First published in the US by HarperTeen in 2018

HarperTeen is a division of HarperCollins Children’s Books

Published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2018

Published in this ebook edition in 2018

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

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Text copyright © Rebecca Ross LLC 2018

Map illustration by Virginia Allyn

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Rebecca Ross asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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Source ISBN: 9780008245986

Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008245993

Version: 2018-01-16

For Ruth and Mary, Mistress of Art and Mistress of Knowledge

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map of the Realms

Map of Maevana’s Territories

Cast of Characters

Allenach Family Tree

MacQuinn Family Tree

Morgane Family Tree

Kavanagh Family Tree

Prologue

PART ONE–Magnalia

1. Letters and Lessons

2. A Maevan Portrait

3. Cheques and Marques

4. The Three Branches

5. The Stone of Eventide

6. The Fall

7. Eavesdropper

8. The Summer Solstice

9. Song of the North

10. Of Cloaks and Gifts

11. Buried

PART TWO–Jourdain

12. A Patron Father

13. Amadine

14. Passion Brother

15. Elusive Bonds

16. The Grim Quill

17. A Sword Lesson

18. Oblique

19. Summer’s End

20. To Stand Before a King

PART THREE–Allenach

21. The Mademoiselle with the Silver Rose

22. d’Aramitz

23. To Pass Through a Tapestry

24. The Hunt

25. The Warning

26. Wounds and Stitches

27. That Which Cannot Be

28. A Divided Heart

29. The Words Wake from Their Slumber

30. The Three Banners

31. A Clash of Steel

PART FOUR–MacQuinn

32. Let the Queen Rise

33. Fields of Corogan

34. Aviana

About the Publisher

Map of the Realms

Map of Maevana’s Territories

MAGNALIA HOUSE

The Dowager of Magnalia

Magnalia’s Arials:

Solene Severin, mistress of art

Evelina Baudin, mistress of music

Xavier Allard, master of dramatics

Therese Berger, mistress of wit

Cartier Évariste, master of knowledge

Magnalia’s Ardens:

Oriana DuBois, arden of art

Merei Labelle, arden of music

Abree Cavey, arden of dramatics

Sibylle Fontaine, arden of wit

Ciri Montagne, arden of knowledge

Brienna Colbert, arden of knowledge

Others Who Visit Magnalia:

Francis, courier

Rolf Paquet, Brienna’s grandfather

Monique Lavoie, patron

Nicolas Babineaux, patron

Brice Mathieu, patron

JOURDAIN HOUSE

Aldéric Jourdain

Luc Jourdain

Amadine Jourdain

Jean David, lackey and coachman

Agnes Cote, chamberlain

Pierre Faure, chef

Liam O’Brian, thane

Others Involved with Jourdain

Hector Laurent (Braden Kavanagh)

Yseult Laurent (Isolde Kavanagh)

Theo d’Aramitz (Aodhan Morgane)

ALLENACH HOUSE

Brendan Allenach, lord

Rian Allenach, firstborn son

Sean Allenach, second-born son

Others Mentioned

Gilroy Lannon, king of Maevana

Liadan Kavanagh, the first queen of Maevana

Tristan Allenach

Norah Kavanagh, third-born princess of Maevana

Evan Berne, printmaker

THE FOURTEEN HOUSES OF MAEVANA

Allenach the Shrewd

Kavanagh the Bright*

Burke the Elder

Lannon the Fierce

Carran the Courageous

MacBran the Merciful

Dermott the Loved

MacCarey the Just

Dunn the Wise

MacFinley the Pensive

Fitzsimmons the Gentle

MacQuinn the Steadfast*

Halloran the Upright

Morgane the Swift*

*Denotes a fallen House

Midsummer 1559 Province of Angelique, Kingdom of Valenia

Magnalia House was the sort of establishment where only wealthy, talented girls mastered their passion. It wasn’t designed for girls who were lacking, for girls who were illegitimate daughters, and certainly not for girls who defied kings. I, of course, happen to be all three of those things.

I was ten years old when my grandfather first took me to Magnalia. Not only was it the hottest day of summer, an afternoon for bloated clouds and short tempers, it was the day I decided to ask the question that had haunted me ever since I had been placed in the orphanage.

“Grandpapa, who is my father?”

My grandfather sat on the opposite bench, his eyes heavy from the heat until my inquiry startled him. He was a proper man, a good yet very private man. Because of that, I believed he was ashamed of me—the illegitimate child of his beloved, dead daughter.

But on that sweltering day, he was trapped in the coach with me, and I had voiced a question he must answer. He blinked down at my expectant face, frowning as if I had asked him to pluck the moon from the sky. “Your father is not a respectable man, Brienna.”

“Does he have a name?” I persisted. Hot weather made me bold, while it melted the older ones, like Grandpapa. I felt confident that he would at long last tell me who I had descended from.

“Don’t all men?” He was getting crabby. We had been traveling for two days in this heat.

I watched him fumble for his handkerchief and mop the sweat from his crinkled brow, which was speckled like an egg. He had a ruddy face, an overpowering nose, and a crown of white hair. They said my mother had been comely—and that I was her reflection—yet I could not imagine someone as ugly as Grandpapa creating something beautiful.

“Ah, Brienna, child, why must you ask of him?” Grandpapa sighed, mellowing a bit. “Let us talk instead of what is to come, of Magnalia.”

I swallowed my disappointment; it sat in my throat like a marble, and I decided I did not want to talk of Magnalia.

The coach took a turn before I could bolster my stubbornness, the wheels transitioning from ruts to a smooth stone drive. I glanced at the window, streaked from dust. My heart quickened at the sight and I pressed closer, spread my fingers upon the glass.

I admired the trees first, their long branches arched over the drive like welcoming arms. Horses leisurely grazed in the pastures, their coats damp from the summer sun. Beyond the pastures were the distant blue mountains of Valenia, the backbone of our kingdom. It was a sight to salve my disappointment, a land to grow wonder and courage.

We rambled along, under the oak boughs and up a hill, finally stopping in a courtyard. Through the haze, I stared at the decadent gray stone, glistening windows, and climbing ivy that was Magnalia House.

“Now listen, Brienna,” Grandpapa said, rushing to tuck away his handkerchief. “You must be on your absolute best behavior. As if you were about to meet King Phillipe. You must smile and curtsy, and not say anything out of line. Can you do that for your grandpapa?”

I nodded, suddenly losing my voice.

“Very good. Let us pray that the Dowager will accept you.”

The coachman opened the door, and Grandpapa motioned for me to exit before him. I did, on trembling legs, feeling small as I craned my neck to soak in the grand estate.

“I will speak to the Dowager first, privately, and then you will meet her,” my grandfather said, pulling me along up the stairs to the front doors. “Remember, you must be polite. This is a place for cultured girls.”

He examined my appearance as he rang the doorbell. My navy dress was wrinkled from travel, my braids coming unwound, the hair frizzy about my face. But the door swung open before my grandfather could comment on my unkemptness. We entered Magnalia side by side, stepping into the blue shadows of the foyer.

While my grandfather was admitted into the Dowager’s study, I remained in the corridor. The butler offered me a place on a cushioned bench along the wall where I sat alone, waiting, my feet swinging nervously as I stared at the black-and-white checkered floors. It was a quiet house, as if it was missing its heart. And because it was so quiet, I could hear my grandfather and the Dowager speaking, their words melting through the study doors.

“Which passion does she gravitate toward?” the Dowager asked. Her voice was rich and smooth, like smoke drifting up on an autumn night.

“She likes to draw … She does very well with drawing. She also has a vivid imagination—she would do excellent in theater. And music—my daughter was very accomplished with the lute, so surely Brienna inherited a bit of that. What else … oh yes, they say she enjoys reading at the orphanage. She has read all of their books two times over.” Grandpapa was rambling. Did he even know what he was saying? Not once had he seen me draw. Not once had he listened to my imagination.

I slipped from the bench and softly padded closer. With my ear pressed to the door, I drank in their words.

“That is all very good, Monsieur Paquet, but surely you understand that ‘to passion’ means your granddaughter must master one of the five passions, not all of them.”

In my mind, I thought of the five. Art. Music. Dramatics. Wit. Knowledge. Magnalia was a place for a girl to become an arden—an apprentice student. She could choose one of the five passions to diligently study beneath the careful instruction of a master or mistress. When she reached the height of her talent, the girl would gain the title of a mistress and receive her cloak—an individualized marker of her achievement and status. She would become a passion of art, a passion of wit, or whichever one she was devoted to.

My heart thundered in my chest, and sweat beaded along my palms as I imagined myself becoming a passion.

Which one should I choose, if the Dowager admitted me?

But I couldn’t mull over this, because my grandfather said, “I promise you, Brienna is a bright girl. She can master any of the five.”

“That is kind of you to think such, but I must tell you … my House is very competitive, very difficult. I already have my five ardens for this passion season. If I accept your granddaughter, one of my arials will have to instruct two ardens. This has never been done …”

I was trying to figure out what “arial” meant—“instructor,” perhaps?—when I heard a scuff and jumped back from the twin doors, expecting them to fly open and catch me in my crime. But it must have only been my grandfather, shifting anxiously in his chair.

“I can assure you, Madame, that Brienna will not cause any trouble. She is a very obedient girl.”

“But you say she lives in an orphanage? And she does not bear your last name. Why is that?” the Dowager asked.

There was a pause. I had always wondered why my last name did not match my grandfather’s. I stepped close to the doors again, laid my ear to the wood …

“It is to protect Brienna from her father, Madame.”

“Monsieur, I fear that I cannot accept her if she is in a dangerous situation—”

“Please hear me, Madame, just for a moment. Brienna holds dual citizenship. Her mother—my daughter—was Valenian. Her father is from Maevana. He knows she exists, and I was concerned … concerned that he might seek her out, find her by my last name.”

“And why would that be so horrible?”

“Because her father is—”

Down the hall, a door opened and closed, followed by the click of boots entering the corridor. I rushed back to the bench and all but fell on it, provoking its squat legs to scrape along the floor as nails on a chalkboard.

I didn’t dare look up, my cheeks flushed with guilt, as the owner of the boots walked closer, eventually coming to stand before me.

I thought it was the butler, until I conceded to glance up and see it was a young man, horribly handsome with hair the color of summer wheat fields. He was tall and trim, not a wrinkle on his breeches and tunic, but more than that … he wore a blue cloak. He was a passion, then, a master of knowledge, as blue was their signifying color, and he had just discovered that I was eavesdropping on the Dowager.

Slowly, he crouched down, to be level with my cautious gaze. He held a book in his hands, and I noticed that his eyes were as blue as his passion cloak, the color of cornflowers.

“And who might you be?” he asked.

“Brienna.”

“That is a pretty name. Are you to become an arden here at Magnalia?”

“I don’t know, Monsieur.”

“Do you want to become one?”

“Yes, very much, Monsieur.”

“You do not need to call me ‘monsieur,’” he gently corrected.

“Then what should I call you, Monsieur?”

He didn’t answer; he merely looked at me, his head tilted to the side, that blond hair spilling over his shoulder as captive sunlight. I wanted him to go away, and yet I wanted him to keep talking to me.

It was at that moment that the study doors opened. The master of knowledge stood and turned toward the sound. But my gaze strayed to the back of his cloak, where silver threads gathered—a constellation of stars among the blue fabric. I marveled over it; I longed to ask him what they meant.

“Ah, Master Cartier,” the Dowager said from where she stood on the threshold. “Do you mind escorting Brienna to the study?”

He extended his hand to me, palm up with invitation. Carefully, I let my fingers rest in his. I was warm, he was cold, and I walked at his side across the corridor, where the Dowager waited for me. Master Cartier squeezed my fingers just before he let go and continued his way down the hall; he was encouraging me to be brave, to stand tall and proud, to find my place in this House.

I entered the study, the doors closing with a soft click. My grandfather sat in one chair; there was a second one beside his, meant for me. Quietly, I surrendered to it as the Dowager walked around her desk, settling behind it with a sigh of her dress.

She was a rather severe-looking woman; her forehead was high, bespeaking years of pulling her hair back beneath tight wigs of glory. Now, her white locks of experience were almost completely concealed beneath her gabled headdress of black velvet, which was elegant upon her head. Her dress was a deep shade of red with a low waist and a square neckline trimmed with pearls. And I knew in that moment as I soaked in her aged beauty that she could usher me into a life that I would not have been able to achieve otherwise. To become impassioned.

“It is nice to meet you, Brienna,” she said to me with a smile.

“Madame,” I returned, wiping my sweaty palms on my dress.

“Your grandfather says many wonderful things about you.”

I nodded and awkwardly glanced at him. He was watching me, a fastidious gleam in his eyes, handkerchief gripped in his hand once more, like he needed something to hold on to.

“Which passion are you drawn to the most, Brienna?” she asked, attracting my attention back to her. “Or perhaps you have a natural inclination toward one of them?”

Saints above, I didn’t know. Frantically, I let my mind trace them again … art … music … dramatics … wit … knowledge. I honestly had no natural inclinations, no intrinsic talent for a passion. So I blurted the first one that came to mind. “Art, Madame.”

And then, to my dismay, she opened a drawer before her and procured a fresh square of parchment and a pencil. She set it down on the corner of her desk, directly before me.

“Draw something for me.” The Dowager beckoned.

I resisted looking at my grandfather, because I knew that our deceit would become a smoke signal. He knew I wasn’t an artist, I knew I wasn’t either, and yet I grasped that pencil as if I were.

I took a deep breath and thought of something that I loved: I thought of the tree that grew in the backyard of the orphanage, a wise, gangly old oak that we adored to climb. And so I said to myself … anyone can draw a tree.

I drew it while the Dowager conversed with my grandfather, both of them trying to grant me a measure of privacy. When I was finished, I set the pencil down and waited, staring at what my hand had born.

It was a pitiful rendition. Not at all like the image I held in my mind.

The Dowager stared intently at my drawing; I noticed a slight frown creased her forehead, but her eyes were well guarded.

“Are you certain you wish to study art, Brienna?” There was no judgment in her tone, but I tasted the subtle challenge in the marrow of her words.

I almost told her no, that I did not belong here. But when I thought about returning to the orphanage, when I thought about becoming a scullery maid or a cook, as all the other girls at the orphanage eventually did, I realized this was my one chance to evolve.

