A Fistful of Fire: Chronicles of Marsdenfel #1

Year 242 of the Bynding

Year 242 of the Bynding

The Kingdom of Salles

Winter, before Solstice

There is but one kind, my daughter. One kind, altered by magic. Magic created us, Evonalé, just as magic now binds us. Over time, depending on what spells they work, your father and his scions could even become us.

Remember this.

—Endellion

· · · • • • · · ·

Cold sears my body, except for my numb feet. Those sank into the mud a while ago. The dirt pastes my tattered dress to my scraped skin. Hunger shreds my insides.

Yowling dogs draw closer. Maybe they’ll find me; maybe they won’t. I shiver and lean into the rough bark of the tree propping me up. Nobody likes finding whelps like me.

The howling draws nearer. A doe darts through the underbrush past me. I jerk away, to get out of the dogs’ path, but my numb feet can’t support me. I tumble into the mud. My lungs burn with coughing.

The dogs follow the doe’s path, but they stop when they spot me. Yips, whines, and whimpers enter their noise. My arms tremble as I prop myself up.

The lead dog crawls closer to me, sniffing inquiry. He’d be bigger than me even without the thick fur that stands on edge, his ears flat against his head.

“Pups! Fall off!” comes a lad’s clear voice. “That’s a girl, not the doe!” The dark-haired boy’s chestnut steed—a neutered he, I can tell from my angle—shies away from me. He croons to it.

The boy’s mahogany hunting tunic is dirty but not filthy, and the fine fabric marks him as highborn. He’s a few years older than me, perhaps even thirteen and a subadult.

He dismounts easily and tsks to the dogs. “Hush, Plun,” he tells the leading dog, rubbing his fur. I’ve never seen that messy a hodgepodge of colors in someone’s lead dog.

I cough. The bad muscle in my back pulls. I bite back a whimper.

The boy’s attention snaps to me at the sound. He studies me with brown eyes that are more bright than dark. Mine can pass for black in poor light. His can’t.

He moves cautiously, slowly, approaching me sidelong while keeping far enough away that he doesn’t threaten me. “Plun’s short for Plunder,” he offers as if I’m some shy filly to be coaxed into a bridle. “Grandfather gave her to me shortly before he died.” The dog’s a she, then; not he. “I was eight.”

How old am I, that story asks. I close my eyes. The ground vibrates as other horses near us.

The vibrations’ smooth cadence roughens as the horses near me. My godmother’s here, then. That’s not reassuring. She’s the only faery that might help me, and she won’t even save me from pneumonia.

“Aidan, stop riding off without your guards!” The man’s voice is firmly commanding without being agitated. “What if an assassin were here?”

The lad’s clothes rustle as he turns. “It’s just a girl, Father.”

“And little girls can’t kill anyone?” If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought his tone amused. Somebody snorts.

I sense a horse’s movement through the ground; feel that it reluctantly sidles forward to stop in front of me. I open my eyes to see a nobleman’s frown, the man himself in a mahogany hunting tunic, his brown hair just long enough that he ties it back. He studies me with hazel eyes, and his strong jaw and nose match the boy’s.

The golden circlet on the man’s brow reveals that he isn’t merely nobility, but he’s a king. The highborn boy is then a prince, undoubtedly intrigued by the novelty of finding a waif in the middle of nowhere.

Highborn folk don’t dirty their hands with waifs. I let my eyes close again. The numbness is climbing up my legs and will take me, soon enough. Maybe that’ll fulfill the prophecy, somehow: me freezing to death, although Father’s a fire mage who could save me.

Some of the people here murmur, and one voice sounds female. Something brushes my arm. I flinch, triggering another coughing fit, but I don’t open my eyes.

“Kitra, the poor girl’s frozen through,” says the king. “Do you have something to wrap her in?”

I hear someone fumble with saddlebags. “Mayhaps a shawl or chemise.” Definitely a woman’s voice.

Someone else touches me. I recoil away, shuddering and coughing and whimpering with the pain spearing me with every gasp. Tears burn my eyes, forcing me to open them.

“Shh,” the woman, Kitra, soothes. She smiles, her white teeth a harsh contrast to her dark golden skin. Her attire announces her foreign origins as much as her deep tan does. The short sheaths on her thighs look well worn with use. I stare at them. A woman fighter? Joining a king on a hunt?

Her black hair, hacked at her chin, could suit either male or female, and her tall slim body could pass for a man’s if she tried. But she’s indisputably female, as revealed by her current bland ensemble of a leather jerkin—no undershirt—and belted trousers, livened by her bracelet and necklace, a matching set made from something’s teeth or claws.

Kitra offers me the chemise she evidently forgot to wear under her jerkin so the lacings wouldn’t reveal her navel and the crease between her breasts. “Here, kitten. Wrap yourself up.”

I shake my head and scoot back. I’m not stupid. I’m not giving them fodder to call me a thief.

His Majesty eyes me thoughtfully as he remounts his own dappled mare. He moves over beside another hunter, one whose worn green tunic is a coarser weave, though silver embroidery cuffs it. It’s unusual, but interesting: a demonstration of wealth added the sturdy garb of someone who actually works for his living.

Silver Embroidery studies me with enough interest that he must be a good friend of the king, so His Majesty doesn’t mind him having opinions of his own. “Do you have a shawl, Your Highness?”

I recoil with the realization that this woman offering me her chemise is a princess, albeit a foreign one.

Princess Kitra frowns and steps over to her palomino mare. She checks her saddlebag. “Scarf…?” And evidently scarf means something else where she’s from, because what she holds up looks more like a courtesan’s veil.

Prince Aidan takes it from her and grabs my shoulder to yank me forward and deposit the ‘scarf’ around me before I can dodge him. I cough hard, but he holds me up and doesn’t let me fall.

Fear makes sand of my muscles. He’s old enough to be picking women he wants to give the veil.

“Oh, my,” Silver Embroidery says quietly, expression pained. “Aldrik.” He gives a small nod my way. Ice crawls beneath my skin. His Majesty nods in return, acknowledgement that he noticed the gesture.

I’m swung in the air and set on a steed. Princess Kitra’s careful, though, and ensures that I stay where she puts me. Prince Aidan murmurs something about Hind being such a good gelding. I cling to the chestnut gelding’s white mane with my fingers, struggling not to fall off.

“Mount Hind and keep her astride,” the king directs his juvenile son, a miniature version of himself though darker of eye and hair. He lowers his tone to speak to Silver Embroidery, but I hear him. “I might’ve thought her an elf-child, but for her clumsiness.”

‘…an elf-child…’ I stare at the king with widened eyes. Do I really look elfin?

· · · • • • · · ·

I cough despite Hind’s smooth gait. Prince Aidan stops often to hold me steady through the coughing fits, and Silver Embroidery and Kitra loiter behind with him.

After one fit, while I’m still blinking back tears, I look at Silver Embroidery. “Are you a bodyguard?” My voice rasps in my throat.

“No.”

Nobody elaborates. I swallow another cough with a wince. “Don’t the prince and princess need guards?”

Kitra replies first. “Not a princess.”

…I don’t understand.

“Yes, I’m really a prince,” Prince Aidan says before I can ask.

Kitra fingers the dagger hilts on her thighs. “Plainsfolk don’t have princesses, not the way you easterners do.”

I nod as if I know what Plainsfolk even are. Silver Embroidery’s wry smile calls my bluff. I flinch. Prince Aidan’s grip tightens so I don’t fall.

“Plainsfolk rulers aren’t necessarily hereditary, but if you’re the child of a Warmaster, you’re a lot more likely to become one, yourself.”

I frown and eye Kitra sidelong. “But you’re a girl.”

She shrugs, loose-limbed. “Warmistress.”

“You fight and you’re a girl?” A look passes among the three of them. I must’ve just offended her. I swallow. “Aren’t women vulnerable in ways men aren’t?”

Prince Aidan shifts behind me. “Er…”

“Women shouldn’t learn to fight because they’re more likely to be attacked?” Silver Embroidery asks, tone polite despite his sarcastic words. “That makes sense.”

I bite my lip and duck my head so my hair hides my face. I hadn’t thought of it that way. If Mother had learned to fight, might she have killed Father instead of conceiving me?

—But Father’s a fire mage. Mother was an air. Fighting wouldn’t have done her much good, anyway.

As we travel, the woodlands of the hunting grounds shift into hilly farmland, with a long stone wall in the distance. The sunset behind us gives everything a rosy glow. The prince’s gelding prances with His Highness’s excitement as we approach his home.

I stare. It’s long, the wall for this castle, far larger than Father’s, and so tall! “That isn’t a castle.” Never mind the two towers inside, the ramparts, or its strategic position with a river looping around from the east, and the mountain-bounded hunting grounds to the west.

I feel Prince Aidan shrug behind me. “So it’s a palace. Over that hill to the south is the main river, and there’s a bridge over the fork there to enter Saf. Our capital.”

So the river bounds the palace on the east and south. I look to the north, the slightly hilly lands holding much less farm and grazeland than I expect to see. The prince follows my gaze and shifts in his saddle. “Don’t let the sheep fool you,” he says quietly. “That way’s the most dangerous of them all.”

The others have waited for us at the gate. We pass within the walls, which don’t quite contain a mansion. The palace itself is huge, certainly—larger than the castles for Father and Queen Yuoleen combined—and it’s surrounded by gardens and barns.

The foreign not-princess Kitra helps me dismount Hind. We leave the horses in the care of stablehands outside a large stable on the southwest of the grounds. Dogs bark just a bit north of the stable, and Prince Aidan rejoins us after leaving the hunting dogs in that pen.

The nobles disperse. Kitra takes my arm to keep me with the royals. Silver Embroidery stays behind me as I slowly follow His Majesty and his son.

A wide stone staircase leads up into the castle’s main entrance, and gardens stretch to either side. The queen plods down the steps at our approach. “What’s this?!” Her nod indicates me.

“Someone’s runaway baseborn get,” Kitra says cheerily. King Aldrik shoves her arm in admonishment. I shy away from the king’s demonstrated familiarity with a woman other than his wife. Her Majesty even looks to be expecting.

“A girl, Mother! Plun found her!” Prince Aidan runs up the stone steps to hug his mother. Tightness grips my chest. I wish I could run to my mother.

I slowly approach and curtsy to the queen. Her Majesty studies me with narrowed dark eyes, her rosy face stern. Her rich navy gown drapes about her mildly-bulging form like a velvet curtain, edged with golden embroidery. Her caramel hair piles on her head in upswept coils.

Prince Aidan leaves us with a spindly grey-haired man who looks like he spends all his time in libraries. The prince’s tutor? Silver Embroidery trails after them with enough nonchalance that he’s probably following them on purpose.

Her Majesty takes my narrow chin in her palm and examines my face. She nods and releases me, but she keeps hold of one of my curls, the color of bitter chocolate.

“Proctor, fetch a cord for the girl. Waiting until she got here to bathe her, I understand, but to leave her hair down completely—”

“Please no, Majesty!” I say quickly, hoping I don’t sound too urgent. Carling forced me to wear my hair up after she knew it upset me. “Mother always told me to wear my hair loose.” I’ll take any lashings owed for my impertinence. The tips of my ears burn as embarrassment heats me.

“Your mother? Where is she?” Her Majesty’s voice drips contempt. I don’t know if it’s over my loose hair or over her husband finding me and bringing me home.

But my throat sticks as embarrassment’s heat shifts into fear’s ice, and I force the tears back. They’ll use any weakness to hurt me more. Father and my half-siblings did.

“Dead,” I manage, having to swallow before I can add, “Majesty.” I don’t want to aggravate this queen. The oft-mocked proverb ‘Never cross an expecting she-dwarf’ can apply to humans, too.

