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Chapter Text

The journal of King William II of Cymdros. March 21^st, in the 30^th year of his reign.

We should have been celebrating last night. The spring equinox has always been one of the grandest festivals in our kingdom, to throw off the gloom of winter. But the blight that began last summer shows no signs of abating. We survived the winter on our reserve food stores. We will not have enough for another winter if this famine continues.

It is a king’s duty to lift his people’s spirits, but even I could not stomach such a farce this year. Instead of feasting, we lit bonfires on all six islands of our kingdom at sunset. We held a vigil for those who did not live to see spring. We prayed.

I can sense our people’s faith in me is failing. They have not forgiven me for destroying one-third of last year’s harvest, though by all evidence it was cursed. The soils of Nefynmor are poisoned. The entire island is bleached, pale as the moon with black tears streaming from the trees.

My daughter Odette stood beside me at the bonfire vigil. She has been abroad most of the year, studying in Yoringard and Lincolnshire. I told her not to return for the equinox, but she came back just the same.

What legacy am I leaving for my daughter? Cymdros was meant to be a sanctuary for those looking to escape the dangers of magic. Is this my punishment, for trying to bring a glimmer of magic back? Am I to be the king who loses another island?

I cannot fall asleep. In my dreams I wade into the lake on Nefynmor, beside the ruins of the warlock’s castle. I hear the trumpeting of swans and whispers from the cursed trees, like the peals of wind chimes.

Take me, I say. Take me to the moonless lake beyond your curtain and leave my daughter alone.

The answer is always the same—a whisper, gentle and pitiless. No.

Our enemies are patient. They can wait years—lifetimes, even, hiding behind their veils of glamour and deception. I am afraid. My daughter knows it; I can only pray she does not know how afraid I am. The whispers mock me, and I fear their mockery has the ring of truth. I fear I am doomed to become what they call me.

King William the Last.   

______________________________________________________

Chamberg, October. Four months after the Great Animal attack.

In the Chamber of Dignitaries, Derek tilted his head and tried his best to keep his face composed. On the opposite side of the table, the new ambassador from Yoringard was fuming.

“A total ban on trade! Forbidden from entering Cymdros’ harbors, under pain of arrest and confiscation of our ships!” Ambassador Thoringol slammed his hand against the table so forcefully, a few drops of wine spilled out of the goblet to his right. Beside him, Derek heard his advisor Lord Rogers let out a soft snort of derision and wished he could have done the same.

“Cymdros is still mourning their king,” Lord Rogers said dryly. “They’re going through the worst famine in their kingdom’s history, and your merchants tried selling them grain at four times the normal price. Of course they were offended.”

“Meanwhile, Chamberg is practically giving them food for free,” the ambassador replied.

“Yes, because we’re allies,” Derek said with forced patience. “That’s what allies do during a crisis.”

“Did you hear how the Council of Cymdros treated the captain at the negotiation table?” Ambassador Thoringol demanded. “They called him a petty thief and parasite. King William would never have used such language to a fellow noble.”

“You’re right,” Derek conceded. “King William would have just thrown him out without a word. If he agreed to see him at all.”

“I’m curious,” Rogers said. “Was the parasite remark before or after they found the captain’s son selling illegal candlewitch weed on the palace grounds?”

Ambassador Thoringol’s face flushed. Clearly he’d hoped that rumor hadn’t reached Chamberg’s ears.

“Candlewitch is a medicinal herb. It’s no more dangerous than wine,” the ambassador argued. “The Cymdrosi are such a paranoid lot, they’ll outlaw anything that even smells of magic.”

“Yes, their fear of sorcery isn’t a secret,” Derek said. “And they have good reason.”

“It was an idiotic move that made an already bad situation worse,” Rogers said. “And now you’re asking Chamberg to fix your kingdom’s mess.”

Derek glanced at Rogers with a frown, which they both knew was only for show. He and Rogers had a routine for meetings like these: Rogers would play the acerbic cynic so Derek could appear more reasonable by contrast. Derek turned back to the ambassador.

“What is it you would like Chamberg to do?” he asked.

“Use your influence with Cymdros to convince them to lift their ban! Your kingdoms have had close diplomatic relations for nearly twenty years. They’re more trusting of Chamberg than any other nation,” the ambassador said.

Derek shook his head.

“They were more trusting under King William’s reign,” he said. “Now that he’s gone, most of the Council of Seven think he was moving too quickly. They won’t reopen their harbors to you just because Chamberg asks them to.”

“Then put them in their place!” Ambassador Thoringol demanded. “Withhold your aid! Show them the other kingdoms on the continent won’t be insulted like this. Chamberg has other allies. You’re under no obligation to Cymdros anymore. It’s a disservice to your people to let yourselves be held back by a backwards island chain in the east.”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Derek said after a long pause.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” the ambassador said, looking down. “I spoke out of turn. I know you cared for the royal family.” His fingers twitched slightly, and in the uncomfortable silence Derek allowed himself to study his face more closely. Ambassador Thoringol truly did look tired. And in all fairness, he hadn’t created this mess. As with most foreign diplomats, his homeland’s disgusting antics had simply fallen into his lap for him to clean up.

 “I know you didn’t mean it,” Derek said. “You’re under a lot of stress. It’s not easy being the messenger. The Council of Seven are proud, but they can be appeased. Duke Ivarson is the head of your Ministry of Trade, isn’t he?”

“He is, Your Majesty,” the ambassador said.

“I’ve only met him once, but he seems like a reasonable man,” Derek continued. “Have him give a formal apology to the Council in writing and offer to visit Cymdros to repeat it in person, along with a gift of good will. Chamberg can deliver the message while your ships are banned. With any luck, this entire thing will blow over in a month.”

“And it’s Highness, not Majesty,” Derek added as he moved toward the door. The ambassador blinked.

“I beg your pardon?” he said. Out of the corner of his eye Derek saw Rogers shake his head, but he ignored it.

“It’s Highness,” Derek repeated. “I’m the prince, not the king. But in this matter, I assure you I speak on behalf of Her Majesty, the Queen.”

He and Rogers walked in silence down the hall for a few moments, until they were both certain Ambassador Thoringol was out of earshot.

“That was an unnecessary correction, Your Highness,” Roger said. “You’re king in all but name. You don’t need to weaken your argument over a title.”

Derek shrugged. “I’d already won the argument. I could afford it.”

“Still. When the ambassador sends his report back to his king, ‘His Highness Crown Prince Derek’ won’t command nearly as much respect as ‘His Majesty King Derek,’” Rogers pointed out. Derek knew his advisor was right. It would have been easy enough to let the ambassador’s mistake stand uncorrected. But just now he didn’t feel like explaining why he felt the urge to stand on principle for this of all things.

“What else have we got today, Rogers?” he asked.

“A celebration with the Royal Horticulturists. Apparently they’ve managed to grow an orchid that looks like a red-warted toad. Yes, we paid them for that. And two representatives from the University of Merduin arrived this afternoon to present another list of candidates for royal mage.”

“Cymdros will love that,” Derek said dryly. “The only reason King William’s council was willing to entertain his idea to join our kingdoms was because Chamberg doesn’t have a royal mage.”

He heard Rogers let out an exasperated sigh behind him and realized Rogers had stopped walking. Derek turned.

“What?” he asked, a little exasperated himself. Rogers stood with his arms crossed, scowling—not an unusual posture for him, but unlike his normal sarcasm, just now he looked genuinely furious.

“Honestly, Derek, you need to stop caring what Cymdros thinks. You don’t owe them a thing, and it’s holding you back. Ambassador Boor-ingol at least had that much right.”

“It was Odette’s home, Rogers,” he said. “The Council needs our help. We’re not just going to let the other kingdoms pick them apart like vultures.”

“The Council of Seven don’t like us and they never will,” Rogers said flatly. “It was King William they trusted. You can mourn him and Odette as long as you like, but you cannot let that cloud your judgment. Right now Chamberg needs you to be its king. For heaven’s sake, you don’t even agree with half their outdated views!”

“Enough, Rogers,” Derek snapped. He stopped and rubbed his head. “I’m sorry. I know you’re right about the Council, but that isn’t the point. Their ruling family is gone. The least Chamberg can do is give them some diplomatic protection while they sort things out.”

“Their ruling family is dead,” Rogers said quietly. An uncharacteristic gentleness had entered his voice. “If you really don’t believe that, why did you say Cymdros was Odette’s home?”

Derek did not have an answer to that. After another few moments of silence, Rogers left him alone in the hall. Derek rested his arm against the wall and stared out the window at the courtyard outside. An array of ghostly purple lanterns and jack-o-lanterns grinned back at him, part of the palace’s preparations for the All Hallow’s Festival.

Four months. Four months since King William’s death and Odette’s disappearance, and this was what he had to show for it.

It was almost insulting how quickly Chamberg had moved past his botched proposal and mind-numbingly stupid “What else is there?” remark last June. Two weeks, maybe three, he’d had to hear the story repeated by local bards and palace servants? Though he supposed the death of a king and abduction of a princess at the hands of a mysterious beast would overshadow that.

But soon the city’s bards had become torn between those who wanted to tell stories of a daring quest, and those who wanted a fresh romance for the palace’s newly eligible bachelor. Bromley had even set up a chart in his room tracking current public opinion: red darts for hunting the Great Animal; blue for finding a new bride. The number of red darts was dwindling.

Meanwhile, the Isles of Cymdros had all but ignored any overtures Derek had made to offer condolences or organize a joint rescue effort. They could understandably blame him for the loss of both their king and their princess—the only heir to the throne. He’d heard stories about Cymdros’ distrust of outsiders. King William had been pushing for a marriage and a merger of Cymdros and Chamberg almost since his daughter was born. But on one of Derek’s more recent visits to their kingdom, he’d discovered a good half of King William’s government wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic about the idea.

Worry about your own misfortune, Your Highness. Leave us to deal with ours. We thank you for your kind sympathies. Those had been the only words the Council of Seven had to offer him at King William’s funeral, after Derek had returned the bodies of the late king and his captain to their homeland. Derek hadn’t known what they meant at first, but within a few weeks it had become painfully clear.

A shadow of madness had descended on him, which prevented anyone with even a shred of relevant information from sharing it. There were times he could sense someone wanted to say something—in Cymdros, in the magical libraries at Merduin, even talking to King William’s captain, Sir Josiah Langley, before he had died of his wounds from the Great Animal attack. He could see some vital truth fighting to escape in the frantic glances of their eyes or sharp twitches in their lips. But when they opened their mouths, an inevitable stream of nonsense poured out.

It explained why King William could utter only a cryptic, “It’s not what it seems” at the scene of the attack. It brought a fresh bitterness to the king’s death, knowing he was not even fully himself when he died. The king had spent his last breaths fighting a chokehold of insanity.

Derek later learned that a few people had tried so hard to give him a piece of useful intel, they had lain bedridden for days or weeks in a state of raving lunacy. After two and a half months, a representative from the University of Merduin had approached him and begged him to stop endangering the minds of their scholars with his questions.

But even that wasn’t the worst of it. The curse had cast a shadow across his entire kingdom. Messengers from outside Chamberg suffered the same lockjaw if they tried to speak or write to anyone inside about the incident. Even Chamberg’s diplomats in other kingdoms weren’t immune. Reports of nonsensical messages and meetings were becoming disturbingly regular, as though simply being citizens of Chamberg had damned them.

Hear no evil. The mages of Merduin had given that name to Chamberg’s curse, though it didn’t seem to get them an inch closer to unraveling it. It made Derek wonder what other dangers his kingdom was now blind and deaf to.

That—that was why, after three months, Derek had finally forced himself to start paying more attention to his kingdom. It was the reason his days were now occupied with diplomatic administrivia and toad-shaped orchids. And it was the reason he could not let anyone, even by accident, call him Your Majesty. A ruler who had failed to prevent something like this was not a king, but a fraud.

The mages at Merduin were working on it, they promised, if His Royal Highness could just be patient for another month…or three. Meanwhile his mother, Rogers and Bromley had covered for him while trying to convince him that he was not to blame. They had been more supportive than he deserved, but Derek could tell they were tired—tired and scared. His people were tired and scared. There were whispers that if the prince would just let go of his futile search, perhaps that would be enough to break the spell and lift Chamberg out of its information prison.

His people were ready to move on, and they needed him to move on as well. A true king would have been able to make the sacrifice.

I’m not ready to let go, Derek thought. I’m not ready to move on.

Chapter Text

After the heated meeting with Ambassador Thoringol, Derek had been bracing himself for another difficult conversation with the two mages from Merduin waiting in the royal library. Merduin was a small kingdom in the western steppes with one gem: the only university on the continent dedicated exclusively to magical learning. And they had been pressuring Chamberg for years to take on a royal mage. While Derek doubted they would be openly hostile like the ambassador, he was not sure he had the energy for what would be, in essence, a sales pitch.

However, the two mages who greeted him—a woman in wine-red robes whose loosely braided hair was starting to gray and a younger man, presumably her student, with brighter orange-red robes—seemed content to exchange pleasantries and hand him a letter with the university seal. The older woman, who introduced herself as Sage Naomi, sat back in her chair nursing a mug of tea while Derek read the letter.

To Her Royal Majesty Queen Uberta, Guardian of the Emerald Fleet, and His Royal Highness Prince Derek, Crown Prince of Chamberg and head of the Order of the Rowan,

We are pleased to recommend these three Sages for your consideration, to provide service and counsel to the kingdom of Chamberg in matters both occult and mundane:

The body of the note had a paragraph about each candidate, listing their names, their specialties and some of the most impressive feats they had accomplished during their mandatory five-year shadow period traveling with a more experienced Sage. Derek noticed that none of the three had focused on combating the Forbidden Arts, though one had unraveled a rather tricky hex involving books whose words rearranged themselves during her shadow period.

“If any of your candidates can break the curse Chamberg is under now, I’ll consider bringing them on,” Derek said. “Unless your mages can do that, I’m afraid I don’t see much point. Perhaps you’d consider nominating someone who specializes in fighting the Forbidden Arts?”

Sage Naomi regarded him sympathetically.

“Your preference is certainly understandable, Your Highness,” she said. “But you must realize, mages who specialize in combating eldritch magic are also required to study it in depth—in practice sometimes, not only in theory. We screen all the students in that school very carefully. However, since this would be Chamberg’s first time commissioning a royal mage, we thought someone from a…tamer…discipline would be more prudent.”

As Derek finished reading the letter, he noticed a postscript at the bottom, written in an entirely different hand.

P.S. There are no tomatoes in the fire markets of Luthedain.

“What does this mean?” he asked abruptly.

Sage Naomi’s younger companion looked shocked and a little frightened at Derek’s reaction.

“I’ve never seen that before, Your Highness,” he said.

“But how did it even get on this letter? Do you know whose handwriting this is?”

“I swear, we have no idea. They wouldn’t have sent us otherwise—”

Sage Naomi silenced her student with a hand on his arm. “My apprentice speaks the truth. We didn’t read the letter before coming here. We only knew the names of the candidates on it. We don’t know what this postscript means, and we couldn’t tell you if we did. The university chose us to meet with you because we know nothing about the information you’ve been looking for.”

“Can you at least tell me when the letter was written?” Derek pressed.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness. Truly I am,” Sage Naomi said. “If you think there is anything sensible in that sentence, then it’s something that makes sense only to you.”

The two mages made short bows as they left the library. Derek sat down, staring at the letter like it might spontaneously combust for daring to defy his kingdom’s curse. But somehow this message had made it past Chamberg’s invisible gatekeepers.

There are no tomatoes in the fire markets of Luthedain. He had recognized the handwriting first, before he had even processed the words. The hand that wrote the postscript was Odette’s, and Derek knew the memory she was referencing; he knew it very well.

______________________________________________________

The kingdom of Cymdros, 1 year and 10 months earlier. December.

Derek remembered very little of his first visit to Cymdros. He did not even remember meeting the baby princess—because how much does anyone really remember from when they were three? So when he arrived there sixteen years later, he wasn’t surprised to discover he didn’t recognize a thing.

The mountains, though—Derek wanted to chastise his three-year-old self for not paying more attention to those. Chamberg had mountains, but they were leagues from the sea, rising gradually from dense forests or farm fields like mountains chastened by time and weather were supposed to. In Cymdros, mountains nearly half a mile high plunged straight into the sea, their green and black slopes so sharp they were practically cliffs.