“Yes, Madame.”

“Then I shall make an exception for you. I already have five girls your age attending Magnalia. You will become the sixth arden, and will study the passion of art beneath Mistress Solene. You will spend the next seven years here, living with your arden-sisters, learning and growing and preparing for your seventeenth summer solstice, when you will become impassioned and gain a patron.” She paused, and I felt drunk on all she had just poured over me. “Does this sound acceptable to you?”

I blinked, and then stammered, “Yes, yes indeed, Madame!”

“Very good. Monsieur Paquet, you should bring Brienna back on the autumn equinox, in addition to her tuition sum.”

My grandfather rushed to stand and bow to her, his relief like overpowering cologne in the room. “Thank you, Madame. We are thrilled! Brienna will not disappoint you.”

“No, I do not think that she will,” the Dowager said.

I stood and dropped a crooked curtsy, trailing Grandpapa to the doors. But just before I returned to the corridor, I glanced behind to look at her.

The Dowager watched me with a sad gaze. I was only a girl, but I knew such a look. Whatever my grandfather had said to her had convinced her to accept me. My admittance was not of my own merit; it was not based on my potential. Was it the name of my father that had swayed her? The name I did not know? Did his name truly even matter, though?

She believed that she had just accepted me out of charity, and I would never passion.

I chose that moment to prove her wrong.

Late spring of 1566

Twice a week, Francis hid amid the juniper bush that flourished by the library window. Sometimes I liked to make him wait; he was long-legged and impatient, and imagining him crouched in a bush was cordial to my mind. But summer was a week away, and that provoked me to hurry. It was also time to tell him. The thought made my pulse tumble as I entered the quiet afternoon shadows of the library.

Tell him this will be the last time.

I lifted the window with a gentle push, catching the sweet fragrance of the gardens as Francis emerged from his gargoyle-inspired position.

“You like to make a man wait,” he grumbled, but he always greeted me this way. His face was sunburned, his sable hair escaping from its plait. The brown courier uniform was damp with sweat, and the sun glinted off the small accrual of achievement badges hanging from the fabric over his heart. He boasted he was the fastest courier in all of Valenia despite his rumored twenty-one years.

“This is the last time, Francis,” I warned, before I could change my mind.

“Last time?” he echoed, but he was already grinning at me. I knew such a smile. It was what he used to get what he wanted. “Why?”

“Why!” I exclaimed, swatting a curious bumblebee. “Do you really need to ask?”

“If anything, this is the time I need you the most, mademoiselle,” he responded, retrieving two small envelopes from the inner pocket of his shirt. “In eight days comes the summer solstice of fate.”

“Exactly, Francis,” I retorted, knowing he was only thinking of my arden-sister Sibylle. “Eight days and I still have much to master.” My gaze rested on those envelopes he held; one was addressed to Sibylle, but the other was addressed to me. I recognized the handwriting as Grandpapa’s; he had finally written. My heart fluttered to imagine what that letter might hold within its creases …

“You are worried?”

My eyes snapped back up to Francis’s face. “Of course I’m worried.”

“You shouldn’t be. I think you will do splendidly.” For a change, he wasn’t teasing me. I heard the honesty in his voice, bright and sweet. I wanted to believe as he did, that in eight days, when my seventeenth summer marked my body, I would passion. I would be chosen.

“I don’t think Master Cartier—”

“Who cares what your master thinks?” Francis interrupted with a nonchalant shrug. “You should only care about what you think.”

I frowned as I pondered that, imagining how Master Cartier would respond to such a statement.

I had known Cartier for seven years. I had known Francis for seven months.

We had met last November; I had been sitting before the open window, waiting for Cartier to arrive for my afternoon lesson, when Francis passed by on the gravel path. I knew who he was, as did all of my arden-sisters; we often saw him delivering and receiving the mail to and from Magnalia House. But it was that first personal encounter when he asked if I would give a secret letter to Sibylle. Which I had, and so I had become entangled in their letter exchanges.

“I care about what Master Cartier thinks, because he is the one to claim me impassioned,” I argued.

“Saints, Brienna,” Francis replied as a butterfly flirted with his broad shoulder. “You should be the one to claim yourself impassioned, don’t you think?”

That gave me a reason to pause. And Francis took advantage of it.

“By the way, I know the patrons the Dowager has invited to the solstice.”

“What! How?”

But of course I knew how. He had delivered all the letters, seen the names and addresses. I narrowed my eyes at him just as his dimples crested his cheeks. Again, that smile. I could see perfectly well why Sibylle fancied him, but he was far too playful for me.

“Oh, just give me your blasted letters,” I cried, reaching out to pluck them from his fingers.

He evaded me, expecting such a response.

“Don’t you care to know who the patrons are?” he prodded. “For one of them is to be yours in eight days …”

I stared at him, but I saw beyond his boyish face and tall gangly frame. The garden was dry, yearning for rain, trembling in a slight breeze. “Just give me the letters.”

“But if this is to be my last one to Sibylle, I need to rewrite some things.”

“By Saint LeGrand, Francis, I do not have time for your games.”

“Just grant me one more letter,” he pleaded. “I don’t know where Sibylle will be in a week’s time.”

I should have felt sympathy for him—oh, the heartache of loving a passion when you are not one. But I should have remained firm in my decision too. Let him mail her a letter, as he should have been doing all this time. Eventually I sighed and agreed, mostly because I wanted my grandfather’s letter.

Francis finally relinquished the envelopes to me. The one from Grandpapa went straight to my pocket, but Francis’s remained in my fingers.

“Why did you write in Dairine?” I asked, noting his sprawling script of address. He had written in the language of Maevana, the queen’s realm of the north. To Sibylle, my sun and my moon, my life and my light. I almost burst into laughter, but caught it just in time.

“Don’t read it!” he exclaimed, a blush mottling his already sunburned cheeks.

“It’s on the face of the envelope, you fool. Of course I’m going to read it.”

“Brienna …”

He reached toward me and I relished the chance to finally taunt him when I heard the library door open. I knew it was Cartier without having to look. For three years, I had spent nearly every day with him, and my soul had grown accustomed to how his presence quietly commanded a room.

Shoving Francis’s letter into my pocket with Grandpapa’s, I widened my eyes at him and began to close the window. He understood a moment too late; I caught his fingers on the sill. I clearly heard his yelp of pain, but I hoped the hasty shutting of the window concealed it from Cartier.

“Master Cartier,” I greeted, breathless, and turned on my heel.

He was not looking at me. I watched as he set his leather satchel in a chair and pulled several volumes from it, laying the lesson books on the table.

“No open window today?” he asked. Still, he had not met my gaze. It might have been in my best interest, for I felt the way my face warmed, and it was not from the sunlight.

“The bumblebees are pesky today,” I said, discreetly glancing over my shoulder to watch Francis hurry down the gravel path to the stables. I knew Magnalia’s rules; I knew that we were not to create romantic entanglements while we were ardens. Or, more realistically, be caught doing such. I was foolish to transport Sibylle’s and Francis’s letters.

I looked forward to find Cartier was watching me.

“How are your Valenian Houses coming?” He motioned for me to come to the table.

“Very well, Master,” I said, taking my usual seat.

“Let us begin by reciting the lineage of the House of Renaud, following the firstborn son,” Cartier requested, sitting in the chair across from mine.

“The House of Renaud?” Saint’s mercy, of course he would request the expansive royal lineage. The one I struggled to remember.

“It is the lineage of our king,” he reminded with that unflinching gaze of his. I had seen that look of his many times. And so had my arden-sisters, who all complained about Cartier behind closed doors. He was the most handsome of Magnalia’s arials, the instructor of knowledge, but he was also the strictest. My arden-sister Oriana claimed that a rock dwelled in his chest. And she had drawn a caricature of him, depicting him as a man emerging from stone.

“Brienna.” My name rolled off his tongue as his fingers snapped impatiently.

“Forgive me, Master.” I tried to summon the beginning of the royal line, but all I could think of was my grandfather’s letter, waiting in my pocket. What had taken him so long to write?

“You understand that knowledge is the most demanding of the passions,” Cartier spoke when my silence had extended far too long.

I met his gaze and wondered if he was trying to tactfully imply that I did not have the fortitude for this. Some mornings, I thought the same myself.

My first year at Magnalia, I had studied the passion of art. And since I had no artistic inclinations, the next year I squandered in music. But my singing was beyond redeeming and my fingers made instruments sound like caterwauling felines. My third year I had attempted dramatics until I discovered my stage fright could not be overcome. So my fourth year was given to wit, a very fretful year that I tried not to remember. Then, when I was fourteen, I had come to stand before Cartier and asked him to accept me as his arden, to make me into a mistress of knowledge in the three years I had remaining at Magnalia.

Yet I knew—and I suspected the other arials who instructed me knew this as well—that I was here because of something my grandfather had said those seven years ago. I was not here because I deserved it; I was not here because I was brimming with talent and capacity as were the other five ardens, who I loved as my true sisters. But perhaps that made me want it even more, to prove that passion was not just inherently gifted as some people believed, but that passion could be earned by anyone, commoner or noble, even if they did not have intrinsic skill.

“Maybe I should go back to our first lesson,” Cartier said, breaking my reverie. “What is passion, Brienna?”

The passion catechism. It echoed in my thoughts, one of the first passages I had ever memorized, the one all the ardens knew by heart.

He was not patronizing me by asking this now, eight days from the summer solstice, but all the same, I felt a twinge of embarrassment until I bravely met his gaze and saw there was more to this question.

What do you want, Brienna? His eyes quietly asked as they held mine. Why do you want to passion?

And so I gave him the answer I had been taught to say, because I felt it would be safest.

“Passion is divided into five hearts,” I began. “Passion is art, music, dramatics, wit, and knowledge. Passion is wholehearted devotion; it is fervor and agony; it is temper and zeal. It knows no bounds and marks a man or woman no matter their class or status, no matter their heritage. The passion becomes the man or woman, as the man or woman becomes the passion. It is a consummation of skill and flesh, a marker of devotion, dedication, and deed.”

I couldn’t tell if Cartier was disappointed with my learned answer. His face was always so carefully guarded—not once had I ever seen him smile; not once had I ever heard him laugh. Sometimes, I imagined he was not much older than me, but then I always reminded myself that my soul was young and Cartier’s was not. He was far more experienced and educated, most likely the product of a childhood cured too soon. Whatever his age, he held a vast amount of knowledge in his mind.

“I was your last choice, Brienna,” he finally said, disregarding my catechism. “You came to me three years ago and asked me to prepare you for your seventeenth summer solstice. Yet instead of having seven years to make you into a mistress of knowledge, I only had three.”

I could hardly bear his reminders. It made me think of Ciri, his other arden of knowledge. Ciri soaked in knowledge with envious depth, but she had also had seven years of instruction. Of course I would feel inadequate when I compared myself to her.

“Forgive me for not being as Ciri,” I said before I could swallow the sarcasm.

“Ciri began her training when she was ten,” he reminded me calmly, preoccupied with a book on the table. He picked it up and passed through several pages that were dog-eared—something he fervently detested—and I watched him gently straighten the bends from the old paper.

“Do you regret my choice, Master?” What I really wanted to ask him was, Why didn’t you refuse me when I asked you to become my master three years ago? If three years was not enough time for me to passion, why didn’t you tell me no? But maybe my gaze expressed this, because he looked at me and then glanced languidly away, back to the books.

“I only have a few regrets, Brienna,” he answered.

“What happens if I am not chosen by a patron at the solstice?” I asked, although I knew what became of young men and women who failed to reach impassionment. They were often broken and inadequate, neither here nor there, belonging to no group, shunned by passion and common folk alike. To dedicate years, time, and mind to passion and not accomplish it … one became marked as inept. No longer an arden, never quite a passion, and suddenly forced to merge back into society to become useful.

And as I waited for his answer, I thought of the simple metaphor Mistress Solene had taught me that first year in art (when she realized I was in no way artistic). Passion moved in phases. One began as an arden, which was like a caterpillar. This was the time to devour and master as much of the passion as one could manage. It could happen as short as two years if one was a prodigy, and as long as ten if one was a slower learner. Magnalia House was a seven year program and fairly rigorous compared to other Valenian passion Houses, which often went to eight or nine years of study. And then came impassionment—marked by a cloak and a title—and the phase of the patron, which was like the cocoon, a place to hold and mature the passion, to support her as she readied for the final phase. Which was the butterfly, when the passion could emerge out in the world on her own.

So I was thinking of butterflies when Cartier replied, “I suppose you will be the first of your kind, little arden.”

I did not like his response, and my body sank deeper into the brocade of the chair, which smelled of old books and loneliness.

“If you believe you will fail, then you most likely will,” he continued, his blue eyes sparking against my brown ones. Dust motes crossed the chasm between us, little swirling eddies in the air. “Do you agree?”

“Of course, Master.”

“Your eyes never lie to me, Brienna. You should learn better composure when you fib.”

“I shall take your advice to heart.”

He tilted his head to the side, but his eyes still rested on mine. “Do you want to tell me what is truly on your mind?”

“The solstice is on my mind,” I answered, a bit too quickly. It was a half-truth, but I could not imagine telling Cartier about my grandfather’s letter, because then he might ask me to read it aloud.

“Well, this lesson has been futile,” he said and rose to his feet.

I was disappointed that he was cutting it short—I needed every lesson he was willing to give me—yet I was relieved—I couldn’t focus on anything with Grandpapa’s letter resting in my pocket as a coal.

“Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon to study independently,” he suggested, waving his hands to the books on the table. “Take these, if you want.”

“Yes, thank you, Master Cartier.” I stood as well, to grant him a curtsy. Without looking at him, I gathered the books and strode from the library, anxious.

I made my way out into the gardens, walking into the hedges so Cartier would not be able to see me from the library windows. The sky above was rippled and gray, warning of a storm, so I sat on the first bench I came across and set his books carefully to the side.

I retrieved my grandfather’s letter and held it before me, his crooked penmanship making my name look like a grimace over the parchment. And then I broke his red wax seal, my hands trembling as I unfolded the letter.