The king moves closer to me. I try to hide my discomfort. Her Majesty glances at him with a scowl. “Your mother insisted you wear it loose? Are you certain?”

I flinch. “Yes, Majesty,” I whisper. What does loose hair mean in this realm?

“Well, then!” The queen briskly claps her hands. “Never mind, Proctor. We will respect the dead.” I doubt she would have given me the same favor had I told her that Father still lives.

“Shouldn’t you be resting?” His Majesty tucks his arm under Her Majesty’s as we go up the steps.

She shoots him a sour look. “Yes, walking is absolutely fatiguing.” She, a queen, speaks…wryly?

Her Majesty glances at me. “Fetch that.” She waves at a nearby teacup perched at the top of the stone staircase, as if she’d been prepared to sit there all evening, awaiting the return of her husband and son. I stare at it. Mother would have sooner been whipped than wait for Father.

King Aldrik sighs. “Maitane, she needs a bath.”

“She might as well do something useful on her way. Fetch it, girl.”

I flinch, take the ornate porcelain thing carefully, and follow her. Her expression says she’s displeased—but that might have more to do with Kitra loitering with one of the guards by a pear tree in the courtyard below. We can hear their coy laughter from here.

“What of your father?”

I jump, and some of the lukewarm tea sloshes from the cup. I gulp. Father would lash me for such a thing. My back stings in memory.

“Maitane!” The king grips my arm to steady my hand. “Don’t frighten the girl so!”

“Frighten? How is asking about her father ‘frightening’?”

“I don’t know him, Majesty,” I lie quickly. Both monarchs freeze. I study the ground.

“You are fatherless, then?”

I nod without looking up. “A forced child, Majesties.”

The queen’s gasp startles me. My back spasms; my hands slip. I try to save the cup before it lands, but there’s a reason my back’s so bad.

Her Majesty gasps again when her cup shatters. I stare at my feet.

As of the approaching solstice, I will have spent ten years on Aleyi; only the past weeks have been in the cold and wet, surviving on what little I’ve been able to scavenge and beg.

I need very little to survive. Too little. As small and weak as I am compared to Father’s scions, I can handle deprivation far better than Carling or Drake ever could.

Still, I flinch when the queen yells at me. I’d rather have food and shelter than be cold, wet, hungry, and waiting for one of Carling’s experiments to find and eat me.

“Maitane!” the king interrupts his wife’s tirade and takes my arm. “Let her be. She hardly meant to break it.” He leads me down the hall with a narrow-eyed glance at Queen Maitane. “Come, child. You must be hungry.”

Why does he care?

“I’m surprised you know of the…peculiarities of your parentage. Were you ever schooled?”

“No, Majesty.” Mother and others taught me when and what they could, and I taught myself some from what I saw and heard, but schooled? No.

His Majesty nods, as if I’ve confirmed something he already suspected. Why did he expect my answer?

· · · • • • · · ·

King Aldrik leaves his wife at her rooms with a kiss more passionate than I expected. She accepts and returns it, which startles me. Even Father’s wife tolerated his attentions, at best, before he killed her.

His Majesty takes me directly to what must be a secondary kitchen, from the size. “Silva.”

A tall broad-boned young woman, old enough to be married but young enough that she’s probably only engaged, turns towards us while tossing her ginger-colored pleated hair out of the way. She glances at me for all of a second. “Yes, Your Majesty?”

A shorter light-haired brunette of about Silva’s age in a formless grey smock openly stares at me. Her cherrywood gaze flickers to the king and Silva, and she sets aside the pot she’s washing. “I’ll fetch a dress. Tweak some ears for more.”

Silva gives her a sharp look.

His Majesty nods at the girl. “Thank you, Lallie.” Lallie curtsies and leaves. “Mind your jealousy, Silva. Lallie’s better at pulling teeth for charity.”

I’m careful not to stare at the king outright. He talks too informally to this Silva for her to be a servant, unless…

She might be like me. Silva is definitely older than Prince Aidan. I wonder if she ever had any brothers. I did, for a few hours, before Father found and killed him.

Silva sighs. “Sorry.” She pops her neck and glances at me. “New girl?”

“Bathe her, feed her, and show her around so she can be situated before your mother gets back.” King Aldrik doesn’t wait for her curtsy or acknowledgement before leaving.

Silva pries a hunk of bread off a loaf and slaps honey on it. She hands me the result. “Eat. You need it. I’m Silva. You?”

I accept the food and flinch. “Evonalé.” Why couldn’t Mother have named me something human?

But Silva doesn’t comment on my elvish name. She quickly tidies up this kitchen. “We call this the washroom. Doesn’t get used for much else than washing the dishes, except by some of us younger folk when we cook on our own time.”

“You like cooking?”

She grins, a dimple pinching her right cheek. “Runs in the family. Not my favorite thing, but I’m not half bad. I’m a better…” She frowns and shakes her head sharply. “You like to cook?”

I shrug and cringe from my bad back.

Silva’s frown deepens. “What?”

“Nothing.” Didn’t His Majesty tell her to show me around?

“Finish your bread,” she says, and as I do, she whirls about, making sure everything’s picked up. Only a large bucket of suds remains out of place. When I swallow the last of my bit of bread, she studies me sidelong for a moment, then dumps the bucket over my head.

She waits until I’m past sputtering and into wringing out the wrap Princess Kitra stuck on me before she looks at me directly. “Well,” Silva says with a wide smile that holds traces of forced cheer. “The head cook’s out today, but she’ll be back tomorrow…”

Her chatter continues while she takes me to one of the buildings outside the palace but within the walls, this one on the southeast side, closest to the nearby river between this palace and the nearby city. I glimpse a canal to the south as we approach the building’s west entrance.

“Separate genders, don’t worry.” She swipes a towel off a shelf beside the entrance and hands it to me. I clutch it tightly as I follow. “Notice the curtain above the door. Red confirms women; blue, men. Don’t go near it when it’s black unless you’re wanting…” Silva shakes herself as if remembering who or what she’s talking to. “West side of the building’s for women; east side’s men. That’s true for pretty much everything, here—courtyards, stables, bridal suites…

“Oh, and purple means the royal family is currently reserving it. Ten lashings for putting that one up without cause.”

I stop in the doorway, seeing the fair soft skin and elaborate hair of the women in the humid room. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“Nonsense!” Silva snaps. She tugs me by the arm towards the gaggle of highborn girls who pointedly ignore our intrusion.

One girl of about my age glares, her golden curls plastered to her sharp-featured face like a wet cat’s fur.

Ignoring the highborn with a self-assurance that further evidences whose daughter she likely is, Silva lets her own rough overdress fall to the floor and strips my wrap and rags from me before I can protest.

I squeak and dive in the washing pool by our feet to hide myself. Carling made sure to keep the skin intact when she messed up my muscles, so my scars aren’t visible, but I still don’t like displaying my body. Someone might realize what I am.

“Who died and made you princess?” snipes the cat girl.

“Don’t start, Goldilocks.” Silva has her back to the girl, so she must recognize the voice.

“Marigold!” a woman snaps, as blonde and willowy as the offending girl. “Mind your tongue!” She quickly gets between cat girl and Silva. She gives Silva a worried look. “Pray forgive my daughter, my—”

“You don’t have to apologize to her! She’s just—”

“Lord Elwyn’s replacement!” Marigold’s mother snaps back.

My stomach lurches, and the ice of terror and flame of embarrassment war to overwhelm me. I do not want to know which member of the royal family takes both a grown man and a young woman to bed.

Well, at least Silva isn’t the king’s baseborn daughter. I hope.

It’s now, after Marigold’s gaping at her mother’s rebuke, that Silva turns to face the room. “I’m allowed here anyway, Goldilocks.”

I gulp. Okay, so maybe she is His Majesty’s bastard.

The rest of the washing up doesn’t take too long. Silva’s earlier bucket of suds loosened the filth, and the baths are designed to let the water flow through them.

The water’s a fair temperature, though not warm enough to help my aching lungs, but the room has a bite to it from winter’s cold. I’m shivering in my towel and coughing by the time Silva’s friend Lallie finds us.

Lallie’s shoulders are taut from the stack draped over her arm. She drops the clothing on a bench and quickly fingers through to a walnut green blouse and oak brown pinafore.

I bite my lip while I look at them. “Um…”

Silva doesn’t hear me, but Lallie notices my concern and doffs her grey smock. I blink at the blueberry blue panel centered in her charcoal-colored overdress. “Color’s fine; just watch the extras.” She nods at the dresses the noble girls are donning, evidently refusing to let a waif exit the baths ahead of them.

The beads stitched on the sleeves of Marigold’s dress handle the light like they’re glass. “An essere’s daughter?” I ask quietly.

Lallie quickly hides her grin and nod behind a cough. Her brown eyes shine when she smiles. “You embroider?”

I shiver and turn away. Elves embroider. It’s said that elven embroidery, depending on its picture, can ward off illness, monsters, famine, and such. I don’t pretend to have that ability, but I mimicked the felven style while Mother lived. It shows in my technique.

Lallie doesn’t press the question, doesn’t even comment on my silence when Silva returns from fetching another towel for her hair. I don the blouse and pinafore. They’re a tad big, but I’ll grow into them.

Lallie scoops up the pile of dresses that remains—my shoulder twinges in sympathy—and nods at Silva. “These’ll fit her right enough,” she says. “I’ll leave the rest in her room.” She doesn’t wait for Silva’s acknowledgement before leaving.

Silva sees that I’m ready and takes me to the main kitchen, showing me the fires, the wood, the pots—all that I’ll need to know to work tomorrow. Other girls and ladies eye me, some warily. Others twitter and give me food. Someone hands me a bitter tea that soothes my lungs.

Silva nods and continues my tour. A cloud of flour greets us in the dessert kitchen. She sneezes. “You aren’t supposed to be in here.”

A girl of about my age but half again my size sticks out her tongue at Silva as she slaps some sticky dough. “Shut up.”

“Geddis.” Silva scowls. “You know Mother—”

“I’m making her sweetbread.” Geddis shapes the dough on the tray and sticks it in the large oven that dominates this kitchen. She grabs a few logs off the stack for more fuel. “She needs something to cheer her up.”

A blank look crosses Silva’s face—blank in the self-controlled way, not blank as in daft. “That doesn’t mean you can disobey her. You aren’t allowed to cook in here by yourself.”

Geddis worries a loose molar with her tongue. “I’m not alone; you’re here.”

Silva lets out a sharp breath. “Geddis,” she says. Her left thumb fiddles with the little finger of that same hand. “Quit playing semantics. You’re not allowed to cook by yourself because it’s dangerous.”

The girl sticks out her tongue at the older girl. “And reading probabilities isn’t?”

“That’s different!” Silva snaps. “I don’t choose that.” Her glare at Geddis is more upset than angry.

“Right.”

“Ask Ferrel!”

I wonder what happened to him.

Geddis looks as though she’s about to say something mean when Lallie pokes her head in. “Geddis Feyim, what is this mess?” Lallie glides in with a self-assured presence that would befit a noblewoman. “Your mum let you cook in here by yourself, young lady?”

Geddis hunches her shoulders. “I’m making a surprise for her.”

“Oh.” It’s an acknowledgement of Geddis’s words rather than an indicator of comprehension. “And your mum wouldn’t whip you if you had a good reason for disobeying her, would she?”

Geddis bites her lip at Lallie’s sarcasm. “She likes sweetbread.”

“And you couldn’t ask one of us to help you with it?”

The girl’s hands shake as she seals up the jar of flour. “It’s stupid. You just pretend that there’s nothing wrong about this, about Father leaving so—” She hiccups and gulps down tears.

