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CHAPTER ONE

I was raised to marry a monster.

The day before the wedding, I could barely breathe. Fear and fury curdled in my stomach. All afternoon I skulked in the library, running my hands over the leather spines of books I would never touch again. I leaned against the shelves and wished I could run, wished I could scream at the people who had made this fate for me.

I eyed the shadowed corners of the library. When my twin sister, Astraia, and I were little, we heard the same terrible story as other children: Demons are made of shadow. Don’t look at the shadows too long, or a demon might look back.It was even more horrible for us because we regularly saw the victims of demon attacks, screaming or mute with madness. Their families had dragged them in through the hallways and begged Father to use his Hermetic arts to cure them.

Sometimes he could ease their pain, just a little. But there was no cure for the madness inflicted by demons.

And my future husband—the Gentle Lord—was the prince of demons.

He was not like the vicious, mindless shadows that he ruled. As befit a prince, he far surpassed his subjects in power: he could speak and take such form that mortal eyes could look on him and not go mad. But he was a demon still. After our wedding night, how much of me would be left?

I heard a wet cough and whirled around. Behind me stood Aunt Telomache, thin lips pressed together, one wisp of hair escaping from her bun.

“We will dress for dinner.” She said it in the same placid, matter-of-fact way that she had said it last night, You are the hope of our people. Last night, and a thousand times before.

Her voice sharpened. “Are you listening, Nyx? Your father has arranged this farewell dinner for you. Don’t be late.”

I wished I could seize her bony shoulders and shake them. It was Father’s fault that I was leaving.

“Yes, Aunt,” I whispered.

Father wore his red silk waistcoat; Astraia her ruffled blue dress with the five petticoats; Aunt Telomache her pearls; and I put on my best black mourning dress, the one with satin bows. The food was just as grand: candied almonds, pickled olives, stuffed sparrows, and Father’s best wine. One of the servants even strummed at a lute in the corner as if we were at a duke’s banquet. I almost could have pretended that Father was trying to show how much he loved me, or at least how much he honored my sacrifice. But I knew, as soon as I saw Astraia sitting red-eyed at the table, that the dinner was all for her sake.

So I sat straight-backed in my chair, barely able to choke down my food but with a smile fixed on my face. Sometimes the conversation lagged, and I heard the heavy ticktock of the grandfather clock in the sitting room, counting off each second that brought me closer to my husband. My stomach roiled, but I smiled wider and gritted out cheerful nothings about how my marriage was an adventure, how I was so excited to fight the Gentle Lord, and by the spirit of our dead mother, I swore she would be avenged.

That last made Astraia droop again, but I leaned forward and asked her about the village boy always lingering beneath her window—Adamastos or some such—and she smiled and laughed soon enough. Why shouldn’t she laugh? She could marry a mortal man and live to old age in freedom.

I knew my resentment was unfair—surely she laughed for my sake, as I smiled for hers—but it still bubbled at the back of my mind all through dinner, until every smile, every glance she darted at me scraped across my skin. My left hand clenched under the table, nails biting into my palm, but I still managed to smile back at her and pretend.

At last the servants cleared away the empty custard dishes. Father adjusted his spectacles and looked at me. I knew that he was about to sigh and repeat his favorite saying: “Duty is bitter to taste but sweet to drink.” And I knew that he’d be thinking more about how he was sacrificing one half of his wife’s legacy than how I was sacrificing life and freedom.

I surged to my feet. “Father, may I please be excused?”

Surprise caught him for a moment before he replied, “Of course, Nyx.”

I bobbed my head. “Thank you so much for dinner.”

Then I tried to flee, but in a moment Aunt Telomache was at my elbow. “Dear,” she began softly.

And Astraia was at my other elbow. “I can talk to her for just a minute, please, can’t I?” she said, and without waiting for an answer she dragged me up to her bedroom.

As soon as the door had closed behind us, she turned to me. I managed not to flinch, but I couldn’t meet her eyes. Astraia didn’t deserve anyone’s anger, least of all mine. She didn’t. But for the past few years, whenever I looked at her, all I could see was the reason that I would have to face the Gentle Lord.

One of us had to die. That was the bargain Father had struck, and it was not her fault that he had picked her to be the one who lived, but every time she smiled, I still thought: She smiles because she is safe. She is safe because I am going to die.

I used to believe that if I just tried hard enough, I could learn to love her without resentment, but finally I had accepted that it was impossible. So now I stared at one of the framed cross-stitches on the wall—a country cottage choked in roses—and prepared myself to lie and smile and lieuntil she had finished whatever tender moment she wanted and I could crawl into the safety of my room.

But when she said, “Nyx,” her voice was ragged and weak. Without meaning to, I looked at her—and now she had no smile, no pretty tears, only a fist pressed to her mouth as she tried to keep control. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know you must hate me,” and her voice broke.

Suddenly I remembered one morning when we were ten and she dragged me out of the library because our old cat Penelope wouldn’t eat and wouldn’t drink and Father can fix her, can’t he? Can’t he?But she had already known the answer.

“No.” I grabbed her shoulders. “No.” The lie felt like broken glass in my throat, but anything was better than hearing that hopeless grief and knowing I had caused it.

“But you’re going to die—” She hiccupped on a sob. “Because of me—”

“Because of the Gentle Lord and Father’s bargain.” I managed to meet her eyes and summon a smile. “And who says I’ll die? Don’t you believe your own sister can defeat him?”

Her own sister was lying to her: there was no possible way for me to defeat my husband without destroying myself as well. But I’d been telling her the lie that I could kill him and come home for far too long to stop now.

“I wish I could help you,” she whispered.

You could ask to take my place.

I pushed the thought away. All Astraia’s life, Father and Aunt Telomache had coddled and protected her. They had taught her over and over that her only purpose was to be loved. It wasn’t her fault that she’d never learnt to be brave, much less that they’d picked her to live instead of me. And anyway, how could I wish to live at the price of my own sister’s life?

Astraia might not be brave, but she wanted me to live. And here I was, wishing her dead in my place.

If one of us had to die, it ought to be the one with poison in her heart.

“I don’t hate you,” I said, and I almost believed it. “I could neverhate you,” I said, remembering how she clung to me after we buried Penelope beneath the apple tree. She was my twin, born only minutes after me, but in every way that mattered, she was my little sister. I had to protect her—from the Gentle Lord but also from me, from the endless envy and resentment that seethed beneath my skin.

Astraia sniffed. “Really?”