Cymdros had six islands, and the royal palace wasn’t on the largest or even the one with the richest soil. For over a millennium, the rulers of Cymdros had made their seat of power on Myneddu, the Island of the Black Mountain—the third largest and most treacherous for incoming ships.

A perfect defense as long as all your enemies are outside, Derek had thought as his ship approached the narrow harbor nearly hidden in the black cliffs.

Craning his neck, Derek could just barely make out the shape of Caer Mynedd two thousand feet above them. Caer Mynedd was King William’s palace now, but little more than a century ago it had belonged to the dreaded Veiled Kings. The Veiled Kings had ruled these islands for over four hundred years. No one knew where they had come from, but they had maintained an iron grip on Cymdros by wielding strange eldritch magic—what most now called the Forbidden Arts.

King William’s grandfather Siegfried had led the revolt that finally defeated them, with the help of Queen Moira of Chamberg. Once the War of the Veiled Kings was over, every kingdom on the continent banned further use of the Forbidden Arts outside controlled, defensive study. But Cymdros had gone even further. Scarred and suspicious, Cymdros had outlawed magic of any kind within its borders, even the most benign spells.

However, despite the imposing history and terrain, a warm welcome awaited him at the dock. King William and Odette had ridden down to meet him. Before Derek had taken four steps off the gangplank, the king embraced him in a fierce bear hug that raised him at least three inches off the ground—an impressive feat for a man nearly seventy, Derek remembered thinking. Though looking back, perhaps that had been the point of the gesture.

“Welcome to Cymdros, my boy! We’re overjoyed you made the journey to our shores,” the king said warmly. “I trust the captain we sent gave you a smooth voyage?”

“Smooth and enlightening, Your Majesty,” Derek replied when his lungs could expand properly again. “I believe he taught me more about Cymdros in two days than all my tutors combined.”

Odette had remained on her horse. Derek determinedly avoided looking at her during this exchange. He didn’t want to know if she was amused at the sight of her father essentially sweeping him off his feet. When he finally glanced her way, she greeted him with a nod and a polite smile. If there was a forced quality to it, could he blame her? All her summer holidays had been ruined by his presence, and now he was ruining her winter holiday as well.

Odette clicked her tongue, and the black horse Derek had thought was King William’s took a few steps toward him. Derek stretched out his hand, and the horse nuzzled his fingers and let him stroke her forehead.

“She likes you,” Odette observed.

“She’s probably just looking for sugar,” Derek replied.

“Onyx has a good nose. She’d know if you had sugar on you,” Odette said.

They journeyed up the cliff face at a slow walk, navigating a series of switchbacks lined with protective stone guardrails nearly as tall as their horses. The road was wide enough for at least two carriages, but Derek could see why the king had chosen to take the journey on horseback. It was a mild winter day, tempered by a warm wind from the sea. And in the clear late afternoon sun, the view across the ocean stretched for miles. Derek could make out the outlines of three more islands in the distance, their tall silhouettes like black sentries watching the horizon. Hundreds of feet below, the waves sent up giant fans of sea spray as they crashed against the rocks.

He’d never been afraid of heights, but his gawking over the ledge must have given Odette that impression. Or perhaps she simply wanted to needle him, because when they were about one quarter of the way up, she remarked,

“If the climb makes you nervous, just do what the horses do and close your eyes.”

______________________________________________________

The ascent took nearly two hours. The final half hour treated them to a dazzling sunset, which Derek had to admit was somewhat lost on him because by that point he wanted nothing more than to get off Onyx’s back. He wasn’t sure which part of him was sorer, his nineteen-year-old ego or his arse. Knowing how his mother liked to put on a grand show whenever dignitaries arrived, he was dreading whatever banquet or party would be waiting when they reached the palace. But it seemed King William wasn’t nearly as trigger-happy as Queen Uberta when it came to grand occasions. When he reached the top, he saw only a large, white canopied tent with warm lanterns hanging from the top. Two figures stood outside the tent, their faces difficult to make out, backlit by the lanterns in the dying sun.

“Of course you remember my captain of the guard, Sir Josiah Langley,” King William said as the bearded knight came forward to take his stallion’s reins. “And his wife, Lady Anisha, our mistress of horses.”

“It’s an honor to finally welcome you to our shores, Your Highness,” Sir Josiah said.

“Though I’d hesitate to call that uphill trek a welcome, especially after two days at sea,” his wife added cheerfully. “Really, Your Majesty, Chamberg won’t thank you for torturing their crown prince on his first day in Cymdros.”

Lady Anisha was a head and a half shorter than her husband. Her coffee complexion and dark hair formed a stark contrast to Sir Josiah’s fair skin and straw-colored hair, streaked with gray. Though looking at least in her mid-forties, she made a sprightly figure in her burgundy shirt and beige riding trousers. Despite her sympathetic words, Derek suspected she could have done the same trek twice, round trip, without taking a rest or straining a muscle.

The quiet, informal dinner that followed was a welcome relief. Derek listened more than he talked as King William, Captain Josiah and Lady Anisha described the various sights and experiences in store for him during his two-week stay. Part of the relief, he knew, stemmed from the privacy. There wasn’t a single servant in the tent. All four of his hosts took turns refilling glasses and replacing plates. When they finished the second course—raw oysters with a sweet chili sauce—Derek began to rise, thinking it was his turn. But King William forced him back into his seat with a gentle shove.

“You’re our guest tonight,” the king said with mock sternness. “Next time you visit, perhaps we’ll give you the honor of serving.”

Derek still made a point of joining the cleanup at the end of the meal. He hadn’t gathered more than a few handfuls of silverware, however, when he felt a light tap on his shoulder.

“Join me for a bit? There’s something I’d like to show you,” Odette said.

Derek hesitated, more than a little taken aback. There was no mischief in her eyes, which made him naturally suspicious. But it also made him curious—morbidly, perhaps.

“Where?” he asked.

“The Fire Markets. Every island has them this time of year, for the Winter Solstice.” Odette nodded to the southeast. “They’re about a quarter mile downhill that way. They’ll only be going on for three more nights, so this may be your only chance to see them.”

When he didn’t answer right away, she shrugged her shoulders. “But if you’re tired, I understand. My father and Captain Josiah can show you to the palace.”

“Lead the way,” Derek said, nearly cutting her off midsentence. Odette looked surprised at his abrupt response, but Derek knew a challenge when he heard one. They’d been throwing challenges like this at each other since the first summer they’d met. And even when his better judgment tried to intervene—as it had many times and was doing right now—he had yet to back down from one.

Still, Odette’s polite tone and friendly demeanor were unsettlingly new. What is she playing at? Derek wondered.

As they made their way into the streets, Odette described the Fire Market tradition: outdoor night markets that lasted for fourteen days leading up to the Winter Solstice. Every island had their own flavors, and the rivalries were notorious. As the capital island, Myneddu’s of course were the grandest. But the wildest had always been on Nefynmor. The last time King William had visited that one three years ago, Odette explained, the mayor had draped a hooded cloak with fireproof inner lining around the king’s shoulders and set it ablaze. King William had been remarkably enthusiastic about the display. But the spectacle had backfired, quite literally, when the train of his cloak set a nearby vegetable stand on fire. No one was hurt, but the stall owner’s produce had been ruined. The king and the mayor agreed to compensate the stall owner by splitting the cost of the burnt peppers and mushrooms. Then they bought a few extra racks of lamb and everyone there that night had enjoyed free roasted kebabs.

When they finally turned the last street corner, Derek had to pause. A blazing arch of flames marked the entrance to the Fire Market, and these were no ordinary flames. Streaks of blue, green, violet, orange and magenta licked the sides of the arch from the ground to its zenith. Derek noticed a few attendants on either side of the arch with buckets and some very carefully placed ladders, presumably to replenish whatever powders gave the flames their colors.

Odette began to walk inside, but turned when she saw he wasn’t following.

“Come on, Your Highness. You’re not scared of a fire-breathing rainbow, are you?” she asked.

“No,” Derek replied, relieved to return to their normal, sarcastic mode of conversation. “I was just wondering where the tomatoes are.”

Odette looked at him oddly. “There aren’t any tomatoes in the Fire Market. They’re not in season this time of year.”

“Fine. Whatever rotting piece of produce you’re planning to have rain down on my head if I walk in there, I’m prepared this time.”

Odette gaped at him. She looked torn between helpless exasperation and a desire to burst out laughing.

“This isn’t an elaborate prank, Derek,” she said finally. “This is called being a good host.”

Derek paused again, but something in his chest began to lighten. Her behavior suddenly made a strange kind of sense. Odette wasn’t trying to blindside him, nor was she trying to take their relationship in a weird, uncomfortable new direction. She was showing off. It was understandable. After being forced to spend all her summers in Chamberg, she finally had him in her element. And whatever she felt towards him personally, he had the impression she genuinely wanted him to like her home. Still, he wasn’t ready to trust her completely.

“You’ll swear, on the honor of every Swan King on your family tree and all their siblings, cousins and pets, that I won’t get embarrassed if I follow you in there?” he asked. Odette sighed, but she raised her right hand.

“I swear, on the honor of Kings Siegfried, Willam the First, William the Second, their families and King Siegfried’s pet duck Sir Downer, that the crown prince of Chamberg will only be embarrassed tonight if he embarrasses himself.”

Accepting that as the best reassurance he was likely to get, Derek once again let his curiosity take over and followed her into the market.

As they passed beneath the burning arch, Derek found himself wading through a sea of lanterns and faces shadowed by the multicolored flames. They passed booths selling Cymdrosi spice cakes, mulled wine, jewelry, textiles and some exotic crafts he couldn’t begin to identify. Tall stationary torches rose ten feet high after every three booths, casting their unnatural colors over the street. After a few minutes of walking, Odette stopped in front of a booth on their left and emerged with two bright green paper lanterns attached to thin wooden rods.

“Hold these, please,” she said. Taking a small letter opener out of her pocket, Derek watched as she made two long slashes on the sides of each of their lanterns. Then, with a few more strokes, the lines took the shape of two feathered arrows.  “This will make it easier for us to find each other. Or avoid each other, if that’s your preference,” she added with a wink.

“You know, these would make a perfect target if someone wanted to assassinate you,” Derek couldn’t help pointing out.

“Or a perfect decoy, if you wanted to throw someone off your trail,” Odette replied. She led him further down the street. Scanning the crowds, Derek now noticed that almost all the colored lanterns had small shapes cut into them—crescent moons, stars, even what looked to be an elaborate phoenix on one red lantern. Everyone seemed to want to leave their own signature on the Fire Market. It was, he had to admit, a spectacular display. For a kingdom that had disavowed any form of magic, Cymdros had still managed to create something truly bewitching.

Odette paused in front of another booth selling mulled cherry wine. This time Derek intercepted her before she could pay for the two steaming mugs the vendor placed in front of them.

“What are you doing? You’re my guest,” she protested.

“Then call it a hostess gift,” he suggested. “My mother sent a hospitality gift with me to present to your father tomorrow, but I forgot what it was. Probably something boring, like a set of sapphire wine goblets.”

“It can’t be worse than the hospitality gift my father and I gave you last summer,” Odette remarked. Derek didn’t have to ask what she was talking about. They both remembered the oddly-shaped silver horn King William had presented at Chamberg, which was supposed to sound like a chorus of nightingales whenever someone blew it. But the garbled, gargling sound it made was more like a chorus of drowning geese. Queen Uberta had still made Chamberlain blow it before every meal for a solid week before Odette and King William had both begged her to stop.

Derek raised his mug to his lips, but Odette stopped him with her hand.

“Not yet,” she said. “The Fire Fountain always gets the first sip.” Puzzled, Derek let her lead him one more block down the street, where she turned to her left. After a couple more blocks, they emerged into an enormous plaza. At its heart sat…the Fire Fountain.

Standing at least thirty feet tall, the Fire Fountain was beyond doubt the centerpiece of the market. Each of its five layers held flames of a different color, presumably lit by oil coating the water’s surface. As the water cascaded down, it reflected the iridescent, flickering colors of the fire rings above and below. A majestic marble bird—a swan or a phoenix?—perched on top, with wings outstretched as if about to soar from the flames.

At the edge of the fountain, Odette tilted her mug so a small splash of wine escaped into the base. Derek followed suit.

“All fires belong to the sun, and cherry wine only comes from the Isles of Cymdros,” she said. “This is our way of encouraging the sun to keep shining on Cymdros after the Winter Solstice.”

In lieu of a reply, Derek raised his mug in a toast, which Odette returned. They drank in silence for a few minutes. Derek remembered thinking that it still felt very awkward. He was glad she broke the silence first.

“Since you’ve sworn me to be truthful once tonight, would you return the favor?” Odette asked. A familiar glint of mischief had entered her eyes.

“Go on,” Derek said.

“Bribe or threat?” she asked. “What tactic did our parents use to get you to visit Cymdros?”

“Neither,” Derek replied. “I asked to come.”

Odette chuckled, but Derek didn’t miss the look of surprise that passed over her face.

“Then we have even less in common than I thought,” she said. “I assumed we were both victims here. What possessed you?”

She deserved a more gracious reply than the one he gave. But their hands had been forced for so long, the prospect of even being friends was still difficult for Derek to imagine. It was more comfortable to think tonight was a fluke, a rare occasion for Odette to play the magnanimous host to satisfy her own ego.

“Curiosity,” he said. “And a chance to gain the upper hand against our parents. They can’t keep forcing this engagement if we can prove our kingdoms really are incompatible.”

Odette didn’t reply, and Derek realized his words may have cut more deeply than he’d intended. But of course she wouldn’t be sorry if his prediction came true. After all, at the time, it was the outcome they both had wanted.

______________________________________________________

Chamberg, present. October.

There are no tomatoes in the fire markets of Luthedain. Derek fingered the note again in the library. He knew where Luthedain was and, last he’d heard, there were no fire markets there either. Luthedain was a small town in the kingdom of Lincolnshire, in a mountain pass just beyond Chamberg’s northern border. He and his mother had stopped there many times on longer trips to Lincolnshire’s capital, though never with Odette.

But the message wouldn’t have worked if it made literal sense. However Odette had written this—and he was certain she had; they’d been exchanging letters for months before her disappearance; his marriage proposal hadn’t come out of nowhere—she knew about his kingdom’s curse. She knew she had to nest a clue within a memory that sounded like nonsense. And that had been enough to slip past the invisible web surrounding his kingdom.

No pranks. No tricks. The truth…or some piece of the truth…is in Luthedain.

Derek knew better than to think he would find her in Luthedain. The magic wouldn’t have permitted a violation so blatant; not in the heart of Chamberg. More likely it was a clue to another clue. But just then, it felt as though Odette had lightly touched his shoulder and whispered, I’m still here. Don’t lose hope.

Could she have left a clearer message beyond Chamberg’s borders? Without thinking, he turned the note over and then wondered why he hadn’t thought to do that sooner. Odette had written another message on the back.

The faithless curtain has been torn. The Cob King sent twelve little cygnets to close it last time, but it wasn’t enough, and now another island must pay for his stinginess.

Chapter Text

Cymdros, 1 year and 10 months earlier. December.

The welcome banquet Derek had been anticipating—and mildly dreading—happened on the third night of his visit to Cymdros. King William’s banquet hall was a lofty chamber of grey brick, brightened by dozens of gilded chandeliers and colorful tapestries on the wall. The most elaborate tapestry, stretching twenty feet high and at least sixty feet wide, hung behind the king’s table. It depicted two armor-clad figures, a dark-haired queen and a fair-haired knight.

Derek recognized the two figures on the tapestry from their kingdoms’ shared history. Odette’s great-grandfather Siegfried had led the five-year rebellion against the Veiled Kings who once ruled the Isles of Cymdros. Chamberg had joined the rebellion a year in, helping end a reign of terror that had lasted over four hundred years. On the tapestry, Derek’s great-grandmother Queen Moira sat on horseback next to the future King Siegfried. She held her sword aloft and looked over her shoulder at the legions of troops she had brought with her. Meanwhile, Siegfried held a glowing, golden-orange orb that he was preparing to hurl into the entrance of a black cave that emitted the same eerie light.

