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Chapter 1

Morgana

R emember, this is keeping you alive.

I choke down a bitter mouthful of crimson potion, trying to ignore the way it burns all the way down to my stomach. A comforting hand rests on my back, rubbing soothing circles as I breathe through the ordeal.

This is the price I pay for being too weak. Too weak to live in the capital with my parents, too weak to have any magic at all. Every day my body is in a fight to survive, a battle I can only win with help. That’s what I remind myself in these moments, when I brace to swallow and fight the urge to vomit.

Without this medicine, I’m dead.

“Well done,” my nursemaid, Etusca, says, like clockwork.

When I was a child, she used to have to hold me down to make me take the mixture as I screamed and sobbed, fat tears staining my bedsheets. She cried with me, but she still held firm, giving me no choice but to take the medicine I needed, the potion she crafted herself to save me. Now, I don’t remember the last time I cried, with or without taking it.

Etusca starts to lift the goblet from my white-knuckled grasp, but I tilt it away from her.

“I can do it,” I say, my voice calm. She doesn’t argue—but she never does these days. She doesn’t think twice as I rise and carry the cup across to the wash basin beside my bed. She simply brushes her jade-colored hair out of her face and drifts across to the window.

Once her back is turned, I slide a jar out from beneath my bed with one foot and tip the remains of the goblet’s potion into it, coughing to cover the telltale trickling noise. This is what Etusca didn’t see, the few thimblefuls left at the bottom of the cup. I wish I was able to reserve more, but I have to make sure I keep drinking most of the potion.

The last drop collected, I nudge the jar back beneath the bed with practiced swiftness. The whole process takes mere seconds, and then I’m rinsing the goblet in the wash basin and setting it neatly back down in its spot, ready for tomorrow.

Later, when Etusca isn’t around, I’ll replace the lid on the jar, making sure to keep my precious stash safe, but for now I try to act natural, turning to see my nursemaid’s pale eyes still on the window. I know she doesn’t truly see anything beyond the glass. She’s many miles away from this place—we both wish we were. She’s longing for the homeland she hasn’t seen for decades, and me? I just want to be anywhere but here.

Beyond this bedroom, there’s no loving family awaiting me, no parents or siblings, only quiet, diligent staff and guards with glinting swords at their hips. I was thirteen by the time I understood Gallawing Manor isn’t truly my home. It’s my prison.

When I got old enough to ask Etusca why my parents sent me here when I was born, she explained that they were important nobles living in the capital of Elmere, near the royal court. They had too many enemies to risk keeping such a weak child close, so they arranged this household in secret for their fragile, sickly daughter. Of course, I was much older before I understood that should hardly stop them coming to visit me if they truly wanted. They must not have, because I’ve only ever seen them once, from afar.

I was nine. Etusca had sent me out to play in the gardens when an unfamiliar carriage rattled up the driveway. It was so rare that we received visitors, I was dying to know who had arrived, but I was met with only stony silence when I begged the guards to let me inside. The most I got was a brief glimpse of their two faces, staring out of the manor windows at me. I guessed immediately who they were and forced Etusca to admit it when they’d gone. They left without saying a word to me.

I’d vowed that I wouldn’t cry over them, and I’d managed to hold myself to that until I was alone in bed that night. Then the tears came. Large fat ones dripped onto my pillow until it was soaked as I cried myself to sleep. But by the time I woke up the next morning, the pillow was dry, and I was resolved not to let them get to me again.

I’ve tried to forget that day. What else is there to do about two people who have so clearly forgotten me ? I learned to plaster on a fake smile through every forgotten birthday and holiday absence even if I lost a small part of myself every time.

Etusca—part nursemaid, part surrogate parent—did the best she could and I’ll always be grateful for her consistent presence in my life. She was the one who taught me to read and encouraged me to explore the library to understand the real world that wasn’t available to me beyond the manor walls. And when I lay there in agony every morning, the medicine feeling like it was burning a hole inside me, she would tell me stories to distract me. But for how much longer?

