Perhaps if I were still able to wield my powers, my confinement might be a little easier to bear. Might help pass the time, too. But I can’t. I’m stuck here, in Harglade Hall, hollowed out and useless. I’ve often wondered whether it’s my punishment, retribution for a crime I have no memory of committing. A price placed upon my very existence.
Grandmother tells me not to worry, that one day my rain will return, but I’ve long suspected that this is a lie designed to comfort me. Best I cling on to hope than drown in the knowledge of my own emptiness. Best nobody discovers that the most hated girl in all the realm is utterly defenceless.
The turquoise gown is removed, a little less carefully this time, and I am once again left standing in my underclothes. I fold my arms over my chest as an attendant approaches nervously, laden with yet more dresses.
Grandmother jabs her stick at a bright cobalt silk embroidered with silver peacock feathers. ‘That one,’ she announces triumphantly.
The peacock is the emblem of House Bartell. Though it’s common in several of our neighbouring kingdoms to take one’s father’s family name, in Ostacre Etheri take the nameof the more powerful House, meaning that I am a Harglade, not a Bartell. Perhaps Grandmother feels my father should be represented today despite his absence. I don’t have much of an affinity with the peacock, much less my father, who hasn’t laid eyes on me since my mother died almost seven years ago. I wonder what she’d make of this, my first public appearance. I wonder what she’d make of me. Sometimes she comes to me in dreams, and I wake with my hand outstretched.
Grief changes people, but it changed my father beyond recognition. The man who once carried me around on his shoulders and brought me back exotic gifts from his every military posting, that calm, kind, steadying presence I had known and loved and leaned on, was suddenly gone, replaced by someone cold and distant, barely there at all. In many ways, it was as if he died, too. But unlike my mother, he couldn’t pass on. He couldn’t be anything for anyone, much less a father. And he couldn’t bear to look at me any more, because I reminded him too much ofher.So along came Grandmother, who whisked me and my brothers away to Harglade Hall, where we have remained ever since.
The seamstress fastens the last button with a flourish and steps back. Both of us wait for approval with bated breath. The dress is elegant, supple, the bodice closely fitted, the skirts cascading from my hips and pooling on the floor.
The girl in the mirror looks back at me, and I feel as though I hardly know her.
Grandmother nods slowly, satisfied. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Good. Beautiful.’
Pearls are hung from my earlobes and looped round my neck, matching the ones woven through my hair. I slip my feet into blue-satin flats and sit patiently as one attendant stains my lips blush pink and another brushes some silvery powder along my cheekbones. Nerves begin to set in then, a series of red-hot pokers jabbing me in the chest. I take a few deep breaths, wiping my palms on my dress and then scowling when I’m scolded for it.
One more year, I tell myself.Just one more year, and then I’ll be free.
Finally permitted to leave, I set off along the winding stone corridor in search of my brothers. Finding both their rooms empty, I head down the back staircase.
Steam and shouting fill the kitchens. Attendants dart about frantically, for once too busy to notice me. Almost every surface is covered in food. Gold platters groan under the weight of delicate canapés, cheeses, cold meats dusted with pepper and pomegranate seeds, mousses and pies, sugared nuts and iced cakes as tall as my younger brother and twice as wide. I help myself to a strawberry tart before slipping out again, deciding to try the library.
This is where I spend most of my time. I must have read every book in here twice over. I used to keep a log of sorts, scoring a line on the loose panel above the fireplace, but gave up after I ran out of space. Grandmother went mad when she found it, arranging for it to be concealed by a tapestry – a rather ugly thing depicting a Harglade cobra emerging from flames. There’s a book in here somewhere about tapestries, another about the emblems of the Noble Houses of Ostacre. I’m not fussy. I’ll read anything: storybooks,history books, picture books, thick anthologies filled with poetry and ballads, large leather-bound ledgers detailing anything from Valburn’s trading district to the repairs on the roof of Harglade Hall.
But my favourite books of all are the ones about the Otherlands, the wild, mythical isles far across the Second Sea that were once ruled by the Magi. I have studied their ancient languages, pored over maps, dog-eared and yellowing with age. I’ve always been fascinated by them, ever since I was a child.
Books have been my way of exploring the world I’ve spent my life locked away from. It’s only the idea of seeing the Otherlands for myself one day that keeps me from wallowing too much in self-pity.
Sure enough, Flint is waiting for me as I push open the door to the library.
‘Finally,’ he says in an accusatory way, as if I had gladly volunteered to spend all afternoon being dressed and undressed like one of Renly’s dolls. ‘Thereyou are.’
‘Here I am.’
The moment I reach my brother he swipes the remainder of the tart from my hand.
As far as fraternal twins go, Flint and I are more or less identical. We have the same unruly dark curls, olive skin and pointed chins. The only real difference between us – if you exclude basic anatomy and the brandmarks on the backs of our hands – is our eyes. While my own are grey and currently wide with indignation, Flint blinks innocently back at me with the signature Harglade brown-gold. He’s wearing a thick, heavily embroidered maroon doublet.
‘You look like a carpet,’ I tell him.
Suddenly there’s a scuffle, and our younger brother swings into view, leaping off the sliding ladder attached to one of the towering bookshelves.
‘Blaaaaaaaze!’ Renly skids to a halt beside us before sweeping into a bow so low he almost topples over. ‘I’ve been practising,’ he announces proudly.
‘Very impressive,’ I say.
‘Flawless,’ Flint confirms. ‘You’ll put me to shame.’
Ren beams, his smile the spitting image of our mother’s. He has no memory of her, since she died giving birth to him. Sometimes, though it hurts to admit it, I envy him. He doesn’t miss her stories, or the musical cadence of her voice. He doesn’t miss the smell of her perfume, the sweet scent of fig and orange blossom that would arrive in the room before she did and linger long after she’d left. He isn’t haunted by her absence because he never felt her presence. He cannot miss what he never knew.
Willing away the drizzle that threatens to fall above my head, I busy myself fastening the top button of his crimson doublet, which is ever so slightly too big for him. Since House Harglade is one of the most renowned flame-wielding families in the realm, Ren is dressed in Ignitia red. Some Etheri are born with their gifts, like Flint and me, but it’s more common for powers to emerge during infancy. Yet what is unusual, and troubling, is that at six years old, Ren remains giftless. Grandmother says he’s a late bloomer, that we must be patient. But still, I worry. I often find myself watching the candles when he’s nearby, waiting desperately for a sign. That he’s inherited the gift of fire, not water. Thathe’s like them, and not an anomaly like me. Or worse, that he’s as empty as I’ve become.
‘It’s almost time,’ says Flint. ‘Shall we watch the arrivals?’
I hesitate, my insides twisting. Never, not once in seventeen years, have I had any contact with the outside world. And now, today, the outside world is coming to me.