“Geddis,” Lallie warns quietly. “Mind your tongue.”

Geddis shoves Lallie, who steps back. “Geddis!” Silva snaps. “Behave—oh!” She stumbles, holding her head and cringing. She clutches the table as if about to fall.

“Silva?” Lallie hovers nearby, but she doesn’t touch her friend.

Silva shakes her head. “Just…just a spell.” Silva lets herself fall on the stool Lallie pulls up for her. She shakes her head in attempt to clear it. “I’m okay.”

“Ay, no. You sit right there until you stop seeing auras. Geddis, stay with her, and make sure she don’t fall and break her neck.” Geddis flinches. “I’ll show the girl her room.”

Silva looks as though she might protest, but then another grimace interrupts, and she lets her head fall forward on her arms. She groans.

Goosebumps form on my arms. Queen Yuoleen’s prophet Gaylen looked like that, on his bad days. “…Should we fetch a healer?”

Geddis snorts. Lallie gives me a slight smile, brow furrowed. “Wouldn’t do no good. Sil gets like this, sometimes. Nice thought, though.” Lallie lightly touches my arm to guide me out.

I follow her lead, but I swallow and duck behind her when His Majesty approaches us. Why is he in the servants’ passages?

“Where’s Silva?”

“Dessert kitchen. She’s…” Lallie smiles thinly and shrugs.

King Aldrik nods comprehension and sighs. “If she were just a smidgen less sensitive…”

“Then the Council would ignore her, and you know it.”

“Idiots,” His Majesty mutters, shaking his head, then gives Lallie a sharp glance. “Don’t go repeating that, mind you.”

“Repeating what?”

He smiles. “There’s a good girl.” He pats her on the head and continues down the hall.

“Is he…” I gulp. On second thought, perhaps it wouldn’t be wise to ask if she and Silva share a father.

“Is he…?” Lallie studies me for a few seconds, then breaks into a grin and a laugh. “Oh, no. Despite what some nobles like gossiping over their tea, King Aldrik has no baseborn get.”

I’m not sure how she figured out what I was thinking, but even so… “Um, Silva?” I heat from embarrassment.

“His Majesty’s best friend’s daughter.” She doesn’t sound surprised or appalled by my assumption, though, so it must be common. “And with her, well… What you see is not what you get, exactly.” Her smile is wry. “But I guess that’s true for most of us.”

“What do I get with you?” I flinch when I realize I asked that aloud.

Lallie bites back a tired laugh with a grin. “Clever girl.” My arm twinges beneath her pat. She frowns and probes the bad spot with her thumb. “Holy Creator,” she whispers.

But she removes her hand. We exchange a long look.

She doesn’t ask who tortured me with magic, and I don’t ask how she can tell.

· · · • • • · · ·

The next morning, a warm bed welcomes me when I wake up. It’s a pleasant change from rocks and mud and cold tree bark. I yawn.

“’Morning, girl!”

I scream, then break out coughing from my lungs.

His Highness laughs. “You should’ve seen the look on your face!”

I quickly hide my scowl and wrestle my coughing fit under control. Letting a royal see your anger is stupid.

I pat my hair to make sure it covers my ears. The cotton shift I pulled from Lallie’s stack to use as a nightdress is decent enough. I climb out of bed, rubbing my eyes.

“Where do you think you’re getting yourself to?”

“Up, Highness.” Is he stupid or playing?

Two brown eyebrows rise. Prince Aidan glances out the window at the predawn view. “Why?”

“I have work to do, Highness.” As I speak, I make the bed. I’m to start helping Cook, today. I heard enough gossip yesterday to expect her to dislike me; she has little tolerance for oafs.

“So?”

“I must prepare for work, Highness.” After fluffing the green pillow, I’m done. I turn to the small stool nearby and relieve it of my green blouse and brown pinafore from yesterday. I pull them on over my shift.

His Highness snorts. “Are you ever going to wash that?”

“Yes, High—”

“Would you stop that?”

I pause to figure out that he doesn’t want me to use his title. My stomach lurches, and I pray to the Power that I misunderstood everything yesterday and he isn’t the one who’s newly taken Silva to bed. He’s a few years younger than she is. “If you’d prefer.”

He rolls his eyes. “Of course I ‘prefer’ it. How would you like to have the people you actually want to know groveling at your feet all the time?”

Smoothing my pinafore spares me from having to meet his gaze. I suppose it sounds annoying, but he’s the first royal I’ve known to not enjoy it.

Prince Aidan eyes me with stark curiosity. “Well, then. Enjoy your tea.” He nods at a steaming mug that I didn’t notice by my bed. Who brought that? Surely not the prince. “I’ll leave you to your…work.” He grins and starts for the door. “See you at the ovens!”

“Your Highness?” I automatically ask before catching myself.

He gives me a pointed look but doesn’t scold me otherwise. “I help Cook on Praisedays.” At my blank-faced response, he clarifies: “The last day of the week—today.”

“You cook?” I ask in my shock. Maybe he did bring the tea.

“Fortunes can change in life. A prince can be exiled, a noble lose his title.” His frank acceptance that he may someday lose his rank makes me blink. “My grandfather conquered the emperor here not all that long ago. Grandfather would still be around if he hadn’t taken the emperor’s daughter to wife. Grandmother assassinated him when I was about your age.

“Besides, men eat. And women aren’t always in a condition to cook. You think Cook works so hard on her moontime?”

Heat floods my face. I remember Melrin; whether on moontime or heavy with child, she must attend Father’s pots. She’s lost more of her brood than have survived. Most of them didn’t fall into the cooking fires.

I shudder and wince. Carling likes her experiments.

“So, see you shortly. Have a good morning.” With a smile and nod, Prince Aidan leaves. Before I can reach the door, he shuts it behind himself.

I sip the tea, and it’s the bitter one to help my lungs. I relish the ability to breathe more easily.

Someone also left a jug of water by my door. I pour it in the washbasin and scrub my face, ears, hands, fingernails. My bad muscles ache something awful. I move carefully so I don’t trigger any of the spasms.

The mirror reflects my dark eyes back at me. My cheekbones jut out the most from my malnutrition. I’m small-framed but don’t lose flesh easily due to Grandmother’s blood; I’m bony, not emaciated. Small, angular, underfed. Too thin, really, for a human to find me pretty, but I’m glad for that. I know where a nice face gets girls like me.

Breathe. I have to remember to breathe. No matter what they say or do, just breathe and stay calm. Don’t freeze, don’t cry, don’t panic, and don’t break anything.

If only that last one were as easy.

· · · • • • · · ·

Flour dusts me as I fight the biscuit dough, which sticks to my hands, my pinafore, my hair.

Prince Aidan passes by with a load of newly-baked bread and winks. “Don’t know how to do that, either, girl?”

I ignore him, struggling to get the spongy dough to conform into the little biscuits Cook demands I make. The somewhat slimy feel of the dough on my skin bothers me. The sensitive skin comes from my human grandfather, Mother told me. She had it, too.

I’ve been worse, though. Much worse.

I finally finish shaping the biscuits and treat myself to a few more sips of the bitter tea someone’s keeping hot for me. I then take the raw biscuits to Cook for baking.

Cook eyes my work critically. With a scowl, she accepts the tray and waves me on to make more.

Turning to head back to my task, I trip over a table leg, falling face-first into some cake batter. Hastily I shove myself out—and stumble back into a fresh baking iron, newly greased. My bottom makes an imprint.

My attempt to leap up catches my ankle underneath a low stand, toppling both of us into the middle of the walkway, spilling a dessert tray and ripping my blouse’s sleeve. Spasms spike through my back, and I can’t stop gasping and coughing. Tears blur my vision.

As my body calms down, booted feet that I recognize as belonging to Silva turn around towards me, a cornflower blue skirt billowing about them. She helps me up and brushes me off, tossing her ginger-colored pleats back behind her shoulders. She tsks at my sleeve, holding my arm. “I’ll clean Evonalé up.”

I follow the young woman’s gaze to the large-framed matron in charge. Cook’s face is unnaturally red, and slightly-peppered ginger-colored curls peep out from her cap. The familiar freezing starts spreading throughout my body. When the ice reaches my shoulder, Silva shivers and gives me a scolding look.

What?! Silva’s fifteen, if that—she can’t know what that means!

I immediately freeze entirely. Silva quickly removes her hand from my shoulder and rubs it in her skirts. “Perhaps there’s something else she could do, where she won’t cause such a mess?”

Cook glowers, glances at our audience of kitchen staff, and nods sharply. “I won’t take a fool, Silva.”

“She’s just clumsy.” Silva takes my still-frozen shoulder and guides me away. Her gentle prods encourage my locked knees to loosen.

Cook is reluctant to unleash her temper on me. Not that I’m not grateful, but… Why?

· · · • • • · · ·

Once we’re in a solitary workroom, Silva hands me a chunk of honeyed bread. “Eat. You need it.”

Shouldn’t I be working? I glance about, but I haven’t seen any guards. Who—or what—patrols to punish lax servants?

Silva twists her long ginger braids into a bun. Now that I notice it, she shares Cook’s large frame if not the build, though she’s so much bigger than me…I suppose most would think her plump. I’m a poor judge; I’m large for an elf, while small for a human.

I’m frail compared to my half-siblings, too. I shiver, remembering Drake’s kicks and slaps; Carling’s ‘experiments’ and amusement at my magic-induced pain. I guess I’m petite, as Mother was called. Mother was more finely boned than I am, though.

A large hand squeezes my shoulder. “Now, Evonalé.” Silva’s voice is quiet. “You’re safe here, you know. Even if Mother kicks you from her kitchens, you’ll be tried at different duties ’til we find one that suits you.”

Silva settles in another chair at the wooden table, drags over a basket, and pulls out parts of a quilt. She slides me a little box across the table. A small pair of scissors sit inside, with a needle, a tiny pincushion, and some thread. “Would you pick a color? I can repair that sleeve of yours while we wait.”

I freeze. “Wait?” I whisper. Memories arise of the whip’s fire and of beatings’ cacophony of pain.

“For William. He’s a Runner.” A messenger. “He’ll bring us the royal suggestion for what we try next.” At my terror, she gives me a pointed look. “A task. You shouldn’t work with fragile things, for example; that narrows the options, but it’s up to His Majesty if he wants to set you doing else now or if Mother—Cook—should continue managing you.”

The king wastes the royal time with waifs?

“I wouldn’t be surprised if His Majesty comes to see us, himself… It’s not as though he has much to do, at the moment, with the council out of session. The council really does do most of the law enforcement and all that, anyway, and even they don’t have all that much to do because of the subcouncils…”

I stop heeding her words in confusion. These concepts of councils and leniency with useless waifs are foreign to me. Of what use are they to the king? I pry a needle and thread myself from the box. Silva’s eyebrows rise as I thread the needle and start repairing my damaged sleeve while I’m still wearing it.

“Evonalé.” I recoil and prick myself upon hearing my name. Silva keeps her gaze on her quilting. If she could’ve known about my past, I would suspect her to be trying to put me at ease. “It’s a pretty name. Where does it come from?”

I shrug, for feigned ignorance is harder to disprove than an outright lie. My name is elvish, specifically the uncommon felvish dialect. Be, my daughter—my, not our. There’s a reason for that. I shiver.

A wry smile appears on Silva’s lips. She gives me an amused look, as if she knows I’m feigning ignorance. I freeze again. She can’t know! How could she—

“You don’t? I would’ve thought you’d know.” She quilts a few seconds more. “A she-elf I met as a child used to say that. ‘Be, my daughter,’ she said it meant.”

Only in felvish!

Silva smiles ruefully. “It’s terrible, what’s happened to the felves…but the mage controlling them must be powerful, since the telves are too frightened to help.”

