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Chapter 1

Olivia

O livia dipped her head toward the colorful, fragrant pile in her arms and breathed deeply. Nothing made her quite as happy as a bright sun in a blue sky and the smell of wildflowers. She loved summer.

Squelch. Her left foot landed in something soft, and she froze. She couldn’t see what it was through the bundle of flowers in her arms, but she couldn’t imagine it was anything pleasant.

Drawing a deep breath, she twisted her arms to the side and peered downward. Mouse droppings.

Her eyes widened. The mice in Sovar were larger than those in other kingdoms, but she had never seen such a large pile of droppings. And placed just there, as if waiting for her. With the flowers obscuring her vision, she had stepped fully into it, her shoe almost totally subsumed.

She let out a wail. The Legacy might have forced her into becoming a servant for her relatives, but this was going too far. Was it really too much for her to be both clean and fragrant for five minutes ?

She stared at her ruined slipper and groaned. She had overreached. She shouldn’t have gathered flowers the same day she was wearing new slippers. It was just inviting trouble.

“Olivia!” A girl in the distance called her name, waving wildly.

Olivia looked up, but with her arms full, she couldn’t wave back. And with her foot stuck in mouse droppings, she couldn’t go to her friend either. With a grimace, she pulled her foot free. The slipper stayed behind.

Olivia laughed. She couldn’t help it. It was such a ridiculous situation. And it was just like Marigold to arrive at precisely that moment.

She took several steps away from her abandoned shoe, wondering uneasily if she should rescue it. It was a new slipper, after all. But would any amount of scrubbing actually make it clean? She shuddered.

“Olivia!” Marigold reached her friend and threw her arms around her neck in greeting. “There you are.”

“Were you looking for me?” Olivia’s mind was still on her slipper.

“I’m always looking for you,” Marigold declared in her usual dramatic way.

“I’m not that hard to find,” Olivia said mildly. “I’m not sure I can even remember the last time I left my aunt and uncle’s manor.”

“That would be today.” Marigold gave her a cheeky smile. “If you look around, you will see blue skies and green hills. You’re currently located on the hill behind both our family manors. If your aunt and uncle are trying to claim this territory, I will fight them to the death.” She assumed a dramatic pose, one arm raised in the air as if she was brandishing a sword.

“Ha!” Olivia shook her head. “I heard one of Uncle Walt’s business partners claiming your father has more influence than the king. I’m pretty sure my aunt would gift you this entire hill in exchange for one dinner invitation.”

Marigold collapsed on herself, letting out a disappointed sigh. Taking Olivia’s elbow, she dragged her toward the nearest tree.

When they reached it, Marigold threw herself on the ground, her back against the trunk. Only then did she properly look at Olivia, still with her arms full of flowers.

“Why are you only wearing one shoe?” she asked.

Olivia glanced over her shoulder back toward the enormous pile of mouse droppings. “The other one had an unfortunate accident.”

“An accident?” Marigold straightened and followed Olivia’s line of sight. When she spotted the abandoned slipper nestling among the droppings, she threw her head back in laughter.

Olivia reluctantly smiled as she carefully deposited her load on the grass and took a more cautious seat facing her friend. Somehow it was impossible not to smile when Marigold laughed. Marigold had that effect on everyone—her presence was magnetic, if a bit chaotic.

“It’s not my fault,” Olivia protested halfheartedly. “Unless you count the foolishness of wearing the slippers at all. I should have foreseen trouble. The Legacy doesn’t like me being too clean and well-dressed—and even you suffer from the issue of losing shoes. One at a time, of course.”

For some reason this speech only set Marigold off into another round of laughter. Olivia eyed her. Marigold had never been the focus of the Legacy’s power—not in the way Olivia had been since leaving her home town and moving to the capital to live with her father’s relatives.

Marigold finally subsided, wiping at the moisture gathered in her eyes. “Thank you for that,” she said on a sigh. “I needed a laugh.”

Olivia winced sympathetically. “Your mother?”

“Actually it was Father this time.” Marigold straightened. “But I don’t want to talk about that. Let’s talk about something else.” She eyed the pile of flowers beside Olivia. “Where in the kingdoms did you find those? I was sure the hot spell had dried out every flower within miles of the city.”

