Chapter One
WELCOME TO WINWOLD
Ceri
It was the autumn of Princess Ceridwen’s reinvention.
The summer had been a disaster. Her father had dragged the entire court out to the middle of nowhere, and what was worse, she’d lost just about everyone she cared about.
The breakup with Isaac had set the whole thing off, but as she had realized in the weeks since, it had been a long time coming.
Ceri hadn’t known how her ladies-in-waiting really felt about her until she watched them abandon her one by one. It was the loss of Jerta, her closest confidante other than her brother since childhood, that had hurt the worst. Their final argument out on the terrace of Weldan House had struck Ceri to the core, and not just because of the cruelty of Jerta’s words.
No, like all of the best insults, Jerta’s words had hurt because there was, within them, an undeniable kernel of truth.
Ceri had dismissed it at the time, but Jerta was right about her.
She was selfish. She was spoiled. She was manipulative and, at times, cruel, and she was a terrible friend.
It hadn’t always been that way.
Ceri hadn’t had the easiest upbringing in the castle. Her mother was in and out for most of her childhood, unable to bringher children with her due to the iron will of her husband: Ceri’s father, King Derkomai. Prince Idris, her only brother, had left her alone there when he went to university. She’d been raised by a series of nannies, governesses, and tutors, but none of them could keep her from her father’s influence once he set his sights on her as his potential heir.
Ceri learned quickly how to adapt to her father’s mercurial moods. She let him spoil her when he wanted to, she stayed out of his way when he didn’t want her around, and she learned to talk to him in such a way that he allowed her to do what she wanted at least some of the time.
She was just pretending to be the person he wanted her to be, but perhaps if you pretend to be someone else for long enough, you can’t help but become someone else in the end.
Ceri didn’t notice herself slowly turning the skills she’d learned to survive her father onto her friends, but once it was pointed out to her, she knew it was true.
It was done now.
She was starting fresh at Winwold College. Her father hadn’t understood her sudden change in attitude towards attending university. She’d fought him on it the previous year when she had finally been old enough to enter, but, if she was being honest, she hadn’t wanted to go not due to a general lack of interest but because Isaac wasn’t going to be there.
She would be making no further decisions based upon the location of a man, no matter how handsome he was.
King Derkomai had been even more baffled when Ceri had told him she didn’t wish to attend King’s College, his alma mater and the nearest university to the castle.
No, she would be going to Winwold. Its primary advantage, other than being as far as from the castle as one could get while still being in Loegria? Idris would be working there this autumn as a guest lecturer, while the friends he’d met over thesummer worked with a professor about that sun-powered ‘lectric machine she’d helped them “invent” a few weeks earlier.
Fine, so she supposed that was one final decision she made based on the location of man, but that man was her brother, and she had missed him terribly.
Ceri’s carriage conveyed her from the town of Norgate along a narrow, wooded path into the mountains. Winwold College’s campus was mainly in the town below, but the first-year students, colloquially known as “freshers,” were all sent to High House, a former manor which overlooked Norgate. High House was visible in the distance from the town, but it vanished from view the moment the carriage reached the tree line.
Indeed, in this dense forest, there was little to see at all. Ceri had never experienced a wood this deep and dark. The sun was so thoroughly and perfectly blocked from view that it had managed to fool an owl, which hooted softly in the distance even though it was still hours until nightfall.
At last the carriage reached an ancient bridge. Ceri leaned out the window, grateful to feel the sunlight on her pale skin and silver hair for a moment before being plunged back into the darkness of the forest.
Gods, it took so long to travel this way. Ceri had insisted on the carriage: arriving by air in her dragon form wasn’t exactly conducive to her goal of blending in. Finally, after what felt like hours, the carriage took a steep turn up a hill, emerging from the woods.
The road rose sharply to cross another bridge which led to the gatehouse, its filigreed iron emblazoned with the school motto:SIC ITUR AD ASTRA. Behind the gates stood High House.
It wasn’t exactly a manor house, but it also wasn’t exactly a castle. Ceri could see the similarities with a real castle, the King’s castle, Corycus, where she spent most of her childhood, mostly in the lower levels of stone. But there were additions instone and wood and plaster, spires and towers and turrets which served no apparent function. They had been added during the manor conversion for aesthetic purposes alone, Ceri figured. She knew exactly what her father would say about them: “Waste of bloody coin.”
It was hard to deny the picturesque charm of it though, standing as it did on its own with the mountains rising behind it and the yellowing trees of the dense forest nestled up against it.
The gates opened at the royal carriage’s approach, and a man burst out a door from the gatehouse. He was wearing academic formal attire just like Ceri: knee-length robe, white shirt with black tie, and a black mortarboard hat, although his robe was crimson while hers was black to indicate his higher degree.
The carriage stopped before him. “Your royal highness,” he said, bowing so low to the carriage Ceri thought he might kiss the dirt.