“Shall we go to breakfast, Essy?” I ask.

A little line forms between her brows as she looks at me, as if she’d forgotten I was there.

“I’m not hungry just now, dear. I’m feeling quite tired.”

I hide a wince as she drifts over to a chaise. It’s been impossible to deny over the last few years—Etusca is fading. Her once vibrant green skin has become pale and mottled, and she’s unfocused, distracted, as if she’s living half in a dream. Like all the best healers in Trova, she’s a dryad from the nation of Agathyre, and every dryad suffers when they spend too long away from the dense, enchanted forest that dominates their homeland.

It's my fault.

I’ve lived to see my twenty-first year thanks to Etusca’s skill with viatic magic. I rely on the complex potion she brews that makes sure my weak body doesn’t fail, but twenty-one years is a long time for a dryad to be away from the Miravow. In the last few years, my once warm, affectionate nursemaid has become a shadow of herself.

I give her hand a squeeze and mutter something about bringing breakfast back for her. I’m not sure she hears me because she barely shifts as I slip out into the hall. I try to calm the ache of guilt in my heart. Etusca may be suffering because of staying here in Trova for me, but that will all change soon.

Things have been different at Gallawing lately since the old head of guards, Will, left and was replaced by a man called Marlowe. I never liked feeling stuck here, but at least when Will was in charge, the confinement felt safe. It doesn’t anymore. I have to get out of here, and it has to happen soon.

And once I leave, Etusca will be free too. Without a charge to look after, she can go home, and we’ll both get what we want.

My footsteps echo across the flagstones of the manor corridors, made up of checkered marble of black and ivory. Occasionally, I’ll pass the silent sentinels of the guards, and they’ll slip into the shadows. They’re trained to be neither seen nor heard, to act as if I don’t exist, though I’m the very reason for their existence, here in this echoey mansion.

A splash makes me freeze mid-step. I look down to see I’ve stepped in a small puddle of water on the polished floors. I search for the source, rain blown in from an open window maybe, but they’re all closed. My muscles stiffen as the water in front of me starts to bubble and froth, large droplets of it skidding across the floor of their own accord.

“Good morning, Bede,” I say through gritted teeth.

A rasping chuckle carries toward me as he steps into the corridor.

Sometimes the guards break the rules about interacting with me.

I take a step back under the guise of shaking the water from my shoe, but I keep an eye on him—specifically the distance between me and those big, clutching hands of his.

“Your handiwork, I suppose,” I say, trying to sound bored while nodding at the still-bubbling water.

He releases his magic, letting the puddle grow still.

“I had to get your attention somehow.”

I’m taller than average, so Bede doesn’t have much height on me, but he’s twice as wide as me and burly as a bull. His dull brown hair is cut brutally short, giving his face a kind of tight, stretched look. It makes the whites of his eyes and the sheen on his teeth stand out as he grins at me.

I resist the urge to shudder; he only enjoys it more when he gets a reaction from me.

“Congratulations, you successfully got me wondering who’d had a little accident. Next time, clean up after yourself.”

I lift my skirts to sidestep the water, head held high, but the hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end, and my heart is jittery in my chest. I’ll need to pass him—turning and walking away would only confirm I’m afraid, and he’d like that too much. I keep my features still as stone, striding down the corridor toward him, my eyes anywhere but on his hungry expression.

I hold my breath as I come level with him, and for a fleeting moment I think he’ll let me pass without another word. Then his hand shoots out, catching my wrist.

I don’t fight it, no matter how badly I want to. The urge is there to drive a fist into his side, finally putting to use the training Will gave me. With the element of surprise on my side, I could wipe that smirk off Bede’s face, at least for a little while—and that would be immensely satisfying. Reckless and ultimately pointless, but oh so satisfying.

