation. It’s just that he didn’t impart any of those plans to me.

‘Yes,’ he concedes. ‘I had plans.’

‘Which were?’ I cross my arms.

He gives me a wide grin. ‘Get to Mora’s Tower, get the princess.’

‘You mean, rescue the princess.’

He clacks his tongue. ‘Need I remind you, we are still in a very dangerous situation. You have not yet been rescued. You have been handed or have gathered the tools you need. I suggest you start using them.’ With this, he gives me a hard shove towards the makeshift tent, a shove which I’m sure no one missed.

To oppose him now would be to risk ridicule, so I stiffly walk towards one of the empty seats. It’s the prettiest one, carved and golden-gilded, and I wonder how no one has taken it so far.

They are all already arguing about what to do next.

So I do what I have learned to do best.

I listen.

The Guilds want to veer south and march on the road that follows the shoreline. Half the Guilds’ forces, and all their ships, are in Port Lang, and they want to join up with those forces.

I think, Of course. They must have sailed from Lafala days ago, when the Guilds rose their yellow banners in Langville.

Robert insists we should press our advantage and march on, well into the night.

And the Golden Pavilion argues through Madame Faucon that it is time to open peace talks with the King.

With the bloody King. To see if we haven’t reached the point of no return quite yet.

‘I don’t remember this being a part of our agreement.’ I cut into Madame Faucon’s words. ‘We rescued you.’

‘I don’t remember you rescuing us,’ she says, narrowing her eyes. Unruffled by me. ‘I think something else was about to happen. You stopped us.’

‘Yes, from making a big mistake.’

Robert thumps into an empty chair to my right. And Henri draws himself a chair to my left.

Splendid.

‘Remember you owe me respect,’ hisses Madame Faucon.

‘Remember to respect your own promises, then,’ I shoot back.

‘I owe you nothing,’ she says, and I’m taken aback at how quickly she can forget her debt.

I will remind her, if needs be.

Albert interjects. ‘We have come with you at the promise of the Commander and your Captain,’ he says, bowing his head towards Robert, ‘to put an end to this reign.’

Would that I knew how that could be achieved. But the people were promised change. Change so fundamental, and so high up, that it could not be ignored.

And yet I have to play games today, when so much hangs in the balance.

‘The land bleeds,’ Albert goes on. ‘We don’t need to bleed more. The folk say we lay siege to Lafala, like we did at the Opal Mountain.’

‘Siege?’ Madame Faucon scoffs. ‘You came in running, and slaughtered dozens of us. Mages barely out of childhood.’ The hate she sears him with is scorching.

Gelda gives her a tight smile. ‘That was not our intention. Some were too hot-headed and refused to listen to good counsel. Our intentions were entirely different.’

Her tone is molten honey. She’s so young, she might have truly believed in what she told the people. She might have been tired of seeing so much suffering, she might have grasped at straws, like all of them. And I think, I have a responsibility to the people of this kingdom, as well. I can’t look away now.

Berengar of the Guilds snorts, his eyes on me. ‘You can’t lay siege to Lafala if you don’t control the sea. And you can’t control the sea without our ships.’

Albert replies, ‘Then give us your ships. I thought we were in this together. That’s what they said.’ The farmer nods towards me and Robert.

‘He is nothing but a Bladehand, and he should have asked before making promises,’ says Berengar. ‘He protects the interests of the Guilds. He is paid to do so. Not run about with the princess and do as he pleases.’

Berengar’s dark brown eyes are set on me. There’s a tinge of fear in them, I notice.

‘The King may yet relent,’ says Madame Faucon. ‘It does not have to come to this. If you do not relent, the Golden Pavilion will have to leave the ranks of –’ she swirls her finger around ‘– whatever this is.’

‘I thought we were going to Lafala to assist the other King. King Charles. The new King,’ says the farmer.

Charles. I don’t even know what he might make of our ‘help.’ I suppose he would have given up speaking to me entirely in the past few months if it weren’t for Amelie. Yes, Charles had taken from me what he needed, and when his name began to be celebrated among the people for his deeds of charity, he seemed inclined to forget me.

I grip the carved armrest of my chair, hard. I don’t know how Henri spirited this sculpted, golden-gilded beauty here, but he must have known. He must have known that I would need it. That appearances matter. That I’d rather sit on a throne while I try to navigate this.

I say, summoning all the courage I may have had, have, or will ever have, ‘We are not going to assist. We are going to negotiate our position. With our own interests in mind.’

‘And who are you to tell us what to do?’ says Berengar.

‘I am your princess. I am the sister of the King. And I am your liege.’

‘You are no such thing,’ says Madame Faucon.

‘The Guilds look after their own interests,’ says Berengar.

‘A woman can’t be King, can she?’ says Albert. ‘You’re a woman. You can’t claim the throne.’

No, I can’t rule. The laws of this land see to it. A woman may not inherit either the throne or fiefs. And it is not a good time to start changing the foundations of this kingdom from within. The people, the seigneurs, might accept a new king, but not a queen. Not now.

I’ll have to pick.

Choose the battles I can wage, choose the battles I can win.

I take them in, thinking how best to strike. Where to begin.

I am the master of myself.

I’ve seen. I’ve listened. And I can speak not only for myself, but also, if they allow me, for them. For all of them. ‘No, but I am here to make sure that you won’t rip one another to pieces before we even set a foot on that battlefield. We lay camp near Lafala together. We protect our interests together. And we do not enter alliances without consulting one another. Because if we shred one another, Anselme and Etienne will rip us to pieces.’

I take in their faces. Even Madame Faucon seems to listen attentively. Gelda leans forward in her seat. ‘Don’t look at me like that. Your King Charles isn’t a saint, either. I should know.’

I turn back to Berengar. ‘The Guilds shall name their price and the princess shall do her best to match it.’ I size up Madame Faucon. ‘And you, you would do best to ally yourself with me and my Fallen Court. Etienne will not talk to you. Not to you alone. The time for that is gone. You need allies, Madame Faucon.’

‘And why would we listen to you?’ says the farmer. He’s curious, I can tell. There’s no anger in him.

Next to me, Robert shifts.

‘You will listen to me because I have been—’ Into your minds. ‘I’ve seen. I’ve seen your fears and your dreams. Because I’m the only one who understands. And who can help you work together. I’m the only one who can unite you.’

They’re all so still for a moment.

‘We can’t trust you,’ says Berengar. ‘I know what you did.’

‘What I did at my brother’s bidding?’ I narrow my eyes. ‘I used to work for my brother, then. Unwittingly. As did you,’ I say, glancing at Madame Faucon. ‘Now I work for the people.’

Berengar seems to consider this.

I say, in a lower voice, ‘I’m sorry for what happened to your brother.’ I nod towards Henri, who has served as a go-between with the Guilds for weeks. ‘He can confirm. I didn’t know what would happen when I gave them his name. I didn’t know what Etienne was capable of.’ Impaling the Guildmasters and letting them rot in the Fischermarket.

‘But we’d reached an agreement,’ says Berengar, pointing at Henri. ‘With him. Why did you not do as we agreed?’

I look at Henri, and there’s a tinge of disappointment in the way his nose curls. Discomfort.

‘I’m sorry for acting the way I did, but there was no time.’ I prefer not to speak aloud about what they intended to do, which was Henri claiming Valmons. ‘We still don’t have time. If Anselme catches up with us from behind, if Charles and Etienne give battle before we reach an agreement with any of them…’ I curl my fist. ‘We might as well turn around right away. And find a very, very good hiding place if my brother wins.’

Silence settles over the party. From the corner of my eyes, I look at Robert, the stone-like mask he has set on his face. Since we arrived, he hasn’t said a single word. But I feel he’s here. His presence, shielding me.

Henri leans forward. ‘Be clever, Berengar,’ he says softly. ‘We spoke about this. What chances do the Guilds have, alone?’

I turn around, amazed that he knew precisely when to speak. But I shouldn’t be amazed, when it comes to Henri.

‘What are you to her, then?’ says Berengar.

Robert crosses his feet at the ankles.

But Henri gives just a wicked half-smile. ‘Why, I’m the head of her Pretorians. We march where the princess marches. And we protect her with our life.’

Nice, I think. It would have been nicer if I would have known this beforehand.

Probably.

‘Let’s say, then, that we’re acting out of desperation.’ A grim smile sets in Berengar’s wrinkled face. ‘The Guilds want their city rights back for Port Lang, Langville and Valserra. Or the Guilds will walk their own path.’

Give. Take. Concede. ‘You will have some city rights,’ I say. ‘The rights to levy taxes and make your own laws, within reason. Guild Courts for the craftsmen, to settle their quarrels. They’ll fall under your own jurisdiction. And a seat in the Curia for three Guild representatives, one for each city.’

Berengar prepares to open his mouth, but I cut in. ‘Madame Faucon, you’ll have a seat in the Curia, too.’

She seems to waver at this.

I lean forward in my chair. ‘And I’ll tell you what there is at the heart of the mountain.’

Her eyes widen so much that they’re almost only whites.

‘I saw what hides there. I’ve seen more than any of you can imagine. And I understand more than any of you can think.’ I snap towards Gelda. ‘Do you think I’m oblivious to the suffering of our people? To their hunger, their needs? I tell you that I’m the first among the rulers who isn’t. Who do you think has been pushing and pushing your beloved Charles Meran to take care of his people? Who do you think has told him who needed his assistance most?

‘The orphan house in Langville, with their lack of beds and boiled rats for dinner. The patch of scorched land in the county of Penery, after the draught last year. The families driven out of their homes by Prince Anselme and Seigneur Valmons last winter.’

The farmer winces at this. Gelda cocks her head, studying me.

‘I’ve seen more than any of you can imagine, confined as you are to your own walls. Most importantly, I’ve listened. And I’d like to grant this gift to everyone.’ Even as I will myself not to, I turn briefly to Robert. He wears a small smile again, as if encouraging me to go on.

As if saying, Finally.

‘If there is one who can lead you to that battlefield, it’s me. Come into my Fallen Court. And together, we can finally have that which we have all dreamt of.’

Still. So still.

Considering.

Then, there’s movement to my left. Henri gets to his feet, and kneels in front of me, his sword on his knees. ‘The Pretorians of Mora’s Tower and the Pretorians of Langville bow to Princess Blanche. We are yours to do with us as you please.’

He looks up at me, his eyes glinting ferociously. I know what he has just done. I know what this did for me. Often, it only takes one for the rest to follow suit.

Then, Robert shifts. Kneels in front of me. ‘The Company of the Tower pledge their swords to Princess Blanche.’

Company of the Tower? I suck in a breath. I did not even know that he could do this. That he would.

Berengar curses, but gets up, pulling the other Guildmaster with him. They bow their heads. ‘The Guilds pledge their faith to Princess Blanche.’

The farmer looks to Gelda, who nods. They turn to me. The farmer gets down on his knees, while Gelda makes a low bow. ‘We have no swords to pledge, but the strength of our arms is yours to command, Princess Blanche.’

I fix my stare upon Madame Faucon. She nods. Slowly. ‘I will not bow to you, Blanche, but the forces of the Golden Pavilion are yours to command. On a few terms, of course.’

I expected nothing less.

I get up on my feet, a power, wild and unknown, coursing through me. I have done this. Me.

I’m not alone.

Not anymore.

Don’t look at him, don’t look at him.

I realise a few things at the same time. That I was allowed to speak to them the way I did because of something as random as being born into the right family. After all, I am the princess. As unfair as that might be to everyone else.

And that he made sure I would be here, on this day. Face to face with the Guilds, and everyone else.

‘Well, then.’ My mind is devoid of anything inspirational to say. But perhaps I don’t need to say more. A smile grips my face, my cheeks aching, once I look at all of them, and how I’ve brought them together. These people, who are trying to escape various prisons of my brother’s making. Even I was confined to the limits of a tower made of white stone, until just a few days ago.

But now it’s all changed, with the right tools, and with just a single sweep of fate. I say, ‘Welcome to the Fallen Court. Let’s get to work. We have quite a few walls to tear down.’

MARCHIONESSA OF A GROWING MARCH

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

Today isn’t a day to hide beneath plain dresses. Nor behind the door of a moving carriage. Before we start marching again, our goals set clearly, I slip into a red dress and cape, spirited from somewhere by Gisele.

As if she knew.

And as I emerge from the small tent where I changed, into the blinding light of the afternoon, banners are being raised. In all corners of the ragtag army that I have gathered around myself.

Teal banners, with a spindly silhouette of a woman dressed in red inked upon them.

My heart flutters and I have no idea when they had time to do this. And I don’t know anymore what I am.

Who I am.

What I know is that this is not a day to hide, so I ask for my mare, and fall in step beside Henri. He seems surprised.

‘Beautiful, aren’t they?’ I say. ‘The banners.’

A smile plays on his lips, but not in his eyes. ‘This is why you wouldn’t marry me. You didn’t need me, or my protection. You had other plans.’

I grip the reins of my horse. ‘Any woman in this world would be lucky to marry you.’

‘But not you. Not the one I want.’