Olivia shrugged. “I was skeptical as well, but I wasn’t going to argue when Aunt Helen sent me out to gather flowers. I think it’s her way of giving me an afternoon off.” She rested her hands on the ground behind her and leaned back, tipping her face up to the sky and breathing deeply. “And it turns out there were more surviving pockets of flowers than I expected. Although I nearly toppled over the cliff retrieving one of them.” She shuddered at the memory. She was usually more careful of the small cliff that lurked at the back of the beautiful, grass-covered hill.

“Do you know your problem, friend?” Marigold asked in a reproving voice.

Olivia didn’t bother to open her eyes. “I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

“You’re too good at your job. How can your aunt resist turning you into a glorified servant when you cover the roles of four paid ones, and make it look easy?”

Olivia wanted to glare at her friend, but the afternoon was too nice for her to muster anything but mild irritation. Besides, any day felt more lively and exciting when Marigold was present. Olivia could still hardly believe that the noble girl from the other side of the wall had chosen to befriend her. Apparently she’d never shown any particular interest in either of Olivia’s cousins.

“It’s because you’re different,” Marigold had told her once. “I knew the moment I saw your face that I was going to like you tremendously and that we would be best friends. I’m never wrong about that sort of thing.”

To be fair, Olivia’s cousins seemed to view Marigold with unease. Hattie had once confided to Olivia that she didn’t know which of Marigold’s dramatic pronouncements could be believed.

If she was objective, Olivia could understand her cousin’s confusion. If you didn’t know her, Marigold’s manner could easily come across as insincere. But Olivia had a method of testing people’s sincerity, and Marigold’s heart was true beneath her over-the-top manner. Olivia just didn’t want to tell her cousins how she had first gained confidence in her new friend—not when the information would make it back to her aunt.

Not that her aunt was a villain. Olivia had confirmed that using the same method. Just as her cousin’s uncertainty about Marigold was unfounded, so was Marigold’s concern about Olivia’s situation.

She straightened and sighed. “Do you think I haven’t tried being worse at my tasks? It’s harder than you’d think.”

“Ah, to be blessed by the Legacy,” Marigold said with a grin. “Do you think there’s any way I can convince the Legacy that it should assist me with my harp playing? I don’t mind performing for my parents’ friends—” Olivia snorted. Marigold never minded performing. “But I loathe all the practicing,” Marigold finished. “It’s so tedious.”

“Let me guess.” Olivia finally realized the reason for her friend’s appearance on the hill. “You’re supposed to be practicing right now.”

“Obviously,” Marigold said without a hint of shame. “It was an unexpected bonus to find you here. I thought that so-called aunt of yours would have you locked away somewhere, working.”

Olivia didn’t bother to protest Marigold’s disparaging description of her relative. It was true that Walt and Helen weren’t really her aunt and uncle since Walt was her father’s cousin, not his brother. But they were a generation above her and had claimed her as a niece on arrival, something Olivia had no issue with. Marigold, however, liked to take issue with anything and everything done by Aunt Helen. She was a very loyal friend.

“I think she sent me out to gather flowers because she felt bad about my working through the heat the last few weeks,” Olivia said. “It’s not as if she hates me. She isn’t half as bad as you always make her out to be.”

Marigold poked Olivia with her toe. “You are too forgiving. Your supposed aunt and uncle wrote to your parents about their successful business and said they would happily provide a job in said business for any of their cousins’ children who might like to move to the capital. In said business. Not as a servant in their home.”

Olivia sighed. It was hardly the first time she and Marigold had gone over the issue. “I know that, obviously. I’m the one who told you. But you make it sound like it was some underhanded plan. They really did mean for whoever came to work in the business. But they were expecting one of my brothers.” She gave Marigold a look. “One of my many brothers.”

Marigold gave a dramatic groan and flung herself back against the tree. “Don’t talk to me of many brothers. Not today.”

Olivia raised her eyebrows. She and Marigold had first connected due to their overabundance of brothers, and Marigold often complained of hers. But something in her tone sounded different this time. Perhaps something of significance had happened after all.

But Olivia didn’t push her friend to say more. Whatever it was, knowing Marigold, she wouldn’t be able to hold it in for long.