“I swear by the creek in back of the house,” I said, our private childhood variation on an oath by the river Styx. And while I said the words I was telling the truth. Because I remembered spring mornings when she helped me escape lessons to run through the woods, summer nights catching glow worms, autumn afternoons acting out the story of Persephone in the leaf pile, and winter evenings sitting by the fire when I told her everything I had studied that day and she fell asleep five times but would never admit to being bored.

Astraia pulled me forward into a hug. Her arms wrapped under my shoulder blades and her chin nestled against my shoulder, and for a moment the world was warm and safe and perfect.

Then Aunt Telomache knocked on the door. “Nyx, darling?”

“Coming!” I called, pulling away from Astraia.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said. Her voice was still soft but I could tell her grief was healing, and I felt the first trickle of returning resentment.

You wanted to comfort her,I reminded myself.

“I love you,” I said, because it was true no matter what else festered in my heart, and left before she could reply.

Aunt Telomache waited for me in the hallway, her lips pursed. “Are you done chatting?”

“She’s my sister. I should say good-bye.”

“You’ll say good-bye tomorrow,” she said, drawing me toward my own bedroom. “Tonight you need to learn about your duties.”

I know my duty, I wanted to say, but followed her silently. I had borne Aunt Telomache’s preaching for years; it couldn’t get any worse now.

“Your wifely duties,” she added, opening the door to my room, and I realized that it could get infinitely worse.

Her explanation took nearly an hour. All I could do was sit still on the bed, my skin crawling and my face burning. As she droned on in her flat, nasal tones, I stared at my hands and tried to shut out her voice. The words Is that what you do with Father every night, when you think no one is watching?curled behind my teeth, but I swallowed them.

“And if he kisses you on— Are you listening, Nyx?”

I raised my head, hoping my face had stayed blank. “Yes, Aunt.”

“Of course you’re not listening.” She sighed, straightening her spectacles. “Just remember this: do whatever it takes to make him trust you. Or your mother will have died in vain.”

“Yes, Aunt.”

She kissed my cheek. “I know you’ll do well.” Then she stood. She paused in the doorway with a damp huff—she always fancied herself so beautifully poignant, but she sounded like an asthmatic cat.

“Thisbe would be so proud of you,” she murmured.

I stared straight ahead at the cabbage-roses-and-ribbons wallpaper. I could see every curlicue of the hideous pattern with perfect clarity, because Father had spent the money to give me a Hermetic lamp that shone bright and clear with captured daylight. He would use his arts to improve my room, but not to save me.

“I’m sure Mother’s proud of you too,” I said evenly. Aunt Telomache didn’t know that I knew about her and Father, so it was a safe barb. I hoped it hurt.

Another wet sigh. “Good night,” she said, and the door shut behind her.

I picked the Hermetic lamp off my bedside table. The bulb was made of frosted glass and shaped like a cabbage rose. I turned it over. On the underside of the brass base were etched the swirling lines of a Hermetic diagram. It was a simple one: just four interlocking sigils, those abstract designs whose angles and curves invoke the power of the four elements. With the lamp’s light directed down against my lap, I couldn’t make out all the lines—but I could feel the soft, pulsing buzz of the working’s four elemental hearts as they invoked earth, air, fire, and water in a careful harmony to catch sunlight all day and release it again when the lamp switch was turned on at night.

Everything in the physical world arises from the dance of the four elements, their mating and division. This principle is one of the first Hermetic teachings. So for a Hermetic working to have power, its diagram must invoke all four elements in four “hearts” of elemental energy. And for that power to be broken, all four hearts must be nullified.

I touched a fingertip to the base of the lamp and traced the looping lines of the Hermetic sigil to nullify the lamp’s connection to water. On such a small working, I didn’t need to actually inscribe the sigil with chalk or a stylus; the gesture was enough. The lamp flickered, its light turning red as the working’s Heart of Water broke, leaving it connected to only three elements.

As I started on the next sigil, I remembered the countless evenings I had spent practicing with Father, nullifying Hermetic workings such as this. He wrote one diagram after another on a wax tablet and set me to break them all. As I practiced, he read aloud to me; he said it was so that I could learn to trace the sigils despite distractions, but I knew he had another purpose. He only read me stories of heroes who died accomplishing their duty—as if my mind were a wax tablet and the stories were sigils, and by tracing them into me often enough, he could mold me into a creature of pure duty and vengeance.

His favorite was the story of Lucretia, who assassinated the tyrant who raped her, then killed herself to wipe out the shame. So she won undying fame as the woman of perfect virtue who freed Rome. Aunt Telomache loved that story too and had more than once hinted that it should comfort me, because Lucretia and I were so alike.

But Lucretia’s father hadn’t pushed her into the tyrant’s bed. Her aunt hadn’t instructed her on how to please him.

I traced the last nullifying sigil and the lamp went out. I dropped it in my lap and hugged myself, back straight and stiff, staring into the darkness. My nails dug into my arms, but inside I felt only a cold knot. In my head, Aunt Telomache’s words tangled with the lessons Father had taught me for years.

Try to move your hips. Every Hermetic working must bind the four elements. If you can’t manage anything else, lie still. As above, so below. It may hurt, but don’t cry. As within, so without. Only smile.

You are the hope of our people.

My fingers writhed, clawing up and down my arms, until I couldn’t bear it anymore. I grabbed the lamp and flung it at the floor. The crash sliced through my head; it left me gasping and shivering, like all the other times I let my temper out, but the voices stopped.

“Nyx?” Aunt Telomache called through the door.

“It’s nothing. I knocked over my lamp.”

Her footsteps pattered closer, and then the door cracked open. “Are you—”

“I’m all right. The maids can clean it up tomorrow.”

“You really—”

“I need to be rested if I’m to use all your advicetomorrow,” I said icily, and then she finally shut the door.

I fell back against my pillows. What was it to her? I wouldn’t ever need that lamp again.

This time the cold that burned through my middle was fear, not anger.

Tomorrow I will marry a monster.

I thought of little else, all the rest of the night.

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

They say that once the sky was blue, not parchment.

They say that once, if ships sailed east from Arcadia, they would reach a continent ten times larger—not plunge with the seawater down into an infinite void. In those days, we could trade with other lands; what we did not grow, we could import, instead of trying to make it with complicated Hermetic workings.

They say that once there was no Gentle Lord living in the ruined castle up on the hill. In those days, his demons did not infest every shadow; we did not pay him tribute to keep them (mostly) at bay. And he did not tempt mortals to bargain with him for magical favors that always turned to their undoing.