I shake my head. ‘It didn’t … feel right. Not when everything in the world was happening. So fast.’

‘Not when he came back, you mean?’ There’s challenge in his tone. A careful question. A certain sort of cunning.

‘This is not about Robert.’

‘But before, you would’ve been more than happy with me, wouldn’t you? We were so good together. Now, I feel like you’re … drifting away.’

I shudder. Yes, we were always good together. Even when I wasn’t sure where his loyalties lay. ‘Things are still changing. Shifting,’ I say. ‘Two days ago, I was as good as the prisoner of The Company of the Tower. Now I’m their liege. You can’t expect⁠—’

‘Oh, I know. I know better than to expect anything.’

Hooves clop on the rocky path. The cadence of so many steps. And I can’t think of anything to say. Because the truth is that, even if I might try to convince Henri of the opposite, my gaze always seeks out Robert’s silhouette in the pack of mounted cavalry ahead of us. My eyes always settle on the shape of his shoulders, swaying as he rides.

‘You could go to Etienne,’ I say. ‘You could tell him what you know. All that you’ve learned during these years. About me, the Fallen Court, Charles’s moves. You know everything.’

Henri scrunches up that lovely button nose. ‘I don’t know everything. And what are you doing? Are you making sure that I’m not that jilted man who runs to the opposite side?’

‘You can’t say that you’d never,’ I challenge him. ‘I know you. No matter where you stand, you always know where your best interests are.’

‘How do you know that, Blanche? Have you looked into my head, too?’ He raises his voice. The soldiers that are marching a few feet from us start watching.

‘I’ve never looked in your head,’ I snap. ‘Before, I couldn’t, and—’ I stop myself. I hadn’t mentioned to him that I can mindwalk again. He doesn’t know. And yet, what I tell him is true. ‘That’s a border that I wouldn’t cross. And I don’t need to. Because we always, always understood each other.’

‘He thinks he understands you, too,’ he says softly. ‘But there are things he would baulk at. Like the fact that no one can ever have you, not fully, Blanche. For too long have you been a kingdom within a kingdom. And he is used to having it all. Anything he wants, always within his reach. Sooner or later. It will destroy him.’

I blink. It’s as much as I’ll ever admit that he’s right.

And he knows that his arrow has found its mark. ‘You don’t need to say anything,’ he says. ‘It’s good enough for me to know.’

* * *

Speaking of a kingdom within a kingdom, it’s high time that I should bring my Fallen Court up to speed. I pass on my mare to one of the Pretorians – my guards, now – and slip into the carriage the Court is travelling in.

Amelie is taking in the raised banners. Mathilde is stitching a red cut-out of the silhouette of a woman on a cape.

Gisele’s attention is focused on me. ‘Do you have something you need to tell us?’

‘The Fallen Court has grown by a few members,’ I say.

Mathilde snorts. ‘A few?’

I have things I need to ask Mathilde. She seems in an obviously good mood today. But so much has happened, so fast, and I’m not sure how pleased she’d be if I pried into her business again.

I’m not sure what I would tell her. I’m not sure what alternatives I can offer to what Amelie thinks she should do.

So I push that thought into a corner of my mind, save it for later.

So many have so much to lose now. By following me. ‘This entire army,’ I say, not sure how to break to them what has just happened. It seems unreal. ‘They all answer to me.’

Amelie knits her brows. ‘What about Charles?’

‘We will talk to Charles,’ I say. ‘Once we reach Lafala.’

‘Goodness, Blanche. You mean to talk to Etienne, too, don’t you?’ Amelie’s tone is sharp like a blade.

Oh, Charles. Amelie and Charles. I’m not sure he would have spoken to me at all in the past few weeks if I hadn’t taken Amelie with me.

It had been an accident, at first. She caught me in my room, ghostwalking, and she touched me to shake me awake. She said I looked funny, with my unblinking open eyes, but what happened was that she was plunged into Charles’s council room.

Our faces fell and what ensued was a small diplomatic catastrophe, which wouldn’t have been smoothed out if Amelie hadn’t offered to give up as much information as she could about Valmons.

Or if Charles hadn’t taken a shine to her, to be truthful. They always started by discussing Valmons’ maps and numbers, but the conversation seemed to slip towards rose gardens and such, more often than not.

Once, a week ago or so, Amelie asked me what would happen if she let go of my hand while ghostwalking. To wander off.

I knew with whom.

I replied to her that I was almost certain that very bad things would happen and that I was neither curious nor compelled to find out. She pouted, but she let the matter drop.

Though I know she wished it otherwise. Not a word had ever passed between them, without me having been at their side. Even when I had something significant to add – like the suggestion to contact Gerard Bencifert – they make me feel like an interruption, not like the reason why they even met in the first place, and why she had to come visit him.

But I did find out some interesting things, at least, while being with the two of them. Like the fact that Gisele had refused my brother – my brother! And that there had been talk about a union with a prince from the Blue Kingdom, dropped in the aftermath of the Tournament. Amelie hadn’t been particularly clear why.

‘You intend to speak to Etienne?’ Gisele furrows her eyebrows and I’m not sure what to make of it. If she is indeed not to be trusted, it surely can’t be bad if talk of my willingness to negotiate reaches Anselme.

‘I owe it to the others,’ I say.

‘What about us?’ says Mathilde. ‘What about what you owe to us? We were here, helping you, long before any of them.’

‘We are caught, too, Blanche,’ says Gisele. ‘Some of us are playing a very, very dangerous game.’

Some more than others, I think.

‘I didn’t come here to face you with a done deed,’ I say. Straightening. Speaking as Blanche, the Red Maiden. The Marchionessa. Not as their friend. ‘But you are right, Mathilde. I owe a great deal of things to all of you. So I will give you a choice. Before dawn breaks on the battlefield tomorrow, I will give you a choice. To pick which side to fight on.’

‘You do not mean to side with Etienne?’ says Mathilde.

I fix my eyes on Amelie’s. ‘Charles is not a saint, not by far, regardless of what some of us might think. Charles has made some calculations of his own. And Charles would not open his arms for us just because we are a group of defenceless girls who need his protection. He will have to be handled carefully. And so that no one’s interests are hurt. This is what I promised. And this is what I can promise to you.’

Amelie’s breaths quicken. ‘You lied to us. You made a decision, without asking us. You threw us aside⁠—’

‘I did what had to be done. So that, at the end of the day, we can all march out on that battlefield⁠—’

‘The day hasn’t ended,’ says Gisele. She picks at a loose thread on her dress. ‘And what you ask of us, it’s not much short of all we have.’

I know what I ask of her. She has chosen to travel with us, with me. Against her own father. And what do I have to offer her? What will I have to offer her, at the end of the day?

‘I cannot make empty promises, Gisele,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what there will be for you. But I can tell you this much. At the Fallen Court, you will always be free to make your own choices.’ I glance towards Mathilde and Amelie. ‘The Fallen Court will always be a thing of shadows. It will always seek allies and make compromises. But the Fallen Court… It will always look after the interests of one another.’

‘The Fallen Court… It’s not real,’ says Mathilde. ‘It’s an illusion.’

‘No more than the walls of the prisons we build for ourselves,’ I say. ‘The Fallen Court is as real as we want it to be. As strong as the understanding between us. I ask no more and no less, ladies, than your trust. I only ever wanted your trust.’

They exchange glances. But I have said enough for now. I tap, signalling the coachman to stop. There are some decisions they’ll have to make for themselves.

‘Remember what we stand for. Remember what the Fallen Court is.’

INVITATIONS

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

Back up on my mare, I spur it towards Robert. In the distance, I can make out the shape of Lafala, half-hidden in a mist swirling from the sea. The walls surrounding it are low, but thick. Etienne must have set his camp right behind the gates, leaving the beaches to the right unprotected. There would be enough room for the Guilds’ ships to alight when they arrive, and this thought somehow worries me.

That my brother should have been so careless.

Charles’s own camp, a patch of red banners to the left of the city, seem so ripe for the taking, should Anselme’s forces arrive from behind us, should they make it in good time.

Robert must be plagued by the same thoughts, because he says, ‘We need to give battle tomorrow. Tomorrow, or all is lost.’

‘All or nothing,’ I say.

Standing so close to him, I’m not sure if we haven’t drifted farther apart than ever. What I negotiate with Etienne or Charles, it will decide our future, too. His future.

And he would not speak to me about it. What he truly has in mind after tomorrow.

I can marry Henri, I remind myself, with a pang.

Robert has promised nothing.

And if we lose… My brother’s revenge will not be swift, but painful.

I toy with a thought. What would my brother prize more? Exacting his revenge on me, or on the Bladehand that betrayed him? There is no mistaking whose troops are crawling now towards the capital. Not while the banners brandish the symbol of the Red Maiden.

All or nothing, yes. For both of us.

‘You will be in no position to negotiate anything with Etienne, if Anselme arrives,’ Robert says.

‘Thank you for your honesty in showing me the lie of the land, but I already knew this.’

Robert points to a hill rising before us. ‘I’d make camp there.’

A hill overlooking what had once been the grounds of the Tournament, and the fair next to it. A hill in the shadow of Sabya’s Tower.

I nod.

He grunts. ‘You could play this directly into Etienne’s hand. He could … delay matters until it’s too late.’

‘Then we make sure it is not.’

‘Someone is stingy today.’

I exhale. ‘I have made a lot of promises. To a lot of people. And I’m not sure how I can keep them all.’

But I know what will happen if I don’t. The Fischermarket will be crowded with the bodies of the people Etienne wants to exact revenge from.

There must be hope, I think. There must be hope. Yet even once this is over, I’m not sure what place there will be for me in this new kingdom. Even if we strike an agreement with Charles, even if we win.

What place is there for the treasonous aunt of the King?

I remember a song, written such a long time ago. A song with hope at the end.

The hope… It has been the tether that kept me moving forward, all this time.

‘Do you remember the song? The one where the ending wasn’t written on the sheet?’

There must be a world where everything is possible.

Perhaps we have yet to carve it for ourselves.

Robert swallows, hard. He spurs his warhorse sideways, away from me. ‘The warsong?’

‘That wasn’t a warsong. That was a lament. Warsongs are different.’

‘I’m sorry to tell you, Blanche. But that wasn’t a lament. That’s called Warsong for the Goddess.’

‘How do you know all that?’

‘In the Green Kingdom, I … I spoke to people who know of these things. To priestesses, if that’s what you want to call them.’

Robert. My Robert. Always probing. Always asking questions.

For me.

‘There is a reason why there wasn’t an ending to that song.’ He feels for the pommel of his dagger. ‘Because in the singer… It’s always the singer who decides the ending. And what the song will do. And on that day, Blanche, at the Tower … you called to me. That woman, and her lover. That was us. You and me, since the beginning of time.’

‘That couldn’t have been you and me.’

‘Someone wise told me once that the wheel of the world spins and spins.’ His eyes are shaded from me. ‘You are not the world’s first Light-Cantor, and I am not the world’s first general.’

Light-Cantor. Sabya has called me as much. She has called me many names. Red Maiden. Mindwalker. Ghostwalker.

Suddenly, a lifetime doesn’t seem so short to be so many things.

We are many things at once. And they may threaten to shatter us.

But most of all, we are all connected.

And in the heart of the mountain, there is another one like me. And I have a tether to her.

‘Where have you gone, Blanche?’

Where have I gone. I’m everywhere at once. Here and not here.

Henri’s warning resounds in my ears. It will destroy him.

I shudder. Shudder at what there is still to be done. At the choices that I might still have to make. ‘I think we should make camp,’ I say.

‘And then?’ he says.

‘And then, we wait.’

* * *

While they arrange my central tent for the meeting, with the pomp that is due to me, I cast my ghostly self forwards, towards the camps with the red banners. I’m wearing a plain dress again, and nobody tries to stop me until I reach Charles’s quarters.

‘Halt!’ says one of the guards, looking at me with strange eyes, as if he can’t understand what I could possibly want there.

I don’t even bother to invent a smooth lie. When I’m my ghostly self, nothing can touch me. I drift directly through his raised spear, letting him scramble after me. Charles is holding council with his captains. The guards burst into the tent, howling at me to stop.

A Crossbowmen’s captain rolls the maps shut.

And Charles stares directly at me. No kindness. ‘You have not come to join our forces, I see. How about your promises for aid, when the time comes?’

‘I have come to talk.’

The wind picks up, as if sensing Charles’s fury. ‘Then talk. By all means.’

‘You are awaited in my tent tonight,’ I say. ‘To discuss the terms.’

‘You don’t expect me to march into your camp.’

‘Alone, preferably,’ I say.

‘It’s unacceptable.’

‘I only ask for an act of trust,’ I say.

‘It’s a trap,’ says the Crossbowmen captain. ‘She’ll have us by the balls. Why should we trust her?’

I ignore him. ‘Tonight, Charles. Before it’s much too late.’

He opens his mouth to say something, but I vanish before he can argue with me further.

Madame Faucon, the Mages and the Guildmasters are in front of me, waiting. Henri, somewhat to the side, is pouring himself a goblet of something, trying to appear like he isn’t listening.