Or Father keeps his magic quiet enough that they don’t realize it’s happening, I think but don’t say, shivering from the cold my fear produces; how could she have known a felf?

Her words pierce me. I start and stare at her. ‘It’s terrible, what’s happened to the felves…’

The felves belong to one elfin realm, and one realm only: Marsdenfel, previously ruled by Queen Yuoleen. That realm has the linking Crystal that binds elves’ magic everywhere for them to share its costs and changes so they stay one race. Father’s father stole that binding, the Bynd, after he seduced the young impressionable queen. Grandfather re-bound the Crystal to magically enslave that realm’s elves—the felves—in Mother’s day.

‘It’s terrible, what’s happened to the felves…’

How does Silva know of it?

· · · • • • · · ·

I slipped away from Silva as soon as I could. I’ve taken only what I’m wearing, a rickety knife I overheard Lallie telling one of the Runners to get replaced, and a bit of old bread due for the compost heap. It’s more than I had when I fled Father.

The skies were clear when I first let myself out the little north door, creaky with disuse. Dark clouds fill the sky now.

My coughing will surely give me away if anyone gets close enough to hear it. But I’ve been splashing through mud and weeds and puddles for a while, now. I doubt anyone cares to waste an evening tracking down a runaway waif, particularly in weather like this. The cold makes my bones ache.

“I can’t stay with them. They’ll give me back to Father,” I tell Fael Honovi, but my faery godmother answers by sending sleet. I shake my head and grit my teeth against the cold and coughs. Prophecy or no prophecy, I won’t go back to Father. I won’t.

Power forgive me, but I don’t want to face the prophecy. I don’t want to fight and be killed by Father or one of my half-siblings. I’d rather live.

Before she died, Mother told me to flee Grehafen, following the river Nidar, and I’ll resume that. First, though, I have to find it, again, and hope I don’t learn the hard way why Prince Aidan called the north so dangerous. The land’s flatter than it looked from astride Hind.

If I can even find the Nidar again. I never should have let Prince Aidan find me. I should have fled when I heard those hunting dogs. I should…

My head’s so heavy, and it’s a fight to keep my eyes open…

I jolt awake.

The ghastly keening continues, echoing and reverberating as if in mountains despite the flat ground. Power have mercy, what is that? It’s coming this way.

My teeth chatter; my body wracks with coughing. I have no idea where I am.

It’s worse than that. I didn’t mean to fall asleep, either. I’m so heavy and tired…

My blue-tinged hands pull me enough out of the lethargy for me to gasp and try to rub some warmth into them. I whimper for help to Fael Honovi, but I can tell she isn’t here as I freeze and hope the approaching magical creature prefers its meat dead.

I pray to the Power to at least make it quick. Better to die here than to be tortured to death in one of Carling’s experiments, Father’s games, or Drake’s—

Someone clicks his tongue behind me. I can’t move to turn to see him.

“Kitra!” the man calls, and I recognize the voice. Silver Embroidery.

Not-princess Kitra’s reply is quick and in a language that sounds like it must be her native one as she catches up to Silver Embroidery.

She turns me around to face him on his horse, so I see him wearily shake his head. He looks thinner than he did yesterday. Sallow, even. “Sprite,” he says. “We need to go before this one finds us—she’s hungry.”

Kitra hoists me onto the horse in front of Silver Embroidery, so I get to see her scowl as she checks on the knives she wears at her sides and yanks herself onto her own mount. “Let her come.”

“Not to argue your skill with a blade, Your Highness, but this is the wrong time of month for me to face something that wants to pluck my spirit from my body. We should go before anything else takes up on our trail.”

“Like your mother?” Kitra’s jibe makes Silver Embroidery restrain a tremor behind me. “Ever wonder which of the rumored hauntings out here is her?”

“Do you wonder which ghoul in Skull Dune was your grandfather?” Silver Embroidery quietly replies.

Kitra catches herself mid-snarl, swallows, and shoots him a dark look. “Poor taste, Elwyn.”

“You started it,” I think I point out before the black overwhelms my senses.

· · · • • • · · ·

“You stupid girl,” Silva says as I wake up. I open my eyes to her frown. She pokes my arm, hitting a bad spot, and I gasp at the pain. “Serves you right, trying to kill yourself for fear of a nice young lady knowing who you are. Where else are you going to hide, hm? Somewhere where that sister of yours can scry you?”

I press myself back into the mattress at Silva’s snide tone.

“Silva!” Lallie snaps, oddly sharp. She stands beside the open door, pointing at the exit. “Out.”

Silva scowls at her friend. “Shut your mouth, Nonsire. Speak again when you can say who your father is—or even your mother would do.”

I grimace in sympathy for Lallie, who doesn’t even flinch. “Get out, Silva. Find your uncle.”

I barely know Silva, but even I can tell that sneer doesn’t fit her. “Baseborn—”

Lallie steps forward and slaps Silva across the face. “Silva Feyim! Get back in charge of your forsook body before I do something we both regret!”

Silva blinks and shakes her head as if waking up. She covers the palm print blossoming on her cheek with her hands. “…Lallie?” She sounds bewildered, scared.

“Go find your uncle, Silva,” Lallie repeats gently. “You need him.”

Silva stumbles out as if she’s groggy or dizzy.

Lallie sighs as she shuts the door behind her friend. She usurps my room’s stool that Silva just vacated. “Sorry about that. You must’ve been in the marshes.”

I swallow. “What…”

Lallie sends her eyebrows a fair way up on her forehead. “The Wailing Marshes be nasty, Pickle, and they weren’t made any kinder all for His Majesty’s father defeating the old emperor there. From the tales, it was a bad business all around.”

I process that. “Pickle?”

Lallie’s smile and the twinkle in her eye say she hoped I’d notice her choice of endearment. “I like pickles.”

Her expression quickly sobers, though, and she scoots closer to my bed. I watch her, wondering if she knows about me, like her friend does. “Sprites and other haints haunt the marshes—not just haunt, but breed.”

She pauses and treats herself to a large breath. “The young ones can’t do the likes of you and me much harm, but they can ride us to let us carry them to someone like Silva, whose connections between her spirit and body aren’t the tightest. Just a touch, and they can wriggle in the gap and…” She glances away from my shiver. “Well, you saw.” Lallie shrugs.

I swallow. “What’s so special about me?”

“It rode you, dinnit it? Theyn’t hard to notice, once you know how. It’s the eyes.” She waves at her own. “The pupil takes a—an odd sheen, when someone’s ensorcelled.”

“What kind of sheen?”

Lallie shrugs. “Hard to say, precisely. It’s unnatural, whatever it be.”

I don’t look at her, this maid who noticed my magic-induced injuries yesterday. “I can’t stay here.”

“Nonsense. Where would you go? The streets of Saf to be pimped and raped and murdered? Some realm where folk have no idea who you are and less reason to protect you when they find out?”

I swallow hard. “Who am I?”

“A king’s bastard,” Lallie says readily, and I flinch. “Anyone can tell that, with how you cower from the Majesties. There’s a betting pool right now on which king. Your actual father’s low in the bets, by the way.”

“How—” does she know who Father is?!

“Because I joined the betting on King Hastheem, like most did when Lord Elwyn picked him. Others follow his lead.”

…Silva probably told her. Who is “King Hastheem?”

“Ruler of Breidentel, last we heard. He’s notorious for trying everything at least once and leaving more than his share of brats behind in consequence.”

Breidentel. Gaylen told me the reason Queen Yuoleen’s realm was denfel and all the others dentel, but I can’t remember. “You know elves?”

“Of them, yes. Breidentel used to have lots of business with Salles, but a little over a decade ago they went to seclusion. We’ve hardly heard from them since.” She glances around my sparse room. “A fair number of folk still know an elf when they see one.”

I understand her words as a warning and swallow. “I can’t go back. They’ll kill me. And I can’t stay.” She just looks at me, waiting for me to finish. “My name’s too—too special.” Be, my daughter, it means, a plea and an admission of my illegitimacy wrapped into four syllables.

Lallie frowns. “What’s so special about Nallé?”

“Nallé?” I repeat, but I get her meaning: As far as anyone here’s concerned, my name’s Nallé, not Evonalé.

She smiles and stands, pushing a tray I didn’t notice closer to the edge of my dresser. Something steams in the mug. “Drink up; rest today. Nobody expects you back in the kitchens until the day after next.”

“Nobody?”

Lallie shrugs and moves the stool back to where it was when she entered. “You aren’t to return to work until Rayday. Elwyn said so. His Majesty heeds him about such things.”

Elwyn? —That’s what Kitra called Silver Embroidery. He has the ear of the king, then. It will do me well to remember that.

· · · • • • · · ·

That same afternoon, I enter the kitchen and bury a cough in my arm. Cook isn’t working today, so Silva carefully bundles up a pack of refreshment for Prince Aidan and sends me off to what she calls “the little courtyard hidden in a garden maze north of the dog kennels.” I watch her blankly and ask how I’m supposed to find my way through the maze.

Silva frowns and adds another two waterskins to the load. “You’ll figure it out.” She hands me both a shawl and the pack. Those last two skins are for me, I presume. She nods and waves me off. “Go on.”

“But—” this will take a while.

Her bland look back says Really? “Scat, Nallé.”

I shoulder the bag, wincing when my back twinges. Why is Silva intentionally trying to get me out of the way for the day? “I can work,” I insist to the older lady who looks like she’s Cook’s cover.

The woman just glances at Silva and shakes her head, unwilling to countermand the younger woman. What is Silva?! Nobody wants to contradict her, she freely wanders the noble quarters, the king concerns himself with her well-being, and…

Actually, paired with Lallie’s insistence that Silva is not a royal bastard, I think I just answered that one for myself.

I shiver at His Majesty’s evident preference for teenage girls and wander off to find my way through a maze in a part of the castle grounds that I’ve not even seen, much less navigated. I start at the stables, and from there I follow the yips north to the dog kennels. I recognize the motley-colored Plun, who perks up when I pass the kennels, headed towards her master. She paws at the gate and whines, wagging her tail when I look at her.

I know the moment Fael Honovi joins me in whatever metaphysical realm she inhabits, because Plun lurches back, ears flat and neck fur on end, and growls. I sigh and continue towards the tall hedges ahead of me. Not only is it a maze, but the growth is even thick enough that I can’t see through it despite the thinning that comes in winter.

After ducking inside and around a bend, I frown at all the plants. Silva said there was a courtyard in the middle, so it should be free of the bushes. And Lallie’s already said everyone assumes I’m an elf king’s bastard. Might as well use what little elven blood I have.

I reach out and brush one of the bushes with my fingertips. My skin tingles with the plants’ life, dull and sedentary in the middle of winter, and I instinctually know where all the intertwined plants sit. I pause just long enough to get my bearings in what I sense, and aim for the empty square that’s in the middle of the maze.

And people think elves foolish for planting their gardens gradually over several years and generations. I wouldn’t have been able to do this if these bushes weren’t the same age.

Clattering comes from the courtyard in the center of the maze. I increase my pace until I’m beside the courtyard entrance, then stop. Someone in the courtyard grunts with pain. I peek around the corner.

Prince Aidan rolls to his feet and attacks not-princess Kitra from behind with his wooden sword and dagger. She blocks the sword with her dagger, and his dagger with her elbow on his wrist, leaving her sword against his neck. Both freeze.

I shudder at the violence and scurry over to the stone bench to pull out the water and refreshments for them from the pack.

“Getting better,” Kitra compliments him. “Need more practice.”

He crouches by me and swipes a handful of dried apple while he shrugs at Kitra’s words. “Father’s been busy.”

“Practice with the boys.”