After their victory over the Veiled Kings, King Siegfried had created the Cygnian Dynasty, though most people now simply called them the Swan Kings. A swan and a rowan tree—the sigils of Cymdros and Chamberg—framed the top corners of the tapestry.

A few minutes after the servants had brought the last course, King William leaned to his right, where Odette and Derek sat beside him.

“If you want your people to love you, remember one thing,” he said in a loud whisper. “Never put a speech between them and their food. Save it for the end of the meal. And give them plenty of wine first.”

“He says that at every banquet,” Odette said, looking somewhat embarrassed. Her father gave her shoulder an affectionate shove. Then the king stood, and within seconds the hall became silent.

“Tonight we celebrate the Winter Solstice,” King William said, his deep voice reverberating off the walls. “It is the night when darkness is strongest. But it is also the night it triumphs for the last time. And in these dark hours of winter, it is fitting that we honor Chamberg—our first and greatest ally!” The king paused, and Derek heard the thunder of over a hundred hands slapping their tables and boots stomping on the floor. One of the hands, he was surprised to see, was Odette’s, though her face was grim. Not an angry grim, he thought, but a somber grim.

“Chamberg fought with our people against the Veiled Kings, when no other kingdom believed they could be driven off!” the king continued. “We are grateful for their courage and sacrifice during our kingdom’s darkest hour. And we are honored to share our prosperity with them now, at the dawn of the golden age of Cymdros. Cofia Loerenys yn y dyfnder!”

The king raised his glass, and the rest of the hall echoed the chant in the high Cymdraeg tongue.

“Cofia Loerenys yn y dyfnder!”

King William had not mentioned a marriage or a joining of their two kingdoms, for which Derek was immensely grateful. But as the only person from Chamberg in the hall, Derek felt an uncomfortable heaviness, as though the weight of a hundred years of history had just dropped onto his shoulders. The king remained standing as his subjects finished drinking their toasts. Derek swallowed, knowing it was now his turn. Speaking in public had always made him nervous. Trying to look confident, he pushed his chair back and rose.

He scanned the crowd, looking for a friendly face to lock onto. Most of the hall of strangers looked politely tolerant at best. But he spotted Captain Josiah and Lady Anisha at a table near the king’s, slightly to the right. Captain Josiah appeared cheerfully drunk, and Lady Anisha was looking at him with an open, encouraging smile.

“Thank you for the kind welcome, Your Majesty,” Derek began, raising his glass to King William before turning back to the rest of the hall. “And thanks to all of you, for your hospitality. I realize this visit is long overdue. But someone told me you make all your guests ride nearly three miles uphill to reach the palace, and I was a little afraid to come.” That remark generated a few quiet laughs. Derek took the small victory and quickly moved on, knowing better than to expect more.

“I don’t know nearly as much about your kingdom as I should, but I sincerely hope to remedy that in the next two weeks,” he continued. “Our shared history has always been a source of pride for Chamberg. The beauty of your islands and the richness of your traditions would put any of the continental kingdoms to shame. I can only hope you’ll forgive any mistakes I make as the…bumbling of an idiotic foreigner.”

His closing sentence also elicited a few chuckles. From her table, Lady Anisha gave a warm nod of approval and began applauding. Many others in the room joined her, though it was a polite, subdued applause. Relieved, Derek sat down. His speech had been stilted, unoriginal, and probably a bit lame. But most importantly, it was over.

He was so immersed in the relief of getting through his address, he barely noticed when the servants removed the dessert course and the musicians struck up the first notes for dancing. He didn’t even realize Odette had left the table until he glanced up and saw her paired off with a bearded nobleman.

He didn’t recognize the dance they were doing. It looked incredibly complex—like a lively galliard, but with steps he’d never seen before. But even taking that into account, he couldn’t help thinking there was something unusual about the way she was dancing. He’d seen Odette dance plenty of times in Chamberg. He’d even danced with her often enough, though he usually had to be cajoled. Why did he think she looked different tonight? Her movements across the floor in her midnight blue gown seemed more carefree, almost flighty.

After watching the other couples on the floor, he finally hit on the reason. The dance wasn’t complex at all. The strange extra movements were pure improvisation. In Chamberg, even the most energetic ballroom dances had every step carefully choreographed. The dances of Cymdros left room for creativity. It had some advantages, he had to admit. Captain Josiah had hit the cherry wine pretty hard. The improvisation gave Lady Anisha more freedom to dodge her husband’s clumsy steps.

Derek watched the second dance, and the third. He tried to focus on the subtle lead-and-follow cues and not the way Odette swept her arm behind her or the graceful curve of her neck, more visible tonight since she had tied her hair back with a wreath of stars.

“May I join you, Your Highness?”

Derek turned at the voice that had interrupted his thoughts. An older nobleman with dark braided hair and a deep crimson tunic had approached his chair. “Councilor Andreas, Your Highness. I’m one of the Council of Seven who advise the king.” 

“Of course,” Derek said. “King William told me about all the Council members. I’m sorry we haven’t had a chance to meet yet.”

Councilor Andreas waved his apology off with a chuckle. “I’m just another bureaucrat. The king has more important things to show you. But I had hoped to steal a few minutes’ conversation with you. Our kingdoms are at a crossroads, and many of us are anxious to learn where Chamberg is leaning. Would you join me outside?”

Derek rose, feeling a little apprehensive. Councilor Andreas looked friendly enough. Still, Derek wondered if he was about to be tested. He’d really hoped the most difficult part of the evening was behind him.

As he followed the councilor out of the banquet hall, another movement caught his eye. A servant approached King William at the head table and whispered in his ear. Derek saw the king’s face darken. He looked very troubled. The king rose and followed the servant in another direction outside the hall. Derek was tempted to follow, but he didn’t see a way to extract himself without being rude, so he let Councilor Andreas lead him beyond the dance floor, to the courtyard outside.

“You did an admirable job with your speech back there. Cymdrosi are a notoriously difficult audience to impress,” Councilor Andreas said once the noise of the musicians had faded behind them.

“I don’t think I impressed anyone,” Derek said honestly.

“No one expected you to,” the councilor said. “Your job was simply not to offend. I’m sure you’ve heard something about how defensive our people can be about our way of life.”

“A bit,” Derek replied. “Now that I’m here, I wish more of my people would visit. I think they’d be amazed how much you’ve accomplished without magic.”

“You’re very kind,” Councilor Andreas said. Had he thought Derek’s compliment patronizing? The man was a trained diplomat. With his polite smile, it was impossible to tell. “For the record, Cymdros has a summer palace that’s much easier to reach. We don’t make all our guests trek uphill for two hours just to reach their rooms.”

“Just the arrogant teenage princes who probably have it coming,” Derek said. Councilor Andreas laughed. The councilor turned then and leaned against the stone railing that bordered the courtyard, looking out. Beyond the castle grounds, Derek could see tiny flickering lights from the Fire Market nearly half a mile away, celebrating the last night of their solstice revels.

“There are many who say we are isolationist, but that is unjust,” the councilor continued. “We welcome anyone to our islands who wishes to escape the evils sorcery can unleash. It is an important role. One that we hope Chamberg will respect.”

“Believe me, my kingdom has no interest in pressuring you to change your laws. That’s your own affair,” Derek said.

“Even if our two kingdoms were joined?” the councilor pressed. Finally, Derek thought. There was the test.

“Forgive my bluntness,” Councilor Andreas said, holding up an apologetic hand. “I realize this must be a sensitive topic for you. But there are many in King William’s government who are concerned about Cymdros’ future if we merge with a kingdom that has not explicitly outlawed magic. A few words of reassurance from you would go a long way.”

Derek paused, weighing his next words carefully.

“We outlaw certain forms of magic in Chamberg,” he said. “Mind enchantments. Transfiguration. Anything that could be used to harm or deceive.”

“And you have not commissioned a royal mage, despite pressure from the scholars at Merduin,” Councilor Andreas added. “That makes Chamberg the only kingdom left on the mainland to turn them down. But you have worked with them before.”

“To help in our hospitals. To create buildings. To predict the weather for our farmers,” Derek said.

“And in war?”

“As medics,” Derek returned. He was starting to feel defensive. He tried to check the sharpness in his voice, reminding himself this was likely the reaction Councilor Andreas was looking for. And the entire argument was moot anyway; a merger between their kingdoms wasn’t going to happen as long as he and Odette remained opposed.

“We wouldn’t force your kingdom to accept mages inside your borders,” Derek said, trying to keep his voice level. “As far as I can tell, the most Chamberg would ask is that you let anyone who wants to practice magic leave freely.”

“That would be a one-way journey for them,” Councilor Andreas said thoughtfully. “You know, magic used to be punishable by death in Cymdros. It was our current King William the Second who commuted the sentence to banishment. Just a few months before his daughter was born.”

“And then the sorcerer Von Rothbart tried to usurp the throne,” Derek said. He’d learned that much about Cymdros’ recent history from his own tutors, and the episode had always puzzled him.

 “Ironic, isn’t it?” Councilor Andreas remarked.

“I never understood why King William didn’t execute him,” Derek said. “He wouldn’t have needed magic to be a capital offense. Rothbart had done plenty of other things to deserve the death penalty. Treason. Attempted regicide. An entire terror campaign to weaken the king’s government.”

“I agree with you, Your Highness,” the councilor said. “I was one of the ones calling for his death. But King William wants to be remembered as merciful.” He let out a sigh that sounded more like a hiss. “It is not mercy to set a monster like that loose on the world. Even stripped of his power. Men like that will always look for a way back. And they will make life miserable for those who cross their path on the way.”

A tapping on the stone wall interrupted them. Odette was standing outside the doorway to the courtyard. She looked grave—the same graveness Derek had seen on the king’s face before he had left the hall.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but something serious has happened,” she said. “No, please stay, Councilor. This concerns you too. An eldritch mine went off on the island of Serenys earlier this morning. My father got word a few moments ago.”

Councilor Andreas’ face turned ashen. He made a sign of divine protection on his forehead. “Are there any dead?” he asked.

“Not this time, thank God,” Odette said. “But the blast zone was over half a mile. At least a dozen people were blinded, and thirty more are hallucinating. And the water is poisoned.”

“I’ll inform the rest of the Council, Your Highness,” Councilor Andreas said.

“Thank you,” Odette said. “My father and I will be gone for three days helping the recovery. He’ll want to convene a meeting once we’re back.”

“Of course.” Councilor Andreas bowed and withdrew. Derek looked at Odette, trying to figure out which question to ask first of the dozens racing through his mind.

“What did you mean, not this time? This has happened before?”

 “It was a landmine made with the Forbidden Arts. A relic from the War of the Veiled Kings,” she explained, answering the question he hadn’t asked but probably should have.

“The war from over a century ago,” Derek said.

“Yes, that one,” Odette replied tersely. She paused and held up her hand. “I’m sorry. That was unfair. You don’t know,” she said. She let out a slow breath before continuing.

“In the last year of the war, the Veiled Kings began getting desperate,” she said. “They buried hundreds of eldritch mines on every island of Cymdros. It was…scorched earth, with a dose of nightmare and whatever other affliction they felt like mixing in. Even after the war was over, our people still stumbled on them and set them off. Nearly every week at first. Eventually the explosions tapered off, but we don’t know how many mines are actually out there.” She folded her arms and leaned against the wall. “This is the first eldritch mine that’s gone off in nearly three years. I don’t think we’ll ever know when they’re all finally gone.”

“How soon do we leave tomorrow?” Derek asked.

“What are you talking about?” Odette asked. “You don’t need to go with us. You’re supposed to be…visiting the summer palace on Nefynmor.”

“You think I care about that? I want to help,” Derek said.

“But we’ll be gone for three days. That’s nearly a quarter of your trip,” Odette protested. “And we’re not going to be touring Serenys. We’ll be sealing off wells and visiting patients and restocking supplies.”

“I didn’t come here to be a tourist, Odette,” he said. “Just let me do something useful.”

She studied his face, and Derek tried to guess the emotions that were passing across hers in turn. Skepticism? Pride? Disappointment, that she hadn’t been able to hide the more unpleasant corners of her kingdom from him? After what felt like several minutes but was probably no more than ten seconds, she released him from her gaze. Her face softened.

“Thank you,” she said, and she sounded sincere.

Chapter Text

The kingdom of Cymdros, 1 year and 10 months earlier. December.

Derek thought he had seen magic before, but nothing had prepared him for the scene when they reached the island of Serenys the following afternoon. The magical landmine had left a sickly green mist over the clearing where it had detonated. The trees and understory had turned white, and many of the plants were oozing black sap like blood. If he stared at the mist long enough, its wispy tendrils began to look like spiderwebs. It was eerily hypnotic. He had to force himself to look away.

Is this what all of Cymdros looked like after the War of the Veiled Kings was over? he wondered. A patchwork of ghost forests and madness-inducing fogs? Were people terrified to walk out of their own homes?

“We got lucky, Your Majesty,” the governor told King William when they arrived, though no one failed to hear the bleak sarcasm in her voice. “Since it’s winter, no crops were ruined. Just plenty of dead trees and shrubs. A few of our families were digging a well when the mine went off.”

“We have eight ships in the harbor with freshwater and other supplies. We can send more if you need them,” the king said. “My people will follow your directions on how to distribute them. Just tell us where you want us to go, and where you need us to stay out of your way.”

Derek recognized the mark of a veteran ruler in King William’s words. The king understood that royal dignitaries, even well-intentioned ones, were often an imposition at the scene of a crisis. The governor looked relieved as well.

“Our medics would appreciate some encouraging words from you,” she said, gesturing toward the two-story gathering hall that had been converted into a temporary sick ward. “Most of the patients are stable, but it’s been a long couple of days. And I’m sure you’ll want to see their notes from the patients experiencing hallucinations.”

As he followed King William and Odette toward the wooden hall, Derek looked at the laborers shoveling dirt into the now-poisoned wells. They paused from their work and bowed as the king passed. The king stopped to speak with a few of them. Most of it sounded like small talk—their names, their families, how long they had lived on Serenys. But they seemed gratified by the king’s interest. He noticed every conversation ended with king and his subjects echoing the same mantra: “Cofia Loerenys yn y dyfnder.”

Remember Loerenys in the deeps, Derek translated silently from the high Cymdraeg tongue. But who or what was Loerenys? He would need to ask one of his hosts, but now did not seem like the time.

When they entered the hall where the island had put its wounded, Derek saw roughly two dozen people blindfolded, lying on cots or sitting against the wall. Another eight or ten medics in blue robes were circling among them, changing bandages and cleaning out chamber pots. These were the men and women who had blinded by the eldritch mine. The ones suffering hallucinations, he would later learn, were on the second floor. Every skin tone and accent seemed to collide inside the hall. Councilor Andreas had spoken truthfully: Cymdros was a kingdom of immigrants, united by a desire to escape magic. And for the fifty-odd scarred people in this hall, magic had found them just the same.

Derek felt a sickening fear. He wasn’t a healer or a counselor. What had he been thinking, that he could help with something like this? Odette turned to him, seeming to sense his apprehension.

“You don’t have to do anything. Just listen to them,” she said. She moved in the direction of a young woman with a rich blue head scarf sitting against a window. Like most of the patients, she was wearing a blindfold. “Would you like some company, miss?” Odette asked. The woman turned her head.

“Please,” she said, lifting her hand in what appeared to be a gesture of welcome.

“I’m Princess Odette. I’m here with Prince Derek of Chamberg.” Odette glanced at him, and Derek realized she was waiting for him to speak.

“Hello. I’m…really sorry for what happened to you.” He struggled to think of what to say next. “Do your family know you’re here, miss…” Derek let his voice trail off, hoping the young woman would fill the silence with her name.

“Eva. And yes. My husband, Yakov, is here.” She swallowed and cleared her throat. “Our daughter is staying with my parents. She’s only four.” Eva turned her head in Odette’s direction. “Has the prince seen everything the landmines do?”

 “Not everything,” Odette said, with some hesitation. Eva began to reach for the back of her blindfold.

“May I?” she asked.

“If you want,” Odette said. Her voice held the same kind tone, but her eyes looked wary. “You don’t have to.”