‘So?’ says Madame Faucon.

‘Will he come?’ says Berengar.

I shrug. ‘I don’t know. I hope he will.’

One of the Fire-Blazers from the Golden Pavilion grunts.

Behind me, Robert shifts. ‘Let’s see what your brother has to say.’ I don’t have to look at him to know how much his words are tinged with worry.

I shift, uneasy that my Gift of Ghostwalking is now known to so many. Yet I need their trust, so I have to offer mine, in exchange.

I rove my eyes, searching for my friends. For the women who have been my steady companions for years. But Amelie said she doesn’t want to watch me while I try to speak to both Etienne and Charles. And Gisele…

Well, matters are still complicated, to say the least, when it comes to her. And Mathilde asked if she could borrow my tent for a few hours to have a conversation with someone.

I wonder who that is. Gwenhael or Arnauld.

No time, no time for these questions.

I dip into my brother’s camp.

The very air here… It doesn’t feel right. My ghostly self doesn’t need to breathe, and yet I can hardly tread forward. The mists… The mists, they’re not drifting from the sea. They’re an illusion, but laced with something else.

I pick my way. Through guards, trying to grab for me. And it’s not their touch that slows me, but the fact that I can hardly see a foot in front of me. My brother is doing an excellent job at keeping this place hidden. With whatever magic he might have summoned.

The clash and shouts draw him out, though. Even before I manage to reach his tent.

Not even on a good day am I good at finding my way, anywhere. But with this mist, with all these soldiers calling, trying to make for me…

Fear settles in my chest. Even more so when Etienne plants himself in front of me. ‘Little sister,’ he says. ‘I thought you might come.’

I can’t think of a single clever thing to say. He must know that even with an army at my behest, I’m still afraid of him.

‘The Red Maiden.’ He grins, and the teeth he reveals are a predator’s fangs. ‘And a little band of ragtag warriors at your back. I’m not surprised about Robert, though. I suspected it the moment he ignored the Guilds’ orders and rushed to Mora’s Tower.’

Everything we had done to cover our tracks before the Tournament, we’d done it well. Now, perhaps, not so much.

‘In the mood for a taste of royal flesh, is he?’ My brother laughs, a deep, mocking laugh.

He will rip us to shreds. He will skin us alive, and hang our bodies on spikes in Lafala, for everyone to see.

But only if I allow him to.

I have seen you for what you were. But I doubt that my brother ever did. This was why my betrayal must have come as such a surprise.

‘I’ve come to talk with you.’ I’m preparing to tell him the same thing I told Charles.

‘Oh, we’ll talk,’ he cuts in. ‘Tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning I will come to your camp.’

I don’t know what he means. If he wants to say that he will discuss anything with me, or if he has something else entirely in mind. Like storming our camp. And showing me what his version of our conversation would be.

And then, he waves his hand. The illusion grows more solid around me, mist made stone. White stone, the walls enclosing around me. Threatening to stifle me.

I jump back into my skin with a jolt.

Robert and Henri are stalking towards me. But it’s Henri who reaches me first, laying a hand on my shoulder, its grip light. ‘What’s wrong?’

I lock eyes with Robert, and then shift my gaze, quickly. No, not in front of everyone. It’s Henri who wants to marry me. It’s Henri who had been here, in the two years when Robert was gone.

‘Etienne says he will talk to us tomorrow morning.’

‘The utter piece of turd,’ says Robert, having stopped a few feet from me. ‘He’s trying to delay. Just like I said he would.’

Henri rubs my shoulder.

‘And you did all you could to persuade him to speak to us?’ says Madame Faucon.

‘He didn’t even let me say anything. He just issued a series of threats. You know how he likes to hear himself talk.’

Henri humphs, a quiet confirmation.

Robert says, ‘Oh, he does like to intimidate.’

The day hasn’t ended.

Even if Etienne thinks he knows something. Whatever he might choose to do with it. Whatever we may choose to do with it.

If there is any choice, at all.

I tell them about the mist, about the walls my brother raised around me, and it strikes me that he was prepared. That someone might have already told him about the ghostwalking. There are a few who had known, who could have told him. Not Mathilde, and not Amelie, for sure. But perhaps Gisele. Perhaps even Henri.

‘Whatever he has in store for us, it’s bad,’ I say.

‘How long until Anselme’s army arrives?’ says Berengar.

‘If our scouts are correct, two days,’ says Robert. ‘At most. But we won’t receive more detailed reports until tomorrow afternoon.’ He gives me a side glance, a quiet plea for help.

Madame Faucon purses her lips. ‘So there might still be time to speak to him.’

‘Perhaps there’s someone else they might speak to.’ I ask Henri to bring Gisele, under everyone’s surprised – and not necessarily approving – gaze.

* * *

Every move I make must be a calculated risk, but the risks have never been so high since I allowed Gisele to join the Fallen Court.

At first, after Mathilde and Amelie had permanently been sent to live with me at Mora’s Tower, she came to visit her friends. I remember one dinner we had together, all of the Fallen Court, and Henri. It had been at the beginning, when Amelie had freshly arrived, and tensions ran high. Somehow, they managed to chase one another from the table, leaving just Henri, me and Gisele.

Mathilde, Amelie and I had not been our usual selves in her presence. How the tables had turned, I thought to myself. When I had first moved at the Tower, it was they who were suspicious of me. Now she was the intruder.

Then even Henri rose to his feet, with a wary look at her. ‘I’m going to do something-something to do with safety,’ he said, a tentative smile on his face.

I realised, then, how much we had developed our small secret language. ‘Something-something to do with safety,’ I’d told him once, referring to my brother, and what he was meant to say to him.

I turned to Gisele and decided to confront her, for the very first time in my entire existence. And I didn’t even feel nervous about it. She had come into my home, into my territory. She was the one who now wanted access. ‘Why are you here? Did your father send you to spy on us?’

Gisele recoiled. ‘Of course not. What would there be to spy on?’

I resettled in my chair. They wouldn’t know, would they, about the ghostwalking? That I was very much doing something that they would want to know about.

‘I told you, I wanted to see Amelie,’ she said. ‘Do you think I’m pleased about what has happened to her? She’s my friend, Blanche. And I stood by and watched them do this to her. I didn’t say a thing then, but I want to help now.’

I knew a thing or two about sitting and doing what Etienne and Anselme wanted us to do, and not being able to pipe in a single sound of protest.

I’ve been there.

Perhaps we were not so different, after all.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But before you ask, there are no minstrels or other sources of entertainment. There isn’t enough funding from my brother.’ In spite of what I’d hoped for. ‘I think you’ll find the Little Court quite boring.’

‘The Little Court?’ she says.

‘It’s my pet name. For what we do here.’

‘You could sell the embroideries,’ she said, softly.

‘What?’

‘And the tapestries that the girls are weaving. They could go for nice prices,’ said Gisele. ‘They could boost the revenues of your court.’

I narrowed my eyes. And then let go of my anger. Indeed, some of the women did wonderful work on their embroideries in their many idle hours. Including Mathilde. Hers were the best, intricate designs of the Golden Mother and Sabya. ‘I didn’t think of that,’ I said.

Gisele scratched the table, driving deep furrows in the bloated surface of the wood. ‘You could afford anything you want then. And if you want me to, I could have a look at your expenses. See if indeed you don’t have enough coin for more entertainment. What I gathered from my father was that your budget is already high.’

‘You want to check my expenses? To have a look at my ledgers?’

If they’d wanted to see what I’m up to, and where the coin went, that would have been an excellent way to do it. Anselme would, of course, know this.

But then.

I had nothing to hide. Ghostwalking through the kingdom costed absolutely nothing. ‘Fine. I’ll hand you the ledgers.’

She smiled at this. ‘Thank you. I do want to help, you know.’

I closed my eyes, letting the sun heat my face. How different this was from the first weeks I spent here. How cloistered I had felt. Suffocated. Unaware that there was an entire world of possibilities out there. Of things that I could do. ‘If you say so.’

Gisele sighed. ‘That’s not what they call you, you know.’

‘What?’

‘The Little Court. They have an entirely different name for you.’

I opened my eyes. The way she said it, her tone – it made me curious.

She said, ‘At the Royal Palace, they call you the Fallen Court. When they talk about the expenses.’

A huge grin expanded on my face. ‘You know what? I think I might like that.’

I don’t feel like grinning when I see Gisele stepping into the tent now. Her face drawn, her soft reddish-brown hair pulled into a tight braid. Everyone else is weary, too.

Berengar says, ‘She shouldn’t even be here.’

‘Gisele,’ I say, inviting her to take a seat, ‘I have something to ask you. We need to—’ I look at the faces of those around me, and wonder if this is, indeed, the wise thing to do. If there is enough connecting Gisele to us. Tying her to our interests. ‘We need to speak to my brother. And he didn’t seem so inclined to.’

‘Perhaps they would talk to me, yes,’ says Gisele, perching on the edge of a chair.

‘And what would you say?’ says Berengar. ‘On whose side are you, in fact? I’m not sure you should be the one leading the negotiations.’

‘Don’t,’ I say. ‘This is what he wants. Etienne. For us to fight among ourselves. We have to wait for Charles now.’

What I don’t say is that he might be our only chance. That whatever we negotiate with him… It would have to be good enough.

‘You could…’ Even Madame Faucon seems to be unsure about what she’s about to say. ‘Perhaps you could walk into his dreams tonight.’

‘Not in a million years,’ says Robert, bristling. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

I want to lay my hand on top of his. Not as much to steady him as to steady myself. I look to him, and he shifts.

I think, Why me? Why do I deserve to wield so much power, just because I was born in the right family? By a whim of fate.

I shudder. But it’s the same with my brother, is it not? And he has wielded his power in all the wrong ways. Someone has to set it right. Someone has to stand up to him.

‘Etienne will… I have a feeling that he was waiting for me. That this trick with the mist, that it was directed at me. And I think he’ll be waiting for me tonight, too.’ And I’m not sure if I ever want to step into that dark, twisted mind of his. If I ever have the courage to face whatever traps he’s laid there for me.

And I’m sure he will have warned those close to him about me and my abilities, those whom he trusted enough to share his plans, his secrets, with.

I pull myself straight. Someone has to confront my brother. And that someone happens to be me. ‘But if things don’t go as expected with Charles tonight, I will do that. I will do that, for you all.’

THE CARVING

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

Tock, tock, tock. Rain drips on the canvas of my tent. I leave the others to wait for Charles in the main chamber and withdraw to a small niche, separated by a painted screen. With a bunch of maps, pilfered from the pile on the table.

A map and a quill and a pot of ink. I draw thick lines, circling, cutting and slashing on the piece of parchment. I stop to think. I was never good with maps, but this one takes little orienting. I know the main points. I know them so well. I have walked there, everywhere, with my ghostly self. I have walked and listened.

And this is a map that arises from need. A new world. Like the one in the song. A new world that we have to carve for ourselves. A new world that Madame Faucon and the farmers and the Guilds need.

A new world that could fit two people and their ambitions, if they are both willing.

There are steps in the main chamber of the tent. The rustle of people rising to their feet. ‘Welcome, Charles,’ says Madame Faucon.

And I know that it is time.

Time to wrap my map and hold it close. Time to fight the battle before the battle.

* * *

When I step into the chamber, they’re all examining each other like butchers sizing up where to cut the carcass. They’re all here. Madame Faucon, Berengar speaking for the Guilds, Robert, Henri and Gelda, of course.

Charles has come alone inside, four Captains of his famed Crossbowmen waiting in front of the tent.

Perhaps to show us that he is not afraid.

That we might have the numbers, but he still has the strongest claim.

Yet I feel that someone is missing. There are people who still need to be here. And I need someone to fetch them. My gaze roves between Robert’s closed, angular face and Henri’s mouth, curled in faint suspicion. I stop at the captain of my guards. ‘Henri. Please could you see that the Fallen Court is also in attendance.’

Madame Faucon draws a sharp breath.

‘Gisele is Anselme’s daughter,’ says Berengar.

I extend a hand to Charles, and he just holds it, unsure what to do. ‘Awful manners,’ I say. ‘Don’t you want to greet your aunt?’ I withdraw and take a seat before he can respond.

He is ever watchful, ever quiet, my nephew. Ever ready to seize the best moment to strike.

‘Are you here to offer your help?’ he finally says.

‘Yes. To whoever offers us the best terms.’

Charles takes us in again. ‘So is Etienne ready to negotiate?’

‘Sooner than you think.’ Let him not see how we are desperate for this. How we have no choice.

‘So what is it that you want, Blanche? Are you making a lunge for the throne yourself?’

I lean back in my chair, drawing a finger along the carvings. ‘The throne?’ I have wondered about this, myself. Since yesterday. Since these people chose me to speak for them.

I wondered if it wouldn’t be easier to take the throne myself, instead of having to trust Charles.

But a woman? On the throne?

Our kingdom is not ready for such a thing.

And there are many ways to make or break kings from the shadows.

There are other ways to hold the reins, without losing oneself in the thick woods of the day-to-day administration of an entire kingdom.

There is one way to keep the entire forest in perspective.