June 7, 1566

My Dearest Brienna,

Forgive me for taking so long to respond. I fear the pain in my hands has worsened, and the physician has instructed me to keep my writings brief, or else procure a scribe. I must say that I am very proud of you, that your mother—my sweet Rosalie—would be proud as well to know you are mere days away from becoming impassioned. Please write to me after the solstice and tell me the patron you choose.

To answer your question … I fear you will be familiar with my response. Your father’s name is not worthy to note. Your mother was swayed by his handsome face and saccharine words, and I fear it would only harm you to learn his name. Yes, you have dual citizenship, which means you are part Maevan. But I do not want you to seek him out. Rest assured that you would find the same faults in him as I do. And no, my dear, he has not inquired after you. Not once has he sought for you. You must remember that you are illegitimate, and most men flee when they hear that word.

Remember that you are indeed loved, and that I stand in place of your father.

Love, Grandpapa

I crumpled the letter in my hand, my fingers as white as the paper, my eyes swarming with tears. It was folly to cry over such a letter, to once more be denied the name of the man who was my father. And it had taken me weeks to muster the courage to write that letter and ask again.

I decided that it would be the final time I asked. The name did not matter.

If my mother had lived, what would she say about him? Would she have married him? Or perhaps he was already married, and that was why my grandfather was so mortified by the mere thought of my father. A shameful extramarital affair between a Valenian woman and a Maevan man.

Ah, my mother. Sometimes, I thought I could remember the musical cadence of her voice, that I could remember how it felt to be held in her arms, the scent of her. Lavender and clover, sunshine and roses. She died from the sweating sickness when I was three, and Cartier had once told me that it was rare for one to remember memories that early. So perhaps it was all in my mind, what I wanted to remember of her?

Why did it hurt, then, to think of one I didn’t truly know?

Shoving the letter into my pocket, I leaned back and felt the scalloped leaves of the hedge stroke my hair, as if the plant were trying to comfort me. I should not be dwelling on fragments of my past, pieces that did not matter. I needed to think of what was to come in eight days, when the solstice arrived, when I should master my passion and finally receive my cloak.

I needed to be reading Cartier’s books, pressing the words into my memory.

But before I could so much as twitch my fingers toward the pages, I heard a soft tread on the grass, and Oriana appeared on the path.

“Brienna!” she greeted, her black hair captured in a tangled braid to her waist. Her brown skin and arden dress were speckled with paint from the endless hours she spent in the art studio. And while her dress told of enchanting creations of color, mine was boringly clean and wrinkled. All six of Magnalia’s ardens wore those drab gray dresses, and we unanimously loathed them, with their high collars and long plain sleeves and chaste fit. To shed them soon would feel passionate, indeed.

“What are you up to?” my arden-sister asked, closing the gap between us. “Has Master Cartier driven you to frustration yet?”

“No, I think it’s the other way around this time.” I stood and took the books in one hand and looped my other arm with Oriana’s. We walked beside each other, Oriana petite and slender compared to my height and long legs. I had to slow down to remain in stride with her. “How are your final paintings coming?”

She snorted and gave me a wry smile as she plucked a rose from a bush. “They are coming along, I suppose.”

“Have you picked which ones to display at the solstice?”

“Yes, actually.” She began to tell me which paintings she had chosen to display for the patrons, and I watched as she nervously twirled the rose.

“Don’t worry,” I said and eased her to a stop so we could look upon each other face-to-face. In the distance, thunder rumbled, the air swelling with the scent of rain. “Your paintings are exquisite. And I can already see it.”

“See what?” Oriana gently tucked the rose behind my ear.

“That the patrons will fight over you. You will bring the highest price.”

“Poppies, no! I do not have the charm of Abree, or the beauty of Sibylle, or the sweetness of Merei, or the brains of you and Ciri.”

“But your art creates a window into another world,” I said, smiling at her. “That is a true gift, to help others see the world in a different way.”

“Since when did you become a poet, my friend?”

I laughed, but a clap of thunder swallowed the sound. As soon as the storm’s complaint quieted, Oriana said, “So, I have a confession.” She pulled me back along the path as the first drops of rain began to fall, and I followed, mystified, because Oriana was the one arden who never broke the rules.

“And …” I prompted.

“I knew you were here in the gardens, and I came to ask you something. You remember how I drew portraits of the other girls? So I can have ways to remember each of you after we part ways next week?” Oriana glanced at me, her amber eyes gleaming in anticipation.

I tried not to groan. “Ori, I cannot sit still that long.”

“Abree managed it. And you know she is constantly in motion. And what do you even mean, you cannot sit still that long? You sit all day long with Ciri and Master Cartier, reading book after book!”

I pressed a smile to my lips. For an entire year, she had asked to draw me, and I had simply been too overcome with my studies to have the leisure time for something like a portrait. I had lessons with Cartier and Ciri in the mornings, but then come the afternoon, I typically had a private lesson with Cartier, because I was still struggling to master everything I should. And while I sat through grueling lessons and watched the sunlight melt across the floor, my arden-sisters had the afternoons to themselves; many days I had listened to their laughter and gaiety fill the house while I flogged my memory beneath Cartier’s scrutiny.

“I don’t know.” I hesitated, shifting the books in my arms. “I am supposed to be studying.”

We rounded the hedge’s corner only to plow into Abree.

“Did you convince her?” Abree asked Oriana, and I realized that this was an ambush. “And don’t look at us like that, Brienna.”

“Like what?” I countered. “You both know that if I want to receive my cloak and leave with a patron in eight days, I need to spend every minute—”

“Memorizing boring lineages, yes, we know,” Abree interrupted. Her thick auburn hair sat free upon her shoulders, a few stray leaves caught within the curls as if she had been crawling through the bushes and brambles. She was known to practice her lines outside with Master Xavier, and several times I had watched her through the library windows as she tossed and turned on the grass and crushed berries to her bodice as fake blood, projecting her lines to the clouds. I saw evidence of mud on her arden skirts now, the stain of berries, and knew she had been in the throes of rehearsal.

“Please, Brienna,” Oriana pleaded. “I have drawn everyone else’s but yours …”

“And you will want her to draw it, especially after you see the props I found for you,” Abree said, wickedly smiling down at me. She was the tallest of us, taller than me by an entire handbreadth.

“Props!” I cried. “Now, listen, I do not—” But the thunder came again, drowning out my weak protests, and before I could stop her, Oriana stole the books from my hands.

“I’ll go ahead and get things set up,” Oriana said, taking three eager steps away from me, as if my mind could not be changed once she got out of earshot. “Abree, bring her to the studio.”

“Yes, Milady,” Abree returned with a playful bow.

I watched as Oriana dashed across the lawn, in through the back doors.

“Oh, come now, Brienna,” Abree said, the rain fully breaking through the clouds, dappling our dresses. “You need to enjoy these final days.”

“I cannot enjoy them if I worry that I will become inept.” I began to walk toward the house, yanking the ribbon from my braid to let my long hair unwind about me, running my fingers anxiously through it.

“You are not going to become inept!” But there was a pause, which was followed by, “Does Master Cartier think you will?”

I was halfway through the lawn, drenched and overwhelmed with the impending expectations when Abree caught up to me, grabbed my arm, and spun me about. “Please, Brienna. Do the portrait for me, for Oriana.”

I sighed, but a small smile was beginning to touch the corners of my lips. “Very well. But it cannot take all day.”

“You really will be excited to see the props I found!” Abree insisted breathlessly, dragging me across the remaining strip of lawn.

“How long do you think it will take?” I panted as we opened the doors and stepped into the shadows of the back hall, soaked and shivering.

“Not long,” Abree replied. “Oh! Remember how you were helping me plot the second half of my play? The one where Lady Pumpernickel gets thrown in the dungeon for stealing the diadem?”

“Mm-hmm.” Even though I was no longer studying dramatics, Abree continued to solicit my help when it came to plotting her plays. “You don’t know how to get her out of the dungeon, do you?”

She sheepishly blushed. “No. And before you say it … I don’t want to kill her off.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “That was years ago, Abree.”

She was referring to the time when I had been an arden of dramatics and we had both written a skit for Master Xavier. While Abree had authored a comical scene of two sisters fighting over the same beau, I had penned a bloody tragedy of a daughter stealing her father’s throne. I killed off all the characters save for one by the end, and Master Xavier had obviously been shocked by my dark plotting.

“If you do not wish to kill her,” I said as we began to walk down the hall, “then make her find a secret door behind a skeleton, or have a guard shift his allegiance and help her out, but only at a twisted, unexpected cost.”

“Ah, a secret door!” Abree cried, linking her arm with mine. “You plot like a fiend, Bri! I wish I schemed like you.” When she smiled down at me, I felt a drop of remorse, that I had been too frightened of the stage to become a mistress of dramatics.

Abree must have felt the same, for she tightened her hold on me and murmured, “You know, it’s not too late. You can write a two act play in eight days, and impress Master Xavier, and—”

“Abree.” I playfully hushed her.

“Is this how two of Magnalia’s ardens behave a week before their solstice of fate?” The voice startled us. Abree and I stopped in the hall, surprised to see Mistress Therese, the arial of wit, standing with her arms crossed in blunt disapproval. She looked down her thin, pointed nose at us with eyebrows raised, disgusted by our drenched appearance. “You act as if you are children, not women about to gain their cloaks.”

“Much apologies, Mistress Therese,” I murmured, giving her a deep curtsy of respect. Abree mimicked me, although her curtsy was quite careless.

“Tidy up right away, before Madame sees you.”

Abree and I tripped over each other in our haste to get away from her. We stumbled down the corridor into the foyer, to the mouth of the stairs.

“Now, that is a demon in the flesh,” Abree whispered, far too loudly, as she flew up the stairs.

“Abree!” I chided, slipping on my hem just as I heard Cartier behind me.

“Brienna?”

I caught my fall on the balustrade. My balance restored, I whirled on the stair to look down at him. He stood in the foyer, his stark white tunic belted at his waist, his gray breeches nearly the same shade as my dress. He was fastening his passion cloak about his neck, preparing to depart in the rain.

“Master?”

“I assume you will want another private lesson Monday after our morning lecture with Ciri?” He stared up at me, waiting for the answer he knew I would give.

I felt my hand slide on the railing. My hair was uncommonly loose, falling about me in wild, brown tangles, my dress was drenched, my hem dripped a quiet song over the marble. I knew I must look completely undone to him, that I looked nothing like a Valenian woman on the verge of passioning, that I looked nothing like the scholar he was trying to mold. And yet I raised my chin and replied, “Yes, thank you, Master Cartier.”

“Perhaps there will be no letter to distract you next time?” he asked, and my eyes widened as I continued to stare down at him, trying to read beyond the steady composure of his face.

He could punish me for exchanging Francis’s and Sibylle’s letters. He could impart discipline, because I had broken a rule. And so I waited, waited to see what he would require of me.

But then the left corner of his lips moved, too subtle to be a genuine smile—although I liked to imagine it might have been—as he bestowed a curt bow of farewell. I watched him pass through the doors and melt into the storm, wondering if he was being merciful or playful, desiring that he would stay, relieved that he had departed.

I continued my way up the stairs, leaving a trail of rain, and wondered … wondered how Cartier always seemed to make me want two conflicting things at once.

The Art Studio was a chamber I had avoided since my first failed year at Magnalia. But as I tentatively entered it that rainy afternoon, my wet hair wound in a bun, I was reminded of the good memories that room had hosted for me. I remembered the mornings I spent sitting beside Oriana as we sketched beneath the careful instruction of Mistress Solene. I remembered the first time I tried to paint, the first time I tried to illuminate a page, the first time I attempted an etching. And then came the darker moments that still sat in my mind as a bruise, such as when I realized my art lay flat on the page while Oriana’s breathed and came to life. Or the day Mistress Solene had pulled me aside and said gently, Perhaps you should try music, Brienna.

“You’re here!”

I glanced across the room to see Oriana readying a place for me, a new streak of red paint on her cheek. This room had always been overwhelming with clutter and mess, but I knew it was because Oriana and Mistress Solene made their own paints. The longest table in the room was completely covered with jars of lead and pigments, crucibles and earthenware bowls, pitchers of water, chalkstone, stacks of vellum and parchment, a carton of eggs, a large bowl of ground chalk. It smelled of turpentine, rosemary, and of the green weed they boiled to mysteriously render pink paint.

Carefully, I wended my way around the paint table, around chairs and cartons and easels. Oriana had set a stool beside the wall of windows, a place for me to sit in the stormy light while she drew.

“Should I be concerned about these … props Abree is so excited about?” I asked.

Oriana was just about to respond when Ciri entered the chamber.

“I found it. This is what you wanted, right, Oriana?” Ciri asked, leafing through the pages of a book she held. She almost tripped over an easel as she walked to our corner, passing the book to Oriana as she looked at me. “You look tired, Brienna. Is Master Cartier pushing you too hard?”

But now I did not have time to respond, for Oriana let out a cry of delight, which drew my eyes to the page she was admiring.

“This is perfect, Ciri!”

“Wait a moment,” I said, reaching for the book. I plucked it from Oriana’s hands. “This is one of Master Cartier’s Maevan history books.” My eyes rushed over the illustration, my breath hanging in my chest. It was a gorgeous illustration of a Maevan queen. I recognized her because Cartier had taught us the history of Maevana. This was Liadan Kavanagh, the first queen of Maevana. Which also meant she had possessed magic.

She stood tall and proud, a crown of woven silver and budding diamonds resting on her brow as a wreath of stars, her long brown hair flowing loose and wild about her, blue dye that Maevans called “woad” streaked across her face. Hanging from her neck was a stone the size of a fist—the legendary Stone of Eventide. She wore armor fashioned like dragon scales—they gleamed with gold and blood—and a long sword was sheathed at her side as she stood with one hand on her hip, the other holding a spear.

“It makes you long for those days, doesn’t it?” Ciri asked with a sigh, peering over my shoulder. “The days when the queens ruled the north.”

“Now is not the time for a history lesson,” Oriana said, gently easing the book away from me.

“You don’t intend to draw me as that?” I asked, my heart beginning to pound. “Ori … that would be presumptuous.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Ciri retorted. She loved to argue. “You are part Maevan, Brienna. Who is to say you have not descended from queens?”

My mouth fell open to protest, but Abree walked in bearing an armload of props.

“Here they are,” she announced and dropped them at our feet.