This is what they say:

Long ago, the island of Arcadia was only a minor province in the empire of Romana-Graecia. It was a half-wild land populated only by imperial garrisons and a rude, unlettered people who hid in thickets to worship their old, uncivilized gods and refused to call their land anything except Anglia. But when the empire fell to barbarians—when the Athena Parthenos was smashed and the seven hills burnt—Arcadia alone remained unravaged. For Prince Claudius, the youngest son of the emperor, fled there with his family. He rallied the people and the garrisons, beat back the barbarians, and created a shining kingdom.

No emperor before nor king after was ever so wise in judgment, so terrible in battle, so beloved of gods and men. They say that the god Hermes himself appeared to Claudius and taught him the Hermetic arts, revealing secrets that the philosophers of Romana-Graecia had never discovered.

Some say that Hermes even granted him the power to command demons. If so, then Claudius was truly the most powerful king that ever lived. Demons—those scraps of idiot malice, begotten in the depths of Tartarus—are as old as the gods, and a few have always escaped their prison to crawl through the shadows of our world. No one but the gods can stop them and no one at all can reason with them, for any mortal who sees them goes mad, and demons only desire to feast on human fear. Yet Claudius, they say, could bind them into jars with a word, so that in his kingdom nobody needed to fear the dark.

And perhaps that was where the trouble began. Arcadia was greatly blessed, and sooner or later, every blessing has a price.

For nine generations, the heirs of Claudius ruled Arcadia with wisdom and justice, defending the island and keeping the ancient lore alive. But then the gods turned against the kings, offended by some secret sin. Or the demons that Claudius had bound at last broke free. Or (but few dare say this) the gods died and left the gates of Tartarus unlocked. Whatever the reason, what happened is this: The ninth king died in the night. Before his son could be crowned the next morning, the Gentle Lord, the prince of demons, descended upon the castle. In one hour of fire and wrath he killed the prince and rent the castle stone from stone. And then he dictated to us the new terms of our existence.

It could have been worse. He did not seek to rule us like a tyrant, nor destroy us like the barbarians. He only asked for tribute, in exchange for holding his demons in check. He only offered his magical, wish-granting bargains to those who were foolish enough to ask for them.

But it was bad enough. For on the night that the Gentle Lord destroyed the line of kings, he also sundered Arcadia from the rest of the world. No more can we see the blue sky that is the face of Father Uranus; no more is our land joined to the bones of Mother Gaia.

Now there is only a parchment dome above us, adorned with a painted mockery of the real sun. There is only a void about and below us. In every shadow, the demons wait for us, a hundred times more common than they were before. And if the gods can still hear us, they no longer raise up women to prophesy on their behalf as sibyls, nor have they answered our prayers for deliverance.

 

When light glowed through the lacy edges of the curtains, I gave up trying to sleep. My eyes felt swollen and gritty as I staggered to the window, but I ripped the curtains apart and squinted stubbornly at the sky. Just outside my window grew a pair of birch trees, and sometimes on windy nights their branches clattered against the panes of glass; but between their leaves I could see the hills, and three rays of the sun peeked over their dark silhouette.

The ancient poems, written before the Sundering, said that the sun—the true sun, chariot of Helios—was so bright it blinded all who looked upon it. They spoke of rosy-fingered Dawn, who painted the east in shades of pink and gold. They praised the boundless blue dome of the sky.

Not so for us. The wavy, golden rays of the sun looked like a gilt illumination in one of Father’s old manuscripts; they glinted, but their light was less painful than a candle. Once the main body of the sun was risen over the hillside, it would be uncomfortable to look upon, but no more than the frosted glass of a Hermetic lamp. For most of the light came from the sky itself, a dome of cream veined with darker cream, like parchment, through which light shone as if from a distant fire. Dawn was no more than the brighter zone of the sky rising above the hills, the light colder than at noon but otherwise the same.

“Study the sky but never love it,” Father had told Astraia and me a thousand times. “It is our prison and the symbol of our captor.”

But it was the only sky that I had ever known, and after today I would never walk beneath it again. I would be a prisoner in my husband’s castle, and whether I failed or succeeded in my mission—especiallyif I succeeded—there was no way I could ever escape those walls. So I stared at the parchment sky and the gilt sun while my eyes watered and my head ached.

When I was much younger, I sometimes imagined that the sky was an illustration in a book, that we were all nestled safely between the covers, and that if I could only find the book and open it, we would all escape without having to fight the Gentle Lord. I had gotten halfway to believing my fancy when I said to Father one evening, “Suppose the sky is really—” And he had asked me if I thought that telling fairy tales would save anyone.

In those days, I had still half believed in fairy tales. I had still hoped—not that I would escape my marriage but that first I could attend the Lyceum, the great university in the capital city of Sardis. I had heard about the Lyceum all my life, for it was the birthplace of the Resurgandi, the organization of scholars that was officially founded to further Hermetic research. I was only nine when Father told Astraia and me the secret truth: after receiving their charter, in the very deepest room of the Lyceum’s library, the first Magister Magnum and his nine followers swore a secret oath to destroy the Gentle Lord and undo the Sundering. For two hundred years, all the Resurgandi had labored toward that end.

But that was not why I longed to attend the Lyceum. I was obsessed with it because it was where scholars had first used Hermetic techniques to solve the shortages forced upon us by the Sundering. A hundred years ago, they had learnt to grow silkworms and coffee plants despite the climate and four times as fast as in nature. Fifty years ago, a mere student had discovered how to preserve daylight in a Hermetic lamp. I wanted to be like that student—to master the Hermetic principles and make my own discoveries, not just memorize the techniques Father thought useful—to achieve somethingbesides the fate Father had given me. And I had calculated that if I completed every year’s worth of study in nine months, I could be ready by age fifteen, and I would have two years for the Lyceum before I had to face my doom.

I had tried telling Aunt Telomache about that idea, and she asked me witheringly if I thought that I had time to waste growing silkworms when my mother’s blood cried out for vengeance.

“Good morning, miss.”

The voice was barely more than a whisper. I spun around to see the door cracked open and my maid Ivy peeking through. Then my other maid, Elspeth, shoved past her and bustled into the room with a breakfast tray

There was no more time for regrets. It was time to be strong—if only my head would stop aching. I gratefully accepted the little cup of coffee and drank it down in three gulps, even the grounds at the bottom, then handed it back to Ivy and asked for another. By the time I finished the breakfast itself, I had drunk two more cups and felt ready to face the wedding preparations.

First I went down to the bathroom. Two years ago, Aunt Telomache had decorated it with potted ferns and purple curtains; the wallpaper was a pattern of clasped hands and violets. It felt like an odd place for the ceremonial cleansing, but Aunt Telomache and Astraia waited on either side of the claw-foot tub with pitchers. Last winter, Father had installed the new heated plumbing, but for the rite I had to be washed in water from one of the sacred springs; so I shivered as Aunt Telomache dumped ice-cold water over my head and Astraia chanted the maiden’s hymn.