I tell my nephew the truth. ‘I don’t want the throne for myself. I don’t even know what I would do with it. No. Look to me as a … representative. To give a voice to those who haven’t had one.’

He taps his fingers on the table.

‘I have been your adviser for quite a while, if you care to remember. And I like to think that I haven’t advised you badly.’

Madame Faucon’s head snaps towards me. Maybe she doesn’t know how such a thing would be possible. Though she had seen me as my ghostly self.

‘I’ve had help,’ I say, tilting my chin towards Henri. In a lunge to tie him even tighter to us. To protect us when he realises what I’m about to do.

My Fallen Court files in. Mathilde in hunting gear, her tight curls tied fast with a strip of silk at the back of her head. Gisele in a practical dress, suitable for riding. And fleeing.

She has promised she will try to contact someone from my brother’s camp tonight. See if anything can be done. See if there’s anything she can find out.

And Amelie, like the queens of old that she stems from, arrives in a swirl of blue-grey silks, swishing like the sea in her wake.

Charles’s eyes widen and as he takes in her measured steps their gazes meet. Amelie seems close to whispering something, then stops herself.

Too many people are watching.

I know what is hidden in her eyes – the yearning, and the need to do, say, touch, feel. But the restraints of a full room hold her back.

The Fallen Court comes to stand behind me.

‘What I want,’ I say, ‘is to come to your aid. It’s no secret that it’s been a long time since I have agreed with my brother’s ruling politics. And I’m not sure how much I can influence him. He isn’t a man who listens to good advice.’

Charles’s gaze drifts to Gisele.

‘But I need to know that you are that man, Charles. Before our ranks join yours, I need to know you are ready to make some concessions.’

I pause, waiting to see what he has to add.

‘I’m listening,’ he says.

‘I’m the voice of these people. And as an acknowledgment of that, I want a place in the Curia. Along with representatives of the Guilds and of the Golden Pavilion. Too long have the seigneurs of this land been a law onto themselves.’

Charles rubs his chin, considering. ‘The Guilds, yes, I see why that would be a necessary addition.’

Berengar nods, pleased. Of course.

The seigneurs had been pushing the yeomen out of their own lands, impoverishing the Guilds, passing laws to serve them, which only needed to be approved by them. If the Guildmasters have a place in the Curia… It gives them the power to defend themselves.

‘And Madame Faucon, of course,’ says Charles. ‘Too long has the realm ignored the good services of the school of magic.’

I could swear that Madame Faucon purrs with pleasure.

‘But you?’ says Charles. ‘A woman in the Curia, not a doyenne, not even a landowner? With what right?’

‘As a speaker for the people,’ I parry.

‘But you are not of the people.’

‘And yet, my dear nephew, all those times when I came to you on your estate, I spoke to you precisely of the people. What they wanted. What they needed. Was I not your eyes and ears in the cities you could not walk from your self-imposed exile?’ I add this as much for Charles’s benefit as for Gelda’s. I need her to be reassured that my plans encompass their needs, too.

Because this is a time for change. But change of the kind that comes with the cost of blood spilled, enough to drown an entire kingdom.

And the bloodspill still lies before us.

Tonight, I must pick which battles to fight.

‘Was that not what helped you to rally them to your cause?’

Gelda considers the new King again and I can almost hear her making calculations behind her blue eyes. Etienne and Anselme had been enemies of her cult. They wrecked the crossroads temples in the villages. Maimed worshippers in Langville and Valserra. The severed hands, the blinded people.

Yes, Gelda is calculating what the new King might do for her.

‘But a woman, Blanche—’ says Charles. ‘In her own right.’

I wave with my hand. ‘Not for long. Just until I marry. The place in the Curia will pass to my husband, then.’

Robert stiffens at this in his seat, squaring his shoulders. His eyes call to me. What are you doing? What are you about to do?

Because to be a woman in the Curia… Even a princess… But with no home, no fortune to call her own.

Except her walls at Mora’s Tower.

‘Three months. That’s how long you have to marry,’ says Charles.

I make myself not look at Robert as I lunge into the next bit. ‘Three months. That’s fine. It should be long enough to find some decent suitors.’

Then I point to Henri. ‘Your first royal decree will be to pass the Valmons inheritance to him. The Golden Mother knows that his brother has done enough evil for you to find some legal grounds on which to strike him off.’

I almost snort at my own manner of speech. The Golden Mother. What I have come to know in the past few days…

‘His brother will not go easily,’ says Charles. ‘You must know that.’

‘None of this is easy. For any of us,’ I say. ‘But, looking a few years ahead, Henri will make a much more comfortable partner to work with. Just think about the future, Charles. Not about the ugly things we have to do in the next few days.’

Charles narrows his eyes. But then nods. ‘Your Commander as the next seigneur of the Valmons lands. It is done, then.’

Behind me, Amelie barely dares to breathe. I throw a side glance at Gisele, watching her, how she watches everyone else.

Henri is so surprised that he’s beyond words. Not even he could have planned a sleight of hand like this. Delivering to him the Valmons county, without him even needing to raise a finger.

‘Oh, but we’re just coming to the interesting part.’ I unfold the map that I was keeping tucked against my chest. I lay it on the table, using two rose stones to hold the corners.

Everyone leans forward, squinting. Even Mathilde. Even Amelie.

‘What is this?’ says Charles.

Through the middle of the land, a great, roving contour has been drawn. Encompassing Langville to the north, and Port Lang to the south. Ending just short of the Opal Mountain. The rich fields that feed the kingdom at its centre.

Mora’s Tower at his heart.

This is an important strategical point, Robert told me once.

And the seat of the Fallen Court.

‘This is the Duchy of Langly.’

Gisele draws a finger along the eastern part of the duchy. ‘This cuts into Anselme. This is most of Anselme, in fact.’

‘There will be no more principate of Anselme,’ I say, cringing as I wait for Gisele’s reaction. This is why I wanted her to be here, and not to do this behind her back. It had to be this way if I ever wanted her trust. ‘Not after tomorrow. But I will see that your due dowry is paid in full to you, Gisele. So that you may marry as you wish.’

There it is, the promise from the Marchionessa to her High Steward of the Fallen Court. Her payment for her services. If she stays true.

Amelie squints at the point where the duchy meets the sea. ‘It takes Port Lang from Valmons, as well.’

‘It is necessary,’ I say, with a sideways glance at Henri. It would be easier for the Guilds to keep their influence if two of their strongholds are within the same territory. The territory of someone who I know would rule justly. ‘It’s time for a new seigneur to rule over Port Lang.’

There it is, the stab at the bond of trust between us. By the way his eyes dart from me to Charles, I know he understands.

I hope he understands, also, why this must be done.

Berengar humphs.

‘Of course, Amelie, this will have no effect whatsoever on the payment of your dowry. Which is due to you and is your birthright. I’m sure that Henri will agree with me.’

‘Oh, most definitely,’ says Henri. He looks squarely at Charles now.

Does he know? I wonder. Does he understand who that dowry might be paid to?

‘I wasn’t about to say anything.’ Amelie lifts her chin, but I can tell that she’s intrigued.

‘Ah, but you should have. You are my Fallen Court. My trusted advisers. And I reward those loyal to me, for their services.’

This is as much a promise for the services rendered, as for those that she can still do for me.

Mathilde points at the western borders. ‘It slices into Penery, as well.’

‘It doesn’t take any territories away from Penery. It just puts the county under the rule of the new duchy. Gives him a new liege.’

Charles clacks his tongue. ‘Of course. Wisely drawn, Blanche. I did not know you had such a hand with maps. And it concentrates such an amount of power. Almost as high as the King’s. So may I ask who this liege might be? Who you have in mind for this position? Or is it to be you?’ He shakes his head. ‘People would never listen to a woman.’

All eyes are directed at me in this moment that my careful planning, skipping and sauntering, and spying and hoping, more than anything hoping, have been leading to.

‘No, not me,’ I say, pointing a finger at Robert. ‘Him.’

TERMS

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

Charles tips his head back, roaring with laughter.

Robert doesn’t breathe at all.

I fix my gaze on him. Rise to the challenge. Take what I’m offering.

The boy who was born in a hovel, at the border of what is to be the Duchy of Langly.

The boy who was sold, and whipped, and took so many beatings, and suffered hunger and cold.

The boy who rose above it.

The boy who was loved by a princess. Because I can’t mistake what’s in my heart, I never could.

The boy who gave her the tools so she could rescue herself from the tower.

‘That’s good,’ says Charles, resuming his usual tone, looking at the map in wonder. ‘So good. No wonder that you said you’ll marry within three months. You already have both of them lined up. You just have to choose.’

My cheeks catch fire. I steady myself before I say, ‘The thing about trusting someone, Charles, is…’ I make myself glance at Amelie now. ‘That you give them power. And you see what they do with it.’

‘You, on the other hand, think you have much more power than you do.’ Charles rises to his feet. Something within me trickles to a thin thread. ‘This conversation is over. Shall we agree that we can’t agree?’

The others all jump to their feet. Shouting, roaring. Pleading.

Making it worse.

Asking him to reach a decision.

To negotiate. He shakes his head, waving them away with a movement of his arm. ‘This is absurd.’

‘These are the terms,’ I say. ‘The only fair ones.’

‘These are terms that would keep me in check for as long as I rule.’

‘Perhaps every ruler needs to be kept in check,’ I reply.

At this, his eyes blaze.

Worse, worse. I’m making it worse.

They’re shouting again. And I can barely make out what they say. There’s a roar in my head. Part ancient song, part battle. And it smells like blood flowing.

There was no other way, I tell myself. No other path to carve. Anything else, and we’d be treading the path we’ve always trodden.

Charles makes to move out of the tent. The others are still bellowing at him. Pleading. Entreating. Robert is the only one who sits, so still. Asking me quietly, What have you done?

There’s a shift behind me. A rustle of skirts, rising above the dim. Silk as sharp as knives. Like blades hidden up sleeves. Amelie walks to him, slowly, so slowly. Charles doesn’t see her, he’s too busy snapping at Madame Faucon.

Time seems to sit still as Amelie reaches for his hand. She strokes the back of it with her nails, so gently, up to the tips of his fingers. I can almost see how his hairs raise on end. He turns, as if stricken by lightning.

He finally sees her, watching him. Touching him. It’s real. They’re real. For the first time, in flesh and blood, so close.

His throat bobs as he caresses the tips of her fingers. As if he’s afraid that she might vanish again. And her face beams with so much emotion that I don’t even have words for it.

Charles opens his mouth and closes it. For once, sharp words fail him.

And they see. Everyone else, they finally see what’s happening. Falling quiet.

And into the silence, Amelie says, ‘You must see it’s the only way. The only way to change anything.’

He cocks his head, as if disbelieving. ‘You, too?’ he says.

She straightens, letting go of his fingers. ‘Do you know what the Fallen Court is?’

He shakes his head, understanding eluding him.

‘They locked us away,’ she says. ‘Mora’s Tower was a prison, but as the Fallen Court we were free. Are the ways we have trodden not prisons in themselves? Is there no room for new paths of thought?’

He seems to consider this.

The Fallen Court is becoming something tangible.

Amelie senses Charles’s hesitation and runs a hand down his arm. ‘Are you the man I thought I knew?’

He blinks. Unsure. He knows that he shouldn’t say anything. But he can’t look away from her.

‘Come, sit down,’ says Amelie. ‘Let’s talk. Let us tell you about it.’

* * *

Mathilde has vanished somewhere with Gwenhael, even if she thinks that we don’t know it, that we didn’t see him waiting for her, just outside the tent. I don’t know if I should be worried or relieved.

Amelie has gone with Charles into his part of the camp.

I don’t know where Gisele is.

And I’m alone in my tent, after having ghostwalked to Langville, keeping an eye out for Anselme’s troops. There isn’t much to report, except that a small contingent is approaching the city. Nothing that the defenders can’t repel, the portion of Robert’s company that the Guilds left there, to hold their heartland for them.

Could they be so slow on their way? I ghostwalked to Mora’s Tower as well, as quiet and as deserted as it was when we left it. I even check the harbours of Port Lang.

There are limits to my Gift. I can’t rove the kingdom far and wide, I can’t transport myself to a place unless I’ve been there before and I remember it, or I see it pictured in a painting, in a carving. I can’t follow a non-existent trail.

My search yields nothing.

I must ask Robert what he makes of this. Or Henri.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, everything depends on what happens tomorrow.

If Anselme is truly that slow to join my brother, then⁠—

I can start making plans for the future.

I have a choice, I think. I’ll have to speak with Henri. Robert…

I have to remember. He has never, ever said a thing. A future was never in the realm of possibility for the two of us.

As if I’d conjured him with the power of my thought, the flaps at the entrance to my tent rustle and Robert steps inside.

‘What are you doing here? Don’t you have to give battle orders and such?’

He walks inside and I can tell he’s hesitating. ‘What do you want now, Blanche? A marriage proposal from me?’

If, and only if, we win tomorrow, he’ll be the most powerful man in the Red Kingdom, save for the King himself.

I can hardly imagine a world where my brother doesn’t control everything.