I watched, stunned, as Ciri and Oriana sifted through pieces of cheap armor, a dull sword, a dark blue cloak the color of midnight. They were props from the theater, no doubt smuggled from Master Xavier’s stash in the dramatics wardrobe.

“All right, Brienna,” Oriana said, straightening with the breastplate in her hands. “Please let me draw you as a Maevan warrior.”

They all three waited, Oriana with the armor, Abree with the sword, Ciri with the cloak. They looked at me, expectant and hopeful. And I found that my heart had quieted, thrilled by the thought, my Maevan blood stirring.

“Very well. But this cannot take all day,” I insisted, and Abree victoriously whooped and Oriana smiled and Ciri rolled her eyes.

I stood still and patient as they dressed me. The portrait would only be from the waist up, so it did not matter that I still wore my arden dress. The breastplate enclosed about my chest, vambraces about my forearms. A blue cloak was draped about my shoulders, which made my stomach clench as I inevitably thought of my passion cloak, and Ciri must have read my mind.

She stood and liberated my hair from its bun, braided a small plait, and said, “I told Abree to choose a blue cloak. You should wear your color. Our color.” Ciri stepped back, pleased with how she had arranged my hair.

When an arden became impassioned, their master or mistress would present them with a cloak. The color of the cloak depended on the passion. Art received a red cloak, dramatics black, music purple, wit green, knowledge blue. But it wasn’t a mere marker of achievement and equality, that the arden was now on the same level as their master or mistress. It was a unique commemoration, a symbol of the relationship between the master and the arden.

But before my thoughts could become too entangled with cloaks, Sibylle rushed into the studio, drenched from the rain. A jubilant smile was on her face as she held up a crown of white flowers. “Here!” she cried, slinging water and attracting our attention. “This is the most starlike crown I could make before the rain came!”

Indeed, all five of my arden-sisters must have been in on this portrait ambush. But Merei, my roommate, was the only one missing, and I felt her absence like a shadow had fallen upon the chamber.

“Where is Merei?” I inquired as Sibylle brought her flower crown to me.

Sibylle, graceful, buxom, and coy, set the crown upon my brow. “You look like you could take off a man’s head,” she said, her rosebud lips opening with a wide, satisfied smile.

“Can’t you hear her?” Abree responded to my inquiry, and held up a finger. We all fell silent, and over the tickling of rain on the windowpanes, we could hear the faint, determined song of a violin. “Merei said she is furiously working on some new composition, but she’ll come as soon as she can.”

“Now, Brienna, take up the sword and sit on the stool,” Oriana requested as she held a shell of blue paint.

I watched her, warily, as I eased myself to the stool, the sword awkwardly blooming from my grip. With my hand coaxed to my right thigh, the sword crossed my chest, its dull point near my left ear. The armor was pliant but still felt odd on my body, like a set of unfamiliar arms had come about my chest, embracing me.

“Ciri, will you hold the illustration up next to Brienna’s face? I want to make sure I do this perfectly.” Oriana waved Ciri closer.

“Do what perfectly?” I stammered.

“The woad. Hold still, Bri.”

I had no choice; I held myself still as Oriana’s eyes flitted from the illustration to my face, back to the illustration. I watched as she dipped her fingertips into her blue paint, and then closed my eyes as she dragged her fingers diagonally across my face, from my brow to my chin, and felt as if she was opening up some secret part of me. A place that was supposed to lie hidden and quiet was waking.

“You can open your eyes.”

My eyes fluttered open, my gaze anxiously meeting my sisters’ as they looked me over with pride and approval.

“I think we are ready.” Oriana reached for a rag to wipe the paint from her fingers.

“But what about that stone?” Sibylle asked as she braided her honey-brown hair away from her eyes.

“What stone?” Abree frowned, upset that she’d missed a prop.

“That stone about the queen’s neck.”

“The evening stone, I think,” Ciri said, examining the illustration.

“No, that would be the Stone of Eventide,” I corrected.

Ciri’s milk white face blushed—she hated to be corrected—but she cleared her throat. “Ah yes. Of course you would know Maevan history better, Brienna. You have a reason to listen when Master Cartier drones on and on about it.”

Oriana dragged a second stool before mine, her parchment and pencil ready. “Try to hold still, Brienna.”

I nodded, feeling the blue paint begin to dry on my face.

“I wish I held dual citizenship,” Abree murmured, stretching her arms. “Are you ever going to cross the channel and see Maevana? Because you absolutely should, Brienna. And take me with you.”

“Perhaps one day,” I said as Oriana began to sketch upon her paper. “And I would love for you to come with me, Abree.”

“My father says Maevana is very, very different from Valenia,” Ciri remarked, and I could hear the pinch in her voice, like she was still upset that I had corrected her. She set Cartier’s book down and leaned against a table, her gaze wandering back to mine. Her blond hair looked like moonlight spilling over her shoulder. “My father used to visit once a year, in the fall, when some of the Maevan lords opened their castles for us Valenians to come stay for the hunt of the white hart. My father enjoyed it whenever he went, said there was always good ale and food, epic stories and entertainment, but of course would never let me go with him. He claimed that the land was too wild, too dangerous for a Valenian girl like me.”

Sibylle snorted, unbuttoning the high collar of her dress to rub her neck. “Don’t all fathers say such, if only to leave their daughters ‘safe’ at home?”

“Well, you know what they say about Maevan men,” I said, helplessly quoting Grandpapa.

“What?” Sibylle was quick to demand, her interest suddenly burning as stars in her hazel eyes. I forgot that Francis’s letter to her was still in my wet arden dress, which I had left discarded on the floor of my room. That poor letter was most likely drenched through and smeared.

“They are smooth-talking, skilled, dastardly lovers,” I said, using my best imitation of Grandpapa’s scratchy voice.

Sibylle burst into laughter—she was the most confident with the opposite sex—and Abree covered her mouth, like she didn’t know if she should be embarrassed or not. Ciri made no response, although I could tell she was trying not to smile.

“That’s enough talk,” Oriana playfully scolded, waving her pencil at me. “If one of the mistresses happened to walk by and hear that, you’d be given kitchen duty for the final week, Brienna.”

“They would have to be skilled, dastardly lovers to be worthy of women who look like that!” Sibylle continued, pointing to the illustration of the queen. “By the saints, whatever happened to Maevana? Why is there now a king on her throne?”

I exchanged a glance with Ciri. We had both had this lesson, two years ago. It was a long, tangled story.

“You would have to ask Master Cartier,” Ciri finally responded with a shrug. “He could tell you, as he knows the entire history of every land that ever was.”

“How cumbersome,” Abree lamented.

Ciri’s gaze sharpened. “You do recall, Abree, that Brienna and I are about to become passions of knowledge.” She was offended, yet again.

Abree took a step back. “Pardon, Ciri. Of course, I meant to say how enthralled I am by your capacity to hold so much knowledge.”

Ciri snorted, still not appeased, but thankfully left it at that as she looked back at me.

“Are you ever going to meet your father, Bri?” Sibylle asked.

“No, I do not think so,” I answered honestly. It was ironic to me that on the day I vowed to never inquire of him again I would be dressed as a Maevan queen.

“That is very sad,” Abree commented.

Of course it would be sad to her, to all my sisters. They all came from noble families, from fathers and mothers who were in some measure involved in their lives.

So I claimed, “It truly doesn’t matter to me.”

A lull settled in the room. I listened to the rain, to Merei’s distant music mellowing the corridor, to the scratch of Oriana’s pencil as she replicated me on parchment.

“Well,” Sibylle said brightly, to smooth away the wrinkles of discomfort. She was an arden of wit, and was skilled to handle any manner of conversation. “You should see the portrait Oriana drew of me, Brienna. It is the exact opposite of yours.” She retrieved it from Oriana’s portfolio, held it up so I could get a good glimpse of it.

Sibylle had been staged as the perfect Valenian noblewoman. I gazed, surprised at all the props Abree had scrounged for this one. Sibylle had worn a daring, low-cut red dress studded with pearls, a necklace of cheap jewels, and a voluptuous white wig. She even had a perfect star mole on her cheek, the marker of feminine nobility. She was beautifully polished, Valenia incarnate. She was etiquette, poise, grace.

And then here was mine, the portrait of a queen who wielded magic and wore blue woad, who lived in armor, whose constant companion was not a man but a sword and a stone.

It was the stark difference between Maevana and Valenia, two countries that I was broken between. I wanted to feel comfortable in the fancy dress and the star mole, but I also wanted to find my heritage in the armor and the woad. I wanted to wield passion, but I also wanted to know how to hold a sword.

“You should hang Brienna’s and Sibylle’s portraits side by side,” Abree suggested to Oriana. “They can teach future ardens a good history lesson.”

“Yes,” Ciri concurred. “A lesson as to who you should never offend.”

“If you offend a Valenian, you lose your reputation,” Sibylle chirped, picking dirt from beneath her nails. “But if you offend a Maevan … then you lose your head.”

It took Oriana another hour to complete my sketch. She didn’t dare ask me to linger any longer as she began to color it; she could sense I was anxious to shed the costume and resume my studies. I handed the cloak, the armor, the flower crown, and the sword back to Abree and left my sisters’ laughter and conversation behind in the studio, seeking out the quiet shadows of Merei’s and my room.

Traditionally, Magnalia’s arden of music was the one student privileged with a private bedchamber, to accommodate the instruments. The other four ardens were paired as roommates. But since the Dowager had done the unexpected and accepted me as her sixth student, the arden of music’s bedchamber had become a shared space.

As I swung the door open, the smell of parchment and books greeted me as loyal friends. Merei and I were messy, but I would blame it upon our passions. She had reams of music scattered in all places. I once found a bundle of music in her quilts, and she claimed she had fallen asleep with it in hand. She told me she could hear the music in her head when she silently read the notes; such was the depth of her passion.

As for my part, I was books and journals and loose papers. Shelves were carved in the wall next to my bed, crowded with volumes I had brought up from the library. Cartier’s books also had several shelves, and as I looked upon their soft- and hard-bound spines, I wondered what it would feel like to return all of them back to his possession. And realized that I owned not one book.

I bent to retrieve my discarded dress on the floor, still drenched, and found Francis’s letter. It was smeared into unintelligible ink.

“Did I miss it?” Merei declared from the doorway.

I turned to look at her standing with her violin tucked beneath her arm, the bow extending from her long fingers, the storm spilling lavender light over her brown complexion, over her rosin-smeared dress.

“Saint LeGrand, what did they do to your face?” She moved forward, wide-eyed with intrigue.

My fingers traced my profile, feeling the cracked trail of blue paint. I had forgotten all about that. “If you had been there, this would never have happened,” I teased her.

She set her instrument aside and then took my chin in her fingers, admiring Oriana’s handiwork. “Well, let me guess. They dressed you up as a Maevan queen fresh off the battlefield.”

“Do I look that Maevan?”

Merei led me over to our commode, where a pitcher of water sat before the mullioned window. I tucked Francis’s letter back in my pocket as she poured water into a waiting porcelain bowl and took a washcloth. “No, you look and act very Valenian. Didn’t your grandfather claim you were the image of your mother?”

“Yes, but he could be lying.”

Merei’s dark eyes quietly scolded me for my lack of faith. And then she began to wipe away the paint with the washcloth.

“How are your lessons coming, Bri?”

This was the one question we continued to ask each other, over and over, as the solstice grew closer. I groaned and shut my eyes as she began to vigorously scrub. “I don’t know.”

“How can you not know?” She paused in her washings until I relented to open my eyes again. She gazed at me with an expression trapped somewhere between alarm and confusion. “There are only two more official days of lessons.”

“As I know. But do you want to know what Master Cartier asked me today? He asked, ‘What is passion?’ as if I were ten and not seventeen.” I sighed and took the washcloth from her, dunking it back into the water.

I had told Merei my suspicions. I had told her how I believed the Dowager had accepted me for some mysterious reason, not because I held potential. And Merei had witnessed firsthand that second year I had struggled in music. She had sat beside me and tried to help coach me when Mistress Evelina seemed overwhelmed by how poorly I played. Never had a violin sounded like it wanted to die.

“Why didn’t he refuse me when I asked him to take me on as his arden?” I continued, scrubbing my face. “He should have said that three years was not enough time for me to master this. And if I had been smart, I should have chosen knowledge from the very beginning, when I was ten and had plenty of time to learn all these wretched lineages.” The blue paint was not coming off. I tossed the washcloth aside, feeling like I had peeled half of my face away, revealing the true bones of who I was: inept.

“Need I remind you, Bri, that Master Cartier hardly makes mistakes?”

I cast my gaze to the window, watching the rain streak as tears on the glass, knowing that she was right.

“Need I remind you that Master Cartier would not have accepted you as his arden if he thought for one moment that you could not passion?” She took my hand, to draw my attention back to her. She smiled, half of her curly black hair caught by a ribbon, the rest loose about her shoulders. “If Master Cartier believes you can passion in three years, then you can. And so you will.”

I squeezed her fingers in silent gratitude. And now it was my turn to ask after her passion. “How is your latest composition coming? I heard a bit from the Art Studio …”

Merei dropped my fingers and groaned. I knew from the sound that she felt as I did … overwhelmed and worried. She turned and walked back to her bed and sat, propping her chin in her palm.

“It’s horrible, Bri.”

“It sounded lovely to me,” I said, remembering how her music had trickled down the halls.

“It’s horrible,” she insisted. “Mistress Evelina wants me to have it ready in time for the solstice. I don’t think it’s possible …”

I knew from my seven years of rooming with Merei that she was a perfectionist when it came to her music. Every note had to be exquisitely placed, every song must be played with fervor and rapture. If her fingers or bow so much as let a screech slip over the strings, she was irritated by her performance.

“Do you know what this means?” I asked, smiling as I reached for the elaborately carved box on one of her shelves.

Merei lay back on her bed, overly dramatic as she claimed, “I am too tired to play.”

“We have a pact,” I reminded her as I opened the box on our communal table, drawing forth the checkered board and the marble pawns.

Her father had sent this game of cheques and marques for both of us, a game Merei adored and had grown up playing on the island of Bascune. As the years had gone by at Magnalia, as Merei and I had become progressively more preoccupied with our impassionment, we hardly had time to play anymore. Save for the evenings when we were both overwhelmed and worried. We had vowed to bring forth the game then, as a way to remind ourselves that the impending solstice wasn’t everything.