Prince Aidan shakes his head. “I’m not good enough for that, yet.”

I use my trembling hands to flatten my skirt, which draws the prince’s attention. He scowls. “You aren’t supposed to be working today.”

“I—” need to earn my keep.

“Go back to your room.”

But… “Highness—”

He sighs and shoves the palmful of dried apple in his mouth. He quickly chews and swallows. “Wait a stone, would you?” he asks Kitra. “I’ll be back.” He grabs my arm as he leaves the small courtyard by the opposite side. He abruptly stops and sticks his head back around the corner. “You see my betrothed, please waylay her. I’ll see her at lunch.”

Kitra gives him an incredulous look but shrugs acquiescence.

Prince Aidan hurries out the maze, pulling me along and hardly slowing when I stumble. We almost collide with someone, and His Highness shoves me into a dead end behind him. I land hard on my side, skirt and blouse and shawl all in the wrong places. I quickly rearrange everything to cover what it should.

“Aidan! What a surprise.” I hear Drake give Prince Aidan a friendly slap.

Fear chills my bones. Prince Aidan knows him? Is friends with—

“Drake,” Prince Aidan replies politely to my half-brother’s greeting. “My apologies, but now is not a good time. Might I meet you at lunch?”

From his laugh, I know my half-brother grins as he replies, “Oh, of course! Forgive me for bothering you—I didn’t realize you’d already found the beauty between a woman’s thighs. I could show you some pointers, to get the most out of the wench.”

“Perhaps another time.”

I shudder. Drake leaves, and Prince Aidan turns back to look at me.

“Next time someone tells you not to work for a few days, heed them!” he snaps.

I gulp at the anger in his tone and shiver from cold. He resumes guiding me through the maze.

At the exit, he steps out first and looks around. “Wrap your face with your shawl.”

We share a long glare. Doing that would imply that he’d taken my virtue or at least sullied it. I’m not a woman yet. “Deviant.”

“I’m certainly about to be thought one. Now put that accursed shawl over your face before Carling decides to come find out what interested her brother.”

With another shudder, I wrap the shawl around my shoulders, neck, and chin, bowing my head so my loose hair hides the rest of it. I look cold and unwell, not like I’m on my way to becoming a woman of ill repute.

His sour look appreciates my quick thinking even as it’s irritated. “That works, I suppose.” He quickly tugs on my pinafore sleeve, straightening it. I step back and flush, heat flaring through my body. He scowls and straightens his own sleeves and collar. “Come along.”

I do, and he moves quickly again, but he actually slows when I trip. One noble youth whistles as we pass by. Prince Aidan doesn’t like that. “The girl needs Ygrain, Hickory. Keep your mind out of the gutter!”

We make it back to the kitchens with minimal mishap on my part. Prince Aidan releases me and immediately grabs a sack and ducks back out. I stand near the doorway of the small kitchen where he left me. Silva works alone on what looks like bread.

Silva pauses. “Through the maze already?”

I tug one bit of hair that’s near my ear. She slams her forehead with one palm. “Felfin! Of course. Forgot about that.”

Prince Aidan returns, the sack now bulging. He hands it to me. “What part of ‘Evonalé must stay in her room today’ did you miss, Silva?”

Silva stares blankly at him. “She would’ve been fine, lost in the maze—”

“But she wasn’t lost in the maze, and Drake nearly saw her.” He snatches a freshly baked loaf off the cooling rack and adds it to the sack as he addresses me: “Stay in your room today and tomorrow.”

“And just what is she supposed to do there?”

Prince Aidan whirls on Silva. “How in creation am I supposed to know how she can amuse herself?! Read? Weave? Play with one of the cats?”

I clench my jaw against admitting that I actually can read. Maids shouldn’t be literate. “I can sew,” escapes my lips, instead. Heat pulses through me at the startled stares Prince Aidan and Silva both give me.

“You sew?”

I’m not sure if I should be wary or appreciative of the pair’s surprise and the prince’s foolish question. “Yes.”

Carling had me make her things after her hips rounded out and she wanted belt pouches designed to carry her spell reagents. The maid refused to make such improper things for Carling, so my half-sister killed the woman and conscripted me. I was seven.

Prince Aidan nods acceptance of my yes. “All right. Send what’s-her-face with a basket of mending for Evonalé to amuse herself with—”

“Nallé,” Silva corrects.

I shiver at the prince’s dark look, and I’m not the target. Silva ignores it.

“Her name is Evonalé,” Prince Aidan says softly. “Call her Nallé if you like, but I won’t. She already is her mother’s daughter.”

I blink at him. Nallé does mean ‘Be my daughter’, but that’s not something I would’ve expected the prince to know, much less be bothered by. “Vle—” I gulp the rest before I kill myself with my felven accent when I’m supposed to be telfin.

Prince Aidan takes my arm by the elbow. “I’ll get her to her room.”

Silva frowns. “You should probably get your father to—”

“What?!” he snaps. “Escort Evonalé to her room? As if that wouldn’t get noticed. ‘Where’s His Majesty?’ ‘Oh, escorting some king’s throwaway brat who showed up on our doorstep.’”

They share a long glare that I’m glad to not be in the middle of.

Silva tosses up her hands. “Fine. Take her—but don’t come crying to me if you walk into one of those mages.”

Prince Aidan’s returning expression is too close to a sneer to be a smile, but he tries. The attempt at politeness despite his obvious frustration puts goosebumps on my arms. What is Silva’s place in this kingdom? Even Queen Yuoleen’s prophet, Gaylen, never forced polite deference to Father. Mother restrained her own temper more after Father killed him.

Prince Aidan pulls me by the elbow with a jerk that threatens my grip on the sack. “Come along!” he snaps.

Silva’s expression goes vacant, and her eyes refocus sharply as she gasps. “Quickly,” she encourages me.

I still frown at her, but I do lift my feet as Prince Aidan drags me away. What little I know of human magic comes from watching my parents and half-siblings. I fear I shouldn’t be as confused by the behavior of Prince Aidan and Silva as I am.

And then, Silva’s episodes remind me of Gaylen. Why does a kitchen maid remind me of a prophet?

· · · • • • · · ·

To my relief, Prince Aidan leaves me at my door with a full sack. I do not want him to get in the habit of straying inside my rooms.

I poke through the sack while I await Lallie, helping myself to some bread and dried apples. The latter are more tart than I’m used to, but they still taste agreeable.

Lallie’s a bit red in the face when she whirls in, arms loaded with two baskets. One looks to be the mending, while the other holds sewing supplies. She sets them down and holds up a small tool with a J shape.

“Seam ripper,” I supply so she doesn’t have to, and I take it from her. “But they work remarkably well for cutting threads close to the edge of the fabric, too.”

Her face is blank for a full second before she grins. “So you can sew. Any good?”

I shrug. I had to be good, sewing for Carling. Her mediocre servants end up corpses. And she doesn’t go through Father to cause it.

“All right.” Lallie plops beside me on the bed. She hands me a threaded needle and some black trousers. “The hem’s already pinned. Think you can sew it?”

Yes. Lallie just has to make sure I won’t ruin anything, so I start the mind-numbingly simple task. She picks out a shirt for herself. I stare at the rip. “That isn’t the seam.”

“No,” Lallie absently agrees. She pinches the front of the blouse together for mending as she rummages through the thread box for one that’ll match the clay red. Unless something’s hiding in the side of the box that I can’t see at my angle, she doesn’t have anything.

I eye the blouse’s fabric and the way it drapes in her hands. “Is that linen?”

“Believe so.” Lallie shakes out the blouse and holds it by the shoulders to get a better look at it. The neckline scoops lower than is considered decent this side of the Dwaline mountains.

“Kitra’s?”

Her glance at me is sidelong and measuring, but a smile quirks her lips. “You might want to drop the questions, Pickle.”

I shrug. “She didn’t get that rip from knife practice with Prince Aidan.” They used wood.

I duck my head to my mending to avoid Lallie’s long look. I’m well aware that royalty tend to take whomever they want. I just don’t want that ‘whomever’ to ever be me.

I wince and blood pools on my finger from the needle, and my right hand’s fingers are a bit raw from pressing so hard on the needle. I carefully work both halves of it out of the fabric. “May I have another needle?”

Lallie hands me one without comment and pulls out a skirt to fix, herself. We work in silence. “You be safest from that in the servant halls,” she says as she checks my finished hem. “King Aldrik has his foremen hire decent men over skilled ones…and His Majesty isn’t above patrolling when there’s rumor that someone likes trouble. It helps that he…”

She purses her lips and folds up the trousers. She hands me the oddly ripped blouse and the box of thread, to see how I’ll choose to mend it. I frown at the difficult project and appreciate the compliment inherent in her handing it off to me. Lallie’s lips quirk when I pull out the scissors and snip the fabric to mirror the rip on the other side of the front.

“Aidan weren’t the king’s first son,” she tells me, “but you won’t hear that from no one. His Majesty found him one morning, with a scullery maid who dinnit want his company.

“King Aldrik killed him.” Lallie stares right at me, making sure I understand what she just said.

The scissors bounce off my bed and clatter the floor. “He killed his son?” I whisper.

“He obeyed the law. He dinnit make an exception due to who performed the crime. That’s much of why so many of the nobles dislike him, I daresay.”

“Lord Elwyn doesn’t,” I blurt, remembering how comfortable Silver Embroidery was around his king when they found me.

A dimple creases Lallie’s right cheek when she grins. “Lord Elwyn be Lord Elwyn.” Her gaze flickers to the blouse I still hold. “You gonna hold that all day, Pickle, or finish it?”

I swallow and comprehend that the conversation’s over. Dark grey thread looks nice on the clay red, I think, to turn the rips’ mending into something decorative rather than an issue of lacking the correct color of thread. Particularly if I work it in cross stitch.

Lallie pats me on the knee and lets herself out.

· · · • • • · · ·

After two days of rest and bitter herb tea, my lungs feel much improved. I return to kitchen duty as ordered. A scowling Cook shoves a pail of seed into my hands and pushes me out the door to feed the chickens.

Why doesn’t Cook have me whipped? I ruined her cake batter a few mornings ago—wrecked her kitchen, besides—and she’s obviously still angry with me.

Awwk! A hen protests her loss of tail feathers when I step into the chicken pen.

The handle of the overlarge bucket of feed digs into my arm. I’ll be glad when it’s empty. I don’t like animals. The bucket’s weight on my arm tugs a knot in my shoulder, too.

I toss a scoop of grain with a twinge in my bad shoulder; the grain patters against the coop while falling. The hen that’s now short a few tail feathers quickly pecks up some food. Some of the other hens and the cockerel join her.

The clucking rises in pitch, and soon all the chickens cluster together at the food. The cockerel rushes at me, wings open. He squawks, drawing back and bobbing forward again in mock-attack, coming closer each time.

‘Animals don’t like me’ is probably more accurate.

Animals act strangely when I’m around. Then again, Fael Honovi does stay closer to me than they find comfortable. It’s a rare creature that naturally accepts faeries; and now that no mage keeps her away, she can hinder me as much as she pleases.

The cockerel darts in for an attack. I backpedal away, awkwardly dumping the entire bucket of feed on the ground before he can slice me with his spurs. Two of the chickens rush me.

I scurry to the gate, hoisting my skirts to clamber over the rail so I don’t let the chickens out. I trip, fall. Sharp pain in my neck greets my landing, first; other pains follow. The bucket crushes my ear—I yelp.

Biting my lip to keep from whimpering, I focus on ignoring the pain, the stabs and aches and throbs. They aren’t bad. They aren’t bad, I insist to myself. Carling has done worse to me—but that thought just makes those bad muscles decide to add to the injuries’ song of pain.

