Prologue
There was a ghost at Elegy house. On nights when the full moon shone on the frog ponds, Magdala could hear it warbling in the forest, or its footsteps softly padding in the walls. When she asked her father about it, he told her that was nonsense—ghosts were not real, and she should not let her imagination roam wild.
But Magdala knew there was a ghost at Elegy house.
Before Magdala was old enough to understand that there was a world beyond her island, Tiernan, the king of Ashkendor, claimed her father's house for his illegitimate son and cast Magdala, her father, the servants—even the stooped old man who cleaned out the gutters—off the island and sent them back to Allagesh without two kibs to rattle in their pockets. Now, Magdala hoped that the ghost in the walls would haunt the prince. She hoped he would sleep badly in her old bed, plagued by nightmares. During her summer visit to the Wildlands, she told her mother of these spiteful thoughts, only to endure a stern scolding.
“Did your father spill such gal and wormwood into your head?” her mother asked in her rolling Russuli brogue. “We never wish ill upon our enemies, for in so doing we cradlea bottle of poison above our own cup. One twitch and you will drink it yourself.”
Still, Magdala couldn’t understand why the prince being born of the Ashkendoric king meant that she slept in a wooden bed instead of a brass one, or why his being cursed meant her father, who had never worked a day in his life, now labored under the hot sun laying stone fences for farmers and trundling his wobbly, second-hand cart from the quarry. Her father, who she had only known dressed in velvet and satin, now returned home pale with stone dust, his nails broken past the quick, his eyelashes frosty.
“No son of Tiernan can sit upon the throne,” her father, Seamus, would say, in his dust-choked voice as they sat at the huge table he had absconded with when he left Elegy. It filled the whole of the dining room and stuck its head into the kitchen. Dragon-leather armchairs crowded out the living room, and the ornate rug was so large, it lapped up against the wainscot like an overfilled lake after a rain. The little stone cottage felt even smaller being so stuffed with grand furnishings, and Magdala often wondered, after she’d bumped her hip against the gold arm of the sofa, if they would both be happier if they sold it for a profit and outfitted the cottage like working-class people, instead of cramming a whole manor house into a space smaller than the vestibule at Elegy.
“Why was the prince cursed?” Magdala ventured to ask.
Her father’s lip wrinkled. “Because our queen-regent here in Allagesh slept in the bed of the Ashkendoric king, and for her sin her child was cursed. If ever he takes thethrone, the curse will fall upon him, and upon the whole realm.”
“Is that why Queen-Regent Madelaine isn’t on the throne? Because she got in bed with the bad king across the sea?” Magdala asked.
“No, no. We have all quite forgiven that. She was young and foolish, but now she is wise and clever. Only a male may light the ceremonial oil and wear the crown in Allagesh,” her father replied. “And so, the little cursed prince will rule when he turns twenty-one. And we will all suffer for it.”
He stalked off, frowning, shoulders stooped.
A painting of Elegy hung over the mantel in Seamus’s cottage. Magdala gazed at it often, longing to see her father happy again.
When Magdala was fifteen, her father’s back failed him and she left school and took over his masonry business. Tall for a girl, and endowed early with a woman’s figure, Magdala’s body quickly packed on lean muscle and her hands hardened, grew strong. She could arm-wrestle most men at the tavern, maintaining a tidy side-business challenging them and then taking their ale money when she slammed their hands down on the table. She could carry a bundle of rocks on her back like a pack-dragon, and build houses and barns and fences better than any other mason in Owlbright—perhaps in all Allagesh.
Even though Magdala could never live up to Allageshan society’s ideal of beauty, men often called her ‘impressive’ or ‘intimidating,’ which was almost as good asbeing pretty.
Magdala’s mother was born of the ancient Russuli clan who lived on the Ashkendoric Wildlands, and Magdala had taken her mother’s looks instead of her father’s aristocratic features. She had a great pile of wild red hair and hazel eyes that sometimes appeared green, sometimes brown. Her nose, jaw, and cheekbones were too harsh to be delicate, too sharp to be masculine. She didn’t know how to smooth her bluntness or relax her scowl, and by the time she was only twenty summers old, she already had a permanent crease between her eyebrows that provoked headaches when her fellow guardsmen were being particularly tiresome or her father particularly opinionated.
But when Magdala was barely seventeen, the captain of the guard found her and everything changed. She was kneeling in the dirt, sliding stones onto a foundation. Her arms were smeared with dust and streaked with sweat so she looked more calico cat than woman. The captain stopped to watch her as she hefted a stone as heavy as a grown man onto her shoulder and carried it to the worksite. He was a tall, handsome man, not youthful and not yet middle-aged, with golden hair and piercing blue eyes.
“What’s your name?” he asked Magdala.
“Magdala Devney,” she replied curtly. “I don’t need assistance, as you can see. I don’t need a rich husband, and despite the red hair, I cannot tell your fortune.”
The corner of the man’s mouth twitched up. “I have a proposition for you,” he said.
Magdala’s scowl deepened. “Never mind, I can tell your fortune. If you don’t leave me alone, you will be struck with a large stone.”
Realizing what he’d accidentally implied, the captain’s cheeks flushed scarlet. “Not that kind of proposition, you ridiculous girl.”
He looked so disgusted, Magdala wondered if she should be insulted.
“My name is Huxley Davenport. I am captain of the royal guard,” he said. “I need a woman to guard Angelonia Monsierra, Duchess of Monkwood, a pixie. But, there are very few women in my employ.”
“Why is that?” Magdala asked, slicking mortar onto the foundation and hefting the stone on top.
“The physical requirements are too difficult for most. They don’t make it through training.”
Magdala smirked. Sometimes, in moments of weakness, she wished she were prettier—but to catch the eye of the head of the royal guard with her smooth muscles and powerful hands? Her heart swelled with pride.
With a hint of regret, she said, “My father needs me to run his business.”
“I will double what you earn here. Work during the day for the duchess, and get paid for that, and then put in night shifts as a palace guard or city enforcer for extra.”
“I like to go home and visit my ma on the Wildlands sometimes.”