In between verses, Astraia darted shy smiles at me, as if to check whether she was still forgiven. No, she wants to make sure you’re all right,I told myself, so I clenched my chattering teeth and smiled back. Whatever her concern, by the end of the ceremony she seemed entirely comforted; she sang out the last verse as if she wanted the whole world to hear, then threw a towel around my body and gave me a quick hug. As she rubbed me briskly with the towel, she stopped looking at my face. I thought, Finally, and let my aching smile slip.

Once I was dry and wrapped in a robe, we went to the family shrine. This part of the morning was comforting, for I had gone into this little room and knelt on the red-and-gold mosaics a thousand times before. The musty, spicy smell of candle smoke and old incense sparked memories of childhood prayers: Father’s solemn face flickering in the candlelight, Astraia with her nose wrinkled and eyes squeezed shut as she prayed. Today the cold morning light already glimmered through the narrow windows; it glinted off the polished floor and made my eyes water.

First we prayed to Hermes, patron of our family and the Resurgandi. Then I cut off a lock of hair and laid it before the statue of Artemis, patron of maidens.

This time tomorrow I will not be a maiden.My mouth was dry and I stumbled over the prayer of farewell.

Next were the prayers to the Lares, the hearth gods who protect a home from sickness and bad luck, prevent grain from spoiling, and aid women in childbed. Our family had three of them, represented by three little bronze statues, their faces worn and green with age. Aunt Telomache laid a dish of olives and dried wheat before them, and I added another lock of hair, since I was leaving them behind: tonight I would belong to the Gentle Lord’s house and whatever Lares he might possess.

What gods would a demon serve, and what would I be required to offer them?

Finally we lit incense and laid a bowl of figs before the gilt-framed portrait of my mother. I bowed my face to the floor. I had prayed to her spirit a thousand times before, and the words rolled automatically through my head.

O my mother, forgive me that I do not remember you. Guide me on all the ways that I must walk. Grant me strength, that I may avenge you. You bore me nine months, you gave me breath, and I hate you.

The last thought slipped out as easily as breathing. I flinched, feeling as if I had shouted the words aloud, but when I glanced sideways at Astraia and Aunt Telomache, their eyes were still closed in prayer.

My stomach felt hollow. I knew that I should take the wicked words back. I should weep at the impiety I had shown to my mother. I should leap up and sacrifice a goat to atone for my sin.

My eyes burned, my knees ached, and every heartbeat carried me closer to a monster. My face stayed humbly pressed to the floor.

I hate you,I prayed silently. Father only bargained for your sake. If you had not been so weak, so desperate, I would not be doomed. I hate you, Mother, forever and ever.

Just thinking the words left me shaking. I knew it was wrong and my throat tightened with guilt, but before I could say anything else, Aunt Telomache dragged me to my feet and out of the room.

I’m sorry, I mouthed over my shoulder as I crossed the threshold. The morning light had left the statues and picture shadowed; from the doorway, I could no longer see the gods’ or my mother’s faces.

We went back up to my room, where the maids waited. Walking in, I caught a glimpse of Ivy’s face looking pale and pinched with worry—but the moment she saw me, she smiled hugely. Elspeth only gave me a bored look and opened the wardrobe. She drew out my wedding dress and whirled to face me, the dress’s red skirt swirling in a frothy wave.

“Your wedding dress, miss,” she said. “Isn’t it lovely?” Her smile was all bright teeth and wormwood.

Elspeth was peerless when it came to hair and wardrobes, but she performed every one of her duties with that harsh ironic smile. She hated the Resurgandi for being masters of the Hermetic arts yet never raising a hand against the Gentle Lord. She hated my father most of all, because it was his duty to offer the village’s tithe, the tribute of wine and grain that would persuade the Gentle Lord to leash his demons. Yet six years ago, though Father swore he made the offering correctly, her brother Edwin was found whimpering and trying to claw his skin off, his eyes the inky black of someone who had looked on demons and gone mad. She was glad to see me wed, because it meant that Leonidas Triskelion would lose someone just as dear.

I couldn’t blame her. She couldn’t know that for two hundred years, the Resurgandi had been secretly trying to destroy the Gentle Lord, any more than she could know how little Father would miss me. Like all the folk in the village, she knew only that Leonidas, the mighty Hermeticist, had bargained with the Gentle Lord like any common fool, and now, like any common fool, he must pay. It was justice; why shouldn’t she rejoice?

“It’s beautiful,” I murmured.

Ivy blushed as they dressed me, and the dress was worth blushing over: deep crimson like any other wedding dress, but far too gaudy and enticing. The skirt was a mass of ruffles and rosettes; the puffy sleeves left my shoulders bare, while the tight black bodice propped up my breasts and exposed them. There was no corset or shift underneath; they were dressing me so I could be stripped as quickly as possible.

Elspeth snickered as she buttoned up the front. “No use making a new husband wait, eh?”

I looked blankly at Aunt Telomache and she raised her eyebrows, as if to say, What did you expect?

“I’m sure he’ll fall in love with you at first sight,” said Ivy bravely. Her hands were shaking as she adjusted my skirt, so I managed to scrape up a smile for her. It seemed to calm her a little.

For the next few minutes, we all pretended that I was happy to marry. Elspeth and Ivy giggled and whispered; Astraia clapped her hands and hummed snatches of love songs; Aunt Telomache nodded, lips pursed in satisfaction. I stood quiet and compliant as a doll. If I stared very hard at the wall and reviewed the Hermetic sigils in my head, the bustle around me faded. I still noticed everything they did, but I didn’t have to feel much about it.

They combed my hair and pinned it up, hung rubies in my ears and around my neck, painted rouge on my lips and cheeks, and anointed my wrists and throat with musk. Finally they hustled me in front of the mirror.

A gleaming, crimson-clad lady stared back at me. Until this day, I had worn only the plain black of mourning, even though Father had told us when we were twelve that we could dress as we pleased. Everybody thought that I did it because I was such a pious daughter, but I simply hated pretending that everything was all right.

“You look like a dream.” Astraia slid her arm around my waist, smiling tremulously at our reflections.

Everybody said that Astraia was the very image of our mother, and certainly she could not have gotten her looks anywhere else: the plump, dimpled cheeks, the pouting lips, the snub nose and dark curls. But I might have been born straight out of my father’s head like Athena: I had his high cheekbones, his aristocratic nose, his straight black hair. In a rare burst of kindness, Aunt Telomache had once told me that while Astraia was “pretty,” I was “regal”; but everyone who saw Astraia smiled at her, while people only nodded at me and said my father must be proud.