Besides, now that she can, Fael Honovi will spare me anything serious…I think. She might’ve let me get too cold, but she won’t let me get killed because of something that’s her fault. She’d face trial from her own kind if she did that.

My head hurts. I struggle to touch the pain’s source—yie, gently!—and find sticky wetness there and a cascade of pain. Tears escape me.

Between the dizziness and pain, I can’t get up.

· · · • • • · · ·

“Nallé?”

Lallie? A low moan escapes my throat. How do I speak?

“Nallé.” Lallie’s skirts brush me, and she kneels beside me. Nallé?

Oh, right. That’s me. Queen Maitane even dislikes ‘Nallé’ and insists on calling me ‘Nelly’. I’m not sure if she’s so snappy because she’s pregnant or just because she dislikes me.

And my head grows heavier the longer I lie here. The longer I lie, the heavier I feel, too. I couldn’t get up when first hurt; I don’t believe I can move, now. That’s probably bad.

“Your head,” Lallie says with merciful quietness. How can a wound to the head sharpen one’s hearing?

‘Is it bad?’ I try to ask, but all I hear is another grunt. Fael Honovi won’t save me from serious harm, then. Not reassuring.

Do you hate your foundling charge that much, Fael? ’Twasn’t my fault Father sought Mother the way he did.

Mother. That pain distracts me from the current torment that is my head and body. I bite my lip to hinder the tears. I see the flames eating her robe, tasting her flesh at their leisure.

And Father, so crimson with rage that he cared not that it is day in the castle garden, that all could see the disrobed shame of his own half-sister.

My eyes burn with tears I can’t stop. Mother!

Summer this year was dry, breezy. The sky had rained her ashes as I fled.

“I’ll fetch Ygrain.” Who is that? “I’ll be right back.”

I hear a whimper answer Lallie. I can’t bring myself to be surprised that it’s me.

The tending of my wounds will make them hurt more before they can hurt less. I look forward to the distraction.

· · · • • • · · ·

“Evonalé?”

Prince Aidan may be the only person who downright refuses to call me Nallé or Nelly. I feign continued sleep, pretend his whisper hasn’t awoken me.

He pokes me. “I know you hear me.”

How?

“You just twitched.”

I did? Throbbing pierces my head, and most of my body is aching or worse. I want to sleep, not talk. But my body betrays me with a shiver when I concentrate on staying limp.

“That was a fine mess with the chickens.” Does he expect me to reply? His talking doesn’t help my head. “Cook wanted to try you on the cows next.”

Cows can hurt you worse with their hooves than a cockerel can with its spurs. I flinch.

Wait, Cook wanted to do it? Not anymore? I open my eyes a slit, wincing at the too-bright light, so I can see his face; his expression tells almost as much as his words.

Prince Aidan’s grin widens. He shrugs. “Of course, that would’ve been asking them to kill you, so Father overrode it.”

I’m sick enough to feel irritated that I can’t tell the talkative prince to shut his mouth and let me sleep.

Then again, he may be my best source of information, since he is so socially inept as to chatter at someone with a head injury. “What…” I croak, but at least I can speak. “What am I to do?”

“Scrub my schoolroom’s floor.” His self-satisfaction shifts into alarm when I fight the weight in my head and try to get up. His loud “No!” makes me squawk in pain.

“That was a joke,” he continues, more quietly but still not quietly enough. “You have to stay abed awhile yet.”

I’m not stupid. Useless servants are expelled ones, as are ones who cost more to keep than they provide. But I can’t even sit, wouldn’t be able to pull myself up even if Prince Aidan didn’t hold me down when I try. “I need…work…”

“You need to get better!”

That, too. But I doubt the adults will let me return to full health before working. I must earn my keep.

But how can I do that when I can hardly move?

· · · • • • · · ·

I recover the ability to move about after about a week of convalescence. Walking is slow, awkward, and painful, but it’s doable. I’m young enough to still heal quickly.

My back has even stopped pulling wrongly, which speaks well for Healer Ygrain’s ability that she even noticed that magically induced injury, much less was able to heal it. I doubt Lallie said anything.

Stairs. The bucket is heavy in my grip, and the soapy water steams. How am I to get this up without losing it or the scrub brush? The brush latches to the bucket’s handle and clanks as I move; it’s pinching my fingers.

I lug myself up slowly, careful not to spill too much water nor to fall, again. I silently plead with Fael Honovi to not let Silva find me. She won’t like my being up today—nor will Healer Ygrain—but I won’t be cast out for not working. Prince Aidan hadn’t been joking about his schoolroom floor needing scrubbing: I’ve overheard some of the maids were arguing over who would finally perform the task, and when. It must be horrid.

Horrid is fine. A horrid floor means a lot of work for me, which is good. Work I can do means I might get to stay.

If I can get everything up these stairs, first. At least stairs aren’t alive and can’t hurt you on purpose. That’s an improvement over animals.

A cough wracks my chest, startling me. I stumble forward, slipping and catching myself on the stairs. Pain arches up my arm.

But in catching myself, I have to release the bucket, and it tumbles down the stairs, clanging loudly enough on its way down that I feel as if half the castle must’ve heard it as my head rings with pain from its lingering hypersensitivity. The hot sudsy water is all over, dripping from the stone walls, flowing down the mortar grooves and the stairs.

My lip bleeds from my biting it. I won’t cry. I won’t—not if whipped, not even if they cast me out.

A few of the maids reach me and see the mess. Their croons of “You poor dear” hardly make me feel better. I feel hap—helpless, but hapless works, too.

Silva shows up with an armload of towels, promptly dispersing them amongst the other maids for them to clean up and silently refusing to hand one to me. Water soon drips from the now-sopping towels. Why did I try to carry that bucket up the stairs? I know I’m clumsy. I should have asked one of the Runner boys to help me.

Lallie’s underdress today looks like she soaked it in strawberry syrup to dye it. She studies the mess and hands another armload of towels off to Silva. “Well,” Lallie says. “At least the stairs be clean.”

With my uselessness proved yet again, it’s a small comfort.

· · · • • • · · ·

The palace is very quiet at midnight, enough days later that others have relaxed their guard enough for me to escape my room again.

I’m quiet, too—silent, almost—as I pick my way through the halls, wrapped in a brown shawl Lallie gave me this afternoon when she brought me supper. My eyesight isn’t quite as keen as Mother’s was, but it’s good enough that I can get to the cow pasture north of the east garden, despite the slight moon. I think it’s close enough to a wood and a stream that linashor might grow there on solstice and equinox. I’m doing better after the stair incident, but Healer Ygrain still won’t hear of me working.

The night is cold enough to make me miss the wardings Mother used to embroider in my sleeves. Even if I knew how to use magic, I’m probably too human to do that.

My stomach twinges. Mother took me with her last year to do this, despite Father’s ban on harvesting linashor. She’d known Father wouldn’t keep her around much longer, I think. Even Gaylen had come, giving me some freshly carved knitting needles at dawn as a birthday present.

I shiver. Grandmother’s prophet Gaylen hadn’t survived to see the next full moon. And Drake had burned the needles to ash by the end of the month.

The fence isn’t much shorter than I am. I let myself in through the gate, sparing my still-injured head the risk of another fall.

In the pasture, a flickering light catches my eye. A firefly.

I crouch, the better to see the insect when it lights up above me. I wait. Cold seeps into my flesh.

There! I catch it and move my hand so it always keeps trying to climb up without getting there. I cup my hands around it and watch the glow.

The glow reminds me of the shiny herb that brought me here. Linashor glitters silver.

“Let me see the little tendrils, wafts lit by moonlit night. Let grow now here sweet linashor; let it reflect the moon bright!” Not that linashor tastes sweet, but I didn’t design the formal petition.

It will be harder to see under the sliver of a moon that is here, but linashor can only be harvested near solstice and equinox, when the boundaries between its realm and this one have weakened. I’ll feel much safer once I have some. Linashor, a powerful and well-guarded plant of a faery realm, negates active magic. A curse can be destroyed by it, and a cup of linashor tea can counter the otherwise-lethal Shadow, an illness that’s controlled by magic.

I flinch, instinct anticipating a blow for that heretical thought. The Shadow is lethal. Nothing can cure it.

Or so Father likes having others believe. I’d rather not know how he found the crypt that contained it. When I was two years old, I foolishly gave a family ‘guest’ who suffered from the Shadow a mug of linashor tea. He, a vassal who Father had intentionally struck with it, recovered from the so-called ‘incurable’ illness. Mother’s screams that night still haunt me.

A slight glint catches my eye in the dim moonlight: a benefit of having an ornery old faery as a godmother. The faeries who tend the linashor are renowned for denying requests. I suppose that Mother was Queen Yuoleen’s daughter might also influence the faeries’ unusual compliance with my petition.

I shiver as I remove my shawl. Despite the cold, I need a basket for harvesting the linashor, and the shawl does that well. The faeries let me see some delicate silver filaments; I untangle them from the grass with my little fingers.

I almost smile while plucking it. I can harvest this here, without fear of attack or execution. Even if a gryphon finds me, it can’t burn me alive; Mother ensured I’d be spared that threat. That was why Father killed her. But gryphons have other spells for killing.

It’s cold.

I may be safe from Father as far as Prince Aidan’s concerned, but I suspect Her Majesty and Cook would be too willing to give me to Father if he asked; not that anyone could keep me from him if he had a mind to seek me here. Which is why, even with the linashor, I must avoid gryphons. Entirely. Without letting anyone realize I know what I do.

Ignorance is safe to admit to owning. Knowledge is not. What you know can betray you, for you always learned it somewhere. Carling’s torture taught me that. She always made sure she could justify my torment when she tested her magery on me. She’s particularly vile when playing ‘healer’.

· · · • • • · · ·

A few days later, Prince Aidan laughs at me. “Oh, don’t be silly! Elves never get sick.”

“They do, too!” I insist, automatically scanning the courtyard for gryphons. I shiver in memory of their grotesque bulbous bodies, harsh cough-cawing and awkward flight. They can siphon, pulling the life energy from the victim’s body. …At least, Father’s gryphons can.

“Elves are designed for living in harsh climates.”

My brown shawl provides more warmth as I wrap it closer about me, sitting on the fountain’s rim. “Doesn’t mean they have to like it, or that they can’t get sick.” I sniffle. My body aches; my head throbs.

I’ve healed enough to move about, but with the cold I caught from the night harvesting linashor, Silva won’t hear of me working again yet. She’s still angry about the time Prince Aidan had to order me back to bed. Silva’s friend Lallie often ‘forgets’ a basket of mending in my room when she checks on me, so I’ve worked on that when I can. Lallie’s careful to keep it near empty so Ygrain and Silva don’t notice.

Prince Aidan scoffs, “Elves get sick, my foot!”

“They—” I sneeze, catching myself on the rim of the fountain so I don’t fall in “—get colds!”

“Elves get colds? Next thing I know, you’ll be telling me they suffer from plagues and mage-curses just like the rest of us!”

“They do,” I quietly protest and sniffle, but he isn’t listening. He’s rolling on the stones, laughing while destroying yet another tunic from his thoughtless actions. “Your Highness…”

“What?” His cross look speaks volumes. I flinch. “Don’t you ever laugh?”

I don’t understand the question. “Should you be mussing your garment?” I ask instead of thinking about how to answer something I don’t know. I sneeze again.

“Mussing? Mussing?” Prince Aidan looks at his garb, the dirt and rips; it’s beyond mending. He grins and climbs up the statue. His mother would have a fit to see him there.

His mother would have a greater fit to watch him leap off the statue in a somersault and land on his feet. My own stomach leaps into my throat at the sight. “Your Highness!”

