“Look at Lord Merkis,” she’d say. “I bet he sleeps with his ledger books under his pillow and dreams of decimal points.”
Or she’d be gathering gossip, discovering which lord would be secretly meeting whom in the garden later. We’d laugh, our heads bent close, and the endless social niceties wouldn’t feel as suffocating.
She would’ve smoothed healing cream across my back.
The main ballroom doors slammed open with so much force that the music came to a stuttering halt.
I reeled around, facing that direction.
A massive bird soared through the opening, its wingspan wider than a man is tall, its feathers the deep blue-black of a moonless night. Its eyes gleamed with unnatural intelligence.
The bird clutched a large cloth bag in its talons, the surface dark with spreading stains.
Gasps rippled through the crowd. Nervous laughter bubbled up from some, quickly dying as the bird circled overhead.
“Tainted,” someone hissed nearby. “Only the rebels can use magic to command such creatures.”
The bird released its burden directly above the center of the ballroom. The big bag dropped and fell, hitting with a sickening thud. Red splattered across the polished stone, droplets speckling the clothing of nearby guests who scrambled backward with cries of disgust.
A sharp pop followed, and the bird vanished, leaving only a few scattered feathers drifting down like blue-black snow.
Silence filled the ballroom, broken only by the sound of my footsteps as I strode closer to the bag.
“Princess, stay back.” A guard stepped into my path, his hand on the hilt of his sword.
I tried to get around him, but another blocked my way. “Please, Your Highness. It could be dangerous.”
Commander Thorne came to my side, his expression grim. “Stay behind me, Princess, please.” The guards parted and Thorneapproached the bag, extending his sword to prod the bloodied fabric. At his touch, the bag’s knot unraveled, the material gaping wide.
Something dark and matted with blood lay inside, a thick, tangled mass that glistened in the torchlight. Part of something bigger still covered with stained fabric.
Dark hair, nearly black, with a hint of curls despite the blood soaking it.
Like Addie’s hair.
No.
My mind refused to make the connection, even as my eyes caught the familiar curves of the pendant that had slipped from the bundle. A crescent moon shape with pearl inlay, encircled with small stones the exact same color as her—and my—eyes. It had been our mother’s, and Father gave it to Addie on her eighteenth birthday. She never took it off, not even to sleep.
Blood smeared its surface, obscuring the inscription that had been etched into the back. “To my fierce star. Shine bright.”
This…horrifying thing could not be my little sister’s body. But the dark curls. The pendant. The rebels attacking carriages along the southern border. No message from my sister saying she’d safely arrived.
Murdered.
My knees buckled as realization slammed into me. The room tilted sideways. Sound echoed, a distant roar.
I staggered forward, falling to my knees beside the bundle, barely feeling the pain scorching across my back from the movement.
I reached for the pendant but stopped short of touching it, as if distance could help me hold onto denial.
One of the pale blue stones the size of a pinky nail was missing.
“Addie,” I whispered, the name catching in my throat.
My father’s voice cut through the shocked silence, raw with an emotion I hadn’t heard from him since he dropped to his knees beside my dead mother at the base of the staircase she’d just fallen down. “Everyone out. Now.”
Guards moved the stunned guests toward the doors, but I remained frozen, staring at what had become of my sister—my fierce, clever sister who’d played dice games on her bedroom floor and urged me to rebel, even a little.