“All right.” She relented, as I knew she would. She rose from the bed and walked to our table, gathering a few loose sheets of music and setting them aside.

We sat across from each other, our colorful pawns gleaming as I lit the candles and Merei flipped a ducat to see who had the first move.

“You start, Bri,” she said.

I stared at my pawns, lined up obediently. Cheques and marques was a game of strategy, the goal being to remove all three of the opponent’s red pawns. I decided to begin on the edge, shifting my yellow pawn forward to the first marque.

We always started the game quietly, granting ourselves time to adjust to moving in rhythm with each other. I tended to make the bold moves, Merei the cautious moves. Our pawns were scattered all over the board when Merei broke our silence by asking, “Have you heard from your grandfather?”

I claimed her first red pawn, one she had defiantly floating toward our line of impact. “Yes. I’ll have to let you read it later.”

She began to shift toward one of my red pieces. “Did he tell you a name?”

“No name. The usual response.”

“That your father is unworthy to note?”

“Yes, those very words.” I watched as she swiped one of my red pawns. She also had me blocked with her yellow pieces. I began to weave between them … “What about your father?”

“He wrote a few days ago. He says hello, and that he hopes you come with me to visit him after the solstice.”

I watched her jump over my blue pawns, landing in the middle of my territory. A bold move from her always baffled me; she tended to play so carefully. I retaliated, mirroring her, and asked, “Would you rather have a very handsome patron who had bad breath, or a very ugly patron who always smelled good?”

Merei laughed. “Nice try, Bri. I am not that easily distracted.”

“I am not distracting you,” I insisted, trying to hide a smile. “These are very important things to think about.”

“Mm-hmm.” She swiped my second red pawn. “I would have to go with the ugly patron, then.”

“Same,” I responded, trying to break through yet another ring of her yellow pawns.

“If we are going to play this game, then you have to answer a question.” She moved her black pawn to an odd marque. “Would you rather fall in love with your master or your patron?”

“Both are horrible, foolish choices,” I muttered.

“You must answer.”

I stared at the board, trying to see a way out of the knot she had me in. “Fine, then. I would rather fall in love with my patron.” My face warmed, but I kept my eyes on the marques. I was almost to her second red pawn …

“I have to say I would go with the master.”

I glanced up, surprised at her answer. She smiled; her eyes locked with mine as she effortlessly claimed my final red pawn.

“You always beat me at this game,” I lamented.

“You lose because you never protect your side, Bri. It’s your one weakness. I beat you with an oblique move.” She waggled my defeated red pawn. “Shall we play again?”

I made a noise of objection, but she knew that I wanted to. We reset our pawns on their origin marques, and then I waited for Merei to move first.

We asked no questions this round; I was too focused on trying to outwit her, by employing this oblique tactic she always championed me with. So when she cleared her throat, I looked up, startled to see she was about to claim my last red pawn.

“Now,” Merei said. “On to a very important question.”

“And what is that?”

She paused, trying to hold back her laughter as she defeated me yet again. “What are you going to tell Master Cartier when he asks why your face is stained blue?”

I was the first one to reach the library Monday morning, waiting for Ciri and Cartier to arrive for the lesson. Despite Merei’s faithful scrubbing and a dose of Oriana’s turpentine, I still had a faint shadow of blue paint on my face. So I decided to leave my hair unbound and drawn to the front; it spilled down my chest, long and ornery, the color of mahogany, but it felt like a shield for me to hide behind, to guard my face and the lingering memory of war paint.

Ciri arrived next and took her seat across from me, on the other side of our table. “I can still see the paint,” she murmured. “But maybe he won’t notice.”

Master Cartier entered not two breaths after that. I pretended to pick at my nails as he set his books down on the table, my hair falling forward even more. I realized my mistake only when I felt his eyes rest on me, his hands go still. Of course he would notice my hair was loose. I always bound it in a braid for lessons, to keep it out of my eyes.

I heard him walk about the table, to Ciri’s side, so he could get a full look at me.

“Brienna?”

I silently swore. And then relented to lift my face and meet his gaze. “Master?”

“May I ask why … it looks as if you painted half of your face blue?”

My eyes shifted to Ciri, who was pressing her lips together, trying not to giggle.

“You may ask, Master,” I responded, kicking Ciri beneath the table. “I sat for a portrait. Oriana decided to, ah, paint my face.”

“It was because we dressed her as a Maevan queen, Master,” Ciri rushed to explain, and then I watched, mortified, as she leafed through the history book to find the illustration of Liadan Kavanagh. “Here, this is the one.”

Cartier turned the book around so he could get a closer look at it. He stared at Liadan Kavanagh, and then he stared at me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, if he thought this was humorous or offensive—if he thought I was bold or childish.

He gently pushed the book back to Ciri and said, “Tell me about Liadan Kavanagh, then.”

“What about her?” Ciri was quick to respond, always eager to answer everything before me.

“Who was she?”

“The first queen of Maevana.”

“And how did she become queen?” He walked about the table, his voice settling into that deep, rich cadence that made me think of a summer night crowded with stars. It was the sort of voice a storyteller might harbor.

“Well, she belonged to the Kavanagh clan,” Ciri answered.

“And why does that matter?”

Ciri hesitated. Did she truly not remember? I was a bit amazed by this, by watching the frown mar her brow, her blue eyes sweeping the table before us as if the answers were in the marks of the wood. She never forgot the things Cartier told her.

“Brienna?” Cartier prompted me when she took too long.

“Because the Kavanaghs are the descendants of dragons,” I replied. “They hold magic in their blood.”

“But the other thirteen Houses of Maevana do not?” he questioned, even though he knew the answer. This was how he taught Ciri and me; he entered into conversations with us, asked us to tell the little pieces of history that he had once fed us.

“No,” I said. “The other Houses do not possess magic. Just the Kavanaghs.”

“But why a queen, then, and not a king?” He stopped his walking before the great map on the wall, his finger brushing the four countries that composed our hemisphere: the island of Maevana to the north, Grimhildor to the far frozen west, Valenia and Bandecca to the south, the ocean breaking them into three pieces of mountainous lands. As he touched them, he said, “Valenia has a king. Bandecca has a king. Grimhildor has a king. All the countries in our realm do. Why, then, would Maevana—a warrior, clannish land—build its throne on a queen?”

I smiled, letting my fingers trace a mark in the wood. “Because the Kavanagh women are naturally stronger in magic than their men.” And I thought of that glorious illustration of Liadan Kavanagh; I remembered her proud stance, the blue woad on her skin and the blood on her armor, the silver crown of diamonds on her brow. Might it be possible that I had descended from one such as her?

“You are right, Brienna,” Cartier said. “Magic always flows stronger in woman than in man. Sometimes I think the same of passion, until I am reminded that passion is in no way magical or inherited. Because some of us choose our passion”—and here he looked at me—“and sometimes, the passion chooses us”—and here he looked to Ciri. It was only then that I realized how different Ciri and I were, how flexible Cartier had to be in his teachings, to ensure his two ardens learned by the methods that best suited them. I preferred stories; Ciri preferred facts.

“So.” He resumed his slow walk about the library. “You have told me that Liadan Kavanagh held magic. But why was she appointed queen, then, three hundred years ago?”

“Because of the Hilds,” Ciri hastened to say, rejoining the conversation. “The raiders of Grimhildor plagued the Maevan coast.”

“Yes,” I added. “Little did the raiders know that they didn’t scatter or intimidate the fourteen clans of Maevana. Rather, the Hilds’ violence united them beneath a queen.”

“And Liadan was chosen because …” Cartier prodded.

“Because she held magic,” Ciri said.

“Because she united the clans,” I responded. “It wasn’t just because Liadan wielded the magic of her ancestors. It was because she was a warrior, a leader, and she brought her people together as one.”

Cartier stopped his pacing. His hands were linked behind his back, but his eyes found mine through the morning sunshine and shadows. For a moment, one slender wondrous moment, he almost smiled at me.

“Well said, Brienna.”

“But Master Cartier,” Ciri protested. “Both of you just said that she was chosen because of the magic.”

Any hint of a smile was gone as his eyes moved from me to her. “She held powerful magic, yes, but need I remind you of how the Kavanaghs’ magic behaved in battle?”

“It went astray,” I said softly, but Cartier and Ciri heard me. “Magic gained a will of its own during battle and bloodshed. It turned on the Kavanaghs; it corrupted their minds, their motivations.”

“So what did Liadan do?” Cartier asked me.

“She did not fight the Hilds with magic. She fought with sword and shield, as if she were born of another House, as if she did not possess magic at all.”

Cartier did not need to affirm my response. I saw the pleasure in his eyes, that I had remembered a lesson from so long ago, a lesson he probably gave thinking we had not listened.

Ciri hefted a loud sigh, and the moment was broken.

“Yes, Ciri?” Cartier inquired with raised brows.

“This has been pleasant, listening to the two of you recount the story of the first queen,” she began. “But Maevan history does not mean much to me, not like it does to Brienna.”

“So what would you like to talk about, then?”

She shifted in her chair. “Perhaps you can prepare us for the solstice. Who are these patrons attending? What can Brienna and I expect?”

As much as I enjoyed talking to Cartier about Maevan history, Ciri was right. I was, once again, trapped by things of the past instead of looking to the coming days. Because knowledge about Maevan queens was probably not the sort of thing that hooked a Valenian patron. As far as I knew, Maevana recognized the passions but did not embrace them.

Cartier pulled back his chair and finally sat, lacing his fingers as he looked at us. “I fear that I cannot tell you much about the solstice, Ciri. I do not know the patrons the Dowager has invited.”

“But, Master—”

He held up his finger and Ciri quieted, although I could see the indignant red rise in her cheeks.

“I may not be able to tell you much,” he said. “But I can give you both a little hint about the patrons. There will be three of them seeking a passion of knowledge, one for each branch.”

“Branch?” Ciri echoed.

“Think back to our very first lesson, a long time ago,” Cartier said. “Remember how I told you that knowledge is broken into three branches?”

“The historian,” I murmured, to whet her memory.

She glanced at me, the knowledge slowly trickling back to her. “The historian, the physician, and the teacher.”

He nodded in affirmation. “Both of you need to prepare your approach for each of these three patrons.”

“But how do we do that, Master Cartier?” Ciri asked. She tapped her fingers over the table anxiously, and I wanted to tell her she had nothing to worry over; she would undoubtedly impress all three of the patrons.

“For the historian, you should have an impressive lineage memorized; you should be able to talk of any member of that lineage. Preferably, you should focus on the royal kindred,” Cartier explained. “For the physician, you should be prepared to talk about any bone, any muscle, any organ of the body, as well as trauma and wounds. And for the teacher … well, this one is more difficult. The best advice I could give you both is to exemplify that you can conquer any subject as well as instruct any student.”

He must have seen the glazed look in our eyes. Again, he almost smiled as he crossed his legs and said, “I’ve overwhelmed you. Both of you take the rest of the morning and prepare for the solstice.”

Ciri at once pushed back from her chair, eager to get away and mull over what he had just told us. I was slower to rise, once more feeling that strange confliction … the need to stay with him and ask him to teach me more warring against the desire to sit alone and try to sort it all out on my own.

I had just walked past his chair, heading to the open door when I heard his voice, soft and gentle, say my name.

“Brienna.”

I paused. Ciri must have heard it too, for she stopped on the threshold to frown over her shoulder. She watched me retreat back to him before she vanished down the corridor.

“Master?”

He looked up at me. “You are doubting yourself.”

I drew in a deep breath, ready to deny it, to feign confidence. But the words withered. “Yes. I worry that a patron will not want me. I worry that I do not deserve my cloak.”

“And why would you believe such?” he asked.

I thought about telling him all the reasons why, but that would require me to extend back to that fateful day when I had first sat in Magnalia’s hall, eavesdropping. The day I had first met him, when his unexpected entrance had drowned out the name of my father.

“You remember what I told you,” Cartier said, “the day you asked me to become your master, to teach you knowledge in three years?”

I nodded. “Yes, I remember. You said I would have to work twice as hard. That while my sisters were enjoying their afternoons, I would be studying.”

“And have you done such?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “I have done everything you have told me to do.”

“Then why do you doubt yourself?”

I glanced away, looking to the bookshelves. I didn’t feel like explaining it to him; it would bare far too much of my heart.

“Would it encourage you to know that I have chosen your constellation?”

That bold statement brought my eyes back to his. I stared down at him, a prince on his throne of knowledge, and felt my pulse quicken. This was his gift to me, a master to his student. He would chose a constellation for me, have it replicated on the heart of my passion cloak. Stars that would belong only to me, to mark my impassionment.

He wasn’t supposed to tell me that he was preparing my cloak. Yet he had. And it made me think of his own cloak, blue as the wild cornflower, and the stars that belonged to him. It was the constellation of Verene, a chain of stars that foretold triumph despite loss and trials.

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you, Master Cartier.” I began to leave, but felt hung once more between the door and his chair.

“Is there something else you long to ask me, Brienna?”

I came back around to him, meeting his gaze. “Yes. Do you have a book about the Stone of Eventide?”

His brows rose. “The Stone of Eventide? What makes you ask about it?”

“That illustration of Liadan Kavanagh …” I began shyly, remembering how she had worn the stone about her neck.

“Ah yes.” Cartier rose from his chair and opened his leather satchel. I watched as he sifted through the books he carried, at last bringing forth an old tattered volume wrapped in a protective sheet of vellum. “Here. Pages eighty through one hundred will tell you all about the stone.”

I accepted the book, minding its fragile binds. “Have you always carried this book around?” I found it odd that he would, because I saw the Maevan printing emblem on it. And who bothered to tote around a tome on Maevan lore?

“I knew one day you would ask for it,” Cartier responded.

I didn’t know what to say. So I curtsied to him, dismissing myself without another word.

That afternoon did not find me with Cartier in a private lesson, because we both forgot that the tailor was coming to measure the ardens for our solstice dresses. But I was never one to be seen lacking a book. I stood in the hall beside Ciri as we waited for our measurements, my fingers turning the delicate, speckled pages of the Maevan lore book Cartier had given me.