“Bah!” He grins at my expression. “I made sure to learn that with Kitra there to make her wind catch me if I fell.” He grabs a stick off the ground and attacks the statue with some oddly graceful moves. “On guard, ah!”

He trips and lands face-first in the fountain, but he still grins after he sputters the water out. “Not quite how that was supposed to go.”

I daresay not.

He shoves himself up and resumes his play. “You won’t see Hickory using that!” he says after one move that evidently involves shoving one’s elbow into the torso of a stone statue. “He thinks he’s the best swordsman among we heirs. Gives him a head the size of a summer watermelon, but he doesn’t think me much of a threat.”

Prince Aidan bends over, picks a stone from the fountain, and flings it at the apple tree. I flinch as it strikes the trunk dead center. “Shows how much he knows,” the prince says, and he climbs out of the fountain.

I cringe away from him. He’s determined that I know he isn’t as foolish as he pretends around the other heirs, but why? What does it matter, what a foreign king’s bastard thinks of him? I sniffle, avoiding another sneeze.

“Come on; it’s getting dark. Let’s get some more garlic from Cook for you.”

Accepting his help to stand, I flex my bare toes, curling them around the plant covering the ground. I sigh. I don’t care for grass. I prefer moss. Mother did, too.

· · · • • • · · ·

After a few more days, my cold clears up enough for me to clean Prince Aidan’s schoolroom.

‘Elves, like dwarves, have keener eyesight than humans and prefer the dark from their generations of hiding from humans in caves.’

I stare at the page, stunned by the writer’s stupidity. Hide from humans? Both kinds have keener eyesight because we didn’t like torches, and magic has an inverse cost. The spells we cast for light made us less able to see in that light and more able to see in the dark. Now, after generations, bright light hurts the eyes of elves and dwarves alike. Neither of us do well in a desert.

I’m surprised to find such an inaccurate book in the crown prince’s schoolroom. Does he actually believe this nonsense?

I sit to continue reading.

‘Dwarves, though a rare sight, may be seen, and faeries encountered. Ware from those kinds is not so unheard-of that it cannot be found by those with the purse to pay for it.

‘The most mysterious form of all are the elves’ —Actually, anything that isn’t a Crystal-kind would be inherently more rare than the rarest of the Crystal-kinds, because the Crystals make each group stay the same race—‘whose wares are difficult to find, and much more so to own. They live in small independent kingdoms, without reliance on each other or the other kinds.’

That last bit sounds wrong, but it must be true, else Father would have control of all elves. …There are more elves than Father has bound, surely?

My lip bleeds from biting it, but I’m able to keep myself from freezing too much. Oh, I hope there are more of us!

—Them. More of them. I can’t let myself even think like that, not unless I want to slip and say it.

Read. That should distract me.

‘Dwarves, by contrast, live in large familial clans in caverns, rarely coming to the surface of Aleyi’—

“…Evonalé?”

I gasp, dropping the book in my haste to shut it to return it to the shelf. Prince Aidan’s voice reminds me of circumstances—I stumble back and tip over the bucket of hot suds, somehow catching it and me before we both completely topple.

At least this is the floor I intended to wash.

Determined to ignore the grit cutting into my skin, I drop to my knees and start scrubbing.

The water’s blackening already! Yie! What am I to do, call for William every ten minutes to help me get another bucket up the stairs?

The water’s still flowing. I glance at its trail.

The book!

I lunge to get it away from the water; slip; slide into the also-lunging Prince Aidan.

Pain explodes in my forehead, complementing the dagger of pain in the back of my head, reminded that it should probably still feel worse than a throb. I think the yelp was me.

Did he also fall?

When my vision clears, I see Prince Aidan rubbing his head with one hand and holding the book with the other. Dropping his hand from his head, he flips the pages with interest. “You read?”

I taste blood, blood as cold as the rest of me from fear. He saw me, so I can’t lie; and what sort of foundling can read? “A little, Your Highness.”

His scowl and sharp look freeze me. He scans a few pages as he flips through. “A little, you say?”

The book is advanced for someone who only reads ‘a little.’

I bite my lip at my error. I don’t respond, and I dare hope my punishment or whatever is to come won’t be too bad. Maids shouldn’t be able to read.

Prince Aidan’s hand slows in rubbing his head, drops. His glance is wry as he closes the book and returns it to the shelf. “How old are you?”

“Ten, Highness.” As of solstice. I bite my lip harder at his look, which scolds me for using his title.

“And you read fluent mountaineer.”

His silence wants an answer. “I suppose so, Highness.” Mother had taught me to read mountaineer and recognize some elvish by the first time Drake struck me with a poker. I think I was four.

He laughed. “Mother will love this.”

I cringe. No, she won’t. Your mother disdains me, Prince, though your father might share your laugh about it.

Father would flog me if he knew I could read. He’s killed others for the same offense. He’d avoid killing me, though; he liked sullying the line of Queen Yuoleen by Mother and therefore me. And he can’t kill me, not yet—not if he wants Drake to be able to inherit the Bynd. Drake’s older than I am, born before Father inherited the Bynd by siring me on Mother, and therefore the magic doesn’t consider him one of the family.

Father’s knowledge of how to enslave Grandmother’s kingdom came from books. I think they must have been written in mountaineer; that would explain why Father forbade us to learn to read it, and why my half-siblings thought faery script little more than pretty designs. At least I can interpret a few of the faerie glyphs.

I shiver and hastily rebury memories of Father and Drake and Carling. I don’t need to remember their sadistic play, not now.

Not ever, really. But I’m not stupid enough to wish they’ll stay buried indefinitely. Only fools wish for impossibilities. Even Mother never dared wish Father would leave her be.

I shudder. Stop thinking about that!

“Evonalé!” The sharp tone and the pain it ignites grab my attention, though not enough of it to stop my shivering. “Do you like to read?” Prince Aidan asks, his tone suggesting it’s a repeated question.

Fear freezes me once again. Why does he ask that? What does he want to know?

“Elves! Can’t you relax?”

I jerk. Elves?! What kind of exclamation is that?

“Elves,” he mutters again, unwittingly confirming that I hadn’t heard him wrongly. Yie!

“You’re as paranoid about questions as Mari is about her hair.”

Paranoid? Again, I meet a word I don’t know, this time with a name. “…Mari?”

“That’s right. You haven’t met her.” He frowns as he turns a thoughtful eye on me. “I don’t think she’ll like you much. Marigold, an essere’s daughter. About my age, but empty-headed enough to want to marry up.”

“You want to marry down?” escapes me before I can think better of it. Prince Aidan certainly isn’t empty-headed, and if he thinks such of those who want to marry up…

He shrugs. “I don’t have to think about it. Some betrothal that was supposed to apply to Father failed when the king didn’t sire a daughter, so it applies to me with the granddaughter.”

Such a longstanding betrothal would be hard to break, even if His Highness wanted to. “Do you like her?”

Another shrug. “At least I’m not wishing for the dowagers who’d be willing to expand my wealth.”

Father married down on purpose, but that was to keep in control, to stay the tyrant he was with the mistress of his choosing. A mistress of better blood than he!

On the mother’s side, at least. Their father…

My face flames; tears blind me, and I can’t stop shaking. I hate him! I hate Father!

I can’t breathe. I fight to gasp while I shake, turning my tears into sobs. Control yourself!

“Evonalé?!” Prince Aidan hesitates before he touches my shoulder. It’s the most princely I’ve seen him act.

If I don’t control myself, they’ll cast me out. With effort I force myself to calm, if barely. Trembling’s better than shaking. “Y—your Highness?”

He eyes at the mess of water on the floor, then glances to the door. “You’re disobeying Ygrain right now, aren’t you?”

Healer Ygrain is the healthiest old woman I’ve ever met. She doesn’t limp or shuffle at all, and she’s at least threescore years old.

“You should go back to bed.”

“I need to work.”

“You need to get better.” Someone passes the door. Prince Aidan frowns and dodges out. “Proctor! Proctor!”

The steward, Proctor, enters and bows. “Your Highness?”

Prince Aidan rolls his eyes. “Please see Evonalé back to her room and make sure she stays there until Ygrain releases her.”

Proctor doesn’t move. “The girl does need to earn her keep, Your Highness.”

Prince Aidan scowls. “I’ll worry about what she does or doesn’t need!” He grabs my arm and shoves me towards Proctor. “And what she ‘needs’ is to get better before she can ‘earn her keep’!” Though a subadult, he is the prince, and for once he’s actually using the power that comes with that.

For me. Why? Why me? I don’t like this.

· · · • • • · · ·

Another day, Prince Aidan pokes his head in the room where I work on the mending.

“Come see this!” The prince stops in the hall and scowls back at me when I ignore him. “Evonalé!”

I set my mending aside and obey, following him as he not-quite runs. Moving as quickly as I can or dare to, I manage the twists and turns without mishap, but then we reach the kitchens’ few steps. I stumble down them, landing on Cook’s bread cart.

Quickly, I shove myself off. I curtsy, intensely aware of the flour on my skin. “Forgive me, Cook—”

“You double-crossed luckless lout! Foundling of your mother’s whoring!”

How dare she! Mother fought harder to keep Father from siring me on her than she had to keep her own queendom! Sweat pools at my temples as fire floods my body. “My mother was weak-bodied, not loose!”

I recognize the following pain and stumbling as from a backhand across my face. Cook grabs me and drags me towards the kitchen. “You foul-mouthed waif! You don’t even know what you say—some soap will fix that for you!”

As if I don’t! I snap at her hand and taste blood. “It’s true! May Fael Honovi cross the liar of us!”

Immediately a support for one of Cook’s pots breaks, sending the large pot of stew into the fire.

Cook freezes, shocked. I manage to wriggle out of her grasp, but have a torn sleeve and crooked pinafore for my trouble. Lallie sighs loudly from where she stands behind Cook, well out of the way, scrubbing a stew pot.

I must calm down. Anger only makes things worse.

Lallie pointedly sighs again, and I realize she’s urging me to breathe deeply, to relax. I try to follow her advice. I straighten my pinafore, then pull a needle and thread from my pouch and repair my sleeve. I prick myself in my furious trembling, but that’s good—the pain helps me calm.

After a near minute of shock, Cook glowers at me as I finish my sleeve, tugging the thread and cutting it with my teeth. “Fael Honovi? What kind of faery protects fatherless waifs? I’ve never heard of her!”

Certain faeries have earned reputations for the type of child they befriend; most people don’t realize such faeries are a minority. I hesitate, then decide to mimic royal etiquette. She won’t believe me. Faeries don’t trouble themselves with bastards. “Fael Honovi is my godmother,” I primly inform Cook.

I scurry out back after Prince Aidan before Cook can hit me with a rolling pin.

His Highness scowls when I catch up. “Where were you? —Never mind that.” He takes my arm to help me down the stairs. “We haven’t much time!”

Time for what? I follow him past the dog pens where his bitch Plun greets him. He absentmindedly croons at her as we pass. We pass the main stables, around a pasture, and into a smaller stable. The horse was on the ground in his stall before we arrived, so it isn’t my godmother—

There’s a wet foal beside the horse. She, then. A mare. She’s beautiful, though, utterly black.

“We missed it,” Prince Aidan gripes, though quietly. He knows not to disturb the resting mare.

“Not by long, Your Highness,” the stableman replies softly. “Not long enough to miss the bonding.”

“I’ve seen horses born before.” I would hide in the stables, sometimes, but not often enough for Father or Drake or Carling to realize it. Horses adapt to my godmother better than most animals, for whatever reason.

The mother and foal rouse themselves, the foal clambering to its feet to suckle.

“There’s a good baby,” His Highness croons. The mare flicks her ear his way but doesn’t react when he quietly opens the stall. “Evonalé.”