Proud, yes. But not loving. Even when we were very young, it was clear that Astraia took after Mother, and I after Father. So there was never any question which one of us would pay for his sin.

Aunt Telomache clapped her hands. “That’s enough, girls,” she said. “Say good-bye and run along.”

Elspeth looked me up and down. “You look pretty enough to eat, miss. May the gods smile on your marriage.” She shrugged, as if to say it was no concern of hers, and left.

Ivy hugged me and slipped a little straw man into my hand. “It’s Brigit’s son, young Tom-a-Lone,” she whispered. “For luck.” She whirled away after Elspeth.

I crushed the charm in my hand. Tom-a-Lone was a hedge-god, the peasants’ lord of death and love. The village folk might sacrifice to Zeus or Hera sometimes, when custom demanded it, but for sick children, uncertain crops, and unrequited love, they prayed to the hedge-gods, the deities they had worshipped long before Romana-Graecian ships ever landed on their shores. Scholars agreed that the hedge-gods were merely superstition, or else garbled versions of the celestial gods—that Tom-a-Lone was but another form of Adonis, Brigit another name for Aphrodite—and that either way, the only rational course was to worship the gods under their true names.

Certainly the hedge-gods hadn’t saved Elspeth’s brother from the demons. But the gods of Olympus hardly seemed inclined to rescue me, either.

With a sigh, Aunt Telomache unfolded my fist and plucked out the crumpled Tom-a-Lone.

“Still they cling to their superstitions,” she muttered, and flung it into the fireplace. “You would think Romana-Graecia conquered them last week and not twelve hundred years ago.”

And from the way Aunt Telomache talked, you would think she was descended in a straight line from Prince Claudius, when in fact she and Mother came from a family that was only three generations removed from being peasants. But there was no use pointing that out to her.

“You don’t know,” Astraia protested. “It might bring good luck, after all.”

“And then the Kindly Ones will grant her three wishes, I suppose?” said Aunt Telomache, sounding more indulgent than annoyed. Then she turned a stony gaze on me. “I trust I don’t need to remind you how important this day is. But it is easy for the young to forget such things.”

No, it’s easy for you,I thought. Tonight you will fondle my father while I am the plaything of a demon.

“Yes, Aunt.” I looked down at my hands.

She sighed, eyelids drooping in preparation for another tender moment. “If only dear Thisbe—”

“Aunt,” said Astraia, who was now standing beside the chest of drawers. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Her hands were behind her back, her smile as big and bright as the time she had eaten all the blackberry tarts.

“No, child—”

“So isn’t it luckyI remembered?” With a flourish, she pulled out from behind her back a slim steel knife hanging in a black leather harness.

For an instant, Aunt Telomache stared at the knife as if it were a big, fat spider. I felt as if I had swallowed that spider, as if it were crawling down my gullet with poisonous legs. That was how lying felt: all the lies I had swallowed and spat out again, vile and empty as the husks of dead insects, all for the sake of making sure that precious Astraia could stay happy. And this knife was the most important lie in our family.

“I had it specially made,” Astraia went on earnestly. “It’s never cut a living thing. Just to be safe, it’s never been used at all, not even tested. Olmer sworeit wasn’t, and you know he never lies.”

Unlike the rest of us, who had been telling her for the last four years that there was a chance I could kill the Gentle Lord and walk away.

“You do realize,” Aunt Telomache said gently, “that it’s possible Nyx won’t get a chance to use the knife? And”—she paused delicately—“we can’t be sureit will work.”

Astraia raised her chin. “The Rhyme is true, I know it. And even if it isn’t, why shouldn’t Nyx try? I don’t see how stabbing the Gentle Lord could possibly hurt.”

It would show him that I was not broken and cowed, that I had come as a saboteur to destroy him. It would likely make him kill or imprison me, and then I would never have a chance to carry out Father’s actual plan. Even if the Rhyme were true—even if—trying to fulfill it was still a bad bet, when the Resurgandi might never have another chance like me again.

“I don’t know why you’re so reluctant to trust Nyx,” Astraia added in an undertone. “Isn’t she your dearest sister’s daughter?”

Of course she didn’t understand. She’d never had to think through this plan, weighing every risk because she had only one life to lose. She’d never woken up in the night, choking on a dream of a shadow-husband who tore her to pieces, and thought, It doesn’t matter how he hurts me. I’m the only chance to save us from the demons.

Aunt Telomache met my eyes, and the flat set of her mouth spoke as clearly as words: Indulge her for now, but you know what to do.

Then she pulled Astraia close and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Oh, child, you’re an example to us all.”

Astraia wriggled happily—she was almost a cat, she liked so much to be petted—then pulled free and gave me the knife, smiling as if the Gentle Lord were already defeated. As if nothing were wrong. And for her nothing ever would be wrong. Just for me.

“Thank you,” I murmured. I could feel the rage pushing at me like a swell of cold water, and I didn’t dare meet her eyes as I took the knife and harness. I tried to remember the panic that burned through me last night, when I thought her heart was broken.

She was comforted in minutes. Do you think she’ll mourn you any longer after your wedding?

“Here, I’ll help!” She dropped to her knees and strapped the knife to my thigh. “I’m sure you can do it. I knowyou can. Maybe you’ll be back by teatime!” She beamed up at me.

I had to smile back. It felt like I was baring my teeth, but she didn’t seem to notice. Of course not. For eight years I’d borne this fate, and in all that time she’d never noticed how terrified I was.

For eight years you lied to her with every breath, and now you hate her because she’s deceived?

“I’ll give you a moment to yourselves,” said Aunt Telomache. “The procession is ready. Don’t dawdle.”

The door clicked shut behind her, and in the silence that followed, from outside I heard the faint patter of drums and wail of flutes: the wedding procession.

Astraia’s mouth trembled, but she pushed it up into a smile. “It seems so recently we were children dreaming of our weddings.”

“Yes,” I said. I had never dreamt of weddings. Father told me my destiny when I was nine.

“And we read that book, the one with all the fairy tales, and argued about which prince was best.”

“Yes,” I whispered. That much was true, anyway. I wondered if my face still looked kind.

“And then not too long after Father told us about you”—well, he told her, when she turned thirteen and wouldn’t stop trying to matchmake me—“and I cried for days but then Aunt Telomache told us about the Sibyl’s Rhyme.”