“Listen to this, Ciri,” I said, my eyes rushing over the words. “‘The origin of the Stone of Eventide is still largely speculated about, but legends claim that it was found at the bottom of a cave pond in the Killough Mountains. It was retrieved by a Kavanagh maiden, who took the stone to the clan elders. After many deliberations, the Kavanaghs decided to bind their magic to the stone, which slowly led to the digression of their ability to shapeshift into dragons.’”

I was enchanted by the lore, but when Ciri continued to remain quiet, my eyes drifted to her, to see her standing rigid against the wall, her gaze stubbornly fastened to the wainscoting.

“Ciri?”

“I do not care about the Stone of Eventide,” she said. “In fact, I do not wish to hear about it at all. I have enough things to crowd my mind these days.”

I shut the book, my thoughts quickly sifting through my memory of that morning, trying to find the source of her irritation. “What is wrong, Ciri?”

“I cannot believe I never saw it until now,” she continued.

“Saw what?”

At last, she turned her eyes to me. They were cold, the blue of ice ready to crack. “That Master Cartier favors you.”

I stood, frozen by her claim. And then my words rushed forward, incredulous. “He does not! Ciri, honestly … Master Cartier does not like anyone.”

“For seven years, I have striven to impress him, to gain his favor, to try and get even a tiny smile out of him.” Her face was exceptionally pale, the envy burning bright and hot within her. “And then you come along. Did you see how he looked at you today? How he wanted to smile at you? It was as if I was not in that room as you both prattled on and on about Maevan queens and magic.”

“Ciri, please,” I whispered, my throat suddenly hoarse as her words sank into me.

“And then he couldn’t help himself,” she continued. “He had to hold you back and tell you that he had chosen your constellation. Why would he tell you that? Why wouldn’t he say the same to me? Oh, that’s right—you’re his pet, his favorite.”

My cheeks warmed as I realized she had been eavesdropping on us. I didn’t know what to say; my own temper was roused, but arguing with her would be as foolish as banging my head against the wall. All the same, she stared at me, daring me to oppose her.

That was when the tailor opened the door and called for Ciri.

I felt the brush of her passing, breathed in the fragrance of lilies that trailed her as she disappeared into the dressing room, the tailor shutting the door.

Slowly, I slid to the floor, my legs feeling like water. I pulled my knees up and held them close to my chest, staring at the wall. My head began to throb, and I wearily rubbed my temples.

I had never thought that Master Cartier favored me. Not once. And it baffled me that Ciri would think such rubbish.

There were certain rules that masters and mistresses followed very closely at Magnalia House. They did not show favoritism to one of the ardens. They evaluated us by a certain rubric at the solstice, far removed from bias and prejudices, although they could provide some level of guidance. They did not bestow a passion cloak if an arden failed to master. And while their modes of teaching ranged from dancing to mock debates, they abided by one cardinal rule: they never touched us.

Master Cartier was nigh perfect. He wouldn’t dare break a rule.

I was thinking of this, my eyes shut, pressing my hands to my flushed cheeks, when I smelled a faint tendril of smoke. I drew it in, deep to my heart … the scent of roasting wood, of crushed leaves, of long, tangled grass … the metallic aroma of steel being warmed over fire … wind carved from bright blue skies free of clouds … and opened my eyes. This was not a scent of Magnalia House.

The light seemed to have shifted around me, no longer warm and golden but cool and stormy. And then came a distant voice, the voice of a man.

My lord? My lord, she is here to see you …

I rose shakily to my feet and leaned against the wall, staring down the corridor. It sounded like that voice was coming toward me, the weathered and raspy words of an older man, yet I stood alone in the hall. I briefly wondered if there was a secret door I didn’t know about, if one of the servants was about to emerge from it.

My lord?

My assumption faded when I realized he was speaking in Dairine, Maevana’s tongue.

I was one moment from stepping forward, to search and discover who was speaking, when the dressing room door groaned open.

Ciri emerged, ignoring me as she walked down the hall, and the light returned to summer gold, the cloying scent of burning things evaporated, and the stranger’s beckoning fizzled into dust motes.

“Brienna?” the tailor inquired.

I forced myself to walk across the hall to him, to step inside the dressing room. I carefully set Cartier’s book aside, made sure that I stood still and quiet on the pedestal as the tailor began to take my measurements. But within, my head was pounding, my pulse darting along my wrists and neck as I stared at my reflection in the mirror.

I looked pale as bone, my brown eyes sadly bloodshot, my jaw clenched. I looked as if I had just seen a ghost.

Most Valenians would claim that they were not superstitious. But we were. It was why we sprinkled herbs on our thresholds at the start of every season, why weddings only took place on Fridays, why no one ever wanted an odd number of sons. I knew that saints could appear to sinners, but this … this almost seemed as if Magnalia House was haunted.

And if it was, then why was I just now hearing voices?

“All right, Mademoiselle, you are free to go.”

I stepped down from the pedestal and reclaimed the book. The tailor undoubtedly thought me rude, but my voice was tangled deep in my chest as I breathed and opened the door …

The corridor was normal, as it should be.

I stepped into it, smelled the yeast of freshly baked bread drift from the kitchens, heard Merei’s music float on the air as a cloud, felt the polished black-and-white floor beneath my slippers. Yes, this was Magnalia.

I shook my head, as if to clear the gossamer that had gathered between my thoughts and perceptions, and glanced down to the book in my hands.

Through the protective sheet of vellum, its maroon cover gleamed bright as a ruby. It no longer looked ancient and worn; it looked freshly bound and printed.

I stopped walking. My hand gently removed the vellum, letting it drift to the floor as I stared at the book. The Book of Hours, its title read with embossed gold. I hadn’t even noticed the title on the cover when Cartier had given it to me, so worn and tattered was the book; it had seemed more like a smudge of stardust before. But now, it was strikingly clear.

What would I tell him when I returned it? That this crafty little Maevan book of lore had turned back time?

No sooner did I think such than did my curiosity sprout as a weed. I flipped open the cover. There was the Maevan publishing emblem, and there was the year of its first print. 1430.

And the fingers on the page—the hands holding this book—were no longer mine.

They were the hands of a man, broad and scarred, with dirt beneath his nails.

Startled, I released the book. But the volume remained in the man’s grip—my grip—and I realized I was anchored to him. As my senses became aware of his body—he was tall, muscular, strong—I felt the light shift around us, gray and troubled, and the smoke trickled down the hall again.

“My lord? My lord, she is here to see you.”

I glanced up; I no longer stood in Magnalia’s hall. This was a corridor built of stone and mortar, with flickering torches sitting in iron brackets along the wall. And there was a man standing patiently before me, the owner of the voice I had first heard.

He was old and bald with a crooked nose. But he bowed to me, dressed in black breeches and a leather jerkin that was worn about the edges. A sword was sheathed at his side.

“Where is she?” The voice that warmed my throat was nothing like my own; it rumbled as tamed thunder, masculine and deep.

I was no longer Brienna of Magnalia House. I was a strange man standing in some distant hall of the past, our bodies and minds linked by this book. And while my heart was wild within my chest, terrified, my soul settled comfortably into his grooves. I watched him, from within, through his eyes and his perceptions.

“In the library, my lord,” the chamberlain said, bowing his bald head once more.

The man I was anchored to shut the book, mulling over what he had just read—what I had just read—as he made his way down the corridor, down the winding stairs to the library. He paused, just before the twin doors, to look once more at The Book of Hours. There were some moments he wanted to believe in such lore, that he wanted to trust magic. But today was no such moment, and he abandoned the book on a chair and pushed open the doors.

The princess stood with her back to him before the arched windows, the light sweetening her dark hair. Of course, she had come to visit him in full armor with her long sword sheathed at her side. As if she had come to wage war against him.

Norah Kavanagh pivoted to look at him. She was the third-born daughter of the queen, and while she was not the most beautiful, he still had a difficult time looking away from her.

“Princess Norah.” He greeted her with a respectful bow. “How can I help you?”

They met in the center of the vast library, where the air grew deep and their voices would not be overheard.

“You know why I have come, my lord,” Norah said.

He stared at her, took in her delicate nose, the sharp point of her chin, the scar down her cheek. She was not lazy as her oldest sister, the heiress. Nor was she wasteful and cruel as her second sister. No, he thought, her eyes so blue they seemed to burn. She was grace and steel, a warrior as well as a diplomat. She was a true reflection of her ancestor, Liadan.

“You have come because you are concerned about the Hilds,” he said. It was always the Hilds, Maevana’s one true nemesis.

Norah glanced away, to the shelves burdened with books and scrolls. “Aye, the Hilds’ raids have provoked my mother to declare war on them.”

“And the princess does not desire to wage war?”

That brought her gaze back to him, her eyes narrowing with displeasure. “I do not desire to see my mother use her magic for evil.”

“But the Hilds are our enemy,” he argued. Only in a private space would he challenge her like this, if only to test how deep her beliefs ran. “Perhaps they deserve to be sundered by battle magic.”

“Magic is never to be used in battle,” she murmured, taking a step closer to him. “You know this; you believe this. You have been spouting such ideology since I can remember. I have grown up beneath your warnings, trained myself to master sword and shield as you suggested. I have prepared myself for the day when I would need to protect my land by my own hand, by my blade, not my magic.”

His heart slowed, feeling the space between them tighten. She was only sixteen years old, and yet who would have thought that the third-born princess, the one who would never inherit the crown, the one many forgot about, would be the only one to heed his words?

“Your mother the queen does not believe such,” he said. “Nor your sisters. They see their magic as an advantage in battle.”

“It is not an advantage,” Norah said, shaking her head. “It is a crutch and a danger. I have read your pamphlets on the matter. I have studied Liadan’s war and have come to my own conclusions …”

She paused. He waited, waited for her to speak the words.

“My mother must not be allowed to enter this war wielding it.”

He turned away from her, her declaration making him drunk on his own ambitions, his own pride. Because of that, he would need to tread this very carefully, lest he turn her against him.

“What do you want me to do, Princess Norah?”

“I want you to advise me. I want you to help me.”

He stopped before the great map nailed to the wall. His gaze traced the island of Maevana, her edges and mountains, her forests and valleys. To the far west was the cold land of Grimhildor. To the south were the kingdoms of Valenia and Bandecca. And an idea seeded in his thoughts, grew roots, and bloomed off his tongue …

“You could tell the queen that Valenia would never come to Maevana’s aid if we wield battle magic.” He turned back around to look at Norah. “In fact, they would most likely sever our alliance.”

“We do not need Valenia’s aid,” the princess replied. There was the haughtiness, which all Kavanaghs seemed to possess.

“Do not dismiss the Valenians so quickly, Princess. They are our strongest ally, our faithful brother. It would be folly to estrange them from us, all because your mother has decided to wage a magical war.”

Norah’s face did not soften; she did not blush or apologize for her arrogance.

He walked back to her, stood so close his chest nearly brushed her breastplate, so close that he could smell the fragrance of mountain air in her hair, and he whispered, “You do realize that your mother could annihilate Grimhildor? Could turn Valenia into her slaves? Could cast Bandecca in eternal darkness? That your mother could shatter the realm into pieces with her battle magic?”

“Yes,” she whispered in return.

It wasn’t fair, he thought. It wasn’t fair that the Kavanaghs were the only magical House, that the other thirteen were decidedly frail, weak, and human. That the slender woman before him could burn his land with a mere snap of her fingers, that she could stop his heart with a mere word. And yet he would have to kindle the fire to burn the land; he would have to draw a blade to end her. He could feel the magic teem about her, as tiny flecks of diamonds in her armor, as stardust in her hair, as moonlight on her skin.

Ah, he had always resented the Kavanaghs.

He thought back to what he had just read in The Book of Hours, about the Stone of Eventide’s ancient origins. Why should he believe such a foolish myth, that the Kavanagh elders would actually shackle their magic to the stone? Either they were foolish, or they were afraid of their own power. So they tempered it.

And he was about to make a great assumption—she would probably laugh when he told her—yet this was what he had wanted for quite some time.

“You must bring me the Stone of Eventide,” he said to her, watched a frown pull along her brow.

“What? Why?”

“Your mother’s magic, your sisters’ magic, your magic, Princess, is contingent that one of you wear the stone over your heart, against your flesh. That if the stone is separated from the Kavanaghs, your magic will go dormant.”

She drew in a deep breath through her teeth, but he could tell this was no surprise to her. So she knew? She knew that her House required wearing the stone in order to wield magic? And yet her clan, the Kavanaghs, had kept that secret. Who had begun it? Liadan herself?

“How do you know this, my lord?”

He smiled down at her; it tasted sour on his lips. “Years and years of reading your lore, Princess. It is an assumption of mine, but I can see in your eyes that I have stumbled onto truth.”

“I cannot take the Stone of Eventide,” Norah all but growled. “It never leaves my mother’s neck.”

“You cannot or will not?” he countered. “You are afraid of feeling the magic dim in your blood, aren’t you?”

Norah glanced to the window, where the storm finally broke, lashing the glass. “My mother would behead me if she caught me taking the stone. If she knew I handed it to … to you.”

“You think I could destroy such a thing?” he snapped, his patience waning. “Lest you forget, Princess Norah, that the Stone of Eventide would burn me if I dared to touch it.”

“She will think I have conspired with you,” she went on, paying him no heed.

He sighed, weary of trying to coax her. “I think you need more time to think on this. Return to the castle, Princess. Consider what I have said to you, what I ask of you. If you think you can temper your mother’s magic another way, then we shall consider a different approach. But if not … you must bring the stone to me. Or else we will witness your mother’s battle magic sunder the world.”

Norah’s face was carefully guarded; he could not read what she was thinking, what she was feeling.

He watched her leave, the library doors banging behind her.

She would return, he knew it. She would return because there was no other way. She would return because she was afraid of her own magic.

I was hardly aware of him leaving me, of his body dissolving as mist about mine, drifting out the open window. But my eyes cleared, as if I were blinking away the sand of sleep, finding myself standing in Magnalia’s familiar library. My hands still gripped The Book of Hours— it was old and tattered and threadbare again. But this book had once been his, the man I had shifted into. This book had once been in the hall of a Maevan castle one hundred and thirty-six years ago.

I winced, the sunlight deepening the ache in my head. I grappled for the door and shuffled down the hall, up the stairs, clenching my jaw when Sibylle’s sudden laughter rattled my ears.

