Prologue
A Bargain of Shadow and Sun
There once were two princesses when there only should have been one.
Two sisters conceived during a Hunter’s moon, just as their mother had been, and her mother before her, and her mother before her… and on and on it went, all the way back to the moment the bargain had been struck between the rulers of the human kingdom of Middlemage and the fae lands to the east and west of that kingdom.
For generations—because of that ancient bargain— it had been this way: Always twins. Always marked. One by Shadow. One by Sun. One destined to stay. One destined for the fae.
The one that stayed eventually became the ruler of Middlemage.
The one that went away to the fae lands became…something else.
The children’s fates were intertwined with that of their human kingdom and those neighboring fae lands; the first twin saw the rule of the Caster family and its bloodline continued, uninterrupted, while the spare child was given as a gift to one of those two fae courts, alternating between them with each new generation.
For over a century, it continued like this, each set of twins a renewed and living, breathing symbol of balance and peace.
But Sephia and Leanora Caster were different.
They were marked as clearly as any before them: The firstborn, Sephia, was Shadow. Nora was Sun. Sephia was destined to stay and rule as Middlemage’s queen. Nora was destined to be stolen away by the Court of the Sun, as it was their turn, their privilege, theirrightto take her.
This was the way the story had gone for so long that all other possible outcomes for the girls’ lives had been forgotten, cast aside.
That is not how this story goes.
It was more twisted than this from the very beginning.
Sephia should have died, the doctors said, because she had been born with a heart too small and too weak to sustain her life. If she had been any other child—a normal human child not infused with the magic that had come about as part of that ancient fae bargain— then she would have died.
There should have only been one princess who lived.
But Sephia was not a normal human child, and so Sephia lived.
And perhaps because of the shadowy fae magic that filled in the weak and empty spaces of her heart, she grew up wild and a touch wicked, and the people of the capital city of Ocalith rarely dared to speak ill of her unless they were clutching a cluster of verbena flowers or an iron cross for protection, and they averted their eyes and recited prayers under their breath whenever royal processions with her in them passed by.
How? The people whispered in between their clutching and praying.How can a girl with such a shadowy heart become our peaceful ruler some day?
Still, perhaps more disturbing than the heir was the spare. The younger sister, Nora, who had been born healthy enough, grew strange and sickly as the years passed. Her straw-colored hair took on the actual texture of straw. Her skin developed a grey tint to it, along with premature wrinkling.
Elephant Princess, the cruelest of the village children hissed behind her back.
And the fae magic that should have been Nora’s never manifested in any noticeable way.
She should have held at least some dominion over the light and warmth of the natural world. Instead, rumors claimed that her eyes were truly pitch black—you’d see this for yourself if you looked directly into them—and that she didn’t sleep most nights, that she ate her meat mostly raw and bloody, that her hands constantly shook, that walking became increasingly difficult for her as she aged…
There were those who said that Sephia— weak, half-hearted Sephia— had lived because she had stolen her younger sister’s magic. This was what had ruined Nora. What was slowly killing her, even.
Nora knew better; her elder sister was her keeper, not her killer.
But people outside of a family looking into it rarely understood the whole truth of things.
They saw a quiet girl who looked strange, who did not have the magic and the beauty and the strength a princess should have, and so came whispers:The girl is ruined. What happens to us when we try to give her away, as the law demands? It could mean war. Our kingdom will suffer for it, either way.
They would suffer, they reasoned, because the fae on either side did not take kindly to ruined gifts.
As Sephia grew older, she learned of the brutal, terrifying sort of things that the fae did with gifts that they did not take kindly to, and her once-weak heart grew ever stronger with the desire to protect her little sister from those brutal things.
And so, on the eve of their thirteenth birthday, Sephia began to plot.