“I’m not afraid of being seen,” Eva said. Slowly, Eva untied her black blindfold. When she peeled it off, Derek felt his chest grow cold. The Veiled Kings’ landmine hadn’t simply blinded her. A dark film clouded her eyes, making them look like milky black opals. Jet-black veins crisscrossed her face from the corners of her eyes to her temples, like a cruel parody of a festival mask. Odette’s lips narrowed into thin line, but she showed no other reaction.

She’s seen this before, Derek thought. Odette touched Eva’s hand carefully.

“There’s a ship leaving tomorrow,” she said. “It will take you to a hospital in Chamberg that can fix your eyes.” 

Eva stiffened. Derek thought he saw her jaw quiver for a split second. Odette glanced at Derek again, as though silently asking him to confirm her words.

“It’s true,” Derek said. “There are healers in Chamberg who fix things like this every day. You’ll have your eyesight back in a few hours.”

“Your healers. They’re mages, aren’t they,” Eva said. It was not a question.

“Mages who just want to help people,” Derek said.

“I believe you,” Eva said. “But they’re not the healers for me. I can’t accept their help.”

“It’s not a crime to let magic heal you,” Odette said quietly. “My father created that exception for a reason.” Eva folded her hands in her lap, twisting the long edge of her scarf.

“The king is very kind,” she said. “But he made that concession for people who are weak. Or people who have forgotten.” A sliver of steel crept into her voice. “My family came to Cymdros years ago to escape magic. We haven’t forgotten.”

“Neither have we,” Odette replied. There was an edge of steel in her voice now as well. “My father and I had a responsibility to prevent this. The landmine was our failure. Your family shouldn’t have to suffer for it.”

“Please, Your Highness,” Eva said. “I know you mean well. But I couldn’t face my family again if I got on that ship.”

“Who cares what your parents or your husband think?” Derek said, unable to stay quiet. “This is your life. You didn’t ask for this to happen to you.”

Eva turned towards him then. Was that pity in her sightless eyes, looking just slightly past his shoulder? There couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years’ difference in their ages. But when she spoke again, her words were slow and patient, as though she were speaking to a young child.

“I’m not talking about facing my parents or my Yakov, Your Highness,” Eva said. “I’m talking about facing my daughter.”

Derek drew in a sharp breath. He turned back to Odette, but she was looking down, her shoulders slumped. Eva turned back in the direction of the window. Derek could only guess it was so she could feel the sunlight on her face.

“Thank you both for coming, Your Highnesses,” Eva said. “It means a great deal to feel seen.” She spoke kindly, but the message was clear enough. Royalty or not, they had just been dismissed. He felt Odette’s hand on his arm.

“Walk with me?” she asked, so softly she was almost mouthing the words. Still feeling shaken, Derek let her steer him towards the door.

“How can you listen to that?” Derek demanded once they were outside. “She’s talking about staying blind her entire life, and for what? The mages in Chamberg could heal everyone in that hall in a day.”

“And anyone who wants to go there can,” Odette said. “Eva could change her mind ten years from now, and no one would stop her.”

“And could she come back?” Derek countered. “Or would she be banished?”

“Of course she could come back!” Odette exclaimed. “That’s the one exception my father created to Cymdros’ ban on magic. If our healers can’t make someone whole, they can seek out magical healing in another kingdom, and we will help them get there.”

“And how many in that building will choose to go?” Derek asked. Odette glanced away. Her face was grim.

“Half, perhaps? At most.”

“Half of the people in your kingdom would rather go blind than accept any sort of magical help,” Derek said. “And what of the ones who want to leave? It takes two days to sail to Chamberg in good weather. It’s even longer to get to Lincolnshire, or Yoringard, or any of the other kingdoms with magical healers. What if someone is so injured they can’t get there in time?”

“It’s not perfect,” Odette conceded. “But believe me, it’s the best we can do right now.”

“What if you created a portal?” Derek suggested. “It’s one of the most basic spells at the University of Merduin. All they would need is a piece of the island’s soil. Healing mages could be here in under an hour.”

“A magical portal. Here,” Odette repeated.

“Why not?”

“You think Cymdros is going to allow an enchanted gate that could let sorcerers just walk into our kingdom?” Odette said incredulously. “Do you have any idea the fine line my father is trying to walk? How much it cost him with the Council to get even this exception?”

“Then your Council is cruel and insane,” Derek said coldly. “You’re letting your people suffer for their paranoia. Don’t you realize this is why every other kingdom thinks Cymdros is backwards?”

Odette recoiled. He’d gone too far; he knew it. But he couldn’t see a way to take the words back, and a large part of him didn’t want to.

“Thank you for your candor,” Odette said, with a coldness to match his own. “I understand. You didn’t come here to learn about Cymdros. You simply wanted to reassure yourself of Chamberg’s superiority. Tell me, Prince Derek, has our fair kingdom given you enough reasons to gloat?”

“You think I’m gloating over this?” Derek said. “People are hurting. They could have died. You think I don’t see that?”

“Don’t preach to us about pain, Your Highness. Chamberg hasn’t had so much as a potato blight in fifty years. We don’t need advice from another patronizing mainland elitist.”

“Fine,” Derek said, throwing up his hands. There were at least half a dozen retorts itching to slip past his tongue, and it was taking most of his willpower to swallow them. Instead he did the most gracious thing he could manage in the moment, and walked off without another word.

Derek walked at least a mile from the hospital ward, back in the direction they had come. He had thought to help the workers shoveling dirt into the poisoned wells, but the wells were abandoned when he arrived. The sun was close to sinking; the laborers had gone home for the evening. What had he been thinking, coming here? For a few short days it had almost seemed that he and Odette could be…amiable companions, if not outright friends. And then they’d struck one vein of disagreement and were back to their usual bickering.

The magical green mist still lingered over the clearing. Now that it was dusk, the setting sun made it sparkle with colorful droplets like gemstones. Derek knew he should look away, but his willpower was almost exhausted. He closed his eyes because that took less energy.

The sounds of the clearing sharpened as his eyes shut. He heard the twang-like chirping of bullfrogs and the hooting of owls waking for the night. Their hoo-hoo calls almost sounded like someone whimpering in the dark.

The hoo-hoo cries grew louder. Was he so sure they were owls? Some of them seemed too irregular, or just a little too long. Finally one of them lingered in a high, drawn-out wail. That couldn’t be an owl; that sound could come only from a person, someone lost inside the mist.

For one impulsive moment, Derek nearly plunged right into the enchanted fog. But a small, rational part of his brain that was still awake made him stop. He could easily become lost in the mist as well. He could be brave, but there was no reason to be an idiot.

He headed toward the nearest well and was rewarded with the sight of its rope still coiled up a few feet from the well’s edge. Eyeballing the rope, it looked at least two hundred feet long. He would have paid a small fortune just then for a lantern as well, but another quick scan revealed nothing. He would need to fashion a torch—and the nearest thing to fuel was the mysterious black sap oozing from the cursed trees. Never mind, he would just have to risk it. He was fed up with playing the safe, polite diplomat. For once he would actually do something.

Derek tied one end of the rope around a narrow beech tree and the other around his waist. Then he coated the top of his torch in the black tree sap and set it alight. He half-expected some strange magically colored blaze to appear, but the orange flame looked normal. Good enough, he thought, and stepped into the beckoning fog.

The torch was barely good enough, Derek realized immediately. He could see perhaps six feet in front of him, no more. He had expected the mist to be cold. But it was warm, reassuringly warm and inviting after the sharp winter air he had just left behind.

As he plunged deeper into the mist, it seemed to shapeshift before his eyes. One moment it looked like green spiderwebs, and the next like strands of seaweed wrapping around his arms and face. He tried to listen for the wailing, whimpering voice he had heard before. He thought he could make it out somewhere to his right, but other sounds—like unintelligible whispers—threatened to drown it out.

“Hello?” Derek shouted. “Can you hear me?”

The wailing grew softer, and the whispers grew louder. They sounded amused.

This one is not one of ours. He is an outsider.

Welcome, prince of shadow and fog. The one doomed to always fumble in the dark. You will bring your kingdom nothing but confusion and fear.

This is a hallucination. You were warned about this, Derek thought. He forced his mind back to the unknown person he was trying to help, while also vowing never to go anywhere strange without his rowan bow and quiver again. He lifted the torch higher.

“Can you see this? If you’re lost, come to the light, or follow my voice. I can lead us out!”

The wailing noise pierced through the fog again. It sounded almost childlike, with sharp, shuddering sobs.

“Hello!” Derek shouted again. “Where are you?”

Poor little prince, one of the whisperers said. You cannot help that voice. It comes from beyond the faithless curtain, the shame of King William the Last. One of twelve. They are waiting for their Swan Queen to join them.

Derek swept the torch around more frantically, and realized the flame was starting to die. How long had he been here? The torch should have lasted at least half an hour. He hadn’t used up even half the rope he had brought with him. How long could he stay in the mist? Would the magical fumes poison his lungs or leave him blind if he remained in here too long?

“Derek!”

Derek turned behind him and saw another torch waving in the mist, this one brighter and steadier than his had ever been. As it came closer, he made out Odette’s form in the green fog. She was wearing a maroon cloak and had a rope tied around her waist as well.

“Do you hear the crying? There’s someone lost in here,” Derek said before she could break in. Odette shook her head slowly.

“Serenys’ people searched the mist an hour after the mine went off,” she said.

“Then someone must have wandered in here afterward,” Derek said.

“They evacuated the families yesterday, and the workers all made it home,” Odette told him. “I promise you, everyone is accounted for. We all hear things in the mist.”

Derek closed his eyes and tried to listen again, but the wailing sound and the whispers had all disappeared.

“I heard it before I even entered the mist. Multiple times,” he said. Odette took a step closer to him.

“If you’re really worried, we can have them send the dogs back in,” she said. “They use animals to search the mists because they aren’t as vulnerable to the enchantments. But please, come back with me.”

“Then do that, please,” Derek said. It occurred to him that he could be wasting several people’s time and risk looking foolish himself as a result. He decided he could live with that. They made their way out of the mist in silence. There was much more he wanted to say, and he suspected there were plenty of things she wanted to say as well, but it would all be better shared under a clear sky.

The cold air bit his face and arms as soon as they emerged. The sun hadn’t fully set. He really hadn’t been in the mist more than half an hour. Why had she come after him so soon? As Odette untied the rope from her waist, Derek let out a slow breath. They couldn’t have a proper conservation about what had happened in the fog without addressing their argument from earlier. Derek still believed he’d been right in principle, but his word choice had been atrocious.

“I’m sorry for what I said about your kingdom. I know Cymdros’ history with magic is…complicated,” he said. That was an understatement, and they both knew it. “Traumatic,” Derek amended. “I respect what you and your father are trying to do.”

Odette regarded him with tired eyes.

“Thank you for saying that. Consider it forgotten,” she said. “You heard other voices too, didn’t you?” she asked after a pause.

Derek didn’t answer right away. She wasn’t asking him to reveal what he had heard. But some of the whispers seemed to concern her father, and possibly her. After three generations of Swan Kings, she would be Cymdros’ first Swan Queen.

“They said the lost voice I heard came from beyond the faithless curtain,” he said finally. “That it was something shameful in your father’s past. One of twelve things. And something about a Swan Queen joining them. Does that mean anything to you?”

Odette frowned thoughtfully.

“The curtain could refer to where King Siegfried sent the Veiled Kings’ stone of power, when we finally defeated them at the end of the war. The Veiled Kings’ bodies vanished after that. Most people say they just dissipated, but no one knows for sure. As for the rest…” She rubbed her arms. “My father hears whispers sometimes too, but I don’t know what they say. He tries to hide it from me. I try to make him believe he’s succeeded.”

Derek nodded. He could relate to that. How many times had he pretended not to notice when his mother changed her jewelry or her outfit six times a day—a habit she only adopted when she was extremely anxious about something?

“Did the voices say anything to you in the mist?” he asked.

“They talked about Loerenys. They said my legacy would be similar, if I tried to fly too high.” Odette shrugged and raised her palms half-heartedly, as if to suggest trying to interpret the disembodied messages was largely futile.

“Who was Loerenys? I keep hearing that name,” Derek said.

Odette stared at him in surprise. “You don’t know? No one ever told you that part of our history?”

Derek shook his head. A prouder, not-that-much-younger version of himself would have retorted, Of course I don’t know. That’s why I asked. But the strangeness of this place, or perhaps a greater sense of perspective, was forcing his ego to take a back seat.

“Loerenys isn’t a who. It’s a where,” Odette explained. “It was Cymdros’ seventh island. King Siegfried and Queen Moira’s rebellion wasn’t the first time our people tried to throw off the Veiled Kings. There was another revolt, twenty-eight years earlier. The insurgents weren’t very smart, though. It only lasted a few weeks before the Veiled Kings found out.”

“They sank Loerenys,” she continued flatly. “The entire island was underwater in less than four hours. Eight thousand people lived there. Only a couple hundred had a chance to evacuate. The irony is, Loerenys wasn’t even involved in the rebellion. Some of the loremasters believe the Veiled Kings chose Loerenys by random chance. A reminder that we were all equally powerless, and equally expendable.”

“Remember Loerenys in the deeps,” Derek repeated quietly. “That’s why the king’s Council has seven members.”

Odette nodded sadly. “Councilor Andreas really grilled you last night at the banquet, didn’t he?”

“Just a little,” Derek said.

“Try not to hold it against him too much,” she said. “He was chosen to represent Loerenys. It’s his job to speak for the fallen.”

Odette paused. For a moment it looked like she was swallowing something bitter. “King Siegfried reached out to Merduin, at the beginning of the war,” she said. “He asked them for help. Where were all those good mages then?”

“I don’t know,” Derek said honestly. He rolled the toe of his boot against a small pebble on the grass, pondering what to say next. “Can you forget what your Council thinks for a minute, or even your father? Just tell me what you think.”

Odette glanced to the side for a moment, and then regarded him steadily.

“I know there are people who use magic for good. Believe me, I do,” she said, holding up her hand. “The problem with magic is that it enables humans to become gods. And when that happens, innocent people get hurt. The people who come to Cymdros are here because they’ve suffered from magic in the kingdoms that allow it. And yes, I know we failed to protect them this time. But Derek, someone needs to offer them at least the possibility of an escape. Someone needs to give them a chance to say, no more.”

It was hard to ignore the irony of her saying that, in a forest that had just been bleached by a magical explosion engineered with the Forbidden Arts. But he knew the irony was not lost on her either. And it wouldn’t change anyone’s mind. If anything, the Veiled Kings’ landmine would only crystallize the fear and loathing most Cymdrosi felt towards anything magical.

“I’m sorry Merduin turned their backs on your kingdom when it mattered,” Derek said. “I would never let Chamberg be that cowardly.”

To his surprise, Odette laughed, though it was a melancholy laugh.

“Are we friends, then?” she asked.

“Why not just be what Queen Moira and King Siegfried were?” Derek suggested. “Allies when it counts?”

It was not the last conversation they would have about magic. There would come a time, far sooner than either of them would have predicted, when Odette would steal away to the libraries of Merduin seeking answers to the riddles in the mist. But it would take a threat even greater than a half-mile curse for her to forsake her pride and her principles. And when she finally found those answers, Derek wouldn’t give her time to reveal them.

Chapter Text

Chamberg, present. October. Four months after the Great Animal attack.

“Well, someone needs to state the obvious,” Lord Rogers said. “This smells like a trap.”

Rogers slid the letter with Odette’s cryptic message back onto the small table where Derek had first revealed it. Derek had called Rogers, his mother and his best friend, Bromley, into his private parlor that evening. He’d hoped for their support. At the very least he’d expected a small display of excitement at the unlooked-for clue. But at the moment, all three of their faces showed varying degrees of skepticism or pity.

“For what purpose?” Derek argued. “Whoever placed this ‘hear no evil’ curse on our kingdom, they’ve already proven they can hit us at home. Why bother drawing me out?”

“Typical,” Rogers returned dryly. “You young people always think your lives are as bad as they can get. Your problem is that you lack imagination.”

“All right,” Derek replied, thinking appeasing Rogers now might make him more amenable later. “What is your worst-case scenario?”