Where no one has to fear him.

‘No proposal,’ I say. ‘My debt is paid. I promised I’d repay you when you rode with me to the Golden Pavilion. I hope this evens the scales.’

He doesn’t take this with the gratitude I expected, but rather seems to be surprised by it. ‘So, what, you’ll still marry Henri?’

‘Why do I have to marry anyone?’ I say.

‘For the obvious reasons,’ he says. ‘That’s what you told Charles. Three months. And you’ll have to go somewhere after tomorrow.’

‘If we survive tomorrow. And I can always return to Mora’s Tower.’

‘Mora’s Tower is mine, Blanche, according to your own division. And I have some plans for it.’ He flashes me a full-toothed grin.

‘Like what?’

‘A strategical point, didn’t I tell you?’ He might have mentioned this, more than once. ‘I intend to make it my seat.’

‘Your seat? Good luck inviting seigneurs for dinner, then. It will be midnight by the time you ferry them all up.’

‘Oh, no,’ he says. ‘I intend to build. With those white bricks that are on my company’s crest.’ He traces the shape on the badge on his chest.

There’s a tingle that goes up and down my spine. Up and down. Numbing my limbs. ‘The white bricks, that’s what they were for? Mora’s Tower?’

‘For someone who sees so much, Blanche, you can be so oblivious sometimes.’ He steps closer, out of a shadow, and I take him in again, the entire bulk of muscles and iron will and something contrary that sometimes sets my teeth entirely on edge.

Nothing has ever been easy with him.

But I’ve never been able to turn away.

‘Today, Robert, I tell you this. You can have anyone you want, with a duchy that size. Take your pick. I’m sure that even Gisele would be partial to you.’ How could she not be, when she could be the lady of her father’s former lands?

He crosses his arms. ‘You know what, Blanche, sometimes I think it’s better if we don’t get what we want. Sometimes, I think it’s no good for us. Henri will be good for you. What he wants from you, you’ve already given him, and he won’t ask for more. Well, except for children.’

His thoughts reflect my own. It will be up to Henri, tomorrow, to decide if he’s ready to step into the terms I’ve laid out today.

Which is, that I give the orders. Not him.

‘He knows what you are. You’re Blanche. You’re half here, half there.’

‘Where?’

‘Wherever you want to be. It has always been this way, whether it was mindwalking or ghostwalking or books. You can’t stand to be in one place. And what drove you mad during your first months at the tower was that you couldn’t be half everywhere and nowhere at all anymore. You’d rather live in any other world but the one you do live in. That’s why you never left the tower. Because the world you wanted to escape to was the one in your head.’

He points at my head now.

‘You’re being overly dramatic,’ I say.

‘But you can do all you want now. And the truth is this. As a new seigneur who will bite into more than he can swallow with Langly, I don’t need someone who’d be half away while I build a castle, build connections. I need someone to supervise the house expenses and someone who’d strengthen the ties to the seigneurs, and you are not that person.’

For a moment, every single thought in my mind eddies, melting into the shape of those five words. You are not that person. It hurts more than I’d have ever thought. I knew he’d made no promises, but this⁠—

No, I tell myself. I’m the Marchionessa. I don’t need him to make me a Duchess. ‘Is there a point to all this?’

‘Yes, there is a point,’ he says.

‘Because, honestly, if we’re talking about this, Gisele would be an excellent steward. Is one, as it is.’

‘Sabya’s Morningstar and its spikes, what is it with you and Gisele?’

What he just said hurts too much to be able to look it in the eye. So I glance away from his statement. Not that person. My weapons of choice are words and whispers. And I can wield them. ‘Why can’t you just be happy and grateful for what I’ve given you? Why can’t it be enough, and why do you have to insult me?’

‘Because it’s never enough,’ he shouts. ‘It never will be.’

There’s movement at the entrance to the tent and Gisele steps in, pale and drawn. ‘Is this a bad time?’ she asks.

I look to Robert with a wild, cruel satisfaction on my face. There, I want to say to him. See?

‘Not at all,’ I say, signalling to Robert that our conversation is over.

Gisele walks over to my bed. Her steps are slow and wobbly and she has the unfocused look of someone who isn’t entirely here. ‘I have to tell you something.’

I can tell it’s not something.

It’s everything.

‘Should he go?’ I say, pointing at Robert.

‘Yes. No. It doesn’t matter. Perhaps he should hear this.’ Gisele rubs her face, hard. ‘I’ve lied to you. You were right to be wary of me. I have been spying for my father.’

I’m hot and cold and angry and sad. I had desperately wanted to be proven wrong. ‘Etienne didn’t believe it anymore, but my father always thought you were dangerous. He tracked Robert’s movements when he saw how much he did for you. He found out what Robert found out. That you might still have a part of your Gifts.’

Honestly, I think. This is the reward for giving someone a chance. For believing that, if I thought the best about that person, that’s who they would be. The best version of themselves.

Gisele looks into my eyes. ‘They have something up their sleeve. I saw your brother, and they’re hiding something from us. I know it, just as I know it will be horrible.’

I lay my hand on her arm. I don’t know why, but I do. ‘How far away is Anselme?’ I ask Robert.

‘According the reports from our scouts, they haven’t even reached Langville.’ I can’t quite read the look that Robert gives her. ‘But we’ll know more tomorrow.’

‘What did you tell them, Gisele?’ I ask.

‘I told him … that you will need days to reach an agreement. Between Charles and the Guilds.’ She wrings her hands. ‘I lied to them. I’ve been lying to them for a long, long time, and I don’t know why, except that I wanted you to succeed.’

‘Why?’ I ask. ‘Why would you do that? It doesn’t make sense.’

I try not to look to Robert, to gauge his reaction. I don’t want to see the judgement in his eyes. Trusting Gisele was my choice – and I will bear the consequences. I don’t need him to tell me what to do.

‘Because they never asked me what I wanted. Because they all expected me to do their bidding, and never ask questions, and never want anything in return.’ There’s something brittle in her eyes now. ‘Because I was tired of not having a choice.’

And then it strikes me, like a slap to my face. ‘You are me. You are me, as I was four years ago.’ They led her with the same mix of threats and sweet words. The same lack of power to make a choice, except that she’s never shown it so much, because Gisele is Gisele and everybody worships her at the Red Court.

‘I am you, except now you are free,’ she says.

‘Am I?’ She lied to me. She’d been spying for her father. Everything she’s heard, everything she’s seen… ‘So what now? You ask for my forgiveness and it’s granted and you can play both sides, as you usually do? To make sure you can’t lose?’

Pure shock is written on her face.

‘Honestly, Gisele, what do you want?’ I can imagine, though, what she might want. How her allegiance might be bought. She does want to find a husband – just someone who isn’t my brother. They probably never forgave her for refusing, and it’s almost shocking that Anselme had even allowed her to.

‘To be free of them,’ she says softly.

‘Well, consider your wish granted, if tomorrow goes as we would like it to go.’ Though her warning rings in my ears. ‘You’ll be rid of your father, and all his possessions will pass to him,’ I say, with a tilt of my head towards Robert. ‘Is that what you want? I hear he’s looking for a wife to help with establishing the duchy and his foothold as the most powerful seigneur in the Red Kingdom.’

Definitely, most definitely, you are not that person.

That was all he wanted. Security. A fief. Not to have to be afraid that he’ll ever be hungry again.

And I would be a threat to that, with my ways, or so he seems to think.

Across the tent from us, Robert’s face is so wild with something, that I can’t even make out what it is.

I throw him a look that I hope conveys what I feel, which is he can take his duchy and shove it up his arse, as far as I’m concerned.

You are not that person.

Something has broken inside of me, and the shards are so sharp, so painful, and I want to throw them all at him.

Robert shakes his head and moves to leave.

And this, how he goes without a word or an explanation, this is agony. My soul bleeds. And I want him to bleed, too. ‘Oh, come Robert, I never knew you to be shy. I think you and Gisele need to have a conversation, at least. Just to make sure that she doesn’t go and tattle tomorrow morning and we all die, in the end.’

‘You can’t be serious,’ Gisele whispers to me.

‘Curse the day when I first laid eyes on you,’ he mutters, and stalks out of the tent.

‘You didn’t. You didn’t, Robert,’ I shout after him. ‘It was me. I was the one who went into your mind, remember?’ I have tears in my eyes and I don’t know why, or how I can push them back, except to laugh, which isn’t quite a laugh. ‘Because my brother told me to.’ I turn to Gisele. ‘What?’

‘I’m not stepping into that hedge full of thorns between you and Robert. Whatever it is.’

‘There is nothing,’ I say, though I know it’s a lie.

It’s everything.

‘Right.’

‘How can I trust you now? How can I know that you’re on our side?’ I’m savage. I’m like an animal that has been wounded and, thrashing as it dies, harms everything around it.

I hope she hadn’t come here hoping that I’d spare her feelings. Not after what she’s admitted to.

But—

She came. She spoke to me.

‘What ties you to us, Gisele? What can you give me, so that I don’t put you in chains right now?’

Gisele hesitates. But not for long. I’d realised moments ago that when she came here, she already had a plan. ‘I can give you something that you want.’

And it probably coincides with what she wants, too. And this is what sets me apart from Anselme and my brother. The two words that I say to her. ‘I’m listening.’

BATTLEFIELD

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

If my brother can create an illusion, well, he has met his match. So can Madame Faucon. She weaves the semblance of a sleeping camp on top of the preparations that are taking place at the gates of Lafala. Should anyone look from the walls of the capital, they’d see still land in the space between the hills, while our armies move into position beside Charles’s.

Not just Charles’s. In the night, Gisele kept her word. She went over to Prince Louis’ side. And I know what she must have told him, what she gave, because today their forces, the sky-blue banners of Seigneur Bencifert and the azure ones with the mermaids’ tail are moving to take their place next to my nephew’s. Finally taking part in this battle, and not watching it unfold before their eyes.

I think I know what Gisele promised, so I need not ask. If we leave this battlefield alive, Gisele will leave it with a husband. And if we win, her betrothed won’t have to fight my brother for her hand, for her dowry.

Madame Faucon’s illusion changes the sounds of boots marching, the whisper of steel swords, into the patter of the light rain that falls from the sky.

Charles is, after all, a Storm-Caller.

It’s still hours before dawn.

Last night, we decided that we needed to strike first. To make sure that, even spurred by magic, Anselme would not stand a chance to help my brother.

From the top of the hill where I wait, in front of my tent, I see nothing, except what Madame Faucon wants us to see. A quiet camp, at night.

A single horn sounds, high and clear, cutting like a blade of silver through the night.

Robert’s.

The signal.

Gisele is next to me, gripping my hand. And on my other side is Amelie.

Lightning after lighting after lightning strike.

And suddenly, I see.

The right flank made up of Robert’s soldiers and the people of the Mothers, guarding the beach. Behind them, Charles calling to the storms in elegant moves of his hands, standing on a dark rock that juts from the shore like the point of a broken arrow.

The centre, held by my nephew’s motley troops, a sea of red surrounded by banners that have answered his call from all around the kingdom, smaller seigneurs who are trying to topple the high seigneurs who have for too long been a law unto themselves: the Valmons, the Anselmes, the Penerics. Etienne, the King.

And on the left flank, I distinguish Bencifert’s exiles, Prince Louis, the sky-blue flags melting into the inky one of the Pretorians. I see Mathilde, sitting on top of one of Arnauld’s enchanted beasts, a riding bear, her hunting javelin exchanged today for bow and arrow.

I only learned a few days ago that Gwenhael had taught her how to fight. I learned by watching her work, defending me in the Battle of the Opal Mountain.

There’s panic on the low battlements of the city. They know they cannot keep at bay an assault by so many gathered armies.

There’s a rush in my blood, a foretaste of victory.

‘So many,’ says Gisele, somewhat breathless at the sight of our unravelled forces.

‘Are you happy now with the side you chose?’

She clacks her tongue, but by her half-smile I can see that she takes my comment in her stride.

She has been under Etienne’s and Anselme’s thumb, just like me, for even longer than I was, but she was better at playing the game. Better at keeping it hidden, at least. Yet not so good at holding the reins of her own life.

Until today.

With a small stab of pride, I think, I did this. The armies assembled in front of Lafala: this has been all my doing.

What do you think about this, brother?

He didn’t even spare a thought for me, after using my Gift for his own purposes for so long, and then taking it away when I was no longer useful to him. And now, it turns against him.

Rain drizzles my hair, glues it to my head.

It has only just begun.

We cannot lose, we will not lose, there is no way.

The only thing is that we must take care that my brother should not get away from us.

He cannot leave Lafala alive.

* * *

I’m not a general, nor do I understand much about strategy or the clash of two armies. I can barely stand to look, but I think that we’re winning.

What Charles has done, hidden on his remote estate, has been to train to perfection his feared Crossbowmen. They string, aim and shoot. Again and again and again, thinning the lines of defence on the battlements. Madame Faucon’s Fire-Blazers are supporting their volleys with balls and strings of fire. Amelie has stepped forward, behind Robert’s troops, and with swift movements of her hands, like a liquid dance, summons shields of water from the sea and throws them at our enemies.