It felt as if I had just slammed my head upon a rock. I was halfway tempted to feel my skull, to see if there was a crack.

Into my room I went, closing the door behind me.

I should be studying. I should be preparing.

But all I could do was set the book aside and lie down on my bed, closing my eyes and willing the pain in my mind to go away, trying to calm the alarm that began to thrum in my heart.

I retraced what I had seen, over and over, until all I could wonder was why and who. Why had I seen this? And who was this man?

Because I had never discovered his name.

The next morning, I arrived to Cartier’s lesson half an hour late. That might have been a little excessive; I had never been late, not even when I was an arden of the other four passions. But I couldn’t bear to imagine that Ciri thought Cartier favored me. I couldn’t bear to let this come between her and me, between our sisterhood and friendship. I wanted to ease Ciri’s mind; I wanted to prove to her that Cartier would not treat me any differently from her. And the best way to get under his skin was to be tardy.

I walked into the library, my gaze resting on him first. He stood by the table reviewing with Ciri, his flaxen hair captured by a ribbon, his white shirt soaking in the sunlight. My heart was racing—agonizingly thrilled—when he turned to look at me.

“And what are the bones of the skull?” he asked Ciri as I slipped into my chair.

Ciri, for the first time since I had shared lessons with her, was speechless. Her eyes were wide, blue as a summer sky to fall into. “Th-the frontal bone, the parietal bone, the zygomatic bone …”

Cartier walked toward me—he often paced during lessons, this was nothing new—but I could hear it in his tread, the calm before the storm. He came to stand near my elbow, close enough that I could feel the air spark between us.

“You are late, Brienna.”

“Yes.” I dared to look up at him. His face was well guarded; I could not tell if he was angry or relieved.

“Why?” he asked.

“Forgive me, Master. I do not have a good reason.”

I waited—waited for him to punish me, to assign some horrible writing assignment in which I described in detail the folly of tardiness. But it never came. He turned away and resumed his languid walk about the table, about the library.

“Now, recite to me the bones of the arm, Ciri.”

Ciri rolled her eyes at me when his back was to us. I knew what she was trying to say to me: See, Brienna? You can get away with anything.

I listened to her begin to dissect the arm bones—she had always been brilliant with human anatomy—as I thought of another way to push Cartier’s boundaries. Ciri had just reached the humerus when I interrupted, my voice rudely cutting her off.

“Humerus, radius, ulna, ossa capri …”

“I did not ask you, Brienna.” Cartier’s voice was smooth as glass. It was a warning, his eyes meeting mine from across the room.

I held my tongue; I tried to make my guilt dissipate. I wanted this, remember. I wanted to anger him, to annoy him.

“Now, Ciri,” he said, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose as if he was exhausted, “please recite the bones of the leg.”

Her fingers were absently tracing the tabletop as she stared at me, confused. “Lateral condyle, medial condyle, tib—”

“Tibial tuberosity,” I overpowered her again. “Tibia, fibula—”

“Brienna,” he said, his voice quickly tangling with mine. “You are dismissed.”

I stood, dipped a curtsy, and departed without looking at him, without looking at her. I raced up the stairs, my heart quivering like a plucked harp string.

I sat on my bed and stared at The Book of Hours, which continued to rest on my bedside table, untouched since the vision, looking tattered and harmless. After an inward debate, I decided to pick it up and read another passage, expecting him to pull me back to 1430. But the hours passed, and I remained sitting quietly, safely on my bed reading Maevan lore.

When I heard the faint chime of the grandfather clock in the foyer, I carefully closed the book and wrapped it in the vellum. The last lesson was officially over, and I had made a fool of myself.

I heard my sisters’ voices as they emerged from their lecture rooms … jubilant, lively. They were finished, ready for the solstice. And yet I thought about all the things I still needed to conquer before Sunday and I absently, reluctantly pulled a random book from my shelf. It so happened to be the tome of royal lineages, which I was supposed to have memorized.

The door swung open, and Merei rushed in carrying her lute. She was startled to see me.

“Bri? What are you doing?”

“I’m studying,” I replied with a lopsided smile.

“But lessons are over,” she argued, setting the lute on her bed and striding over to mine. “We are going on a celebration picnic. You should come.”

I almost did. I was one breath from shutting the tome and forgetting the list of things I needed to memorize, but my gaze drifted to The Book of Hours. I needed, perhaps more than anything, to talk to Cartier about it. About what I had seen.

“I wish I could,” I said, and I thought Merei was about to pull me up and drag me down the stairs when Abree hollered for her from the foyer.

“Merei!”

“Brienna. Please come,” Merei whispered.

“I have to talk to Master Cartier about something.”

“What about?”

“Merei!” Abree continued to shout. “Hurry! They are leaving us!”

I stared up at her, my sister, my friend. She might be the one person in the world I could trust, the one person who would not think I had lost my wits if I told her what had happened, how I had shifted.

“I will have to tell you later,” I murmured. “Go, before Abree loses her voice.”

Merei stood a breath longer, her dark eyes steady over mine. But she knew arguing with me was futile. She left without another word, and I listened to the sound of her descending the stairs, the front doors latching with a shudder.

I stood and walked to our window, which overlooked the front courtyard. I watched my arden-sisters gather into one of the open coaches, laughing as their entourage traveled down the drive, disappearing beneath the boughs of the oaks.

Only then did I grab The Book of Hours and rush down the stairs in a tumble. I nearly collided with Cartier in the foyer; his cloak was draped over his arm, his satchel in hand as he prepared to depart.

“I thought you had left,” Cartier stated.

“No, Master.”

We stood and stared at each other, the house unusually quiet, as if the walls were watching us. It felt like I was taking in a breath, about to plunge into deep waters.

“May I request an afternoon lesson?”

He shifted his satchel and snorted. “I dismiss you from one, and now you want another?”

A smile warmed my lips as I held up his book. “Perhaps we can discuss this?”

His gaze flickered to the book, then back to me and my soft, repentant eyes. “Very well. If you agree to act as yourself.”

We walked into the library. As he began to set down his things, I stood at my chair, sliding The Book of Hours onto the table.

“I wanted you to dismiss me,” I confessed.

Cartier glanced up, one eyebrow cocked. “So I concluded. Why?”

I pulled out my chair and sat, lacing my fingers as an obedient arden. “Because Ciri thinks you favor me.”

He took Ciri’s chair, sitting directly across from me. Propping his elbows on the table, he rested his chin on the valley of his palm, his eyes half-lidded with poorly concealed mirth. “What makes her think that?”

“I don’t know.”

He was quiet, but his gaze touched every line and curve of my face. I remembered how easily he could see through me, that my face was like a poem he could read. So I tried to keep from smiling, or frowning, but he still insisted, “You do know. Why?”

“I think it is because of the things we talk about. Yesterday, she felt left out.”

“When we talk of Maevana?”

“Yes.” I wasn’t about to tell him of the suspected smile. “And I think she is worried about the patrons, about … competing with me.” This is what I was most worried about—that Ciri and I would inevitably turn the solstice into a competition, that we would want the same patron.

His gaze sharpened. Any glimmer of mirth faded, and he straightened in the chair. “There should be no need for you and her to compete. You have your strengths, she has hers.”

“What would you call my strengths?” I tentatively asked.

“Well, I would claim you are similar to me. You are naturally a historian, attracted to things of the past.”

I could hardly believe his words, how he had just opened the door to what I was anxious to talk about. Gently, I unwrapped The Book of Hours and set it between us.

“Speaking of the past,” I began, clearing my throat, “where did you come by such a book?”

“Where I come by most of my books,” he smartly replied. “The bookseller.”

“Did you purchase it in Maevana?”

He was quiet, and then he said, “No.”

“So you do not know who owned it before you?”

“These are strange questions, Brienna.”

“I am merely curious.”

“Then no, I do not know who owned it before me.” He leaned back in the chair, that half-lidded expression returning. But he did not fool me; I saw the gleam in his eyes.

“Have you ever … seen or felt things when you read this book?”

“Every book makes me see and feel things, Brienna.”

He made me sound foolish. I began to mentally retreat, slightly stung by his sarcasm, and he must have sensed it, because he instantly softened, his voice like honey.

“Did you enjoy reading about the Stone of Eventide?”

“Yes, Master. But …”

He waited, encouraging me to speak my mind.

“Whatever happened to it?” I finished.

“No one knows,” Cartier answered. “It went missing in 1430, the year of the last Maevan queen.”

1430. The year I had somehow stepped into. I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry, my pulse skipping. I remembered what the princess had said, what the man had said.

Bring me the Stone of Eventide.

“The last Maevan queen?” I echoed.

“Yes. There was a bloody battle, a magical battle. As you already know from reading about Liadan, the Kavanaghs’ magic in war turned wild and corrupt. The queen was slain, the stone lost, and so came the end of an era.” He tapped his fingers on the table, gazing at nothing in particular, as if his thoughts ran as deep and troubled as mine.

“But we still call Maevana the queen’s realm,” I said. “We do not call her a ‘kingdom.’”

“King Lannon hopes to change that soon, though.”

Ah, King Lannon. There were three things I thought of at the sound of his name: greed, power, and steel. Greed because he had already minted Maevan coins with his profile. Power because he heavily restricted travel between Maevana and Valenia. And steel, because he settled most opposition by the sword.

But Maevana had not always been so dark and dangerous.

“What are you thinking?” Cartier asked.

“I am thinking of King Lannon.”

“Is there that much to think of when he comes to mind?”

I gave him a playful look. “Yes, Master Cartier. There’s a man on Maevana’s throne when there should be a queen.”

“Who says there is supposed to be a queen?” And here came the banter; he was challenging me to flex my knowledge as well as my articulation.

“Liadan Kavanagh said so.”

“But Liadan Kavanagh has been dead two hundred and fifty years.”

“She may be dead,” I said, “but her words are not.”

“What words, Brienna?”

“The Queen’s Canon.”

Cartier leaned forward, as if the table cast too much distance between us. And I found myself leaning closer too, to meet him in the middle of the oak, the wood that had witnessed all my lessons. “And what is the Queen’s Canon?” he asked.

“Liadan’s law. A law that declares Maevana should be ruled only by a queen, never a king.”

“Where is proof of this law?” he asked, his voice dropping low and dark.

“Missing.”

“The Stone of Eventide, lost. The Queen’s Canon, lost. And so Maevana is lost.” He leaned away, settling back into his chair. “The Canon is the law that keeps the power from kings, granting the throne and the crown to the noble daughters of Maevana. So when the Canon went missing in 1430, right after the Stone of Eventide was lost, Maevana found herself on the brink of civil war until the king of Valenia decided to step in. You know the story.”

I did know it. Valenia and Maevana had always been allies, a brother and a sister, a kingdom and a queen’s realm. But Maevana, suddenly void of a queen and magic, became a divided land, the fourteen Houses threatening to splinter off into clans again. Yet the Valenian king was no fool; from the other side of the channel, he watched the Maevan lords fight and squabble over the throne, over who should rise to power. And so the Valenian king came to Maevana, told each of the fourteen northern lords to paint their House sigil on a stone and to toss their stones into a cask, that he would draw who should rule the north. The lords agreed—each of them was hindered by pride, believing he had the right to rule—and anxiously watched as the Valenian king’s hand descended into the cask, his fingers shifting the stones. It was Lannon’s stone that he drew forth, a stone graced with a lynx.

“The king of Valenia put the Lannon men on the throne,” I whispered, regret and anger entwining in my heart whenever I thought of it.

Cartier nodded, but there was a spark of anger in his eyes as he said, “I understand the Valenian king’s intentions: he thought what he was doing was right, that he was saving Maevana from a civil war. But he should have stayed out of it; he should have let Maevana come to her own conclusions. Because Valenia is ruled by a king, he believed Maevana should also embrace a kingdom. And so the noble sons of Lannon believe they are worthy of Maevana’s throne.”

It wasn’t lost on me that Cartier would probably lose his head if loyal Maevans heard him speak such treason. I shivered, let the fear gnaw on my bones before I reassured myself that we were tucked into the deep pocket of Valenia, far from Lannon’s tyrannical grip.

“You sound like the Grim Quill, Master,” I stated. The Grim Quill was a quarterly pamphlet that was published in Valenia, paper inked with bold beliefs and stories written by an anonymous hand that loved to poke at the Maevan king. Cartier used to bring the pamphlets for me and Ciri to read; we had laughed, blushed, and argued over the belligerent claims.

Cartier snorted, obviously amused by my likening. “Do I, now? ‘How shall I describe a northern king? By humble words on paper? Or perhaps by all the blood he spills, by all the coins he gilds, by all the wives and daughters he kills?’”

We stared at each other, the Grim Quill’s bold words settling between us.

“No, I am not that brave to write such things,” he finally confessed. “Or that foolish.”

“Even so, Master Cartier … surely the Maevan people remember what the Queen’s Canon says?” I argued.

“The Queen’s Canon was authored by Liadan, and there is only one of them,” he explained. “She carved the law magically into a stone tablet. That tablet, which cannot be destroyed, has been missing for one hundred and thirty-six years. And words, even laws, are easily forgotten, eaten by dust, if they are not passed from one generation to the next. But who is to say a Maevan won’t inherit their ancestor’s memories, and remember these powers of the past?”

“Ancestral memories?” I echoed.

“An odd phenomenon,” he explained. “But a passion of knowledge did extensive research on the matter, concluding that all of us carry them in our minds, these select memories of our ancestors, but we never know of them because they lie dormant. That being said, they can still manifest in some of us, based on the connections we make.”

“So maybe Liadan’s will be inherited one day?” I asked, only to taste the hope of the words.

The gleam in his eyes told me it was wishful thinking.

I mulled on that. After a while, my thoughts circled back to Lannon, and I said, “But there must be a way to protect the Maevan throne from … such a king.”

“It’s not so simple, Brienna.”

He paused and I waited.

“Twenty-five years ago, three lords tried to dethrone Lannon,” he began. I knew this cold, bloody story, and yet I did not have the heart to tell Cartier to stop speaking. “Lord MacQuinn. Lord Morgane. Lord Kavanagh. They wanted to put Lord Kavanagh’s eldest daughter on the throne. But without the Stone of Eventide and without the Queen’s Canon, the other lords would not follow them. The plan fell to ashes. Lannon retaliated by slaughtering Lady MacQuinn, Lady Morgane, and Lady Kavanagh. He also killed their daughters, some who were mere children, because a Maevan king will always fear women while Liadan’s Queen’s Canon lies waiting to be rediscovered.”