“Picture this,” Rogers said. “You arrive in Luthedain, and the mayor greets you. He’s been expecting you, but he acts surprised. He insists you stay in his mansion, of course. He wines and dines you that evening, and you show him your mysterious letter. His eyes light up, because he knows exactly what location that riddle points to.”

“How would he know that?” Derek scoffed. “Just look at the message. ‘There are no tomatoes in the fire markets of Luthedain,’ and there are no fire markets there either!”

“I don’t know. Maybe there’s a forge in Luthedain owned by a blacksmith who’s allergic to tomatoes. You’re missing the point,” Rogers continued. “The next morning the mayor has his servants take you to the riddle’s source. Once you’re deep in the forest, a band of mercenaries ambushes you. Or masked ninjas, if they lead you into the city. Some of his servants are badly injured, but they make it out alive. You are not so lucky. Whether the mayor was threatened or bribed, you’ll never know. Meanwhile, Chamberg will have a new heir who might already be in the pockets of our enemies.”

“Hey, Rogers, can I have a go?” Bromley asked. “Let’s say these enemies don’t kill Derek. Maybe they bewitch him, so he acts mostly like the crown dolt we all know and love, but he does their bidding whenever they need him to. Or they do kill him, and one of them steals his face and his memories, and a doppelganger comes back.”

“That’s bleak,” Rogers said. “Our prince returns home, humbled and contrite but safe, and our enemy inherits the throne.”

“Stop it! Stop it, both of you.” Queen Uberta rose from her chair. Her right hand was shaking, but her voice was steady. “The life of our crown prince is not a subject for jokes.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking, Your Majesty,” Bromley said quickly.

“I wasn’t joking, Your Majesty,” Rogers said. But he lowered his eyes at another wordless glare from the queen. Having chastened her advisor, the queen turned her gaze to her son.

“Do not,” she said slowly, “make the mistake of thinking our curse at home makes you immune to danger abroad. Why does a hunter set fire to a den of foxes?”

Derek didn’t want to answer, but he knew his mother deserved one.

“To smoke them out,” he replied tersely.

“Odette wrote letters to many people,” his mother said gently. “It is not impossible that someone could have forged her handwriting.”

“If we thought that about every letter we received, we couldn’t trust anything. Our entire intelligence system would fall apart,” Derek pointed out. “This postscript refers to a very specific memory. Even if a handful of people knew about our visit to the fire market, how would they know we talked about tomatoes?”

“Lucky guess,” Rogers said. “How many people saw the two of you pelt each other with tomatoes at the royal harbor when you were teenagers?”

Derek threw up his hands. “I’m tired of waiting for Merduin’s so-called experts to break our kingdom’s curse. This is the first lead we’ve had in months. I’m taking it.”

 “If you’re determined to do this, these are my conditions,” Queen Uberta said rigidly. “First, you will send a message home at least once every day letting me know your current whereabouts and using your family code name.”

“I don’t know where this clue will lead,” Derek protested. “How can I possibly guarantee that?”

“Horseman, pigeon, talking squirrel, I don’t care,” the queen said. “If I don’t receive your first message four days from now, and another message every day thereafter, so help me, I will send the Order of the Rowan to ransack Luthedain until you or your body are found.

“Second, you will return home after a month if this…riddle…fails to yield any useful information. If you do find something useful, you will still return after one month so we can decide how to act on it. What you’re doing impacts the entire kingdom, and I am still your queen. These are my terms. Do you accept them?”

“I do, Mother,” Derek said. If his mother was upset that he had not addressed her as Your Majesty in that moment, she did not show it. She stepped closer and placed a hand on his shoulder. It was no longer shaking, he noticed.

“Then go with my blessing,” she said. “And may the strength of the rowan and the cunning of the raven guide your way.”

It was a two-day ride north to Luthedain by the most direct route, which Derek did not intend to take. When he and Bromley left the palace the following morning, they rode four and a half miles south along the main road out of the capital, before veering off into the woods and doubling back northwest. The queen had let slip a rumor to a few servants that they were traveling to Rebegend, one of Chamberg’s southern provinces, to scout possible locations for next year’s May Festival.

By the time he and Bromley began riding northwest, the sun had already passed noon. They made camp in the forest that evening, and the following one. They relied on dried venison, fruit and bread from the palace kitchens for meals. Derek supposed he could have tried hunting small animals for their supper. Squirrels and rabbits were much harder to bag, and it would have been good practice. But he didn’t know what awaited them in Luthedain, or what could be waiting for them on the road they were trying so hard to avoid. At this point, he didn’t want to waste arrows on anything that didn’t matter.

By noon on the third day, they had reached the border of the kingdom of Lincolnshire. The terrain was getting steeper and more treacherous this close to the mountains, forcing them onto the road. But if luck held out, they would be in Luthedain before sunset.

As they broke the last of the stale bread, Bromley suggested that he ride into town first, and that Derek follow half an hour later. And by all means, they should avoid each other’s company until at least the midnight bell. As crown prince of Chamberg, there was a decent chance someone would recognize Derek, which could generate plenty of false leads from opportunists or sycophants. Alone and anonymous, Bromley had a better chance of getting solid information.

“Won’t they recognize you too? You’re my best friend,” Derek pointed out. Bromley touched his chest in a gesture of mock affection.

“And you’re my best friend. But this is one of the things you’re phenomenally stupid about,” Bromley said. “Outside the palace, I’d guess maybe a few dozen people know who I am. At most. When we get beyond the capital, I could count them on one hand.”

“But you’ve gone with me all across the kingdom!” Derek protested. “People have had plenty of chances to see you.”

“And yet they don’t,” Bromley said. “I’ve seen it hundreds of times. Whenever we’re together in public, people look right past me and straight at you.” It was amazing to Derek the lack of bitterness in his friend’s voice. If anything, Bromley seemed to relish his obscurity.

“Would it help me keep a low profile if I just wore a hooded cloak everywhere?” Derek asked, only half joking. Bromley looked horrified.

“Oh, hell no,” he said. “When has that ever worked? Normal people don’t walk the streets or drink beer in taverns with their hoods up, unless it’s exceptionally cold. You’ll just stand out even more. But don’t worry too much,” Bromley went on. “There’s a chance no one will recognize you either. Most people only see their monarchs every few years, if they’re lucky. And you aren’t even Lincolnshire’s crown prince.”

“I’ll try not to be too offended if they don’t,” Derek said.

The sun was at least an hour from setting when Luthedain came into view, a cluster of several dozen thatched roofs surrounded by mountains on either side. Bromley winked as he led his horse onto the road into town.

“I won’t forget my promise, Your Highness,” Bromley said. “I vow to be utterly useless in combat, but I will use my innocuous, forgettable face in the service of greater Chamberg intelligence. Meet up outside the Shrinking Violet between midnight and one?”

Derek nodded and watched his friend ride off. During the half-hour he’d promised to wait, he wracked his brains again for what could possibly pass for a fire market in this town. In the whole of their three-day journey, the best he’d come up with was the signature fire whiskey served at the Crimson Dragon. His mother had forbidden him to try it, even though the legal drinking age in Lincolnshire was sixteen, so Derek never let her know when he finally did. Had he ever mentioned that tavern to Odette? He honestly couldn’t remember.

What have I got to lose? Derek thought thirty minutes later as he urged his horse onto the road. The Crimson Dragon was as good a place to start as any. And if he kept his head down, he might overhear something useful.

He hadn’t been to the Crimson Dragon in nearly three years. The bartender tonight was unfamiliar, which Derek took to be a good sign. In as few words as possible, he requested a mug of dark lager. He could skip the fire whiskey; he had no intention of compromising his judgment tonight. After trading a few copper coins for his drink, Derek made for a small table against the far wall, near enough to the bar that he could hear the conversations of any new guests.

He tried to nurse his mug, sipping only every five or ten minutes to make it last as long as possible. Perhaps a couple dozen more guests meandered into the bar over the next hour or two. Derek did his best to catch their conversations while leaning back against the wall, occasionally closing his eyes. But most of what he heard was personal or mundane. Stable roof’s leaking again. Too many feral cats on the streets. My son’s named all the pigs on our farm, so now we can’t have bacon for a year.

A sharp clunk on the table broke his concentration. When he glanced up, surprised, another mug of lager sat in front of him. The bartender smiled and nodded in the direction of a table by the fireplace. An elderly man with a shabby, wide-brimmed grey hat sat alone. Evidently, this drink was a gift from him. The old man tipped his hat and gestured to his table, which had an entire pitcher of whatever he was drinking.

Derek raised the new mug in thanks. But rather than accept the old man’s invitation, he mirrored the gesture and invited the man to his own table. There was a real risk of causing offense. But Derek was in a cautious mood. The man shrugged, offered a friendly smile and rose, making his way toward the prince’s table. He brought the pitcher with him.

“Permit me to be the first t’welcome you to Luthedain, Your Highness,” the old man said. He folded his hands on the table as he sat and kept them there, to signal he had no ill intent. Derek did the same.

“What gave it away?” Derek asked.

“Nothing obvious you did tonight, if that’s what you’re worried about,” his companion said. “I’m a regular. I was here when you came in…three years ago? Asked for a mug of fire whiskey, you did. Didn’t realize it was usually served in two-ounce shots. But the bartender poured out a full mug anyway. He figured you was royalty, so you could afford to pay up.”

Derek groaned. “Do you remember how much of it I drank?”

“Too much!” the old man said with a hearty laugh. “Based on your drink tonight, I’d say ye’ve learned a bit since then.”

“You seem to know more about me than I know about you,” Derek remarked.

“Of course! Forgive me, Your Highness. My name is Matthias Windham. Old Windbag, some of them call me around here.”

“Honored to make your acquaintance, Master Windham,” Derek said politely. “To what do I owe the free drink?”

“Old man’s curiosity, I s’ppose,” Matthias said. “The last we heard up here, you were still obsessed with huntin’ the Great Animal. Luthedain seems a strange place to look.”

“Nothing is what it seems these days,” Derek said with a noncommittal shrug. King William’s dying words were well known to most who had heard the story of the Great Animal; it was probably safe to repeat them here.

“True enough,” Matthias said. “There are rumors of something unnatural at work here too. Livestock getting killed if they stray too far north. Strange marks—not like wolves, y’understand? The claw cuts are too wide and too deep.”

“Go on,” Derek said.

“A couple kids got lost a few weeks back too, up by the ruins of the Red Temple. They found ‘em, but they was all dazed when they got back. Mumbling about a dark enchanter and a giant bat.”

“I remember hearing about the Red Temple,” Derek said. “Luthedain used to cremate its dead, didn’t it?”

“You know your history,” Matthias said approvingly. “That was centuries ago, a’course. Before we joined Lincolnshire. Cremation was free. But for a small donation, the Fire Priests would place a loved one’s ashes in a small alcove in the walls.”

A small donation, Derek thought. Morbid as it was, he supposed a crematorium with paid resting places for the deceased could be a different sort of fire market.

Matthias rubbed the back of his neck. “I could take you there tonight. Show you where the kids was found. They didn’t move the livestock. The latest corpse is nearly a week old, but maybe ye’d see something there that would help your little quest.”

“Why tonight?” Derek asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier to see any signs left behind in the morning?”

“Not these kinds of signs, Your Highness,” Matthias said with a dark chuckle. “I told you, these are unnatural forces. The footprints of magic are always clearest under moonlight.”

Derek slowly pushed the new mug of lager away, which he still had not tasted.

“There is no moon tonight,” Derek said. “And you’re not what you seem either.”

The old man who called himself Matthias Windham smiled grimly and leaned forward. He wasn’t even going to try pretending anymore, Derek realized. And that made him dangerous. His gnarled right hand slid across the table. Derek withdrew his hands immediately, but instead of reaching for Derek, the old man seized Derek’s mug. Derek heard sounds of cracking and snapping inside of it. Still smiling, the old man tipped the mug over. Nothing happened. The lager had frozen solid.

“Do you see that, Your Highness?” Matthias asked quietly, all traces of a country accent gone. “I could just as easily freeze the blood in your veins.”

“Then why bother with your charade?” Derek asked coldly. “Why not wait for me to leave and kill me in the street when no one’s watching?”

“Oh, someone’s always watching you, little prince. The enchanter’s little birds have been watching you since you left your castle.”

“So you’re just the messenger. You work for someone else,” Derek concluded, narrowing his eyes. “Who’s this enchanter who sent you?”

“Wouldn’t you love to know?” Matthias said with another grim smile. He took a swallow from his own mug. “But we don’t have to be enemies, Highness. I know people who can lift your kingdom’s curse, and people who can make it much, much worse. The same people, of course.”

“Which would leave Chamberg entirely at your mercy. You think I’d allow that?” Derek said. At that, Matthias broke into a laugh mid-drink that abruptly turned into a sputtering cough. It was an oddly human display that was probably designed to unsettle him. Derek used the moment to slide his hand beneath the table, feeling his quiver of arrows to his left.

“You really are blind, aren’t you?” Matthias said when he recovered, wiping a few tears of laughter from his eyes. “You’re already at our mercy. Those mediocre snobs in Merduin can’t break the spell on your kingdom, because they’re too afraid of the power it took to cast it. Or were you too busy to notice, while you’ve been playing the noble, questing hero?”

Matthias almost certainly meant to strike a nerve with that remark. Derek was determined not to let him know he had succeeded. Matthias sat back, rotating the frozen mug in his hands.

 “We’re not interested in ruling Chamberg. All we want is an ally,” he continued.

“A vassal, you mean,” Derek said. “To pay you tribute and fight your battles. We’ll take our chances on our own.”

“Wait then, if you dare, little prince. Once the Cygnian Dynasty falls and Cymdros bows to its new Warlock King…once we skewer the heads of their self-righteous Council on seven spikes outside the city gates…then Chamberg will consider itself lucky to be our vassal, and not our enemy. If that door is still open to you.”

Derek raised his rowan bow in his right hand. Matthias gaped at him, and then threw back his head and laughed.

“What do you plan to do with that in here?” he asked.

“Not much,” Derek said. Sweeping the bow across the table, he knocked the frozen mug out of Matthias hands. Then he slammed the bow over Matthias’ right arm, pinning it to the table. With his left hand, he drove an arrow point he’d snapped off during their conversation deep into Matthias’ palm. As Matthias shrieked, Derek dumped the almost-full pitcher of lager onto the frost sorcerer’s wrist.

It was a gamble, but the result was everything he’d hoped. In his shock and pain, Matthias’ magic reflexively froze the liquid as soon as it touched his hand. His right hand was trapped under the ice.

“You can’t melt it, can you? Your magic only works one way,” Derek said. He leaned forward, deciding he could afford one more ten-second gamble. “What would have happened if I’d followed you to the Red Temple ruins?”

“You would have met a few of my friends,” Matthias said through clenched teeth. “They’ll be on their way soon. The enchanter has many, many birds. Some of them have talons.”

“If they’re really your friends, perhaps they’ll help you before the ice melts,” Derek said coldly. He turned to the rest of the tavern. “Get out while you can and alert the mayor! This man is a frost sorcerer,” he shouted as he sprinted out the door. He had to find Bromley. Was it past midnight yet? Would Bromley be waiting for him outside the Shrinking Violet tavern, as they’d planned? Or had the birds Matthias Windham chillingly referenced followed Bromley as well? Would another agent have tried to lure him to the Red Temple ruins?

Derek paused in his sprint when he reached the town square. Temple or tavern? Where should he go first? He looked at the sky, trying to get a sense of time from the North Star, Boreus, and its familiar companion, the Turtle. Based on the Turtle’s position, he guessed it was still at least half an hour shy of midnight. Should he wait for Bromley outside the Shrinking Violet, potentially wasting half an hour or more when his friend’s life could be in danger? Or should he assume the worst and make a dash for the temple ruins?

His eyes fell on the bell tower, and he chose a third option.

Grabbing a few pebbles from the pavement, he lashed them onto his broken arrow. He nocked the arrow, drew the string back as far as he could and aimed at the iron bell. His shot was true. The bell let out a resounding gong. It wasn’t nearly as loud as the bell would be when rung properly, but it did the trick. Derek did the same thing with a second arrow, and a third, waiting for someone to notice the commotion he was causing. Finally, a man he hoped was the town crier dashed towards him. Derek didn’t wait for him to ask what he was doing.