Girls weren’t trained to fight at the Golden Pavilion – their Gifts were moulded to what were considered more feminine occupations, like irrigating the fields. But today, Amelie fights for our cause and there are no words for how proud of her I am. And I can’t imagine that, when Sabya set the first stone of the Golden Pavilion, she wouldn’t have intended girls to learn how to fight, too.

A siege tower is being pulled into position by enchanted aurochs of the Arnauld lands, creatures that must have stemmed from the Hallowed Forests of the Green Kingdom.

My brother is nowhere to be seen.

But I’m not surprised.

He’s never had much of a stomach for real battles.

And he’s too much of a coward, especially with so many of our own soldiers climbing the walls around Lafala.

I rally myself for what is to come. The slaughter that is sure to ensue on the streets, innocent after innocent dying, until my brother is found and a stop is put to this madness. I doubt that many of the men fighting for my brother do so because of their convictions – it’s fear that spurs them on. I wish for no more than a quick ending to all of this. It would have been much better if we had the sea, but we had no time to wait for the Guilds’ ships to arrive.

And then, there’s a surge, many cries, low horns blasting from the beaches. Our troops fighting there are being pushed back by something that I can’t see, not even with Charles’s lightning strikes on the battlefield.

Robert’s voice rises above the din, shouting something suspiciously like ‘Stand your ground.’

Then there’s a blast of light on the battlements and my brother appears in the midst of it all, his laughter carrying above the fray.

Next to me, Gisele stiffens. ‘What is that?’

And before I even manage to scramble for an answer, the great fog sweeps away from the sea. In the light of Charles’s next bolt, I see it. A swarm of soldiers on the beach, a swarm of ships behind them.

Anselme’s banners.

And suddenly I understand. Why, when I ghostwalked yesterday, searching the road to Langville, I spotted only a meagre array of troops. Because the bulk of Anselme’s army had never been there.

I can see now that he probably embarked from Port Lang days ago, when we were all still squabbling, and sailed here.

I didn’t even think to look to the sea itself.

Gisele draws in a sharp breath and her fingers tighten around mine. ‘My father is here.’

‘Gisele,’ I say, my voice trembling. ‘Did you ever tell your father what I can do? That I can ghostwalk?’

Her silence is answer enough.

He would have known to avoid my spying eyes. He would have known that I can’t be everywhere. That I can’t walk the entire surface of his principate in a single day.

He would have known that he needs to hide from me – and how.

And just like that, we are losing.

Inflamed, my brother’s soldiers from the battlements push back, sending our soldiers down the walls they have just clambered up. A compact set of troops exits through the gates of Lafala and attacks the Bencifert flank.

Robert’s forces are pushed back, back, back from the beach. Charles sends some of his support troops across the battlefield, but Robert is too far, and they are too slow, and the lines of displaced farmers who joined us are beginning to crack.

‘I’ll help,’ says Gisele, and before I even manage to ask which side she means, I see her grabbing the nearest mount and heading for the left flank.

No, no, no.

I close my eyes and with a surge, my ghostly self is in the din, next to Robert. It’s blinding here. The sounds, the clash of swords, the shouts. It’s so much that even in my ghostly shape I cannot breathe.

Then Robert notices me. ‘Get back,’ he yells at me. ‘Get back to safety.’

A sword plunges through my hand, but I don’t feel a thing, because I’m made of air. ‘What do you need?’ I scream at him.

‘Another bloody army.’

I consider this. Blood splatters, raining through me.

‘Blanche, go back,’ he says. ‘There’s nothing you can do.’

I look up, wishing things would be otherwise. Wishing I could throw water shields, like Amelie, or at least shoot arrows, like Mathilde. Wishing I could do more than get to places no one can get to.

Even with the Gift of my ghostwalking, I failed them by not keeping an eye on Anselme. On his moves.

‘Blanche.’ He’s angry now. ‘You’re distracting me.’

I think, This might be the last time I see him alive.

I think, I wish, last night, we hadn’t parted on such terms. I wish I’d told him what he means to me.

I raise a hand, making to touch his jaw, visible under his half-helm.

But I can’t.

Instead I say, ‘I can’t give you an army, but what if I brought you an ancient goddess?’

* * *

Sabya rises swiftly from the throne when she sees me. Perhaps it was my bearing, the way I stepped into the cave. ‘What do you need?’

‘We are losing,’ I say. ‘I need help. Your help. I know what you are. They said you could defeat an entire army by yourself. Your Darkblades. Your shadow-dancing. Your light daggers. I need it all.’

She closes her eyes and shakes her head. ‘I can’t meddle. I can’t leave her alone for this.’

But all will be lost without Sabya. All is lost, as it is. Even for her, and for what she’s guarding. ‘If my brother hears about what Madame Faucon wanted to do, he will do the same. You don’t know him as I do. He’ll awaken her.’

Sabya’s nostrils flare. ‘He would not.’

‘You don’t know that. You don’t know what he’d hope to gain from it. This must end. Today. We need you.’

I watch in awe as Sabya touches her hand to the amber.

One eye open, one eye closed. My mindwalking self is here, while my ghostly self still watches the battle. How Robert plunges into the fray of it. My ghostly self screams and even my mindwalking self is rattled.

‘What’s wrong?’ asks Sabya.

Tears stream down my cheeks.

‘You’ll have to stay here,’ she says.

Half here, half there.

I can do this.

This is who I always was.

‘You’ll have to guard her. There will be a price to pay.’ Sabya twists her wrists and daggers of blinding light appear in her hands.

For the first time since I met her, a smile lights her face.

I say, ‘You’ll enjoy this.’

She wills the daggers away, checks the straps on her armour. ‘I’ve been waiting for more than five hundred years.’ Her smile fades. ‘There will be a price to pay, Mindwalker, for what we do today. The price the Dark Queen will exact will be, most likely, you.’

My ghostly self watches an arrow strike Robert’s shoulder plate. ‘Anything,’ I say. ‘Even me.’

Sabya nods, slowly. ‘As you wish. You’ll have to make sure she doesn’t awaken.’

‘How do I do that?’ I say. Liquid terror pours through my veins.

‘Light-Cantor, sing her a lullaby. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

* * *

I watch Sabya plunge into the very centre of the troops, swinging her Darkblades, double-edged, double-bladed swords, dark pools that swallow all life around them. My brother, who had been watching with satisfaction as the axe fell down on our necks, disappears from sight.

She is mesmerising in her shadow dance. She is here, cleaving with her formidable blades, and then she’s three steps over, shooting light and dark daggers from behind a heavily armoured knight. I catch flashes of her golden armour as she shadow-dances to the right flank, landing by Robert’s side.

Yes, there.

She throws spears of light, one, two, three, summoning a new one just after she made her toss. Then her Darkblades are spinning in her hands again, twisting like a whirlpool of shadows.

I wish we could send her after Etienne, and end this. But she’d lose her Gift if she killed another mage – and the Red Kingdom can’t afford that. It would mean that the Dark Mother would be unleashed.

Next to Sabya, Robert is slashing with his sword, left and right. The way he lets his blow fall, parries, surges for his next blow, he is the perfect partner in this odd dance they do together.

He stops just for a moment to flash her an approving grin, and then raises his gaze, searching for me. He nods when he finds me, watching, then he raises his sword, plunging into the massacre again.

I don’t know what he meant to tell me.

The men stop to watch, in awe, the way he cleaves a path through our enemies, striking them down as they swarm him.

All these people, I wonder. Would they be here, fighting us, if they had truly been given a choice? If they hadn’t been terrified into submission?

It’s not my brother that we’re fighting, it’s our own people.

Victory is bitter, and yet this is the stuff of legends.

Though it still is too little, too late. They are too many. I am here, guarding the thing at the heart of the mountain, and I am not here, watching the battle unfold. A ghostly silhouette on the top of the hill, rooted in front of my tent.

Watching Charles and Amelie side by side, on a rock behind the right flank, while she is raising the waters of the sea, and he is tossing them in whirls and small storms at Anselme’s ships. Enough to crash a few against the seabed, but not enough to stop the merciless flow of his soldiers swarming the beach. They are too many, far too many, and even with Sabya and him fighting, they are breaking through the bulk of Robert’s company.

A flag carrying the emblem of the white brick snaps, and the banner gets trampled upon in the heat of battle, soaking in blood as Anselme’s soldiers push, push, push our lines back.

Sabya is a flash of gold in the centre, her two double-blades in a whir, slicing left and right. But the holes she carves out in my brother’s lines are too small to stop the advance of his entire army. The lines on the city’s battlements seem to grow thicker, battering us harder and harder with their arrows.

We still can’t manage to climb the walls.

On the right flank, Mathilde is mounted on the bear, right behind Gwenhael, who has moved to fight beside her. To die beside her.

We try to push, but it is not enough.

She shoots arrows at the soldiers surrounding him, and he is now her shield against the ones who would tear her down from her mount. But there are so many, too many. The captain swerves left and right, parrying a blow, trying to land one. Mathilde shoots an arrow into the neck of a soldier who was trying to stake Gwenhael from the right, but she isn’t fast enough to catch the one landing a blow with a warhammer to his head.

Gwenhael sways on his feet, turning to her, as he falls to the ground. Mathilde’s shout tears through the battlefield, a screech that rips my chest apart. She spurs her bear forward, to slash left and right, to protect her captain’s body. She is pain, she is fury.

She is a fighter.

Gisele steps up from far behind them, twisting her hands upwards. That is where she went. A great hedge of slithering branches and fearsome thorns springs up, building a wall between Mathilde and the attacking soldiers, impaling the ones who couldn’t run out of its way fast enough.

Robert shouts at his troops, blood running down his face. I don’t know if it’s his or our enemies’.

And I … do nothing. I’m watching a great slumbering beast, hidden in the heart of a mountain. Reminding myself of the words of a half-forgotten lullaby.

Then, on top of the battlements, there’s a flash of torches, and in the grey light just before the dawn, my brother’s tall, slim silhouette appears. He is dressed as the king he is, with the crown atop his head, the red mantle trailing behind him.

A sword in his hands, he is laughing. So hard that his eyes are crinkling.

I see it. The moment Robert snaps his head to him. The sheer, hot, burning anger. The way his eyes flare, seek Etienne’s.

But Robert says, his words soft, carrying on the storm that Charles is wielding, ‘Blanche. Sing me a song.’

My heart shatters into a million pieces, shards sticking into every inch of my chest.

What Robert is about to do will kill him.

So I sing.

Not the lullaby, like Sabya asked me to.

I sing the only song I can think about.

You are the master of your own power.

I stand atop that hill and the ancient words roll out of my mouth. They melt in the clink of armours, the screech of steel on steel as swords clash. They melt in grunts and the calls of the wounded. The song weaves and winds around them, and my ghostly silhouette floats in the air, floats above the battlefield. An arrow pierces it and I feel nothing, but that ancient voice grows deeper, thrumming with the power.

Two of the army musicians pick up my song with their drums. Their beat like thunder, crashing down.

Robert turns to Charles and yells something at him, something I can’t make out.

My voice rises in mournful notes. Soldiers fall on both sides, soldiers pick up my words.

The old words.

The song. The song of battle and loss and of fighting.

For a new world. That will make or break in our hands.

The edge between light and darkness flickers. Balls of light rise. From the waters of the sea. The blueish light of jellyfish, the tail of lightning. On the battlements, light is drawn from the torches, wisps like arrows, shivering in the air.

Sabya, frenzied by it, jumps from ball of light to ball of light, tossing dark spears again and again and again at my brother’s troops.

Charles wrings his hands in the air and sends Robert up with a gust of wind. Up, up, up. Above the clamour of shields, and onto the battlements. Directly where Etienne stands. My brother’s face twists with disbelief at Robert’s drawn sword.

My ghostly self pounces, intent on laying itself between them, but so slow, too slow, and Etienne’s soldiers are faster, closing themselves around Robert. But it’s not enough, not enough, and they are so many, and though he brings them down left and right, it’s still not enough.

He will die.

Robert will die.

And I am reaching the last notes of the song.

I am the master of myself.

And I am the master of this song.

I sing its new, different ending.

I sing of the Commander’s sword slicing a breach into the line of the King’s guards. I sing of him coming closer to the King.

The drums crash and crash and crash.

The lights flicker, stronger, brighter.

Robert swings to his right, but a guard plants his sword in his left thigh. He buckles and swerves, trying to keep upright.

I want to scream. To cry.

But I sing.

I sing of all the light, gathering together, bright, so bright, so searing. I sing of the light bunching in a shield around Robert and shattering everyone around him.

My last word is, Burn.

And the light crashes into the soldiers standing around Robert, tossing them to the ground in shouts and screams. Even Etienne falls, his backside pounding on the unyielding stone of the battlements.

Robert shakes his head, in sheer disbelief at what I’ve done. Etienne, his face red and blistering, clambers to his feet, grabbing a sword from one of his guards, lunging towards Robert. I want to scream, but my throat is locked. That last word has drained me.

Burn.

