Fate of the Mage (Skyelorn Chronicles #3)

A Cold Place For a Lonely Girl

In the twenty years since Samuel had pledged his allegiance to the Winship line, the Pathosian castle had stayed the same in every way: down to the color of the carpets and the collection of busts which adorned the King's visiting chambers.

When he had first stepped foot onto the castle grounds as a fearful sixteen-year-old and traded his surname for a title, everything had seemed so much larger than life. The twisting wooden spires and gables atop the castle felt imbued with magic, though he knew that couldn't be possible. Even the King himself seemed to be more than human, a titan among the Pathosian citizens under his rule. Samuel remembered everything—his mind had remained sharp throughout the years—but most of all he remembered the first time he'd been stationed outside the King's throne room as a guard.

He remembered watching a soldier drag a shackled prisoner into the room, a sobbing woman around his own mother's age. If he pressed his ear to the wooden door just right, he was able to hear what was happening inside. The woman begged for mercy, trying her utmost to convince the King that she wasn't Touched. The King said something in a low voice that Samuel couldn't make out, and then the room fell silent. She hadn't returned.

Since that day, Samuel had been witness to more death than he could stand to count. These instances of the King's cruelty spread by word of mouth among the guards like wildfires; he learned quickly that the men in the castle tended to gossip more than the maids in the kitchens and washing rooms. There was nothing much else to do when your only job was to watch and wait, be silent. But unlike the other guards he served alongside, Samuel had never found it easy to remain silent. Perhaps his training didn't quite remove his conscience like it was meant to, or maybe he was always softer than the others. Whatever the reason, Samuel found it harder and harder to stomach the King's actions as the years went by.

So when he was gathered into the Pathosian arena with the rest of the royal staff and watched as Taileen Winship severed her father's head from the rest of his body, the first emotion that flooded his system was relief. He was the first to set down his sword and pledge fealty to the new Queen, because she had to be better than her father. Anyone did. And her rousing words about the Touched had snaked into his already open mind, lighting a single ember of hope that he had believed long extinguished.

Unfortunately, not all of his peers were quite so optimistic. In the nine days following the King's death and Queen Taileen's occupation of the Karvothian throne, droves of soldiers, guards, and staff members had deserted their roles at the castle and even the capitol itself, claiming that Taileen was unfit for the throne and out of her wits to believe that the Touched could be assimilated into daily Karvothian life.

Good riddance, Samuel thought to himself every time he heard news of yet another rebel or watched them stalk through the halls, possessions piled in their arms on their way out. King Harlan and all of his supporters had their heads firmly rooted in the past; the sooner any remnants of his regime were eliminated, the better. For the sake of the kingdom and the Touched.

As for the Queen herself, it didn't seem apparent to Samuel that she cared at all about the mass exodus of servants from the castle.

The people of Karvoth had always held wildly varying opinions about the former Princess. She'd barely shown her face for the three years following the death of Prince Markus, her brother and the heir to the throne. But now, suddenly, she was the Queen of Karvoth. And crazier still, she was Karvoth's first Touched leader. No one quite knew where to place their allegiance; the uncertainty of the people in the capitol felt almost tangible. Samuel was glad, for once, to be safe inside the castle's walls.

Even though it was only a little over a week since King Harlan was buried by the shore of Lake Heylweay, the young Queen had already improved the castle so much that it seemed to be an entirely different place. For starters, she had peeled away all of the heavy, dust-laden draperies that covered the windows so the halls were filled with natural light. There were far less people in the castle since the deserters left, so every corridor felt less crowded when he made his daily rounds. Queen Taileen had even reopened Queen Rosemary's—her mother's—old wing of the castle. It had been sealed off by King Harlan following her death. She went there often, and Samuel often found himself wondering what she did alone in those dusty old rooms.