My godmother might show up and aggravate the pair. “Oh, no, I—”

His bland stare reminds me that I’m nobody to refuse. I flush and obey. He takes me by the shoulder to make sure I don’t trip. He’s even patient about it.

Once I’m crouched and unlikely to topple myself or anything else, he takes a cloth from the stableman and hums as he gently rubs the foal dry. The foal fast accepts the handling. “A filly.”

She shares her mother’s black mane and tail, but her coat’s shiny brown. “She’s beautiful.” Father’s mares wouldn’t dare ignore Drake if he tried entering their stall.

“A classic champagne,” the stableman says. “Nicely done, Your Highness.”

“Thank you.”

When does Prince Aidan have time for his lessons or duties, in between caring for his animals and harassing me? “You picked the breed pair?”

He shakes his head. “Poor Shada here belonged to…someone who saw her docility as a detriment. Fortunately, I inherited her before her old owner beat the sweet temper out of her. Took most of a year to get her over the timidity, but she’s better-natured than my Hind, even—my gelding. She’ll let anyone ride her that I ask. Not a good mount for new riders, though. She likes improvising.”

“Many fortunate happenings came from that particular inheritance, Your Highness,” the stableman says gruffly.

Prince Aidan stiffens. The mare Shada shifts her weight.

“Your brother?” Both the stableman and His Highness stare at me, which answers my question. I swallow back the chill at this reminder that Lallie said nobody speaks of him. “Sorry.”

His Highness hums and rubs Shada’s nose. “We don’t speak of Henrik. I’m the crown prince, now.” He glances at the stableman. “Go. I’ll see to Shada tonight.”

The stableman obeys his prince. I stand carefully and quietly open the gate.

“You like the filly, Evonalé? You called her beautiful.”

“She is.” I move slowly so I don’t accidentally knock anything over and disturb the filly or her dam. “Her coat glistens.”

“Little girl needs a name, doesn’t she?” he croons to the filly, and I eye her.

Her coat reminds me of rowan wood. “Rowan?”

“Rowan,” he repeats. “That’s a good name. Rowan. You like that, girl?” Prince Aidan grins at me. “You’re better at naming animals than I was. My first pet was a black cur. I called him Night.” Less overused than Blackie. “You’ll be a good girl for your lady, won’t you, Rowan? Like your dam is?”

“She’s to be your mother’s?”

Prince Aidan snorts. “She’s yours, Evonalé.”

What?! I recoil back and trip through the gate. Shada snorts but doesn’t panic.

His Highness sighs heavily. He helps me out of the barn so I don’t fall again. “Giving yourself another head injury won’t make her any less yours. I have the papers ready and everything, just waiting for her coloring and name.”

“You can’t give me a horse!”

“Why not? She’s mine to give.”

I know what it bodes when a man gives such a costly gift to a lowborn woman. I swallow hard. I have six years yet before that can happen to me, but it’s still inappropriate. “Your father won’t like it!”

Prince Aidan blinks. “It was my father’s idea.” He pats Shada. That mare trusts him an impressive amount. “Give you a horse, get you to join me on riding lessons, hand you a way to make a fast exit if you need it.”

My flesh crawls as it chills. “…What?!” I squeak.

“You know I met Queen Endellion? I was little—perhaps four—but I remember thinking she looked more of a queen in her rags and dirt than most others I’d seen in their full splendor.”

Father let Mother come here?

“You do not do her credit.” He re-enters the barn before I can splutter a reply.

How in creation does he know whose daughter I am?!

· · · • • • · · ·

“Evonalé.” His Majesty’s calm voice startles me into dropping my sewing.

“Y—your Majesty?” I daren’t look at him. Prince Aidan said his father had suggested he give me the horse, and if Prince Aidan remembers meeting my mother, well…Surely his father does.

His Majesty sits on the edge of the bench. From the corner of my eye, I glimpse his loose silk tunic wafting in the breeze. Cobalt blue is a good color for him. “How is the mending coming?”

I curl my toes in the grass at the odd question. “Well, Your Majesty.” I’ve been mending dresses and aprons and blankets and…everything that other maids did at one time or another before such work was shifted to me. It’s all that I cando—all I can do well, rather. Lallie has helped me with the foreign seams I hadn’t known, and not-princess Kitra liked my creative mending of her blouse enough that she gave me a few cesses for it.

“Silva said I’d find you here.” He waits for my response. None. “She says you always bring your sewing out, your feet bare despite the cold, and sit here. If it’s raining, you sit on a little stool, with the door open. You like the outdoors.”

Breathe! I remind myself when a bit of dizziness hits, chomping my lip so I don’t shiver from the cold. The king keeps too close an eye on what I do. That’s not good. It wasn’t good for Mother when her king paid notice to her, though I’m thankfully too young to worry about it being bad in that way…yet. And surely His Majesty behaves himself, if he killed his own son for not.

“I hear you like to read.”

Prince Aidan must’ve told him that.

After a brief pause, he asks, “You like to learn?”

Do I? I unclench and reclench my toes around the grass, trying to ignore his long look.

“You sew beautifully.”

“Thank you, Majesty.” I like sewing. I used to help…

“Did your mother teach you?” A shudder takes me against my will. He continues before I can frame a reply. “Never mind. That was unkind of me.”

Another shiver. I hate when kings feign civility. Something cruel always follows.

“You have a good eye for aesthetics, for how to make things lovely. You may even have the gift of beauty.”

The gift of beauty—the ability to bring out the beauty in others, more common in plain woman than comely ones. Getting myself noticed isn’t safe. I swallow and concentrate on containing the internal ice.

“A handmaid with that ability, or even a hint of it, would suit Claiborne.”

Claiborne?

He smiles gently at my confusion. “The princess,” he clarifies. “She may not yet be born, but Her Majesty and I are certain as to her gender.”

A faery probably told the Majesties, or a prophet. Some people with faery ancestry can prophesy.

“I hear you don’t like the gift I arranged for you.”

Rowan. I swallow. “It isn’t appropriate, Majesty.”

“True.” I’m not sure if it makes me feel any better about the gift, if even King Aldrik admits it’s excessive. “But she’s yours, nonetheless. Make sure to spend time at the stables; you’ll need to be the one to train her. And you’ll need to learn how to ride, for that matter.”

I lurch up to bob a curtsy and plop back down before I fall. “Thank you, Majesty,” I mumble. What does he want from me?

For now, I need to finish the sewing. Just a few more stitches to finish this scarf’s seam. It’s hard to concentrate, but I manage it despite His Majesty watching me. I fold it up and put it in my basket, ready to pull out an apron—

“Come with me, please.”

I grimace with the streak of ice that pierces me at his words, and I obey. Now I’ll find what he wants. I swallow back the tears as best I can, but one forms, frozen solid in the corner of my eye. I pry it out with a grimace.

We pass others, other maids, servants, a noble or four, all watching curiously, one lord with the slight contempt I know well. I keep my head down, trying not to trip while almost wishing that I might fall and get hurt again so I can’t fulfill His Majesty’s whim, whatever it is.

His Majesty positions himself a bit behind me as we go up some steps, ready to catch me if I fall. The strange behavior troubles me and keeps the ice from thawing as I wish it would. If he touched me now, he’d know for certain what I am. He would know what my emotion-based temperature means.

Prince Aidan’s voice comes from a room we approach. “Eight times seven: fifty-six. Eight times eight: sixty-four. Eight times nine: seventy-two…” His Highness quotes the multiplication tables. “Eight times twelve…”

Our entrance distracts him into speechlessness, and I quickly add the numbers. Eighty plus sixteen…“Ninety-six?”

The silence lengthens. All three—His Majesty, His Highness, and His Highness’s tutor—stare at me in blank surprise. I flush and swallow, abruptly remembering that Carling wasn’t taught math. Human females usually don’t learn it.

His Majesty smiles, then. “Eight times twenty-four?”

“Um…” It’s a command, so I obey. Eighty plus eighty plus thirty-two. “One hundred…”—sixty plus thirty-two—“ninety-two?” Or, I now realize, I could’ve just doubled my previous answer. Oh, well.

King Aldrik raises an eyebrow at the tutor, a reedy balding man with glasses, the spindly scholarly man I’d noticed on my first day here. “I’ll expect you to train her the same you would any noble son.”

The tutor opens his mouth and shuts it a few times before managing to say, “But Your Majesty…She is neither a son nor a noble…” I can’t help but worry when the king gives the tutor a long look. “Not a son, at least,” the tutor corrects.

Alarm spears me. I’m not a noble child!

…But I am of high rank. Sort of. Supposing I ever should’ve existed in the first place. Which I shouldn’t have. Curse Father, I shouldn’t have!

His Majesty’s expression solidifies into stern politeness. “Evonalé will receive the best training you can give her, or I shall find a replacement of fewer prejudices. Do I make myself clear, Woad?” This brand of kingly behavior, of threats, is more familiar to me.

Mister Woad winces and bows. “My apologies, Aldrik, but I’m not certain that I could train her to maximum efficiency…within the limits.” What limits? What did I miss?

“Do as best you can,” His Majesty allows with surprising generosity considering his previous demand and Mister Woad’s use of the king’s given name. “And Silva will assist you.”

…Since when did maids help tutors?

Prince Aidan perks up. “But—”

“No,” the king interrupts his son’s protest.

“You won’t let her teach me anything!”

…And what knowledge could Silva have that Prince Aidan covets? Sewing? The thought sparks a threatening giggle, which thaws me. Mostly. Even Geddis sews better than Silva. Lallie tends to sneak things out of Silva’s pile before Silva gets a chance to work on them. It’s easier than fixing her messes.

“You aren’t Evonalé,” His Majesty says simply, tweaking his son’s nose. “And you need to learn how to do things properly before learning how to cheat.”

…Cheat?

“Just one tracking spell?” His Highness’s fourteen-year-old voice is excruciatingly annoying when it whines.

Silva knows spells?!

“I doubt she knows any of those,” Mister Woad comments.

“She does; she told me so.”

King Aldrik considers that. “Bring home your first deer, and I’ll let Silva teach you a tracking spell.”

“It wasn’t my fault the dogs found—”

“Aidan.” The king’s mild yet firm voice halts his son. “Bring home your first deer, and I’ll ask Silva to teach you the tracking spell.”

Silva being a mage explains a lot; that would give His Majesty cause to stay on good terms with her. Is Lallie one, too?

His Majesty nods at Mister Woad. “Carry on.”

Prince Aidan quickly fetches me a chair to sit at the table with him. He grins. “You’ll teach me some magic, won’t you, Evonalé?”

“She certainly will not,” Mister Woad says dryly. “But she will write down her multiplication tables as far as she has memorized on your spare slate.”

His Highness finds the slate and some chalk to hand me. Mister Woad watches me steadily, waiting for me to start.

I lack a choice, short of defying His Majesty. I start writing.

——————

I hope you’ve enjoyed this section of A Fistful of Fire. It’s up here on Wattpad in its entirety, and feel free to read it all here. (Note that all the sections of this book are of uneven lengths. I’m sorry for that. This was the first title I posted on Wattpad with long-term intent, and I was focused on dividing by timeline sections, as the book is, rather than considering what would make it convenient to read.)

 • A FISTFUL OF FIRE is available for sale in e-book and print formats. Links to purchase it can be found at http://bit.ly/showcase-AFoF (click the little "External Link" URL in the right sidebar). You can also search for it on Amazon or your preferred vendor.

 • The sequel, A FISTFUL OF EARTH, is also available both on Wattpad and for sale in e-book and print formats. It's on Wattpad at www.wattpad.com/story/6039622. Links to purchase it can be found at http://bit.ly/showcase-AFoE, or you can search for it on Amazon or your preferred vendor.