The story made my heart feel heavy. My chest ached, because half of my heritage came from such a land, a beautiful, proud people that had been driven into darkness.

“Brienna.”

I blinked away the sadness, the fear, and looked at him.

“One day, a queen will rise,” he whispered, as if the books had ears to eavesdrop. “Perhaps it will be in our lifetime, perhaps the one to follow us. But Maevana will remember who she is and unite for a great purpose.”

I smiled, but that emptiness didn’t fade. It perched on my shoulders, roosted in my chest.

“Now then,” Cartier said, tapping his knuckles on the table. “You and I are easily distracted. Let us talk of the solstice, how I can best prepare you.”

I thought back on his suggestions of the three patrons, of what I needed to have prepared. “My royal lineage is still lacking.”

“Then let us begin there. Pick a noble as far back as you can, and recite the line through the inheriting son.”

This time, I did not have Grandpapa’s letter sitting in my pocket to distract me. All the same, I got several sons into my recitation before I felt a yawn creep up my throat. Cartier was listening to me, his gaze focused on the wall. But he forgave my yawn, let it pass by unacknowledged. Until it came again, and I finally resolved to take a hardback book from the table and stand on my chair with a swirl of my skirts.

He glanced up at me, startled. “What are you doing?”

“I need a moment to revive my mind. Come, Master. Join me,” I invited as I balanced the book on my head. “I shall continue my recitations, but the first one whose book falls from their head loses.”

I only did it because I was weary, and I wanted to feel a jolt of risk. I only did it because I wanted to challenge him—challenge him after he had challenged me these three years. I only did it because we had nothing to lose.

I never thought he would actually do it.

So when he grabbed The Book of Hours and stood on his chair, I was pleasantly surprised. And when he balanced the book on his head, I grinned at him. He no longer seemed so old, so infinite, with his sharp, crisp edges and infuriating depth of knowledge. No, he was far younger than I’d once believed.

There we were, face-to-face, standing on chairs, books on our heads. A master and his arden. An arden and her master.

And Cartier smiled at me.

“So what are you going to give me when you lose?” he teased.

“Who says I am going to lose?” I countered. “You should have chosen a hardback book, by the way.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be reciting to me?”

I held still, my book perfectly balanced, and continued where I left off in the lineage. I misspoke once; he gently corrected me. And as I continued to descend the rungs of noblemen, that smile of his eased, but it never faded.

I was nearing the end on the lineage when Cartier’s book finally began to slip. His arms flew out, outstretched as a bird, eager to regain his balance. But he had moved too suddenly, and I watched—a wide-eyed victor—as he tripped down from the chair with a tremendous crash, sacrificing his dignity in order to catch The Book of Hours.

“Master, are you all right?” I asked, trying in vain to control my chuckling.

He straightened; his hair had fallen loose from his ribbon, spilling around his shoulders as gold. But he looked at me and laughed, a sound I had never heard, a sound that I would yearn to hear again once it faded.

“Remind me to never play games with you,” he said, his fingers rushing through his hair, refastening his ribbon. “And what must I sacrifice for my loss?”

I took my book and eased down from my chair. “Hmm …” I walked around the table to stand near him, trying to sort through the mayhem that had become my thoughts. What, indeed, should I ask of him?

“Perhaps I might ask for The Book of Hours,” I breathed, wondering if it was too valuable to request.

But Cartier only set it into my hands and said, “A wise choice, Brienna.”

I was about to thank him when I noticed a streak of blood on his sleeve. “Master!” I reached for his arm, completely forgetting that we were not supposed to touch each other. I caught my fingers just in time, before I grazed the soft linen of his shirt. My hand jerked back as I awkwardly said, “You’re … you’re bleeding.”

Cartier glanced down to it, plucking at his sleeve. “Oh, that. Nothing more than a scratch.” And he turned away from me, as if to hide his arm from my gaze.

I hadn’t seen him hurt himself when he fell from the chair. And his sleeve had not been ripped, which meant the wound had already been there, reopened from his tumble.

I watched him begin to gather his things, my heart stumbling over the desire to ask him how he had hurt himself, the desire to ask him to stay longer. But I swallowed those cravings, let them slide down my throat as pebbles.

“I should go,” Cartier said, easing his satchel over his good shoulder. The blood continued to weep beneath his shirt, slowly spreading.

“But your arm …” I almost reached for him again.

“It’ll be fine. Come, walk me out.”

I fell into step beside him, to the foyer, where he gathered his passion cloak. The river of blue concealed his arm, and he seemed to relax once it was hidden.

“Now then,” he said, all stern and proper again, as if we had never stood on chairs and laughed together. “Remember to have your three approaches prepared for the patrons.”

“Yes, Master Cartier.” I curtsied, the movement ingrained within me.

I watched him open the front door; the sunshine and warm air swelled around us, laced with scents of meadows and distant mountains, stirring my hair and my longings.

He paused on the threshold, half in the sun, half in the shadows. I thought he would turn back around—it seemed like there was more he wanted to say to me. But he was just as good at swallowing words as I was. He continued on his way, passion cloak fluttering, his satchel of books swinging as he moved to the stables to fetch his horse.

I didn’t watch him ride away.

But I felt it.

I felt the distance that widened between us as I stood in the foyer shadows, as he rode recklessly beneath the oaks.

The summer solstice descended upon us like a storm. The patrons were to lodge in the western quarters of the grand house, and every time one of their coaches pulled into the courtyard, Sibylle shouted for us to rush to her room window so we could catch a glimpse of the guests.

There were fifteen of them in all—men and women of varying ages, some who were passions, some who were not.

I became so nervous that I couldn’t bear to watch them arrive. I tried to slip from Sibylle and Abree’s room, but Sibylle caught my hand before I could vanish, drawing me back around to face her.

“What’s wrong, Brienna?” she whispered. “This is one of the most exciting nights of our lives, and you look like you are about to go to a funeral.”

That coaxed a little laugh from me. “I’m only anxious, Sibylle. You know that I am not as prepared as you and our sisters.”

Sibylle glanced to the sheen of the window, where we could hear yet another patron arrive to the courtyard, and then she returned her gaze to me. “Don’t you remember the first lesson Mistress Therese gave you when you were an arden of wit?”

“I try to block all such memories from my mind,” I said drily.

Sibylle squeezed my fingers with an exasperated smile. “Then let me refresh your memory. You and I were sitting on the divan, and it was storming outside, and Mistress Therese said ‘to become a mistress of wit, you must learn how to wear a mask. Inside your heart, you may rage as the storm beyond the walls, but no one must see such in your face. No one must hear such in your voice …’”

Slowly, I began to remember.

To be a mistress of wit, one must have perfect command over their expressions, over their aura, over what they concealed and what they revealed. It truly was like donning a mask, to hide what actually lay beneath the surface.

“Perhaps that is why I did so poorly in wit,” I said, thinking of how Cartier could always read my face, as if I wrote my feelings on my skin.

Sibylle smiled, tugging on my fingers to regain my attention. “If you remember anything of wit, remember the mask. Wear confidence instead of worry tonight.”

Her suggestion was comforting, and she kissed my cheeks before letting me go.

I retreated to my room, pacing around Merei’s instruments and my piles of books, reciting over and over the three approaches I had diligently prepared. By the time the maids came to dress us, I was sweating.

I knew that every noble and passionate Valenian woman wore a corset.

Even so, I was not prepared to shed the comfortable innocence of my arden dress for a cage of whalebone and complicated laces.

Neither was Merei.

We stood facing each other as our corsets were laced, the maids tugging and pulling on us. I could see the pain on Merei’s face as she readjusted her breathing, her posture, trying to find symbiosis with it. I mirrored her—she knew better how to hold herself from all those years of playing instruments. My posture had always been poor, stooped by books and writing.

There is no passion without pain, Cartier had once told me when I had complained of a headache during lessons.

And so I embraced it that night, the agony that was married to the glory.

I was, not surprisingly, short of breath by the time my solstice dress emerged from its parcel in three elaborate pieces.

The first was the petticoats, layered in lace. Then came the kirtle, which was low-cut and spun from silver fabric, and last, the actual gown, a steel-blue silk that opened up to reveal coy glimpses of the kirtle.

Merei’s kirtle was a rosy shade of gold, overlaid by a mauve gown. I realized that she was wearing her color—the purple of musical passion—and I was wearing mine—the blue depths of knowledge. Obviously, this was arranged so the patrons would know who we were by the colors of our gowns.

I gazed at her, her brown skin glistening in the warmth of early evening, the maids brushing the last of the wrinkles from our skirts. My roommate, the friend of my heart, was stunning, her passion as light radiating from her.

She met my gaze, and it was in her eyes as well; she was looking at me, seeing me as if I had just taken my first breath. And when she smiled, I relaxed and settled into the dusk of summer, for I was about to passion with her, a moment that had taken seven years in the making.

While Merei’s hair was intricately braided with tendrils of gold ribbon, I was surprised when one of the maids brought me a laurel of wildflowers. It was a whimsical array of red and yellow blossoms, a few shy pink petals, and a brave ring of blue cornflowers.

“Your master had this made for you,” the chambermaid said, setting the flowers as a crown in my hair. “And he has requested your hair remain down.”

My hair remain down.

It was untraditional and a bit perplexing. I looked to my blue-and-silver dress, to the long brown waves of my hair, and wondered why he would make such a request.

I moved to stand before the window and waited for Merei, forcing myself not to think of Cartier but to mentally recite my chosen lineage again. I was whispering the ninth-born son when the maids departed from our room and I heard Merei sigh.

“I feel like I should be ten,” she said, and I turned to look at her. “Or eleven, or even twelve. Is this truly our seventeenth summer, Bri?”

It was strange to think of, how slowly time had moved until we had reached a certain point. And then the days had flowed as water, rushing us along to this night. I still didn’t feel wholly prepared …

“Where did the time go?” she asked, glancing to where her lute sat on the bed. Her voice was sad, for come Tuesday, we would both leave this place. She might to be pulled to the west, me to the east, and we might not ever see each other again.

It bruised my heart, made a knot well in my throat. I could not think of such possibilities, of the good-byes that loomed on our horizon. So I walked to stand before her and took her hands in mine. I wanted to say something, but if I did, I might shatter.

And she understood. Gently, she squeezed my fingers, her dimples kissing her cheeks as she smiled at me.

“I think we are probably late,” she whispered, for the house around us was quiet.

We held our breath, listening. I could hear the faded sounds of the party melt through the windows, a party that was flourishing outside on the back lawn, beneath the stars. Punctures of laughter, the hum of conversations, the clink of glasses.

“We should go,” I said, clearing the aches from my throat.

Together, Merei and I left our room only to discover we were not the last ardens to the solstice. Abree stood at the top of the stairs, her dress as a cloud of midnight, her red hair piled up high on her head with curls and jeweled barrettes. She clutched the railing in a white-knuckled grip and looked at us in relief.

“Thank the saints,” she panted, her hand clawing at the corset. “I thought I was the last one. This dress is horrid. I can’t breathe.”

“Here, let me help you,” Merei offered, easing Abree’s hand from her waist.

I was just as inclined to fall down the stairs as Abree, so I took my time behind them, familiarizing myself with the wide arc of my petticoats as I descended. My sisters reached the foyer and turned into the corridor, their footsteps fading as they walked through the shadows to the back doors.

I would have caught up to them, but my hem snagged on the last iron rung of the balustrade and it took me a good minute to untether myself. By then, I was annoyed by the dress and shaky with hunger, a few stars dancing in the corners of my sight.

Slowly, I turned into the corridor, moving down its long passage to the back doors, when I heard Ciri’s voice. She sounded upset, her words muffled until I walked closer, realizing she was standing just inside the Dowager’s study, speaking to someone …

“I don’t understand! I was your arden first.”

“What don’t you understand?” Cartier. His voice was low, a rumble of thunder in the shadows. I stopped walking, just before the study doors, which were cracked.

“Are you going to hold her hand all evening and forget about me?”

“Of course not, Ciri.”

“It’s not fair, Master.”

“Is anything in life fair? Look at me, Ciri.”

“I have mastered everything you have ever asked of me,” she hissed. “And you act as if … as if …”

“As if what?” He was becoming impatient. “As if you have not passioned?”

She fell quiet.

“I do not want us to quarrel,” Cartier said in a softer tone. “You have done exceedingly well, Ciri. You are by far the most accomplished of all my ardens. Because of that, I will simply stand back and watch you passion tonight.”

“And what of Brienna?”

“And what of her?” he responded. “You should not worry about Brienna. If I see you compete with her, you will wish that I had never been your master.”

I heard her sharp intake of breath. Or perhaps it was my own. My fingers curled into the wall, into the carvings of the wainscoting; I felt my nails bend as I tried to hold on to something solid, something reassuring.

“You may be my master for one more night,” she said in a dark tone. “But if the patron I want is interested in her …”

His voice dropped so low it was nothing but a growl to me. I made my feet move forward, as silently as I could, praying they did not hear me pass the doors.

Through the glimmer of the bay windows, I could see the white tents of the solstice on the lawn. I watched the servants circulating with platters of drinks, heard the laughter floating amid the night. I caught a glimpse of Sibylle’s green dress as she meandered beside a patron, her beauty warbled by the mullioned windows when she moved. I was almost to the threshold, a threshold scattered with herbs to welcome the new season.

But I didn’t walk through the back doors.

I turned to the right, to the safe shadows of the library.

Gently, as if my bones might break, I sat in the chair in which I had withstood all of Cartier’s lessons. And I thought about what I had just overheard, wishing that I had not stopped to listen.

At Magnalia, there was never supposed to be two ardens of one passion. There was only supposed to be one of each, and now I understood why the Dowager had structured her house this way. We weren’t supposed to compete, but how could we not? The arials were not supposed to favor one over the other, but what if they did?

Should I say something to Ciri?

Should I leave Ciri be?

Should I avoid Cartier?

Should I confront Cartier?

I sat there, letting those four questions pick at my thoughts until I felt the urgency of the night. I could not continue to sit there as a coward.