Then convulsions wracked my body, and I screamed.
Two
Isabel
???
“Really?” I glaredat the heavens. Only a few puffy clouds interrupted the crystalline blue of the sky. “A perfect summer day? Just a hint of autumn in the air, preventing the sunshine from being unbearable? Tsy take it, we’ll only get a handful of days like this before the rains come, and today has to be one of them?”
I kicked at my skirts, the rocks in the road, anything. “How can I properly sulk with birds singing at me?”
Unsatisfied with kicking things—and tired of tripping myself—I grabbed a fallen branch and began whacking at the tall grass creeping onto the road. Under normal circumstances, the route between Leort and Rose Castle saw enough traffic to beat the grass back. Then, two months ago, a flood of castle workers had arrived in town with no explanation, declaring the castle closed to visitors until further notice. No one had traveled it since.
“Almost no one,” I corrected my thoughts aloud and threw the stick into the verge. I had always preferred to vent my frustrations verbally rather than physically. It didn’t matter that no one but the birds and the gods could hear me now.
“He had to try for a big score, didn’t he?” I found another pebble and kicked it down the road. “I know, I know. He always wants to do something bigger. Even with me working with the constablesand Sofia with the magistrates, he still thinks he can get away with being a thief.”
I thought I had come to terms with my father’s disrespect for the law years ago, but this time, he had gone too far. He had no right to drag me into his problems.
“You’d think he’d realize that—even with all the rumors—a castle brimming with magic wouldn’t be an easy target, wouldn’t you?”
A lark trilled from a nearby tree, and I shook my finger at it. “You’d be wrong.” I imitated my father’s gruff voice. “It should have been a quick in and out, Isabel. The duke sent everyone away. I figured he was dying. Or dead. The castle was as good as empty.”
I threw my hands up in the air, startling another bird into flight. “The castle sits on a damn node and is the home of a duke! Even if the craziest rumors were true—and even those never went so far as to claim the duke was dead—Father never had a chance of stealing anything.”
I savored my rage, not telling even the birds my real problem. If I admitted it, despair might take over the rage, and I refused to arrive at the castle blotchy and teary-eyed. It would send the wrong impression.
I had every intention of delivering a tongue-lashing once I reached the duke, and such things were more effective if the deliverer looked calm and mature. Poise lent tongue-lashings more weight. Tears made them sound like the product of a girl throwing a fit.
Luckily for me, I had plenty to be angry about. The final mile of my walk, I focused my energy on my father. I alternated between cursing his ego and calling him every word for stupid I knew. Experience had given me quite a selection.
The birds ignored my tirade, and I ignored their damned, cheerful singing.
My litany of insults trailed off when I crested one of the taller hills in the area and caught sight of Rose Castle. Truthhold was situated in a stretch of hilly land surrounded on three sides by mountains.The castle perched at the peak of the next hill over, not quite centered, with the ridges of the Gaboor Mountains behind. Constructed out of pale pink granite, people had named the manor Rose Castle shortly after it was built. Then the magic pooling in the Truthholder node intervened. Now Rose Castle truly lived up to its name. Technically a manor house, it had a tower at each corner that fit the term castle well enough. But it was the rose part where the magic had truly taken over.
I couldn’t see a single patch of the pink stone as I walked down my hill toward the castle. The sun hadn’t quite sunk behind the mountains in the west, the most distant stretch of the Gaboors from where I stood, and the light was enough to illuminate the briars covering every inch of the castle walls. Scarlet, pink, yellow, orange, and white blooms alternated with the deep green of the vines. The facade looked more like a tapestry woven from the castle’s namesake plant than a stone wall.
The breeze carried the sweet scent of roses all the way to the base of the hill. For a moment, I stopped, my anger and hopelessness fading. Under any other circumstances, walking up to the castle doors would have left me gaping.
Even without the ability to sense the power in the air, how had my father overlooked the magic permeating this place? Usually, I had to concentrate to sense magic, and could still only catch it under very specific circumstances, but here, so many trickles of power joined together that it shivered over my skin, the vibration of a sound too low to hear.
I concentrated on that energy, trying to hear it. Instead, I felt the power twined around my torso pulling tighter. I rubbed at my sternum, wishing I could ease the pressure. I took another step, but even that didn’t satisfy the magic at this point. Perhaps the sensation wouldn’t be so strong if my father had told me what he had done the instant he returned to Leort last night, instead of spending the evening in a tavern and staggering home after I was in bed.
I hadn’t understood the tug of the magic when it first wrapped around me. This morning, the pressure had been almost unbearable. Then my father stumbled downstairs and told me I had to go to Rose Castle because of a contract he signed in order to save his own hide after getting caught trying to rob the duke. Magic bound me to fulfill the terms of a contract I hadn’t even seen.
It should have been impossible for my father to sign away my freedom. I was an adult. Father had lost his legal authority over me years ago. But somehow, I was still bound by this contract.
With every step up the hillside, a little more of my wonder at the beauty of Rose Castle was replaced by indignation. My father wasn’t the only one at fault in this situation. Since I hadn’t had the time to yell at him, the duke would bear the brunt of my anger. I refused to let my awe of the castle and the magic suffusing the hillside affect me.
???
I didn’t botherto knock at the doors of the castle. I knew there was no butler here to welcome me. The people of Leort had tried for weeks to get Master Berklay to explain why he, the handful of servants, and the passel of clerks who lived in the castle had left. The butler only said the duke wanted solitude. The clerks and secretaries could do their jobs just as well in Leort.
Even my mentor among the constables—who happened to be Berklay’s brother—couldn’t get a straight answer. I had been too busy to devote any time to satisfying my curiosity.
I looked at the brass doorknob. For the first time in my life, I wished I wasn’t about to have my questions answered. I’d take not knowing over this forced excursion to Rose Castle.
I threw open the doors, the tug of magic directing me inside. Candles flicked to life in the sconces on the walls as I walked into the foyer. If my father had even a lick of sense, he’d have fled the instantthe first candle lit on its own. I certainly wanted to flee. But I couldn’t.