“There’s a frost sorcerer in the Crimson Dragon. Someone needs to alert the mayor and sound the town’s bell,” Derek said quickly. The man paused for the space of two seconds, and then dashed up the bell tower. In the time it took Derek to retrieve his arrows, the bell was clanging loudly enough to wake all Luthedain.

Derek sprinted towards the Shrinking Violet. If Bromley was still in town, he’d likely drop whatever he was doing and head towards their rendezvous point. If he didn’t show up in ten minutes, Derek would head for the Red Temple. But Bromley was there when he arrived, with his arms folded and looking cross.

“Yeesh, Derek. Please tell me you didn’t cause this scene. I was actually getting somewhere! With a really nice girl, too!”

“Rogers was right,” Derek said. “We’ve been set up. This entire outing was a trap.”

“What are you talking about?” Bromley asked. “The clue was real. There is something linked to the fire markets here, but it’s not what we thought.”

“Nothing’s what we thought! The sorcerer they’re tolling the bell for? He works for the people who cursed our kingdom. They’ve been following us since we left.” Derek banged his fist against the tavern wall in frustration. “I’m really sorry, Brom, but this girl you met, did she try to lead you to the ruins of the Red Temple?”

“What? No.”

“But the sorcerer knew about the fire market clue! They used to cremate people at the Red Temple and pay the priests to make shrines for their ashes! That was the bait!”

“Derek, we’ve been thinking about it all wrong,” Bromley said patiently. “We’ve been trying to find something like a fire market in Luthedain, but we should have been thinking about the fire markets in Cymdros. Do you remember when you told me about the different colored flames when Odette took you there, and the powders they used to make them?”

Derek nodded. He wasn’t sure where this was going, but it was enough to temporarily quiet the ranting voices in his head.

“Those powders are mined here. The minerals only come from Luthedain. And they make the soil so toxic, nothing can grow near them,” Bromley said.

“There are no tomatoes in the fire markets of Luthedain,” Derek repeated.

“It gets better,” Bromley continued. “The people I was sitting with said a dark-skinned woman from Cymdros came through a few weeks ago. She tried to plant a tomato garden near one of the mines. Everyone laughed, but she said she didn’t expect to grow anything. She was just ‘doing a little horticultural experiment.’”

“Who was she?” Derek asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.

“The man who mentioned it didn’t seem certain of her name. That’s one reason I think the story’s genuine,” Bromley said. “He said it was something like Lady Anita.”

“Lady Anisha Langley,” Derek said immediately.

“You know her?” Bromley asked.

“She’s the wife of King William’s captain. Widow,” Derek corrected, with a momentary pang of regret. “I met her when I visited Cymdros a couple years ago. She and Odette were close. She tried to talk to me at her husband’s funeral, but her words just seemed like…”

“Nonsense,” Bromley said with a nod. “Which means she probably knew something and couldn’t tell you.”

Derek leaned his arm against the wall, trying to process the new information.

“Think about it, Derek,” Bromley said. “Maybe our enemies did find out we were coming to Luthedain. Maybe they even overheard us talking about the fire market clue, and they tried to lead you astray. But the original clue was still real. Odette is trying to reach you.”

“I don’t know how long before the sorcerer breaks loose,” Derek said. “Did they tell you where Lady Anisha planted her tomatoes?”

Bromley favored him with a patronizing look. “Would I have left without that intel? Even after your head-splitting diversion?”

“Then we have to get there now. We can’t afford for things to get messed up even more,” Derek hadn’t meant for his words to sound hurtful. But a split second later, he heard the bitterness in his voice and realized Bromley could have taken his remark personally—when in fact Bromley was the only reason this wasn’t a complete mess. He offered his friend an apologetic look. “Thanks, Brom. I’d be lost without you.”

Bromley shrugged off the compliment with a half-smile. “Just keep your bow close, Your Highness. I’d defend you with my life, but that probably won’t last very long if we get into real danger.”

Chapter Text

Luthedain, a town north of Chamberg in the kingdom of Lincolnshire. Four months after the Great Animal attack.

For the rest of his life, Derek would never remember plainly how they reached the garden outside the mine. Somehow, he and Bromley found their horses again and rode as hard as they could outside the town of Luthedain. Stealth was pointless now, knowing that their enemies had been onto them from the start. Speed was everything. He would remember the town bell though, its iron chimes following them like a clear and merciless judge. Wrong, wrong, always wrong, the gongs seemed to echo. Gone, gone. Took too long.

Bromley must have reined up his horse first; he knew where they were going, after all. And at some point they both had lit their lanterns after dismounting. But Derek didn’t remember that either. His next lucid memory of the night was of kneeling on gravelly soil, staring at thirteen curved tomato cages. The town was nearly two miles behind them. It was cold for early October; he could see his breath leaving misty clouds in the dark.

A few of the plants had made a valiant effort to break through the soil. Around three or four of the cages, Derek saw green vines snaking listlessly up the first ring. But they seemed to decide, less than halfway up, that the climb was not worth the effort. These would have been planted sometime in August, most likely. Yet Derek knew even without the mineral-polluted soil so close to the mine, Luthedain was too far north for tomatoes to grow well in fall. This was not a serious effort to plant a tomato garden. Whoever created this was sending a message.

Inside the thirteenth cage, furthest to the right, the gardener had left a small trowel staked in the soil. The message was clear enough: Dig here.

While Bromley kept watch, Derek tore through the soil with the trowel. Roughly a foot and a half into the ground, he struck something hard. A few more minutes of digging and scraping revealed a small box made of cherry wood with the seal of House Cygnus: a swan crowned with seven stars, one for each of the islands of Cymdros…and one for the lost island of Loerenys.

Derek wrested the box out of the soil and unfastened the latch. Inside sat a small package wrapped in sealskin to protect it from water and tied with a leather thong. Derek quickly untied it and found a leather satchel with several sheets of paper inside.

He glanced over his shoulder at Bromley.

“Is anyone following us?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Bromley said. “But the bell has stopped. I think they found the sorcerer. Luthedain has some good mages too, don’t they?”

“If they don’t, they know how to get them here fast,” Derek said. “The kingdom of Lincolnshire has its own mages, and they have magical portals in every town.”

“Good,” Bromley said. “They’ll be fine, right?”

Derek walked over to where Bromley stood looking down at the town. From two miles away, on a moonless night, he couldn’t make out much. But he could see the flicker of lanterns or torches in the distance. After another half-minute, four blue flashes abruptly lit up the night, making dark silhouettes of the town.

“That would be the portals. Their mages are here,” Derek told his friend. A sudden rush, like the beating of dozens of wings, troubled the air above. Derek glanced up and saw several dark shapes blotting out the stars. They were flying in the direction of the town. “We should get back on our horses,” he said quietly.

Bromley didn’t ask why. But once they had mounted, Bromley glanced back toward Luthedain.

“Couldn’t we ride closer to the town? Just to make sure they’re all right?” he asked.

“Of course we can,” Derek said, spurring his horse downhill toward the town. He suffered another glance at the sky, but the dark shapes had vanished. The enchanter has many, many birds, he remembered.

They reined up about thirty feet above the town, where the road to the mine leveled off before sloping downhill again. From there, they could see beyond the rooftops into the street outside the Crimson Dragon tavern. Four mages in white tunics and chain mail had the sorcerer Matthias Windham cornered. His frost powers seemed to work only at close range, so the mages were wisely keeping their distance. They had managed to ensnare both his legs and one arm with magical ropes that glowed blue. But Matthias had stationed himself beside a water trough and was using his right arm to hurl ice projectiles at the fourth mage trying to create his own snare.

Without warning, a flurry of ravens descended on two of the mages, breaking their snares. A larger bird swooped down to land on the third mage, pecking at her neck and face. In the torchlight, Derek made out the form of a black swan.

With all the snares broken, Matthias bolted across the street. It looked like he was seeking refuge inside the Crimson Dragon again. But before he had even touched the threshold, three enormous birds of prey latched their talons onto his jacket. They bore him into the sky, while he kicked and shrieked and batted at them pointlessly with his hat.

Bromley let out a low whistle. “You’d almost think he didn’t want to be rescued,” he said.

“He probably didn’t,” Derek said. “I’d imagine his friends aren’t too happy with him. He was supposed to be more discreet.”

With the frost sorcerer beyond reach, the mages turned their attention to the birds. The first two had blown away the ravens with magical gusts of wind. One of them aimed an enchanted snare at the black swan, but it danced outside her aim and landed on a nearby roof. As Derek and Bromley continued to watch, the black swan let out a trumpeting cry that sounded like triumph and launched itself into the air. The ravens followed the swan into the sky. Without warning, the swarm of black birds veered toward the mountain road where Derek and Bromley sat on their horses.

Can they see us? Derek thought. He barely had time to pull an arrow from his quiver when another bird pelted into the black swan. A white swan? It was difficult to tell, but in the torchlight from the town square he saw the two swans battling in flight like some kind of macabre dance. The ravens, meanwhile, had become a chaotic horde flying in all directions. They need the black swan to lead them, Derek realized.

The white swan had its beak around the black swan’s neck, while the black swan pecked ferociously at the white swan’s wings. The black swan was ripping out clumps of feathers. But the white swan was tenacious. Derek nocked an arrow out of pure instinct, but he didn’t expect to loose it. With the erratic way the swans were twisting in the sky, he’d only make that shot by pure luck. And he didn’t even know for certain what he was looking at.

For a brief moment, the black swan ceased tearing into the white swan’s wings and let out another cry. But by then, the ravens had flown away. There was no one to summon. Realizing the ravens were gone—as though that had been the main objective—the white swan released its opponent. The two swans hovered in the air, staring each other down. Finally the black swan made one final lunge. The white swan veered off, but not before the black swan’s beak clipped its wing one final time. Then the black swan flew in the direction Matthias Windham had been unwillingly carried off.

Derek watched the white swan fly away in the opposite direction. Its wings looked shaky and battered, but they were still working.

“We need to ride,” Derek told his friend. “Now.”

Bromley didn’t need telling twice. Derek dug his heels into his horse’s side, urging him into a swift gallop. The drumming of hooves filled his ears so loudly it would be impossible to hear whether any birds were still following them. But there was nothing he could do about it either way. They rode in silence down the dirt road, leaving Luthedain with its riddles and lies behind them.

After another hour and a half of riding, they found shelter in a two-story barn, with a hayloft on the second floor. At Derek’s request, Bromley offered the family a handful of silver coins to let them stay there for what little remained of the night.

“The scariest part about that was waking them up. Do you have any idea how terrifying a farmer robbed of his sleep is?” Bromley asked when he returned.

“Thanks for handling that, Brom,” Derek said. “It would have been worse if they’d found us here in the morning and mistaken us for intruders.”

“Don’t worry, your cover is safe. They agreed not to ask about my shy companion,” Bromley said. “I told them my friend fell into a vat of pink dye a month ago and you don’t like people staring at your beard.”

“My beard?” Derek repeated. “Even if I had a beard, why wouldn’t I just shave it off and cover my head?” He found himself laughing despite the nightmare they’d left behind—or, perhaps, laughing because of it. Bromley scowled.

“Make up your own story next time,” Bromley said. “Until then, don’t complain about how your underlings carry out your wishes, Your Highness.”

They spent the next several minutes surveying the first floor of the barn with their lanterns lit, making sure the doors locked from the inside and that all the windows were covered. After combing their horses and settling them in for the night, they climbed the ladder to the second floor and did the same survey. Derek was relieved to find there wasn’t a single bird in the shelter, not even a stray pigeon. Finally, he felt safe enough to remove the cherrywood box from his riding sack and flip open the latch.

The sealskin pouch with the mysterious papers was still inside. As he untied the leather strap, his fingers shook. What if water had leaked in and smudged the ink, rendering the messages unreadable? What if there was nothing important inside at all, and this entire endeavor had been a giant misunderstanding? Or—an even more terrifying possibility—what if it contained all the answers he’d been searching for, and the knowledge forced him to make a choice he wasn’t ready to make?

She wanted you to have this, a voice in his head reminded him. And who knew what risks Odette had taken to get it into his hands? Moving the satchel closer to his lantern, he pulled out the papers. Scanning the letter on top, he knew immediately by the handwriting who had written it. The letter was dated August 11^th.

Dear Derek,

If by some miracle you are reading this, then one of my clues must have made it through. By now I suspect you know that both you and your kingdom are cursed. There is an aura of madness around you and your family that prevents anyone with useful information about my disappearance from sharing it. If someone tries to tell you directly, they first begin speaking nonsense and, if they persist too long, lose their mind entirely. There is a similar aura around your kingdom’s borders, which prevents anyone from delivering a written message with such knowledge—including myself, as I learned last July. Even in this note, I cannot write as clearly as I wish. I cannot even write my own name.

For all your kingdom’s suffering, I am deeply sorry. You have been a true friend to Cymdros, especially in our last year of famine and blight. This past spring I finally found the origin of our kingdom’s troubles. The answers are in the second note. But here I must apologize for my own blindness. I never imagined the forces rallying against Cymdros would turn their eyes on Chamberg. Had I suspected, I would have warned you the moment my father and I arrived on your castle grounds last June.

I hope, after you read the next note, you can piece together why I could not say yes to your proposal. It caught me off guard, but my attempt to find an escape was cowardly and deplorable. For the embarrassment I caused you in front of half your court, I am sorry. If you wished to sever ties with me for nothing more than that, I would understand. But if we can both forgive each other, perhaps we can finally end these troubles for good. And if we cannot ultimately forge a path together, I hope we can at least part as friends.

My time is running out. If I am able to write clearly, look for me in the mirror of white feathers
on the forbidden canvas painted in tears
where lunatics fly when the moon disappears

Do you remember our argument two winters ago, when the eldritch mine detonated on Nefynmor? What I told you Cymdros would never allow has come to pass. Take my hand. Find my pen and you’ll find me.

I cannot write any more clearly; believe me, I have been trying for the last half hour. Is it enough? Do you know where to look next?

I hope to see you again and give you the explanation you deserve. But if not: Please do not give up on Cymdros, even if neither of us are destined to lead it. There is willful blindness and bigotry, but beneath it there is unspeakable pain.

With love and friendship always,

Your summer adversary and winter ally. Find my pen and you’ll find me.

Derek closed his eyes. A dozen emotions were competing for space in his brain, but one annoying inconsistency was blocking them all.

Nefynmor, he thought. The eldritch mine didn’t go off on Nefynmor. It went off on Serenys. Odette wouldn’t have forgotten that…

He made up his mind to ponder that later. If it was another hidden clue, he would remember it. That was enough for now. If he’d still harbored any doubts about who the letter was from, her signoff silenced them for good. He and Odette had been at each other’s throats every summer, until the winter in Cymdros when they finally found common ground. If we can both forgive each other…Was she trying to encourage him or trying to bid him farewell? Could neither of them escape Cymdros’ penchant for secrecy and suspicion?

Setting aside Odette’s letter, Derek found the second, longer note below. The handwriting looked vaguely like King William’s, but the words were rushed and uneven, like notes written in haste or great agitation. On the top, Odette had folded a small slip of paper that read The Cob King. Derek paused a moment to shuffle through his own papers, where Odette had written another riddle mentioning a Cob King. Then he turned back to the king’s note.

The note was dated April 27th of the current year—six weeks before the king’s death. Taking another deep breath, Derek began to read the pages beneath the amber glow of his lantern.

Chapter Text

In the cold loft of the barn, Derek held his lantern closer to the pages. King William’s handwriting was smaller and more uneven than that of his daughter, forcing him to read more slowly. Derek tried to swallow the feeling that this was somehow sacrilegious. He was reading the private notes of a king—a king who, little more than a month later, would be dead. But whatever information was in these pages, Odette had wanted it to fall into his hands. He had to believe that, or everything he and Bromley had risked to get this far would be for nothing.

The journal of King William II of Cymdros, April 27^th, in the 30^th year of his reign

Why am I cursed to rewrite these memories every other night and burn them afterward? All of this was more than eighteen years past. Is it not enough that I am robbed of sleep over my kingdom’s current woes?