Instead, I give him a look that should burn holes into his skull—and maybe it would, if I could will myself into being an incendi, able to summon fire at will. Instead, I’m me—the broken girl too weak to ever conjure so much as a gust of air.

I try to stay calm, but that reminder of how little I have in my arsenal ramps my panic up a few notches. I’m not strong enough to fight him without magic.

“I’m surprised you’re not on the twilight shift, Bede,” I say. In fact, I thought I had Bede’s schedule memorized; it’s been crucial in avoiding him. “Isn’t that when Saronson runs his card game? Surely, you’d want to be there to thrash them instead of working a boring shift like this.”

It turns my stomach to play to his ego, but I know it’s smarter than angering him. I hate the tightrope I have to walk between being nice and standing firm, the one that could so easily snap and send me plummeting downward.

“Oh, I’d win a game against those morons alright.” He smirks. “But why would I pass up the chance to see you? Especially when we’ve had so little time together lately.”

His hot breath grazes my cheek, and once again I clamp down on my instinct to flinch away but my breath comes out louder than I intended. His satisfied smile tells me he knows how much I loathe him.

“You can keep playing hard to get, my sweet. But soon you’ll give me what I want.”

I know exactly what that is, what thoughts have been circling in Bede’s hideous mind. Since his arrival a few months ago, his gaze on me has turned from intrigued, to lewd, to downright ravenous.

He’s had to bide his time, of course—not be too obvious. But he figured out quickly that Marlowe doesn’t give a damn what happens to me as long as I don’t interfere with his schedule of spending his nights in town, getting drunk and making trouble, and his days in his private quarters, sleeping it off. Taking the measure of the guards took longer, but Bede’s slowly ingratiated himself with them, and now he’s one of the leaders of the pack. No one seems to either notice or care about his interest in me. Since he’s realized how defenseless I am, he’s stopped bothering to hide his twisted desire, especially when it’s so easy to get me alone.

I’m so often alone.

“But you don’t want to be wasting time with me,” I play it light, like the thought’s just occurred to me. “People might get the wrong idea.”

“What people? The other guards?” he laughs. “How about that oblivious maid of yours? Or that ugly cook and her little slut of a daughter? What business is it of theirs?” He takes a step closer. “If they’re the sort to tell tales about what happens here, it seems to me they pose a security risk and will need to be dealt with accordingly. Should I report them to Marlowe?”

I fight to keep my face from crumpling. Bede is Marlowe’s favorite, and he knows how to exploit that. He also knows exactly where my weaknesses are. If Bede reported Tira as a troublemaker, her family could face serious consequences. I can’t risk that. I won’t. Which means I have to handle this another way.

“Bede? What are you doing? You know you’re not supposed to touch her.” My head snaps up to see one of the younger guards standing in the doorway. His hand hovers over his sword, but he’s smart enough not to draw it.

“Mind your own business, Sneeze ,” Bede tells him as his grip tightens on me. Sneeze isn’t his name and for the life of me, I can’t remember what it is, but it’s clear that when Bede can’t charm the others, he’s willing to bully them. The young man swallows, his fingers brushing the hilt but he doesn’t leave.

Swallowing back my disgust, I put my free hand to the one clutching my wrist, gently lifting it away. He seems so surprised I’d willingly touch him that he lets go.

“If you’ll excuse me,” I say more evenly, “I’m expected at breakfast.”

His smile widens, exposing his shiny teeth, but though he’s let my wrist drop, he doesn’t withdraw his fingers. Instead, he runs them all the way up my arm until his knuckles graze the curve of my breast.

“Bede.” The young guard clears his throat, but my tormentor ignores him, his eyes on me.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, and my stomach curdles. “Be nice, and I’ll make sure you’re taken care of. I’m missing the twilight shift because I’m on duty later tonight. That’s when we’ll have our fun.”

I pull away, appalled. He just laughs at the noise of disgust I make, his grin even wider.