Everything comes down to this moment. The silence stretches on all sides, into the past and into the future.

It’s as if history itself is drawing a long breath.

Robert sways. And brings down his sword.

My brother falls to the ground with a mighty crash.

A crash that shakes the entire battlefield.

Everyone is in a daze as Robert twists his sword deeper in my brother’s body.

In the cave beneath the Opal Mountain, there’s a crack, and the rock shakes beneath my feet. But I don’t look, I can’t look at the figure in amber. All I can look at is Robert.

The soldiers on the battlements hesitate as he draws up again his bloody weapon.

It’s Anselme who throws a ball of fire from where he stands, on the beach. Searing into Robert’s faltering lines, pushing them back. ‘Stand and fight,’ he calls.

He knows that he can still win this battle. That he might. That it’s even more than a slight possibility.

The guards on the battlements close in around Robert. Slashing. Taunting. He tries to reply blow for blow, but his movements are slower.

He is tired.

And he knows that he cannot win.

With a last shove of my power, I push my ghostly silhouette forward, land neatly next to him.

Robert’s eyes are on me. That searching, intense glare. Tinged with so much sadness. For the time that has slipped away from us. ‘Go, Blanche. You don’t need to see this.’

I try to touch him, but I know I can’t, and every moment when his attention is on me might cost him…

But the guards have stopped. Watching us. Watching me.

The Red Maiden.

The elusive, powerful Red Maiden.

I have to say something, I know I have to say…

‘Yield!’ The voice is mine and not mine, penetrating and demanding, rippling across the battlefield. My brother’s body has stopped twitching at my feet.

The choices we must live with.

The future we want to build for ourselves.

It starts now.

My voice rises, a thrum in my own ears. ‘For your own lives, for the lives of your children and your children’s children, put down your swords and yield!’

They stop.

Everything stops.

Watching me with awe, and surprise.

One man raises his sword, ready to slash into me.

I look to the side to Robert. Let him.

I don’t wait to see what he says, what he does. Instead, I take a step towards the man, placing myself in the way of the sword.

Steel ripples through air, and my shape shivers.

But I am unscathed.

The man’s eyes are wide with feral shock.

I call one last time. ‘Yield!’

All it takes is one clank of steel on stone. One man who has let go of his sword. One man who has seen the power of the Red Maiden and has bowed to it.

A clink and a clink and a clink. Swords falling, the guards on the battlements before me, on their knees. The red light of dawn, cracking above our heads.

Anselme knows. Anselme sees, as he sounds the retreat to his forces on the beach. Running back to their boats and ships.

But the main body of his army, now caught between the low wall of the city and our own armies, they have nowhere to run to.

My brother’s banners drop, golden flags of parley are raised. Men let their weapons drop and fall to their knees.

They yield.

* * *

At the end, I’m sitting on the beach, looking into the distance, where Anselme’s few surviving ships have disappeared. The sea glints gold in the sunlight and this is all I want, the smell of salt and the waves rising and falling.

If I were to look behind me, I’d see the sand drenched in blood. I’d see flotsam, broken planks.

The stretch of land at the foot of the battlements is a horror: the torn bodies, the blood, the crows, circling.

The last time I saw her, Mathilde had dragged Gwenhael’s body away from the battlefield and she had begun washing it. She didn’t shed tears.

She seemed empty.

I am empty, too.

This was the price.

There’s the crunch of boots on sand and I don’t have to turn to know it’s him. It’s in the way he breathes, he moves, the cadence of his steps. He sits down beside me, the press of his thigh, the warmth of him suddenly at my side. ‘You’re shivering,’ Robert says, and drapes his cape around my shoulders.

He’s done this once before, I remember.

When I thought I’d lost everything.

I take him in, the lovely sight of him, the sight of him that will always fill me with something, to the brim, until I overspill, no matter how much time has passed, no matter what we say to each other.

You are definitely not that person.

But he is, he always will be, that person for me. The person who would make me reach into the deepest parts of myself and bring them to light.

The person I’d want to stand next to me on a beach when I have everything I have ever wanted, and yet it seems that all is lost.

‘She said that there will be a price to pay.’ My voice doesn’t sound like my own. It sounds like it has been cut to pieces and sewn back together. ‘Sabya. Before she returned to the mountain. She said, harm has been done because she left. She said that she will need me.’

‘How long do you have?’ Robert digs his heels into the sand, glaring at the holes he leaves behind with his steel boots.

‘Years, she said. Probably years before I have to join her in the cave.’

He brushes his fingers across the back of my hand and the warmth in it bolts through me. But he looks tired. So tired. Like the fate of half a kingdom rests upon him. Which it does. He says, ‘You will destroy me.’

You are not that person.

I lean into him, lay my head on his shoulder. Close my eyes, and breathe in. He has washed the blood off his hands and his face, but he still smells of steel and death.

‘I can’t even look,’ I say. ‘At what’s left behind. Does that make me a coward? You once told me that I wouldn’t have the stomach for what you do, and you were right.’

‘I can say this much, I’ll be glad when the most savage thing in my week will be a dinner with the seigneurs.’ He lays his arm around my shoulder and pulls me closer to him.

I shift and he shifts, too, and our lips meet and it’s molten gold poured through my body, it’s warmth and desire and the hope that it will never end. It’s happiness, made liquid, coursing through my veins, through to the pulsing core of me.

It’s him.

It was always, always him.

We break away because I can’t stand how it makes me feel, because I’m so close to dissolving into tears. Our foreheads touch and we breathe the same air.

He smiles.

‘You kept your promise,’ I say. ‘You came back, before the end. You are free.’

‘Free?’ he laughs. ‘Need I remind you, you also made a promise to me.’

At the Tournament. When I re-fastened my cloak, and we faced the dinner with the siegneurs and my brother.

I flush but it’s not shame, it’s mostly desire. For him to hold me to it. I say, ‘And I will honour it. At your earliest convenience.’

He laughs again and traces the shape of my jaw with his finger. ‘I can’t believe you’d negotiate your way into this.’

I take his hand. ‘You said you don’t need someone like me.’

His fingers interlace mine. And he’s looking to the sea, and I’m looking, too, at the clear-cut, infinite possibilities of it. The sun, shining, regardless of the battlefield on which we’ve turned our backs.

He says, ‘If you’d listened to me to the end, you’d have heard me say that you’re not who I need, but who I want.’

My heart skips a beat at this. And then starts fluttering as if it has wings.

‘Blanche, I reckon we have a few good years ahead of us. Let’s make the most of them.’

THE UNSPEAKABLE

THE MARCHIONESSA OF THE FALLEN COURT

The Year of the Red Maiden

‘She has done what?’ Amelie’s incredulous gaze seesaws from Mathilde to Gwenhael, who are sitting at the bottom of the great table in the Curia Chambers.

Across from them, Gelda lowers her eyes, pretending to arrange the hem of her linen green dress.

‘Exactly what I said.’ I tap the golden-gilded armrest of the throne, still unable to believe that I find myself here.

In this chamber, with its blue-and-gold marble that has been partly ripped and hauled from the heart of the mountain.

This is where my brother used to sit, while he lied and coaxed and threatened. And to my right, Anselme’s place has been taken by his daughter. Gisele’s reddish-brown hair is braided like a crown around her head, marking the line where a tiara will sit, when she marries Prince Louis.

By the law of this kingdom, I, as a future duchess, have no right to sit in the throne, above Amelie to my left, who is set to become our queen. But the Fallen Court has always abided by its own rules.

Because if we were to follow the rules, there is only one decision we could make today – end Mathilde, as she is, and what she has brought forth.

‘What were you even thinking?’ says Amelie, holding her chin high, her jaw set.

Mathilde meets her gaze with an unflinching one of her own. ‘I was thinking that I will not lose him. I will not let anything drive us apart.’ Her hand seeks Gwenhael’s blindly, and there’s a slight tremble shaking her shoulders when she finds it, as if its presence there relieves some of the tension in her body.

Gwenhael gives her a swift smile and grips her hand with both of his.

‘I thought that you were trapped,’ says Amelie, unrelenting. ‘That, otherwise, you wouldn’t have even looked at him.’

Gwenhael turns his stare towards her, something foggy and unfocused in his hazel eyes.

Unnatural. Breaking the laws of nature. Defying logic and magic itself.

‘I was wrong,’ says Mathilde, raising her voice. ‘When I saw—’ She swallows hard, as if words are refusing to come forth. ‘When he didn’t move, when he⁠—’

‘When he was dead, you mean?’ says Gisele, picking at her own nails. ‘Are you trying to tell us what you felt when you saw that he was dead?’

Mathilde’s hand tightens around Gwenhael’s, squeezing hard. So, so hard. As if she will never let go.

Something rips within my chest. Because I know, myself, what it is to want to hold that tight to someone. To never want to let them go.

If someone asked me to give up Robert now… I shudder, memories of last night seeping in, the feel of his warm, callused fingers on my naked back. The feel of his lips on my neck, of⁠—

Concentrate.

‘Was this about the baby, Mathilde?’ I say, making my voice soft. ‘If you didn’t want to marry Arnauld and pass the baby off as his, we would have taken care of you. Between the three of us, you would have never, ever lacked a single thing.’

‘This was never about the baby.’ Mathilde closes her eyes. ‘This was about him. I couldn’t imagine what I would ever do without him.’

‘Mathilde,’ says Gwenhael and I shudder. His voice is the same, and he looks the same, though Mathilde has told me that the wounds he received during the battle are still open gashes, and they cannot heal, they will never heal.

They are just very well hidden underneath his clothes, the blow that killed him concealed underneath the line of his hair.

I turn to Gelda. Her pale blue eyes are looking up from beneath her lashes. Studying us. This one, this one is dangerous. That she should have the power to bestow such a Gift. She may say what she wants, but she is not just a priestess. She was never just a priestess.

No, Gelda with her light eyes and straw-coloured hair and soft voice, Gelda is much, much more than that. And she is ripping a path for herself and the Mothers of the Forest with her lovely shining nails and her pearly teeth.

They will have to be dealt with, too. Later. To make sure that they never attempt again what has been attempted before the Opal Mountain.

A chill darts like an arrow down my spine. I remember Sabya’s warning. I will have time, but only a few years. I will have to join her. To undo the damage that has been done.

‘Why have you done this?’ I ask Gelda, trying to tamp down the fury in my voice. So much damage has she wrought.

‘I was so sad when I saw how upset she was.’ Gelda’s voice is the clop of water in a stream. A whisper in the wind. More, so much more. Yes. Perhaps not just a mouthpiece for the Mothers of the Forest. ‘So I asked the Mothers if they would grant her a Gift. And the Mothers have been merciful.’

I tap my fingers again on the armrest. Tap, tap. ‘You asked the Mothers? How did you do that?’

I’d tried to step into her mind last night, after the battle. When I heard what Mathilde had done. When I heard what Gelda had done for her. But I found no memories, just howling woods. Creatures lurking in the dark, their dark yelps distant, and then drawing closer.

An ancient mind.

A mind that would not yield any of its secrets, not without a terrible fight.

Gelda says, ‘The Mothers of the Forest have been known to be merciful in the past. They care about their people.’ She braces her elbows on the table, leaning forward. ‘They have granted Gifts before. They did so often in the times of old.’

‘You are speaking about what hasn’t been done since the times of the Romannhon Empire. When gods walked the earth,’ I say. Since Sabya’s time.

‘Some gods still walk the earth, whether you know of it or not.’ Her voice is the hiss of fire.

A lie? I hope so.

There has been so much to see, so much happening, everywhere, that I overlooked this. Her.

She continues, ‘And Gifts have been granted in more recent times, too.’ Gelda turns to Mathilde, who meets her with a tentative smile. ‘The Mothers have approved of your union. The Mothers saw your love, and its strength, and wanted to support you.’

There are two sorts of Mothers of the Forest, and the corrupted sort still supports the Dark Mother, Sabya said. And I think I know which sort Gelda belongs to. Since she was there, at the foot of the Opal Mountain, trying to awaken the Dark Mother.

‘You have made Mathilde a Necromancer,’ I say.

The forbidden magic. The sort that had to be wiped out.

The sort that has never been seen, or, at least heard of, since the Dark Mother.

Gelda flinches in a way that makes me think of an artist performing. ‘I have given Mathilde the Gift of Life.’

Almost true, but not quite.

Liar. Puppeteer. Plotter.

Mathilde has become a mage. She took the Gift and used it to bring back Gwenhael.

‘You are excused,’ I say. ‘Please stay in sight. Where your presence can be accounted for.’

Gelda gets up swiftly and bows her head. But her icy smile is no less than a challenge.

I turn to Mathilde as soon as the heavy wooden door, with its complicated ironwork, clicks shut. ‘What will we do about you?’

‘You know what Madame Faucon would do,’ says Amelie, but there’s no threat in her eyes. Just sadness.

Kill her. Madame Faucon would kill her. This is what the laws of the Golden Pavilion and of the Red Kingdom would dictate.

As long as Mathilde is here, she is a target.

Kill her. Yes, perhaps, considering what is already happening, it would be the wisest course of action. I take in her hunched shoulders, the shape of her powerful body, curled to protect the baby in her belly.