It was Councilor Andreas who warned me of Baron Von Rothbart’s plan to usurp the throne. I had always thought Andreas a paranoid hardliner who saw demons and assassins everywhere, but in this case his suspicious instincts proved correct. We attacked the sorcerer’s stronghold at night, on a lake on the island of Nefynmor. His defenses were weak—presumably because he had drawn almost all his magic into one focused attack on the heart of our kingdom. We won because of surprise, I think. Rothbart did not have time to redirect his magic toward the soldiers at his gate.

Once we had the sorcerer and his servant in chains outside, Councilor Andreas and my captain, Sir Josiah Langley, both urged me to burn the fortress to the ground. But here I advised restraint. I would congratulate myself for that decision weeks later—and then lament it bitterly.

Rothbart was not a wizard, but a warlock. He had stolen his magic by tearing an eldritch curtain and awakening forces better left undisturbed. When we severed his ties to the Forbidden Arts during the ambush, we thought the power simply dissipated or retreated back from whence it came. We were wrong.

Barely a fortnight later, strange reports began to come in from all six islands in our kingdom. Trees and crops had turned white and were bleeding black sap. The white wood refused to burn. Even the soil had turned to white chalk. Eerie faces were emerging in the bark of some of the trees. Some of the locals swore they heard whispers, though they never saw the faces move. A cryptic symbol appeared in the bark above each face, like an upside-down trident. Nearly a quarter of the kingdom was suffering from an otherworldly blight.

Even more chilling were reports of children with black marks on their feet, marks that matched the strange three-pronged symbols on the trees. The children, they said, suffered waking nightmares during the day and would sleepwalk for hours at night. They complained of itching arms and scratched them until they bled. Some tried to leap off rooftops, as though they thought they could fly. Twelve children were found with the marks—two from each island.

I wish I had not been so quick to banish the warlock. But by the time the full scope of the curse reached my ears, Rothbart and his servant were long gone. So I returned to the warlock’s fortress on the lake.

From the shore I could see the magical tear he had rent, giving him access to the cursed eldritch magic we now call the Forbidden Arts. It hovered above the lake, a wispy strand of orange-gold, mocking me. I turned away and entered the abandoned keep. After over an hour of ransacking his library, I found something like the mysterious mark on the cover of a heavy blue tome titled “The Eldritch Balances.”

Leafing through the book, I saw the branching symbol on multiple pages, with slightly different variations. Its root form seemed to signify a transition, or a reunion. Finally I found the version that had appeared on our trees and the feet of our children. (Why did I ever think it was an upside-down trident? Why did I not see it then for what it really was?)

Beneath this paragraph, Derek saw, King William had sketched a copy of the mark. It showed a single line that branched off into three at its base. Holding his lantern closer to the page, he continued to read the stolen entry from the king’s journal.

Beneath it, I read the following:

“The Forked Current. When an eldritch force is split between multiple living beings, it creates a magical tug of war between them. The resulting conflict will consume them, until only one living host remains and the power can be made whole once again. Usually, but not always, the wisest host will emerge victorious. Only a very strong enchanter can keep the warring powers at bay.”

They were paired, I realized, the children and the land. In the chaos of destroying Rothbart’s connection to the Forbidden Arts, we had shattered the magic and the fragments had scattered across our kingdom, latching on where they would. Children were wiser than plants, so they were better able to withstand the magical conflict. Our land was dying so our children could live.

But why would the magic have latched onto children dozens of miles away? Why would it not have attached itself to me, or any of the soldiers who were there at the scene? Back then, I assumed it was some strange law of magical physics—the result of pent-up energy, perhaps, that compelled the magic to fly many miles over land or sea before settling on a random host. Now I know better. The magic was purposeful, and it was vindictive.

The passage in the book went on:

“To end the conflict, each host must give back their power by returning to the original site of the power’s splitting and offering a piece of themselves. Only once the divided powers are reunited will the hosts be set free.”

The answer appeared in my mind then, almost a whisper, gentle and kind. The power must be returned. Take the children to the lake. Send their power back through the eldritch curtain, and all will be made right again.

We returned to the sorcerer’s lake on the night of a full moon. Superstition? Perhaps. But the ancient magics were always strongest when the moon was new. I wish we could have done this in broad daylight, but the tear in the eldritch curtain was so faint it was visible only at night—the same wispy, vaporous strand of orange-gold hovering just above the surface of the lake.

Fifty of us there were in the party. Myself, twelve families and a handful of soldiers. The oldest child was thirteen. The youngest was five. I remember all their names. Some of the older children looked excited at being so close to a sorcerer’s keep. That I also remember well.

We brought with us every tree that bore the eldritch mark—their roots, stems and branches—loaded onto five enormous wagons. At a signal from me, the guards cut the ropes that held the trees in place. The thunderous cracks as they rolled into the water still echo in my mind. Yet even then I knew that was the easiest part. We still needed to cast something of each tree and child through the curtain itself.

Captain Josiah waded out into the lake first. He carried two burlap sacks with the bark and roots of every marked tree. When he held out both sacks to the eldritch tear, they vanished in his hands. But nothing else happened, though we watched for several minutes.

Then he snipped off a lock of his blond hair and sent it through the curtain. I followed, sending a lock of my own graying hair through as well. As I did, my fingers touched the glimmering orange strand. It felt surprisingly cold and harsh, like raindrops blown through a fierce wind. For a brief moment I glimpsed the world beyond the curtain—a lake like the one we had come to, but with no moon reflected in its surface, only starlight. As the wind rippled across the surface, the pealing of wind chimes almost sounded like whispers. But again, nothing happened. The hovering golden-orange tear still winked at us impassively.

Finally, Captain Josiah and I waved to the families on the banks. The children would need to be on the lake for this to work, or so I believed. Their parents had all clipped off strands of their children’s hair to send through the curtain; I prayed it would be enough.

One of the older children sprinted across the water, sending up clumsy waves in his excitement. He brandished his own pair of scissors.

“I want to see through! I’ll hand it over myself!” he announced. Captain Josiah rolled his eyes and gave a helpless half-shrug.

“Let the kid have a story he can exaggerate to his friends later,” he said.

The older boy reached us, nearly slipping in his enthusiasm. Captain Josiah reached out an arm to steady the boy. He had a mane of shaggy dark hair and a cluster of dark freckles on his right cheek—may God forgive me, I remember all their names but not which faces go with them. After making an uneven cut, the boy handed a fistful of hair to me and made an awkward bow. In return I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring nod.

Captain Josiah stretched out his hand then, offering to toss in the boy’s hair himself. I shook my head.

“Thank you, my friend,” I said quietly. “But this has to be me.” Trying to keep my hands from shaking, I offered a silent prayer to the sky and cast the boy’s locks through the wispy golden veil. In that instant, I realized how fragile and vain my hopes truly were. I had no idea what to expect next.

The boy held his left foot in his hands. To my astonishment, the black symbol vanished before our eyes.

“It worked!” the boy shouted. “It’s harmless!”

Harmless? The magic was intelligent, and patient. Now all the children entered the water. The older ones waded out on their own; the younger were carried in their parents’ arms. Captain Josiah’s men handed eleven more locks of hair to me, and I cast them into the curtain.

Nothing at all happened for what seemed like several minutes, though it might have been a mere thirty seconds. The last child to enter was perhaps ten feet from the shore when the misty tear began to pulse. Three, perhaps four beats? Then twelve greedy fingers of orange light raced across the lake, and twelve pearlescent whirlpools rose from the surface, enveloping each of the children.

I did not see what transpired at first. But I heard the wordless cries, first of shock, then despair. It was the parents who had been holding their children; they must have been the first to understand.

The fierce wind I had felt when I touched the curtain now ripped free, spraying water drops on our faces like needles. When I finally could look up, I saw a bevy of swans suspended just above our reach, swept up by a wind from another world. They do not know how to fly yet, I thought. That is why the curtain sent the wind.

By now the tear in the curtain had grown into a throbbing arch. The wind shifted, drawing the birds that moments earlier had been children closer to the curtain. I remember the trumpeting wails that followed. I remember the black silhouettes of their necks and wings, how they stretched them out in a confused, desperate struggle to return to their parents’ arms. They hovered in front of the portal another moment. Twelve swans backlit by the golden light, a cruel mockery of the sigil of my house. Then the wind pushed them through and the tear closed behind them. They were gone.

The next morning, every site that had suffered from the magical blight had returned to normal. Better, even. Local recordkeepers would later say that year, the once-cursed fields and orchards produced a better harvest than any in recent memory. Except one…except one.

A cherry grove on the eastern side of Nefynmor remained blighted, because I had held my own child back.

What manner of monster am I, that I would allow twenty-four parents to suffer a heartache I was unwilling to endure myself? I had no idea what would happen that night. But in some dark corner of my mind I must have suspected something, for I was unwilling to expose my own infant daughter to the unknown, though she too bore the three-pronged eldritch mark on her foot—the mark of a bird’s foot, I now realized, how could I have ever thought it was anything else?

The whispers some local peasants spoke of came to me that night, and they have never left. I remember trying to bargain with them, back then.

Take me through your curtain, I demanded. I thwarted your servant. Transfigure me into a true swan king and leave my daughter alone.

A voice, soft and merciless, replied, No.

As I said, all of this was nearly eighteen years ago. In time, the mark on my daughter’s foot faded, though the cherry grove never recovered. I began to hope that perhaps that was enough. A few dozen dead trees were a small price to pay for my only daughter and heir.

But now the blight has spread. In the last year, plants across the entire island of Nefynmor have begun bleeding black again. The trees are turning white, and their wood refuses to burn. The island’s harvest was weak last year—weak? More like sickening. Some of our livestock fell ill and died after eating last year’s grain. Others became rabid. Once the first report of half a village falling sick came in, I ordered the rest of the harvest thrown into the sea. It was a risky and deeply unpopular move. Our kingdom relies on the rich soils of Nefynmor for nearly a third of its food. We had enough stores to get us through last winter, but what about the next?

We have already relocated most families to the other five islands, where the soil remains unpoisoned. How long before we abandon Nefynmor entirely? Must our kingdom lose yet another island?

A moment, please—my daughter is knocking. She has begun hearing the whispers too. I have told her it is because she wandered into an eldritch mist two winters ago, chasing after the reckless prince of Chamberg. I fear to tell her everything I know, and yet I fear where she will search for answers if I do not.

I must remember to burn these pages. There is no fire in the grate tonight, it is too warm. My daughter calls louder now. Yes, Odette, I’m all right, just a moment— 

Eighteen years ago, I sent twelve children through a curtain into another world. Hundreds more would have starved if I had not. And hundreds more may yet starve, because I was not king enough to make the necessary sacrifice. All this suffering, because I would not choose between my kingdom and my child.

I will burn these pages when I return.

The king’s notes ended there. Derek turned the final page over, just in case there was another clue, but the other side was blank. Then he turned back to Odette’s note and reread one of her final sentences: Find my pen and you’ll find me.

He closed his eyes. The clues seemed so obvious now. Of course King William was the Cob King from Odette’s earlier clue, scrawled in haste on a note from the University of Merduin. A cob was a male swan, and William the Second was the last Swan King of Cymdros. And a pen…a pen was a female swan. Derek sank to the sawdust-covered floor and began to laugh, not caring that Bromley was staring at him as though his best friend had lost his mind. He barely noticed when Bromley started shaking his shoulder and shouting his name. Derek laughed so hard he nearly cried.

Chapter Text

Northern border of Chamberg, present. October.

Derek booked passage on a small merchant galley bound for Cymdros called the Pierina Legnani. He introduced himself under the false name “Fletcher,” but the captain, a surly man named Pyotr Ilyich, hadn’t seemed remotely interested in that. Captain Ilyich had simply waved him on after he’d paid his fare with barely a glance at his face.

“Thanks for warning me not to be offended if people don’t recognize their prince,” Derek had told Bromley afterward, just before boarding the ship.

“Well, you’re kind of a mess,” Bromley told him. “We’ve been on the road for nearly a week. No offense, but you don’t look the part much anymore.” Bromley glanced skeptically at the ship then. It looked sturdy enough, but the sun-bleached planks and sails had clearly seen better days. “You sure you don’t want me to go with you?”

Derek had shaken his head.

“I need you to take the entry from King William’s journal back to my mother. She exchanged more letters with him than I ever did. If there’s a chance this is fake, she’ll know.”

“I know you made a copy for yourself, but suppose Odette wants the real one back when you find her?” Bromley asked. “What if she needs it for…I dunno. Weird magic spell-reversal stuff.”

“Then I guess I’ll have one more thing to apologize for,” Derek had replied.

The Pierina Legnani would dock on the capital island of Odette’s kingdom, bearing grain and vegetables at half price under Queen Uberta’s orders to help relieve the kingdom’s famine. Derek remembered his visit to the island nearly two years ago—that strange winter when he and Odette had taken the first unsteady steps toward friendship. But this time, Derek planned to dock at another island.

“Drop me off at Nefynmor,” Derek said, after knocking on the captain’s door that evening. “I’ll make it worth your time.” Captain Ilyich raised an eyebrow. He clearly did not like even the suggestion that a passenger was giving him an order on his ship. He turned back to his charts and compass.

“Couldn’t even if I wanted to,” he replied tersely. “No one’s allowed to dock in those harbors. Cymdros has closed off the island. People are saying it’s cursed.”

“Then let me take one of the dinghies,” Derek said. “I’ll pay you double its worth, and enough to pay your crew three times their daily wage.”

“And I suppose you’re hoping we’ll come back for you too?” Captain Ilyich asked.

“Nope,” Derek replied. “I’ve got another way off.” Captain Ilyich raised an eyebrow again. But if he didn’t believe Derek’s confidence, he also didn’t seem to believe Derek’s problems were his concern.

“All right, Master Fletcher,” the captain said, accepting his proposal with a dismissive shrug. “We can drop you off half a mile offshore. After that you’re on your own.”

“Thank you very much,” Derek said. He gave a polite nod before walking out the door.

It was a two-day voyage from Chamberg to Cymdros, which gave Derek plenty of time to reflect on everything he had thought the past year had meant—and now, having read Odette’s cryptic letter and King William’s private confession about the cursed swan children, what they actually had meant.

Of one thing he was now certain: Odette had seen this coming. Perhaps not in the form of a grisly roadside attack that would leave her father and Captain Josiah dead, but she had known since at least this spring that she was marked and that her time was limited.

How had it come to this?

As Derek shifted uncomfortably in his hammock below deck, the waves jostling the Pierina Legnani, his thoughts drifted to their last full summer in Chamberg together, just over a year ago. Odette and her father had spent every summer in Chamberg since Derek was nine—part of their parents’ wishful attempts at matchmaking. But last year, for the first time, Odette had arrived alone. King William was dealing with troubles at home—an unexpected blight had struck the summer crops on the island of Nefynmor. Back then, the blight had tainted nearly a third of the island’s farm fields. It was enough to cause alarm, yet not half as bad as it was doomed to become.

King William was absent over half the summer. When he finally arrived in Chamberg at the end of July, he looked every one of his sixty-eight years.

If I tell you a secret, can I trust you with it? Odette had asked him that summer. It was just before dawn, in one of the palace side gardens. Was it before or after King William’s arrival? Derek couldn’t remember. But that conversation would change his life.

My father agreed to let me study abroad in Lincolnshire this fall. But that isn’t why I asked to go abroad. She rubbed her arms, though it wasn’t at all cold. Or had she scratched them? Had she even then felt the prickling of invisible feathers beneath her skin? I’m going away to find help. From Merduin.

Merduin, Derek had repeated. You’re asking the wizards for help?

I’m doing what my father can’t. Not publicly, at least, Odette had replied. Nefynmor is cursed, Derek. Everyone knows this isn’t just another blight. But my father can’t afford to beg. Not to them.

There was a bitter edge to her voice. Derek understood then. Odette remained deeply suspicious of the mages at Merduin. They had refused to aid her kingdom a century before, in their rebellion against the Veiled Kings, and there was no guarantee they would help now. If anything, the bad blood between the two kingdoms had only thickened. This wasn’t a change of heart or an act of forgiveness. It was an act of desperation.

Who else knows? Derek asked.

