Page 2

Six Hours Earlier

B RIONY SAT AT THE DESK IN HER BEDROOM , gaze focused on the steam curling from her teacup like dancing flames.

With a distracted twitch of her fingers, she imagined her favorite willow at the edge of the lake and watched as the steam did her bidding, rising up to form a trunk and falling down into hundreds of reedy branches kissing the water.

Sometimes it was easier to manipulate something unimportant when she couldn’t find the spell she needed to make the world right. Steam from her cup could make a pretty picture, even if the picture outside the castle walls wasn’t as pretty.

She grasped the humming thread of magic between her eyes.

The translucent mist of the hot tea billowed out to show the lake next to it, and her mind supplied the silhouette of a boy with a lithe body sitting at the base of the tree.

She had just conjured the book in his hands when her bedroom door opened.

Briony startled, and the willow disappeared, steam curling like normal again.

She swung around, feeling caught in the act of something, and Rory was there in her doorway.

“Is it time already?” she asked, checking the clock.

“No, I’m just … visiting.”

Briony pulled a face. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Don’t say goodbye.”

“All right, I won’t.”

“Good.”

His lips twitched. As twins, they shared the same curved mouth, the same brown eyes, the same chestnut hair color. His nose was broader like Father’s, and her hair was wavy like their mother’s, but the differences in their appearances were subtle.

Rory hooked his thumbs into the tailored trousers he’d had made for battle. “But I should warn you that Didion wants to say goodbye. Wants to probably say more than goodbye—”

Briony groaned and tilted her face back to the high ceiling. “This is your fault,” she said. “If you hadn’t proposed to Cordelia, then Didion never would have gotten these ideas.”

Rory plopped onto her bed. “Actually, I’d say he got the idea when you started taking walks after midnight with him—”

She gasped. “Who told you about that? That was a year ago, and walking was all we did!”

Rory leveled his gaze at her. “Couldn’t find a better time of day to walk?”

Briony bit her lip. “All right, maybe we did a bit more—”

Rory covered his ears. “Stop.”

“But I swear my virtue is intact.”

He rolled on his back and squeezed his eyes closed. “Stop talking, I beg you.”

Laughing, Briony dropped onto the other side of the bed. “Is there anyone else who wishes to say goodbye? Any other suitors I should know about?” She fluffed her flowing summer skirts around her legs.

Rory smiled, but then the curve of his mouth dripped like wax. “I don’t know. Are there?” he asked quietly.

Her breath caught in her chest. “What do you mean?”

His eyes flickered between her own, seeking. “If it’s not Didion, then who does have your attention?”

“No one.” Her voice was high and rushed. “It’s—it’s war , Rory, in case you hadn’t noticed. Why would anyone have time for any of that?”

“Well, some of us find the time quite easily. Anyway, after today, things may be different.” He sat up, and she watched his fingers as they played with the long leather cord he usually tucked under his shirts; the silver pendant at the end of it had belonged to their mother.

Rory was always so humble when the possibility of victory was brought up. As if he wasn’t the one prophesied to be the victor. As if he didn’t quite believe it himself.

“Yes. Today may change everything.” She reached across the bed and grabbed his hand. “Do you want to go over it again?”

He looked up at her and nodded. It would always be like this with them, she realized.

On the first day of school, when Father had asked her to look out for Rory, she hadn’t understood why she needed to take care of her sixteen-year-old twin brother. Shouldn’t he be the one looking out for her?

“He may struggle in lessons you excel at,” Father had said. “It would be nice if the Bomardi children didn’t see the future King of Evermore bested by his sister.”

Briony still didn’t comprehend it until the results of the first exams came in and Father started asking her to switch entire assignments with Rory. Hours upon hours of work she did over the next five years were often given to her brother, and she had to gather what she could from his scraps.

She never forgave her father for that, not even in his death.

Briony took a deep breath and curled her fingers toward her palm, summoning a small vial filled with water into her hand. She held it up to Rory.

“This is water from the lake. It’s the same water in the castle’s well and the Eversun school’s well.

” Briony swallowed, thinking of the thousands of Eversun families who were sheltering at the school across the lake until this war was done.