Every half-educated child knew about the Sibyl’s Rhyme. In the ancient days, Apollo would sometimes touch a woman with his power, granting her wisdom and driving her mad at once, and she would live in his sacred grotto and prophesy on his behalf. They said that on the day of the Sundering, the sibyl stood up and proclaimed a single verse, then threw herself into the holy fire and died; she was the last sibyl, and that day was the last time the gods ever spoke to us.

Every well-educated child knew that it was just a legend. There was no good evidence that there had been a sibyl in Arcadia at the time of the Sundering, let alone that she had said such a thing, and no ancient lore about demons, nor any newly discovered Hermetic principle, so much as hinted that what the Rhyme prescribed could work.

The day that Aunt Telomache told Astraia the Rhyme, she forbade me ever to tell her that it wasn’t true. “The poor child’s had enough of tears,” she’d said. “As you love her, let her believe it.”

I had promised and I had kept my promise, and so now I got to watch Astraia clasp her hands and recite it in a low, reverent voice:

 

“A virgin knife in a virgin’s hand

Can kill the beast that rules the land.”

 

A hopeful half smile twisted at her lips, and she darted hopeful half glances at my face. It was my cue to smile and pretend to be comforted, as if the Rhyme were true. As if Astraia weren’t asking for comfort as much as trying to give it. As if I had everlived in her world, where daughters were loved and protected, and the gods offered an escape from every terrible fate.

You wanted her to think that,I told myself, but all I wanted right now was to seize a book off the table and throw it at her face. Instead I clenched my hands and said sourly, “We both know the Rhyme. What’s your point?”

Astraia wilted a moment, then rallied. “I just wanted to say . . . I believe you can do it. I believe you will cut off his head and come home to us.”

Then she flung her arms around me. My shoulders tightened and I almost jerked away, but instead I made myself embrace her back. She was my only sister. I should love her and be willing to die for her, since the only other choice was that she die for me. And I did love her; I just couldn’t stop resenting her either.

“I know Mother would be proud of you,” she muttered. Her shoulders quivered under my arms and I realized she was crying.

She dared to cry? On this day of all days? I was the one who would be married by sunset, and I hadn’t let myself cry in five years.

There was ice in my lungs and I couldn’t breathe. I was floating, I was swept away, and out of the cold I spoke to her in a voice as soft as snow, the gentle and obedient voice that I had used to consent to every order that Father and Aunt Telomache ever gave me, every order that they would never give Astraia because they actually loved her.

“You know, that Rhyme is a lie that Aunt Telomache only told you because you weren’t strong enough to bear the truth.”

I had thought the words so often, they felt like nothing in my mouth, like no more than a breath of air, and as easily as breathing I went on:

“The truth is, Mother died because of you, and now I have to die for your sake too. And neither one of us will ever forgive you.”

Then I shoved her aside and strode out of the room.

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

Astraia didn’t follow me, which was lucky. If I’d seen her face again, I would have shattered. Instead I floated numbly down the stairs. I knew that soon I would realize what I had done, that the acid of my self-loathing would eat through my walls and burn me down to the bone. But for now, I was wrapped in cotton wool, and when I reached the bottom of the stairs I stepped out onto the floor and curtsied without even trembling.

“Good morning, Father.” Beside me, I heard Aunt Telomache’s intake of breath, and I realized that I had strayed from the ceremony. I curtsied again. “Father, I thank you for your kindness and beg that you will let me leave your house.”

As if the Gentle Lord cared about propriety.

Father held out an arm. “I will grant that with a glad heart and open hand, my daughter.”

Certainly the glad part was true enough. He was avenging his dead wife, saving his favorite daughter, and keeping his sister-in-law as his concubine—and the only price was the daughter he had never wanted.

“Where’s your sister?” Aunt Telomache hissed as she draped the veil over me. The red gauze covered me down to my knees.

“She was crying,” I said calmly. It was easier to face the world from behind the red haze of the fabric. “But you can drag her down to ruin the ceremony if you like.”

“It’s not proper for her to miss your wedding,” Aunt Telomache muttered, adjusting the veil.

“Let her alone, Telomache,” Father said quietly. “She has enough grief.”

The icy hatred swirled back around me, but I swallowed it down and laid my fingertips on Father’s arm. We walked out of the house together at a slow, stately pace, Aunt Telomache behind us.

Sunlight glowed through my veil; I saw the golden blur of the sun well over the horizon, and by now the whole sky was bright and warm. Music washed over me, along with a clatter of voices. The people of the town were enjoying themselves; I heard cheers and laughter, glimpsed red streamers and dancing children. They knew that I was marrying the Gentle Lord as payment for my father’s bargain, and while they did not know Father’s plan, they knew that marriage to such a monster must mean death or something worse. But I was still the manor lord’s daughter and he still planned to give the traditional feast.

For them, it was a holiday.

We walked the length of the village. It was well before noon, but between the sunlight and the closeness of the veil, there was sweat trickling down my neck by the time we got to the tithe-rock. Every village has one: a wide, flat rock straddling the village bounds, for people to leave their offerings to the Gentle Lord.

Now there was a statue set atop it: a rough, half-formed thing of pale stone. The oval head had two dents for eyes and a soft line for a mouth; ridges along the sides of the body suggested arms. Usually it stood in place of a dead man, for a funeral or rites concerning the ancestors. Today it would stand for the Gentle Lord. My bridegroom.

Before witnesses, my father proclaimed that he gave me freely. The village maidens sang a hymn to Artemis and then to Hera. In a normal wedding, the bride and groom would each give the other a gift—a belt, necklace, or ring—then drink from the same cup of wine. Instead I hung a gold necklace around the sloping neck of the statue. Aunt Telomache helped me lift the corner of the veil so I could gulp cloying wine from a golden goblet, and then I held the goblet to the statue’s face and let a little wine dribble down the front. I felt like a child playing with crude toys. But this game was binding me to a monster.

Then it was time for the vows. Instead of holding hands with the groom, I gripped the sides of the statue and said loudly, “Behold, I come to you bereft of my father’s name and exiled from my mother’s hearth; therefore your name shall be mine, and I shall be a daughter of your house; your Lares shall be mine and them I will honor; where you go, I shall go; where you die, I shall die, and there will I be buried.”

For my answer, there was only the rustle of wind in the trees. But the people cheered anyway. Then began another hymn, this time with dancing and flower scattering. I knelt on the stone before the statue, not watching, my head bowed under my veil. Sweat beaded on my face, and my knees ached from the hard stone.

One girl’s voice lifted above the others:

 

“Though mountains melt and oceans burn,

The gifts of love shall still return.”