‘Then we must make sure that Madame Faucon never finds out,’ says Gisele, straightening.

I nod. We could never kill her. We have only one option: to protect her.

Protect them.

‘You’ll have to leave,’ I say.

Last night, after all was said and done, Robert mentioned thick patches of ancient woods within the Green Kingdom. The Hallowed Forest. Woods so thick that only the most desperate dare to travel to their pulsing hearts: outlaws, murderers, thieves.

Adulterers.

I cannot send Mathilde there, I had told him.

There is no other place she might go, he replied.

Woods. They might be fine in the woods, the two of them. That is the sort of world they thrive in. Not the world of paved roads and embroidered dresses and palaces built of marble.

I lay down the plan for them, quickly. Robert can travel with them, today, as soon as possible, before Madame Faucon even catches a whiff of what has happened. Before she can even think of what there is to be done.

Our powers are diminished beyond the borders of our kingdom. Beyond the reach of the Crystal of Power. There, hidden in a patch of woods far from us, Mathilde’s magic will wane, not thrive.

And if it isn’t enough to keep Gwenhael as he is now… I take in the dip of his head, how his eyes won’t leave her.

I remember a shard of a conversation I once had with Henri. How, away from the Red Kingdom, the Gift vanishes in the children of mages. The child, we’d have to see if it displays any signs of this power… We’d have to bring it here, for a while.

Later.

We’d have to think about this later.

I shift in the golden throne. So much to do, so little time.

‘But you have to promise,’ I tell them. ‘Promise not to even try to use the Gift again.’

Mathilde’s eyes glimmer with something. Eagerness, I think. ‘No, no. I promise. I’d never.’ She pulls his hand into her lap, the back of it touching her belly. ‘I have all I want. If I knew how to, if I knew that Gwenhael would stay this way… I’d give it back to her.’

You cannot give back a Gift, I think. You cannot bind it unless you give up your own.

And we’ll need our wits and Gifts about us for what is to come.

‘Amelie?’ I turn to our future queen. She has laced her own hands on the table, considering.

‘No one will know, you think?’ she says.

‘I think. But we can never be sure.’

A glow of iron darts through her eyes with a sliver of light, and then it’s gone. ‘I see no other way around it.’

I touch Gisele’s arm where it’s draped across her chair’s armrest. She shudders, the slow uncoiling of a great, slumbering cat. ‘She could come with me, I suppose. They’d probably be just as safe in the Blue Kingdom.’

‘I think—’ That would give her too much power. I do not trust her completely, not even after all this time. Our friendship still has a hidden blade that may yet cut. ‘That you will have enough to do when you arrive at a foreign court. I expect you will be busy working to tighten the bonds with us.’ Amelie and Gisele exchange a look across the painted table. The future queen and a future princess of neighbouring, if not always friendly, kingdoms. ‘And by this I mean protecting the interests of the Fallen Court.’

I shift in my throne, the wooden back hard and unyielding against my spine. ‘Because make no mistake,’ I continue, ‘kingdom politics aside, we have one purpose, and one purpose only: To make sure that the thing inside the mountain never, ever awakens.’

WARSONG

THE MINDWALKER IN THE MOUNTAIN

The Hallowed Forest in the Green Kingdom

Twelve Years Later

‘She’s gone.’ As Robert says this, Darg, once the Dark Mother’s general, once Sabya’s lover, the man hailed in all the ballads as the filthiest traitor, lifts his head. Even the birds seem to grow still.

There’s nothing here, except a clearing, the moonstones of the Mothers of the Forest, a dilapidated hovel. And a table in the front of the house, with three small chairs lined around it.

Darg’s face twitches in something like pain. Compassion? It’s hard for Robert to read the general’s emotions, even after all these years.

Probably because he never shows them.

Probably because, until today, Robert thought that the man – the ancient god? – had none.

‘We expected this,’ Darg says in that rough voice of his, like two stones grinding.

‘We have small children,’ says Robert.

I feel him.

His pain is a whip, striking over and over and over again, leaving bloody traces in raw flesh. ‘Isabella is ten. She is ten, and she cries herself to sleep every night, calling for her mother.’

Darg shifts, the cord-like muscles in his forearm tensing. ‘Fate has been merciful. None of you expected to have twelve years together. Shut up and consider yourself lucky.’

Lash. Lash.

Blood.

‘I’ve waited for eight-and-sixty years for her,’ says Robert.

‘And when she came, you did the stupid thing, and fell in love. I warned you, boy. I warned you.’ Darg pauses. ‘When she left. Did she know about your Gift? Did she suspect?’

‘No.’ I feel the sorrow in Robert. How he will never forgive himself for this. For never telling me.

‘Sabi mustn’t know. Not yet. It’s for the best,’ says Darg, puncturing every word, moving carefully around them as if they had grown spikes. ‘You have waited for eight-and-sixty years for her? Then maybe you will understand. I have waited more than five hundred years for my revenge.’

Robert says nothing. Reaches into the folds of his pockets, brings out an old piece of parchment. Touches it as if he wants to hold onto it for a bit longer. Then lets it float into the Darg’s open hands. ‘I have no more need for this.’

And when Robert looks away, the general unfolds it, draws the tip of his fingers along the notes, as if caressing his lover’s skin. ‘You forgot yourself. You forgot your mission. You made her three children, instead of pushing her to do what she was meant to do.’

Robert closes his eyes. Three children. And twelve years. And still, it hadn’t been enough.

I stayed.

For him, I had stayed, grounded in Langly. Building – we erased the bad memories around Mora’s Tower by erecting Fort Cantor around it. A seat fit for a Duke and his Duchess.

Tightening.

Always scheming. Reaching out tendrils of smoke towards the Blue Kingdom, through Gisele’s steady arm. Keeping Charles bound to his promises.

Planning carefully.

Strengthening our hold on the duchy and on the kingdom. Ensuring fairer terms for the people. And Robert had seen that. He loved me more for it.

I was there, until I wasn’t at all anymore.

‘Why aren’t you angrier with me, then?’

Darg smiles and all the sadness in the world flows from this rare smile. A sadness bottled for more than five centuries. ‘The warsong,’ he says.

‘The warsong,’ echoes Robert.

‘Tell me about it.’

Robert closes his eyes and tells him again about the battle of Lafala. How they all fought, Charles and Amelie, Madame Faucon and the soldiers from the Blue Kingdom, Gisele and Mathilde and her lover. How Sabya wielded the shadow and the light and the darkness. How, in the aftermath, they’d taken to calling Robert names like the Lion, and the King-Breaker.

How afterwards I was pleased to step back into the shadows and let him take the credit, in this kingdom that had become increasingly suspicious of the mages. How Robert had been tongue-in-cheek about the entire matter, and chose a red pouncing lioness, and not a lion, for Langly’s insignia.

The general has, as always when Robert tells this story, so many questions about Sabya. How she summoned her Darkblades. How she jumped from shadow to shadow. How she could make an entire line of soldiers crumble.

But when it’s time for Robert to tell him about my song, he finds that he cannot. That it has been sealed in a corner of his heart, a memory he will never be able to speak about.

Because of how much it hurts.

Darg folds the paper, slips it into one of his own pockets. Close to his heart. ‘Don’t mope,’ he says. ‘We had time aplenty. But now we don’t. Everything slips. It’s in the rain and the shudders beneath the earth and in the restless sea. We are rushing to an end. And we aren’t ready. She did what she had to do. What she thought was right.’

Robert says, closing his eyes, ‘I failed her.’

‘If you want to help them, you know what we have to do.’

‘The King of Kings.’

‘The King of Kings. He must be ready.’

I will know nothing for more than thirty years about this conversation. I will see my twins tear into each other, I will see Langly flooded in blood, I will shout in pain and nobody will hear me.

I will weep, unable to help them, trapped at the heart of the mountain.

I will weep, and thrash, and bleed.

I will see a man rise into the ducal seat who is not of our bloodline, Robert’s and mine, but of Gisele’s, of all people. I will see the princess, Amelie’s granddaughter, taking him by the hand and guiding him.

I will see her bind my own blood and banish them, bringing them to my feet, where I can prepare them for their true purposes.

And, together, we will find a way to ready ourselves for that final battle, for the one that will make or unmake the fate of the Three Kingdoms.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Dear Reader,

I hope that this book answers many of the questions that you might have had after reading The Kingdom Is a Golden Cage. And I hope you have many more questions about who’s on Team Sabya and who’s on Team Dark Mother. And that you feel like questioning the legends that everyone in the Three Kingdoms has grown up with.

Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered, in the next few books. When I’ll also reveal who is Hugo’s mother (yup, you’ve met her).

But what I really wanted to talk about with you were the sources of inspiration behind this novel.

The Rise of the Fallen Court mainly plays on a popular fairy tale, the one featuring Rapunzel. You might have recognised motifs from a story that features prominently in the folklore of many regions, the one of the princess locked in a tower. But Blanche grows in fits and starts, and doesn’t wait for someone to rescue her. She realises she has to lay the groundwork herself.

And since we talk about princesses in towers, I wanted to tell you a bit about the inspiration behind Blanche’s name. There are two historical characters that it pays tribute to. One of them is Blanche of Burgundy, the daughter-in-law of Philippe le Bel, king of France in the fourteenth century. When Blanche was barely sixteen, she and her sister-in-law, Margaret, had been accused of cheating on their royal husbands.

A trial ensued and both women were found guilty. Margaret died soon after in prison, and her daughter was deprived of her right to inherit the crown, through machinations of the application of the law of inheritance (sounds familiar?). And poor Blanche was literally locked in a tower, and history didn’t hear much from her after that, until her presumed death at the age of thirty.

The second Blanche behind our Blanche was Blanche of Castille. The mother of the boy who would become the influential King Louis IX of France, Blanche of Castille lost her husband when Louis was aged only twelve, so she became a Regent of France. It was a time of great turmoil, and Blanche had to face, on the battlefield, multiple challenges to her (and her son’s) right to rule. Warrior queens (and skilled politician queens) did exist in the Middle Ages – such as Isabella of France, who rebelled against her own husband, Edward II of England. It’s just that history has somewhat forgotten them.

Also, a bit of trivia: though a princess of Spain, Blanche of Castille’s maternal uncle was Richard the Lionheart. I’m telling you this to demonstrate how closely related Europe’s dynasties were, and I’d ask you to keep this in mind when, in the next book, you finally see the family trees of the Langlys, the Royals of the Red Kingdom, and the Royals of the Blue Kingdom.

Families in power kept a close grip on that power by arranging marriages among themselves. The family trees of the Three Kingdoms reflect those mediaeval customs, and I promise there will be a few surprises for you in store.

Talking about dynasties and adhering to the laws of the land, it may seem anachronistic that in a land where the laws of inheritance were so important, the King should be challenged by his own nephew for the right to rule. But my story is no more paradoxical than history itself.

Just think about how Richard II, King of England, and heir of Edward III through the male line (and through the Black Prince), was deposed by his own nephew, Henry Bolingbroke, in 1399. Three decades later, these events, and the complicated matters of inheritance between the Houses of Lancaster and York, would start the War of the Roses.

And one last mediaeval tale about the King or Queen who is hidden at the heart of the Opal Mountain. That part of the story was based on the folklore around the mediaeval emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Folktales claim that he sleeps on a throne in the heart of a mountain, and that he’ll return when he’s needed. Our Sabya will return, too – sooner than she’s ready to, perhaps.

But I’ll let you discover more about that in my next book…

THANK YOU FOR READING…

We hope you enjoyed Rise of the Fallen Court!

Do leave a review if so on all your preferred platforms to help spread the word!

* * *

Don’t miss Lilly Inkwood’s first book, The Kingdom is a Golden Cage!

Once upon a time there was a princess, locked in a tower, forced to bend to her father’s will…

But Celine is no ordinary princess, and she has no intention of being a damsel in distress.

Celine has a lover, Hugo, whose cunning plan to rescue her is tied up in his own ambition to reclaim the lands and title that are his birthright. If only they can break the spell that binds him to the body of a cat, they will free the kingdom from the grasp of a cruel witch and live happily ever after…

This is a land of shapeshifters, magic, and illusion, where nothing is as it seems, even the truth.

Get your copy here!

* * *

Be sure to follow Lilly on X (Twitter) @lilly_inkwood for all the updates on her latest work.

Lilly Inkwood always wanted to write books, ever since she penned (literally, with a pen) her dozen-page long ‘novel’ in fifth grade. It just took her much too long to realise that she loves fantasy, above all things. She also writes historical fiction as Patricia Adrian. Her novel The Bletchley Women is a USA Today Bestseller.

Lilly’s interests also include history (especially women in history), skulking around social media for much longer than she should, and reading, particularly when she’s on a tight deadline and should be writing instead. Originally from Eastern Europe and now living near the Black Forest in Germany, Lilly has always loved the old European folktales she grew up with.

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ALSO BY LILLY INKWOOD

The Red Kingdom series

The Kingdom is a Golden Cage

The Three Kingdoms series

Huntress of the Hallowed Forest

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