“You can swan around here like a queen all you like, but I bet you still scream like a whore,” he whispers to me before he turns to walk away. He passes the young guard and speaks loud enough for me to hear. “You better hope you know which end to point should you ever be stupid enough to pull that blade on me,” he threatens him.

It’s all I can do to keep from throwing up. I don’t dare say another word—in my defense or the guard’s—I just take my chance to retreat down the corridor. I hate my silence as they both watch me go.

I knew this day was coming. It was only a matter of time before Bede grew confident enough to lay hands on me. It’s why I started making plans these last few months, knowing all along I was running out of time.

At least Bede is arrogant enough to brag about his intentions. It means I can plan accordingly. Today will be my last at the manor.

* * *

Steam billows from the stove Una bends over to stir something hot and aromatic in a deep pot.

“Lunch?” I ask, breathing it in. “Smells good.”

“And it will be good,” she says, “but you’ve got to have your breakfast first.”

She straightens up, adjusting the curly hair piled haphazardly on top of her head and tied in place with a magenta scarf. Una Holms and her family are the brightest spots of color and vibrancy in my life, so it’s fitting that they always dress brightly, whether working in this dreary house or at the inn Una’s husband owns in the village. Her eyes land on me now and narrow shrewdly.

“Are you alright, my dear? You look pale as anything.”

I force my face into a smile. “Yes, fine. Like you say, I probably just need to eat something.” I move toward the pastries piled on the counter, freshly made every morning by Una’s deft hands. I may be trapped in this place with no family and creeps breathing down my neck, but I’ve never wanted for good food.

A foot kicks open the back door, the rest of the figure blocked by a pile of perfectly split logs with curly hair sprouting out over the top.

“Good morning, Tira,” I say as Una’s daughter drops the pile into the basket in the corner.

“Mornin’, Ana. Wait, what’s wrong?” My best friend looks me over, instantly noticing something’s off. For most people, I have a hard face to read—Will used to comment on it often enough when we played chess—but these women know me too well.

I start to shrug, but she’s grabbing a pastry with one hand and my fingers with the other, dragging me toward the back door before I can form an excuse.

“Tira,” Una scolds, “you’re supposed to be helping me with this stew.”

“Later please, Mom. Ana and I have to talk.”

We’re tucked up in the folds of our favorite statue in the gardens five minutes later, the goddess Firesta’s flaming skirts making a good perch, just as it has since we were scrawny little girls. I was so desperate for someone—anyone—to see me back then. To treat me as more than an expensive vase to be watched over, occasionally polished and put back up on the shelf.

I ran into Tira, sharp-eyed and colorfully dressed, in the gardens the first day her mother brought her to work. I was seven and imperiously ordered her to tell me her name, because back then everyone I’d met were servants who mostly did what I asked or guards who ignored me. Tira promptly shoved me over in the mud and told me to be more polite.

I loved her immediately.

“That scumbag,” she growls after she’s dragged the story of my encounter with Bede out of me, brandishing her pastry like she might be able to murder him with it. “That filthy, motherfucking maggot.”

“I doubt he has a mother to fuck,” I say, taking her rage and running with it. “He probably just got spawned by some hideous worm thing and spat out from the wrong end.”

“Definitely. You wait, the next time he sits down on a nice wooden seat?—”

She makes a little gesture and a tree stump a few feet from us explodes into a spray of splinters. Tira is a geostri—an earth-magic user, but she rarely uses her talent for splitting wood outside of her day-to-day chores. I grin at her suggestion until I remember how I ended my conversation with Bede. At that, the smile dies on my face.

“As much as I love the idea of you decorating his genitals with wood shards, that’s not going to do you or your mom any good.”

“I’ll stay with you tonight, hide in your room. He can’t take on both of us; he’s not even that strong an aquari,” she says.

It’s true Bede seems incapable of doing much more than frothing up small puddles. “But he’s strong in other ways,” I say. “And he’s got authority. He’ll just kick you out, or worse. And even if we stall him tonight, what about tomorrow, or the next day? He won’t stop looking for an opportunity.”