“I’m not saying Aunt Helen and Uncle Walt are unwilling to employ females in their business,” she continued instead. “Or that they were unhappy it was me who came. Nell and Hattie were certainly delighted I was a girl. But if I’d been one of my brothers, the Legacy wouldn’t have been a factor.”

“What does it matter if you’re a girl?” Marigold asked fiercely. “It shouldn’t matter!”

Olivia rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t matter to any of us. That’s what I’m saying. But you know it matters to the Legacy. It wasn’t a boy who was forced by his stepfather into becoming a servant, only to eventually go to a ball wearing glass slippers and dance with a princess. It was the other way around.”

“More’s the pity,” Marigold said darkly. “We would all have been saved a deal of trouble if it was the other way around.”

Olivia threw her another curious look. Something was definitely going on with Marigold. Other than her staunch defense of Olivia, she had never shown any particular animosity toward the Legacy on her own behalf before.

Sometimes when Olivia was cooking or cleaning, she thought about the long-dead Queen Ella, only the second queen her kingdom had ever had. Had Ella realized during her lifetime the profound impact her life would have on the kingdom she helped rule? All the founding royal families of her generation had fallen prey to enchantments that had reshaped their lives. But had they realized those enchantments were also reshaping their kingdoms—seeping into the fabric of the kingdom itself and affecting everything from the plants and animals to the crafts that were possible within each of their borders?

Surely the Legacy had already begun to make itself felt before Queen Ella’s passing from old age? The history books said it had started then—exerting its mindless force, binding those born within Sovar’s borders to their kingdom and pushing the kingdom’s inhabitants to follow the elements of Ella’s own history whenever possible.

Of course no one got to live her entire fairy tale-worthy life. The unpleasant parts would be far less of a burden if you were guaranteed the happily ever after at the end. But as Olivia knew only too well, the Legacy mimicked elements from the original history wherever it could, regardless of the outcome.

For someone like Marigold, that mostly meant she had trouble keeping track of a matching pair of shoes. For Olivia, it meant she was currently stuck as a servant in her relative’s home.

It was the Legacy that ensured Olivia was far too good at her job to be employed in any other capacity. Her mistake had been entering her relatives’ home without finding out more about them first. If she’d known her father’s cousin had two daughters a similar age to herself, she would have been more cautious. Once she arrived in the household, how could the Legacy resist forcing her into the role of servant?

But if she could go back in time and make the choice again—this time with all the information—would she have chosen differently?

Her new life in the capital hadn’t turned out how she had imagined, but that didn’t mean she wanted to return to her old life. She could still easily call up the frustrated, trapped feeling that had permeated her days in Henton as she approached eighteen.

When a roving merchant—one of the few people who could comfortably travel between kingdoms, unbound by any Legacy—had appeared in Henton, it had been the most exciting event in her whole year. Olivia had confided her dream to leave her small town and seek adventure in the capital, and Avery’s encouragement had been enough to decide her—even before Avery’s gift. But that gift—one that allowed Olivia to see a person’s true emotions—had provided the final bit of confidence.

How could Olivia have stayed stuck in boring Henton after that—where nothing ever changed and nothing of excitement ever happened? Even if she could go back, she would still choose to experience the capital and gain a friend like Marigold.

In that moment—sitting with her friend in the sun, with the scent of the flowers still in her nose—it was easy to see that it was all worth it. But she might feel differently next time Cook asked her to peel a pile of potatoes nearly as tall as Olivia herself.

A soft squeaking made her twist to look behind her, a welcoming smile on her face. A soft gray mouse appeared, unremarkable except for its size.

Marigold, distracted from her sour mood, stared at it. “Olivia, your pet got bigger,” she said. “You can see that, right?”

Olivia laughed. It was hard to see the changes day to day, but she couldn’t deny that when she had first encountered the lone creature, the mouse had been the size of a cat. She was now the size of a medium dog. Although she still didn’t seem large enough to account for the unfortunate droppings.

“Mildred’s not my pet,” Olivia said. “She’s more like a friend.” She smiled as the once-wild mouse scurried up to her and pressed against her side, letting Olivia run her hand over her soft fur. “I think the Legacy is making her smarter as well as larger. She was my first friend here—even before you.”

“I must be losing my edge if there’s any competition between me and a mouse ,” Marigold muttered.