“When you cast the protection, pour this onto your hands and place the last drop on your tongue. The lake, Claremore Castle, and the school will all link under one shield connected to you.”

Rory took it from her, nodding. “General Meers doesn’t like this plan, by the way.”

“He doesn’t understand it. He’s not a Rosewood,” Briony said.

Their Rosewood bloodline was strong with protection magic—shields, borders, and wards.

It was one of the main reasons they were predestined to rule, according to Briony and Rory’s father.

He, their grandfather, and all the men behind them were celebrated peacetime rulers.

Rory was the first Rosewood to know war in over five hundred years.

“The general values offensive magic. That’s his job,” Briony continued. “But it’s your job as king and as a Rosewood to protect our people.”

“What’s left of them,” said Rory, the exhaustion in his voice clear.

Over the past four years of war, they’d been beaten farther and farther south, losing their ground and losing people.

It wasn’t land that Bomard truly wanted.

It wasn’t the captives taken along the way—though that was always a plus for the power-hungry Bomardi.

It was Rory. It was the end to the Heir Twice Over.

Briony placed her hand on his. “It will be over soon. Today is the day.”

“What if it isn’t?” Rory asked, the words tumbling out quickly. His eyes pleaded with her.

“It is.” Briony’s voice was stronger than she felt. She smiled reassuringly. “The eclipse. Everyone knows it’s today. When the sun shines at night, he who will bring an end to war —”

Rory yanked his hand from her. “Don’t quote the prophecy to me. Six-hundred-year-old nonsense.”

He stood and went to the window overlooking her writing desk. Briony watched him lean forward on the ledge, like a child wishing he could play outside. She ran her fingers over the duvet, thinking of the old prophecy that had haunted Rory for four years now.

When the sun shines at night, he who will bring an end to war on this land shall be victorious. He shall be an heir, twice over, and a rightful sovereign over the continent.

The prophecy was from more than half a millennium ago.

When it hadn’t come true at the end of the Moreland civil war that split the continent into Evermore and Bomard, many had forgotten about it.

But four years ago, at the outbreak of the new conflict, everyone began wondering if Rory was the one prophesied.

Briony’s eyes drifted to the papers and correspondence on her desk—the letters she’d received back from the countries across the sea stating that they could not send aid, but that they would accept the Rosewoods and their court warmly in a retreat; the Journal page that updated daily with the news from the realm; the victory speech she’d written for Rory; the maps with all the locations of Eversun safe houses.

She cleared her throat. “You have to kill her,” Briony said softly. “It has to end. Completely.”

Briony hadn’t even said Mallow’s name, and yet a cold wind settled inside her chest.

Rory pressed his lips together. “I know.”

“You’ll have to use Heartstop if nothing else is working—”

“I know, Briony,” he said harshly. He sniffed. “Sorry. I … I will. General Meers and I have been practicing on …”

His voice trailed off. Briony didn’t want to know which small animals or birds around Claremore had been disappearing.

Heartstop was outlawed in Evermore. Of all the heart magic, Heartstop, the crushing of a heart within its owner’s chest, took the heaviest toll on a magician.

The first taking of a human life ripped one’s own heart, and every subsequent kill sliced further and further.

Rory had had to learn this complex magic from scratch, as only Bomardi used heart magic. Just as only Eversuns used mind magic.

It was this divide between the two countries that Veronika Mallow had seized upon.

Bomard had been radicalized under her, believing that the Eversuns’ mind magic was mind control , instead of what it simply was: a different source from which to pull magic.

There were differences between the disciplines, too—certain mind magic spells could never be mastered by a heart magician, and vice versa, but the true difference was the source of power.

Magic pulled from the mind did not exhaust the body, whereas magic from the heart took a greater physical toll.

Heart magicians had always needed to rely on animal familiars to keep their strength for prolonged magic use.

Or worse.

Under Mallow’s influence, some Bomardi had taken it all a step further. Why use an animal when you could use a person. Another magician’s heart could give you much more power than an animal’s, and creating a bond—a heartspring bond—would ensure that your own heart wasn’t being exhausted.

There was a screech outside the window, and in tense silence, they both watched Mallow’s familiar beat its black wings against the sky. The last dragon in the known world, the creature whose name had been lost to time, had begun circling at dawn.