I can see her running through the options, looking for a counter argument.

“This isn’t your fight, Tira,” I say firmly.

“What about Etusca?” She’s still determined to help me, but she doesn’t sound hopeful. She’s noticed the dryad’s frailty too. “If you told her about Bede, couldn’t she stop him?”

“Etusca can hardly get up in the morning, let alone stand up to Marlowe and his golden boy. No, I have to get myself out of this.” I exhale, knowing once I say it out loud there would be no going back. “I have to get myself out for good.”

Her eyes widen, and she grabs my hand. “You’re going tonight? Do you even have enough potion?”

“Yes,” I say with more confidence than I feel. “I have enough to get me close to the coast. My body’s gotten used to the reduced dose by now, so I can ration it out until I find another healer who can make me more. Then when I reach Gullert, Will can help me.”

If Will were still here as head of the guards, none of this would be happening. He’s the only one of them who ever actually liked me.

He was older than most of the others, and I think at first he felt sorry for the lonely little girl he’d been tasked with watching. Then, pity grew into something almost paternal. He started teaching me how to do things, taking an interest in the basic lessons Etusca would give me in the afternoons. I learned my most important lessons from Will—how to think strategically, how to watch out for myself—things not in the library books.

He taught me to play chess, each move a lesson on how to attack and how to defend—and most of all, how to stay two steps ahead of my opponent. Then there were the self-defense lessons. While I couldn’t counteract any magical attacks, I lived for the looks of approval he gave me when I finally learned how to land a punch or break a hold on me.

And then one day, after nine long years, he had to leave. He’d always had salt and pepper hair and crinkles around the eyes, so I guess I never thought of him as getting old, but he told me about his dream of retiring to the coast and told me that if I ever left Gallawing, I should come look him up. He didn’t sound hopeful. We both knew this was more of a prison than a home and no one would be letting me out of this place on their watch, not while they’re still paid to keep me here.

Well, I’m through waiting for permission.

“It’s pretty sad, isn’t it,” I say with a grim smile as I pick at one of Firesta’s mossy toes. “The only people I count as friends are people employed to spend time around me.” I flick a bit of the moss at Tira. “You’d probably be out of this place like an arrow without all the coin.”

“Oh absolutely. I only talk to you because of the mountains of furs and jewels it allows me to buy,” Tira says. “Tragic, really.”

My smile spreads into a grin. “Really tragic. And I bet Will thought he’d got rid of me. Think how disappointed he’ll be when I turn up.”

“Disappointed? He’ll be devastated.” Tira pulls a face of such horror that I choke out a laugh. Sometimes my life is too awful not to be funny.

“Come to the inn tonight before you go,” Tira says, serious now.

I shift in my seat, unsure if it’s a good idea. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to face saying goodbye.

“I’ve got some traveling clothes you can have,” she prompts. “You can’t tell me you’ve managed to scare up normal clothes in this place, no matter how clever and sneaky you are.”

She’s right. I nod, and Tira looks relieved. We slide down from our perch on the statue, and Tira grumbles about getting back to the kitchen. The air is crisp, but not quite cold, and I walk through the gardens, trying to absorb every leaf and flower, convincing myself that this is the last time I’ll look at them.

The gardens are beautiful, like everything else here. It really is a lovely cage. But what my parents can’t have understood is that no amount of beauty would save me, not without people surrounding me who truly care. Will cared, but he’s gone. Etusca cares, but she’s fading. Una and Tira care, but they’re largely powerless here.

My parents sent me here to keep me alive. But if this is all there is to living, how could it be worth it?

I watch a dark-tailed gallawing hop across the grass—the bird after which the manor is named. It tilts its head at me before it takes flight, sailing away with a freedom I’ve always envied.

Tonight, I’ll break free. If I have to stay in this prison another day, I’m not sure I’ll survive.