Olivia ignored her. “I do feel guilty about her size, though. All the changes in her must be my fault. She’s been with me for nearly a year now and growing slowly bigger all that time. It’s going to be hard for her to hide herself soon.”

Growing up in a small town in the middle of the kingdom, Olivia was used to seeing cat-sized mice, usually found with equally large lizards. But she knew most of them had been driven out of the capital long ago—a fact that had been confirmed by Marigold’s astonishment and distaste the first time she had encountered Mildred.

It must have been hard enough to stay hidden before, but it could only be getting harder as Mildred kept growing—something that was rumored to happen in areas where the power of the Legacy was strongly concentrated. And Olivia knew it was her fault the Legacy was pouring its power onto those around her. If Mildred had never befriended Olivia, she might never have started to grow.

“Only you would worry about a mouse,” Marigold said with a laugh. “You really are too kind for your own good. It’s too bad you—” She froze, her eyes widening.

She had clearly been hit by an idea, and Olivia’s heart sank. Marigold’s ideas had a way of sucking Olivia into their orbit, and they were rarely what you might call sensible or realistic.

Marigold seized her hand, confirming her fears. “Olivia,” she breathed, her eyes shining. “I have the best idea!”

Before Olivia could either protest or express curiosity—she still wasn’t sure which was about to spill out of her mouth—the sound of shouting reached them from the bottom of the hill.

Marigold dropped Olivia’s hand and leaped to her feet. Olivia scrambled up after her, peering down at three servants wearing the livery of Marigold’s family. She bit down on a grin. It wouldn’t do to express sympathy for the poor men sent to find and fetch the missing Marigold.

“Oh, drat,” Marigold said. “I was hoping it would take them longer to notice I was gone. I’ll have to run or else they’ll catch me, and then I’ll be practicing all the way to the evening meal.”

“Or maybe your father is just concerned about you,” Olivia suggested. “He is both wealthy and influential. If you keep sneaking off alone, you might find yourself abducted one of these days. You’d be a juicy ransom target.”

“Ha!” Marigold grinned. “I’d like to see someone try.” She threw Olivia an affectionate look. “You do have an odd idea of life in the capital if you’re worried about that.”

Olivia shrugged. “One of my cousins confessed that she doesn’t like going into the market alone out of fear of such a thing, and my uncle is much less important than your father.”

Marigold snorted. “Pure chicken-heartedness. You should tell your cousin not to worry. I’ve snuck away on my own hundreds of times, and no one has ever tried to abduct me. I’ve never even heard of a noble youngster being kidnapped, so I’m sure they’re not going to come after her.”

“If you’re truly not worried, you might want to hurry.” Olivia watched the men toiling their way up the hill. Marigold didn’t have long to get moving if she wanted to outrun them.

Marigold spun, poised to take off when she hesitated and looked back at Olivia.

Olivia raised an eyebrow and waited.

“I really have had the most fabulous idea,” Marigold said. “Meet me back here when it’s dark, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Olivia didn’t have time to agree before Marigold was off in a swirl of shrieks and racing feet. The men struggling up the hill changed direction, heading after the fleeing heiress and leaving Olivia alone with only Mildred for company.

The mouse had sat down beside her, leaning her head on Olivia’s leg, and Olivia patted her absentmindedly. Mildred usually avoided people, but she had grown used to Marigold, and even the girl’s exaggerated actions and noises no longer sent the mouse running. She really was an unusually intelligent creature.

“Is it all thanks to the Legacy?” Olivia wondered aloud. “Or were you always a remarkable mouse?”

Mildred squeaked and burrowed her head harder against Olivia. But a moment later, the mouse froze. Her ears twitched, and she surged back to her feet. With a single flick of her tail, like a farewell wave to Olivia, she raced in the direction of the hidden cliff.

Olivia would have been afraid for her, but she knew Mildred was an expert at survival and familiar with every inch of the local area. So she rose unhurriedly to her feet and carefully gathered her flowers back into her arms. Mildred’s departure was a clear indication that someone was approaching, and it might be someone from her aunt and uncle’s household—possibly even Aunt Helen herself. It was time Olivia was returning anyway.

But she had barely stepped away from the tree when the newcomer strode into view. Tall, young, and broad-shouldered, with dark hair and light eyes, the strange man approaching her was certainly not Aunt Helen.