 

I supposed that was true: Father had loved Mother too much, and seventeen years later the gifts of that folly were still returning to us. I knew that wasn’t the sort of gift that the hymn was talking about, but I didn’t know anything else. In my family, nobody’s love had given anything but cruelty and sorrow, and nobody’s love had ever stopped giving.

Back at the house, Astraia was crying. My only sister, the only person who’d ever loved me, ever tried to save me, was crying because I had broken her heart. All my life I had bitten back cruel words and swallowed down hatred. I had repeated the comforting lie about the Rhyme and tried not to resent her for believing it. Because despite all the poison in my heart, I knewit was not Astraia’s fault that Father had picked her over me. So I had always forced myself to pretend I was the sister she deserved. Until today.

Five more minutes,I thought. You only had to hold on for five more minutes, and all the hatred in your heart would never have been able to hurt her again.

Hidden by the veil and the clamor of the wedding, I finally cried too.

When the sacrifices to the gods were finished, Aunt Telomache dragged me off the stone and packed me into the carriage with Father. Normally the bride and groom would stay for the feast—as would the father of the bride, who hosted it—but getting me to the Gentle Lord took precedence.

The door closed behind us. As the carriage rattled into motion, I stripped the veil off my head, glad to be rid of the suffocating heat. My face was still sticky with tears; I rubbed at my eyes, hoping they weren’t too red.

Father looked at me, his gaze even and impassive, his face an elegantly sculpted mask. As always.

“Do you remember the sigils?” His low voice was calm, even; we might have been discussing the weather. I noticed his hands clasped over his knee; he wore the great gold signet ring shaped like a serpent eating its own tail: the symbol of the Resurgandi.

I knew what was inscribed on the inside of his ring:Eadem Mutata Resurgo, “Though changed I rise again the same.” It was an ancient Hermetic saying, long ago adopted as the motto of the Resurgandi because they sought to return us to the true sky.

I was not riding to my doom with my father. I was riding to my doom with the Magister Magnum of the Resurgandi.

“Yes.” I clasped my hands over my knees. “You’ve seen me write them with my eyes shut.”

“Remember the hearts may be disguised. You will have to listen—”

“I know.” I clenched my teeth to keep back all the poison I wanted to snarl at him. I might not be able to hurt Father, but I still owed him my duty and respect.

Some people distrusted the Resurgandi’s secrecy, the way that dukes and Parliament consulted them; they whispered that the Resurgandi practiced demonic arts. In a way, that was true. By dint of long study and careful calculations, the Resurgandi had come to believe that while the bargains of the Gentle Lord were accomplished by his unfathomable demonic powers, the Sundering was different. It was a vast Hermetic working, whose diagram was the Gentle Lord’s house itself.

This meant that somewhere in the Gentle Lord’s house must be a Heart of Water, a Heart of Earth, a Heart of Fire, and a Heart of Air. If someone were to inscribe nullifying sigils in each heart—so the theory went—it would disengage the working from Arcadia. The house of the Gentle Lord would collapse in on itself, while Arcadia returned to the real world.

The Resurgandi had known this for nearly a hundred years, and the knowledge had availed them nothing. Until me.

“I know you will not fail her,” said Father.

“Yes, Father.” I looked out the window, unable to bear that calm face a moment longer. I had spent my whole life pretending to be a daughter glad to die for the sake of her family. Couldn’t he pretend, just once, to be a father sad to lose his daughter?

We were driving through the woods now as we began the slow ascent up the hills atop which sat the Gentle Lord’s castle. Between the tree branches, I could glimpse scraps and pieces of the sky, like shredded paper tossed among the leaves. Then we suddenly drove through a clearing and there was a great foolscap folio of clear sky.

I looked up. Father had installed, on account of Aunt Telomache’s claustrophobia, a little glass window in the roof of the carriage. So I could see the sky overhead and the black, diamond-shaped knotwork that squatted at the apex of the sky like a spider. People called it the Demon’s Eye and said the Gentle Lord could see anything that passed beneath it. The Resurgandi officially scoffed at this superstition—if the Gentle Lord had such perfect knowledge, he would have destroyed them long ago—but I wondered how many secretly feared that he might know their plans and be drawing them into one of his ironic dooms.

Was he watching me now from the sky? Did he know that fear was swirling through my body like water running out of a tub, and was he laughing?

“I wish there had been time to train you more,” Father said abruptly.

I looked at him, startled. He had been training me since I was nine years old. Could he possibly mean that he didn’t want me to go?

“But the bargain said your seventeenth birthday,” he went on, so placidly that my hope wilted. “We’ll just have to hope for the best.”

I crossed my arms. “If I try to collapse his house and fail, I’m sure he’ll kill me, so maybe you can marry Astraia to him next and give her a chance.”

Father’s mouth thinned. He would never do such a thing to Astraia, and we both knew it.

“Telomache told me that Astraia gave you a knife,” he said.

“She has only herself to blame for that,” I said. “Or was it your idea to tell Astraia that story?”

I still remembered the day that Aunt Telomache told us about the Sibyl’s Rhyme—Astraia’s muffled sniffling, the hard ache in my throat, the sudden stab of wild hopewhen Aunt Telomache said that I might not have to destroy my husband by trapping myself forever with him in his collapsing house. That I might kill him and come home safe to my sister.

It can’t be true,I had thought. I know it can’t be true—and yet that night I had still nearly wept when Aunt Telomache told me it was a lie.

“She was a child and she needed comfort,” said Father. “But youare now a woman and know your duty, so I trust you have already disposed of it.”

I sat up a straighter. “I’m wearing it.”

He sat up too. “Nyx Triskelion. You will take it off right now.”

Instantly the words Yes, Fatherformed in my mouth, but I swallowed them down. My heart hammered and my fingertips swirled with cold because I was defying my father and that was ungrateful, impious, wrong—

“No,” I said.

I was going to die carrying out hisplan. Against that obedience, this little defiance could hardly matter.

“Are you actually deluding yourself—”

“No,” I repeated flatly. That had been another part of my education: the history of all the fools who tried to assassinate the Gentle Lord. None succeeded, and all died, for even if they stabbed the Gentle Lord in the heart, he could heal in a moment and destroy them the next. I had long ago given up hoping that any mortal weapon could kill a demon.

“I don’t believe in the Rhyme, and even if I did, I wouldn’t bet our freedom on my skill with a knife. You trained me too well for that, Father. But this is the last gift my only sister ever gave me, and I will wear it to my doom if I please.”

“Hm.” He settled back in his seat. “And have you thought how you’ll explain it to your husband, when the time comes?”

His voice was once again as calm as when he read me the story of Lucretia. The euphemism was dry and bloodless as dust on the old book. When the time comes.Meaning, When he strips you naked and uses you as he pleases.

In that moment I hated my father as I never had before in my life. I stared at the loose skin of his neck and thought, If I were really like Lucretia, I would kill youand then myself.

But just thinking the impiety made me feel sick. He had only been trying to save my mother. No doubt, in his desperation, he’d deluded himself into thinking the Gentle Lord would be easier to cheat; and once he knew how wrong he’d been, what could he do but try to save as much as he could?

Iphigenia had gladly let her father, Agamemnon, sacrifice her to the gods so that the Greek fleet would have good winds as they sailed to Troy. My father was asking me to die for something much better: the chance to save Arcadia.

All my life, I’d seen people driven mad by demons; I’d seen how everyone, weak or strong, rich or poor, lived in fear of them. If I carried out Father’s plan—if I trapped the Gentle Lord and freed Arcadia—nobody would ever be killed or driven mad by a demon again. No fools would make disastrous bargains with the Gentle Lord, and no innocents would pay the price for them. Our people would live free beneath the true sky.

Any one of the Resurgandi would gladly die for that chance. If I loved my people, or even just my family, I should be glad to die for it too.

“I’ll tell him the truth,” I said. “I couldn’t bear to part with my sister’s gift.”

“You should make him think you didn’t even want to have it. Tell him that you made a promise to your father.”

I couldn’t resist saying, “He bargained with you himself. Do you think he’s fool enough to believe you’d try to save me?”

His eyes widened and his jaw hardened. With a little flicker of pleasure, I realized I had finally hurt him.

 

This is the first way that I heard the story: Father drew me aside and said, “When I was young, I promised the Resurgandi that one of my daughters would fight the Gentle Lord and free us all. You are that daughter.”

I suppose it was a kindness that he told me that way—the first and last kindness he ever showed me. I heard the rest of the story soon enough from Aunt Telomache, and I heard it over and over again, from her, from him, from visiting members of the Resurgandi.

The story was all around me—in Aunt Telomache’s grim silences, Father’s carefully blank stares, the way their hands touched when they thought no one was looking; it was in Astraia’s overflowing toy chest, the portraits of my mother in every room, the stack of books Father gave me about every hero who had ever died for duty. I breathed that story, swam in it, felt like I would drown in it.

This is how it goes:

Once upon a time, Leonidas Triskelion was a young man, handsome and clever and brave. He was the darling of his family and the hope of the Resurgandi. And he was also the beloved of a young woman named Thisbe, and in time her husband. But as the years wore on, their joyful marriage filled with sorrow, for Thisbe could not conceive a child. No matter how Leonidas swore he loved her, she despised herself as a worthless and unlucky wife, who would cause her husband’s name to die with him because she could not give him a son. At last she fell into such despair that she tried to kill herself. For if even Leonidas’s Hermetic arts could not help her, what hope was left?

Just one.

So at last Leonidas, who had spent years studying how to defeat the Gentle Lord, went to bargain with him. And this is the bargain that the Gentle Lord struck: a son was out of the question. But Thisbe would conceive two healthy daughters by the year’s end, and the only price would be that when one of them was seventeen, she must marry the Gentle Lord himself.

“And do not think that you can cheat me,” said the Gentle Lord. “If you hide your daughters, I will find them, and after marrying one I will kill the other; but deliver one daughter to me and the other one will live free and happy all her life.”

But while the Gentle Lord always keeps his word, he always cheats at his bargains. He made Thisbe conceive and grow heavy with twins, but he did not make her able to bear them. The first daughter was born quickly enough, but the second came out crooked and covered in her mother’s blood, and though she survived, Thisbe did not.

Leonidas could not help loving Astraia, the daughter his wife had paid for so dearly. He could not help despising me, the daughter who had received her life for no cost, as he had paid nothing of his own to receive us. So Astraia grew up beloved, the living image of her mother. And I grew up knowing that my only purpose was to be my father’s vengeance incarnate.

 

The carriage stopped with a jolt and a bump.

I looked at Father. He looked back at me.

My throat tightened again and I swallowed. I felt sure there was something I could say—should say—if I could just think of it fast enough—

“Go with all the blessings of the gods and your father,” he said calmly.

The rote words stung more than his silence. As the driver opened the carriage door, I realized how desperately I had always wanted him to show one hint of reluctance, one suggestion that it pained him to use me as a weapon.

But why should I complain? Hadn’t I just hurt Astraia even worse?

I smiled brightly. “Surely the gods will bless such a kindly father as much as he deserves,” I said, and clambered out of the carriage without looking back. The door slammed behind me. In an instant the driver was snapping the whip at the horses, and the carriage clattered away.

I stood very still, my shoulders tight, staring at the house of my bridegroom.

They had not brought me quite to the door—nobody would go so close to the Gentle Lord’s house unless he was already mad enough to seek a bargain—but the stone tower was only a short distance up the grassy slope. It was the only whole part that remained of the ancient castle of the Arcadian kings. Beyond it, the hill was crowned with crumbling walls and revenant doorways that stood alone without any walls about them.

The wind moaned softly, ruffling the grass. The sun’s diffuse glow warmed my face, and the cool air had the warm, ripe smell of late summer. I sucked in a breath, knowing this was the last time I would stand outside.

Either I would fail, and the Gentle Lord would kill me . . . or else I would succeed, and either die in the house’s collapse or be trapped with him forever. In which case I would be lucky if he killed me.

For one moment I considered running. I could be down the hill by another path before the Gentle Lord knew I was gone, and then . . .

. . . and then he would hunt me down, take me by force, and kill Astraia.

There was only one choice I could make.

I realized I was shaking. I still wanted to run. But I was doomed in any case, so I might at least die saving the sister I had wronged. I thought about how much I hated the Gentle Lord, how much I wanted to show him that requesting a captive bride was the worst mistake he’d ever make. While that hate still flickered within me, I marched up to the wooden door of the tower and banged on it.

The door swung open silently.

I stepped through before I could change my mind, and the door promptly slammed shut. I flinched at the crash but managed to stop myself from trying to tug it open again. I wasn’t supposed to escape.

Instead I looked around. I was in a round foyer the size of my bedroom with white walls, a blue tiled floor, and a very high ceiling. Though from the outside it had looked as if there were nothing of the house but one lonely tower, this room had five mahogany doors, each carved with a different pattern of fruits and flowers. I tried them, but they were all locked.

Was that a laugh? I went still, my heart thumping. But if the noise had been real, it did not repeat. I circled the room again, this time pounding on each of the doors, but there was still no response.

“I’m here!” I shouted. “Your bride! Congratulations on your marriage!”

 

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