Lady Anisha. She agreed to act as a chaperone. And Captain Josiah. He knows as much as he’s comfortable knowing. Derek could guess how an arrangement like that would work. They would have shared enough details so that Lady Anisha wouldn’t need to lie directly to her husband, and Captain Josiah wouldn’t need to lie directly to his king.

Why are you telling me this? Derek remembered asking her.

I don’t know who or what I can trust in Merduin. I need someone whose opinion I can rely on, Odette had replied. Didn’t we agree to be allies?

Derek had nodded. In the silence that followed, he wondered if he should take the opportunity to make a polite exit. He knew Odette wouldn’t have thought it strange. Neither of them ever had much patience for idle chatter. But something in Odette’s posture—he would never have been able to say what exactly—pulled at him to stay. So he kept looking ahead as they walked, making their way between the beds of crimson dahlias and blue hydrangeas.

I need to ask one more favor of you, Odette said finally, when the silence had lingered for several minutes. If word of this gets out, my father’s council will look for a scapegoat. Do you understand? They will crucify Captain Josiah and Lady Anisha if they find out they were involved. My father might not be able to stop it.

Even if none of you actually use magic? Derek asked.

We won’t, she said forcefully. But it won’t matter. The Council already think my father is too soft for just banishing magic users. Some of them are itching for an excuse to bring back the death penalty. A lapse like this could destroy everything he’s worked for.

They can have asylum in Chamberg if that happens, Derek had replied. I’ll sign the papers today if you want.

If Odette looked surprised at how fast he’d anticipated her request, Derek had pretended not to notice. And so the circle of confidence had begun.

Odette had spent three months in Lincolnshire last fall and another three in Yoringard the following spring. The public story was that she was studying abroad to learn about Cymdros’ neighbors on the continent. And to a certain extent, that was true. But she spent nearly half her waking hours interviewing the kingdoms’ mages and arcane scholars, and pouring over books that were banned in her own kingdom. And she made five clandestine—and questionably legal, by Cymdros’ rules—visits to the University of Merduin. During those weeklong trips, Odette scoured Merduin’s enchanted libraries and laboratories for answers: information about the Veiled Kings, information about magical rifts and a solution to the unearthly blight that was consuming an entire island.

In total, the inner circle had amounted to four people: Odette, Captain Josiah, Lady Anisha and Derek. Somehow, in the process of becoming confidantes, they had become friends.

Had he been wrong to propose? He’d toyed with the idea since his visit to Cymdros last winter, when Odette had returned from Lincolnshire. But he had decided to see how things played out during the following summer. Perhaps, at the end of August, he would ask her to make their all-but-despaired-of engagement real. And then Odette’s last letter had arrived in May. She had closed it with the following sentence: There are few things I am certain of anymore, but I know that I love you.

Derek would never forget that she had said those words first. He hadn’t expected them, hadn’t even fully thought out how he would feel if she said them. But when he read them, they filled him with an elation he hadn’t known he was capable of.

Now, Derek read her letter from May again and saw all the things he’d been too elated and blind to notice before.

Dear Derek,

I hope you are not alarmed at my taking so long to write back after your last letter in March. There is a great deal I need to share with you when I see you again in June—too much and too risky to put in a letter.

The source of our troubles is beyond Nefynmor. How far beyond, I do not know. My father knows it too, though until now neither of us possessed the courage to speak about it to each other. We both rationalized our cowardice and secrecy for far too long. The secrecy needed to end. As I write this, I have told my father everything you know about my time abroad. I wish I could take full credit for confiding in him, but it was one of our friends in confidence who urged me to do it. They may need your help soon.

My father’s reaction was not what I expected. I will explain more the next time I see you. For now, let it suffice that he is furious I dragged you into this—that at least I did expect. But of all my questionable actions this past year, that is the one I regret the least.

I am getting close—so terribly close—to finding a way through. But a new revelation has turned things upside down. There is something else I need to do, something that may be impossible. Another great wrong needs to be made right. My father attempted it and failed. I am looking forward to seeing you again, when we can speak freely and openly.

The swan children, Derek thought. That was what she had been talking about in her letter, the revelation she would have shared if he hadn’t stupidly cut her off the minute she’d set foot in his courtyard last summer. King William must have tried to bring them back already. Now Odette had chosen to shoulder the same burden.

My time is running short, Odette’s letter from May continued. But in the spirit of honesty, I will risk saying one thing plainly. I no longer think of you as an ally, or even a friend. I suspect we have both been dancing around this for months, unless I have grossly misinterpreted your behavior. So here—I will reveal my hand, just like when we used to play poker. And if I have misjudged your tells and overplayed my hand, at least I will have no regrets. There are few things I am certain of anymore, but I know that I love you.

Sincerely,

Odette

When he’d read that final paragraph last spring, Derek now realized, he’d practically forgotten everything else in the letter. All he had been able to think about was how he would respond to Odette’s unexpected confession. She had taken a terrible risk laying her feelings open like that. He wanted to return the favor. They both knew how uncomfortable public displays had always made him. What better way to prove his affection, than by showing her he could do something just as risky and courageous?

In hindsight, proposing in the castle courtyard had been a terrible idea. It was noisy at every hour of the day. If Queen Uberta had known, she might have advised him on the sort of proposal Odette actually would have enjoyed. But Derek hadn’t wanted to cause that much of a bother, and he had never been a fan of his mother’s flamboyancy. So he had kept the matter secret. That time, though, he would have benefited from Queen Uberta’s flair for planning.

King William and Odette had arrived in an open-air phaeton. The morning air had been heavy with the scent of an impending storm, but that wouldn’t come for hours. Odette had looked surprised when Derek dashed ahead to help her out of the carriage—was it because one of the palace footmen usually did the job, or because of the wild expression on his face?

Did you mean everything you wrote? he had asked her. About revealing your hand?

Yes, all of it, she had replied. The tight knot in his chest had sagged with relief then. It must have shown in his face, because her face relaxed then too. Had she been just as nervous about this meeting as he had?

Then let’s tell the rest of them, Derek said. Right here. Right now.

Looking back, Derek thought, he’d never noticed the expression that passed across her face next, because he’d turned away. He looked up at Bromley, the one person he’d confided his plans to personally, stationed on a balcony fifteen feet above the courtyard. At a nod from Bromley, a dozen servants threw baskets of white calla lilies—the national flower of Cymdros—so they landed in the courtyard around William and Odette’s phaeton. He heard several audible gasps from the crowd, one that he was certain belonged to his mother. Then the gasps quickly morphed into cheers and applause.

In all honesty, Derek hadn’t planned to say the words he uttered next. But he was carried along by the crowd’s enthusiasm. He’d been so anxious about a display this public, but this was going better than he could have hoped.

Arrange the marriage! Derek announced, when the applause had died down enough to make his words audible.

Odette’s eyes darted above his head, at the dozens of people staring at them across the courtyard.

Derek, what is this? she asked. She was frowning, and her tone was chilly. A prickling in the back of his mind warned him things were in danger of going south, but he was too committed now to change course.

I’m revealing my hand. Just like you did, Derek said. I’m tired of all the pretense. I don’t care what our parents do or don’t want anymore. Let’s start living our lives the way we want.

Derek, can we please talk in private? Odette said quietly. Her voice had lost none of its chill. There’s something important we need to discuss.

Whatever it is, we’ll make it work. I promise, Derek said. We can have all the time we want. Derek didn’t remember how, but his feet had begun carrying them both across the courtyard, closer to where his mother stood beaming and Lord Rogers stood drop-jawed.

Please, Derek, you’re missing the point. Planning a wedding right now would be a disaster.

It’ll be beautiful, just like you, he had said—not realizing how those words would hand Odette the out she’d been so desperately seeking. As long as we’re doing this together, we can figure things out as we go.  

A sharp gust of wind caught one of the enormous green and indigo banners hanging from the castle parapets then. On the far side of the courtyard, palace stablemen were leading the horses outside to train for the June races. One of them shouted that a saddle was slipping. Without warning, Derek suddenly wondered what summer traditions they had in her kingdom. They should swap seasons—hell, they could board a ship and take off for Cymdros this evening if they wanted. In that brief moment of distraction, Derek didn’t hear the next thing Odette said. He only heard the last part of her question: Is that really all that matters?

He finally stopped walking and stared at her. What else is there?

Derek did not know that, just seconds before, she had asked the critical question he would later hear repeated endlessly—first by Rogers and Bromley, and then by half the bards in the city. He had let his mind wander, during what may have been the most important conversation of his life. Is beauty all that matters to you? Odette had asked, while Derek had been sidetracked. Is that really all that matters?

In the end, Derek’s greatest mistake wasn’t that he had said the wrong thing. His mistake was that he had utterly failed to listen. And he had been too wounded and too proud to tell her the truth that day, because he didn’t think she would believe him, and because he had assumed—foolishly again—that they would have more time.

Isles of Cymdros. Present.

Derek spent most of the voyage to Cymdros asleep belowdecks. He overheard some of the crew calling him “Sir Brooder” or “Sleeping Beauty” when they thought he couldn’t hear, but he didn’t care. He hadn’t gotten much sleep in the past week, and he didn’t know when he would get the chance again. The captain’s boatswain had to jostle him awake when the ship dropped anchor. Rubbing his eyes and neck, Derek clambered to the deck and gazed at the shore from the starboard side.

Stretched across the horizon, like the corpse of a pale giant, was Nefynmor. The place where Baron von Rothbart had staged his doomed coup nearly two decades ago. The place where all of Cymdros’ recent troubles had begun.

“Don’t know what you expect to find there, Master Fletcher,” Captain Ilyich said. “There’s no way off that island. The next closest island is nearly two leagues away, and this dinghy won’t stay afloat that long in waves like this.”

The captain was offering him a chance to back out. The dark waves, ghostlike trees and chill October wind all seemed to hiss at him, Keep away, stranger. These shores are not for you. But Derek was trusting the cryptic trail of clues Odette had given him. And he was trusting that this time, this one time, he’d understood what she meant.

Chapter Text

Kingdom of Cymdros, off the coast of Nefynmor. Present. October.

“Give our regards to the ghosts, Master Fletcher!”

Derek caught the boatswain’s farewell a few minutes after entering the dinghy, when he was still within shouting distance of the larger ship. Apart from the captain and the boatswain, the rest of the crew had avoided Derek’s gaze when he disembarked. He didn’t blame them. None of them expected him to leave this island alive.

Captain Ilyich had kept his promise: The dinghy was as sturdy as Derek could have hoped for. But the sea was choppy, and the bitter autumn wind sloshed almost as much water into the rowboat as the waves themselves. By the time Derek reached the shore, his clothes were soaked and his arm and upper leg muscles were screaming. The beach was rocky, but Derek laid down and plastered his face against the dark pebbles anyway. Cursed or not, he’d never been so happy to touch land in his life.

As he lay on the beach catching his breath, he pulled out Odette’s last letter. He reread, once again, the paragraph with what he thought were the most critical clues. They had to be, or else his entire journey to get here had been a waste.

Do you remember our argument two winters ago, when the eldritch mine detonated on Nefynmor? What I told you Cymdros would never allow has come to pass. Take my hand. Find my pen and you’ll find me.

The eldritch landmine had gone off on the island of Serenys, not Nefynmor. But Derek suspected Odette had deliberately changed the name, to lead him here. As for what Cymdros would never allow…the obvious answer was magic. But magic was everywhere on Nefynmor now. No, he knew Odette had been referring to something more specific.

A portal. They had argued about creating a magical portal on Cymdros, so healer mages could arrive almost instantaneously. Somewhere on this island, a portal must have actually appeared. But what had it let in, and where did it lead?

Take my hand. Derek had laughed to himself the second time he’d read that sentence. Tucked beneath her note and King William’s, Odette had slipped in three playing cards: an ace of clubs, a four of diamonds and a two of spades. Card games were one of the few activities they could both tolerate doing together as teenagers, back when they were just trying to kill the forced time in each other’s company. But thanks to that, they both knew the four suits of cards could also refer to the four points on a compass. Odette had given him directions.

The ace of clubs he suspected pointed to a landmark: the Shamrock, a rock formation of three giant boulders on Nefynmor’s eastern side. The four of diamonds and two of spades must be directions away from the Shamrock. Four miles north and two miles west. Roughly four and a half miles of hiking northwest once he reached the Shamrock, if he was lucky enough to be able to walk in a straight line.

As he ventured further inland, the depths of Nefynmor’s blight began to sink in. Neither Odette nor her father had been exaggerating. Nearly every tree Derek passed was an unearthly white, from their leaves to their roots. More than once, he nearly stepped on rotten apples that looked like dark, moldy tomatoes. A sticky black liquid oozed out of their squished bodies, and strange spores were erupting from them where seeds should have been.

The forest was unnaturally quiet. Had any animals been able to survive in this poisoned terrain?

Derek looked closer at the trees, wondering if he would see the faces King William had mentioned. Most were blank. But after a mile or so of walking, his eyes fell on a cherry tree. In the white bark, he saw etchings of an elongated face, the jaw dropped open—a scream or a cry? Black sap was dripping from the eyes, giving it the appearance of someone weeping. Above the face, he saw the three-pronged symbol King William had sketched in his journal. A bird’s foot. He wondered if Odette had seen the same mark on herself, and when it had reappeared. Without thinking, his fingers reached out and nearly touched it.

This was the impossible thing she said she had to do in her letter. The great wrong that needed to be made right, Derek thought. She wanted to find them all. All twelve of the king’s lost swans. He withdrew his fingers. For all their petty arguments and genuine disagreements, they were kindred spirits. Odette was just as reckless and wishful as he was. And he would have helped her, had he known.

When he finally reached the Shamrock’s boulders, the moss that should have been green looked white as snow. Looking down from the outcrop, his heart sank. A spidery green mist stretched out before him on the northern slope. He remembered the last time he’d plunged recklessly into an eldritch mist spawned from the Forbidden Arts. This one wasn’t nearly as thick as the mist from the landmine, but would that matter? An eldritch mist could cloud his mind just as much as his vision.

There was nothing for it. If he was going to follow Odette’s directions, he had to go through. Derek made his way cautiously down the slope. As he stepped into the fog, another thought crossed his mind.

Take my hand, Odette had written. Were the cards enchanted? If he held them up, would they show him the way through the mist? Impulsively, Derek grabbed all three cards and held them in front of him like a fan. No such luck. They were, in the end, just cards.

He walked deeper into the mist.

He didn’t hear the voices right away. They took their time—perhaps they knew he was doomed to wander this mist for miles. They were, as King William had said, patient. But they came just the same, melodious and mocking. When Derek had walked for what felt like nearly an hour, trying to follow his compass northwest but starting to think he couldn’t trust that either, the invisible voices began.

So you’re back, prince of shadow and fog. Back to grope in the dark, as you always do and you always will. This first voice sounded old, high-pitched and raspy. The next two sounded younger.

Did you lose something, little prince? Did you fumble and break a heart the moment you captured it?

Be kind, sister. This little prince is not so ignorant anymore. He knows why he heard weeping the last time he entered our domain. He knows the crying child in the mist was no illusion. Would you like to know the child’s name? Would you like to know if he cried for his mama or his papa? Or is your noble fiancée the only lost creature that matters to you?

Derek winced. The last words stung. They stung because they were true.

The asylum papers. The papers he’d promised Odette he would give Captain Josiah and Lady Anisha, if they ever needed them. He should have given them to Lady Anisha at King William’s funeral. They would have helped her at least, even though her husband was already dead. But he’d left them behind in a locked drawer in his desk in Chamberg. And by the time he’d remembered weeks later, Lady Anisha had vanished too. Had the Council of Cymdros gotten to her? Or had the same nefarious forces that had snatched Odette away taken her mentor as well? Why the hell hadn’t Lady Anisha just asked him for asylum at the funeral, when she had the chance?

Blind, selfish little prince. Too blind to notice us chipping your world away, while you were playing the noble, questing hero. That voice sounded like the old sorcerer who had taunted him in Luthedain. Was the old man somehow in the mist too? Or was he going mad?

A cry pierced the mist. A high, wordless warble. Derek looked up. He couldn’t see what made the sound—the mist was too thick for him to see even the tops of the trees. But he recognized it immediately. The cry had come from a swan.

The cry came again, twice now. It was clear and cutting, like an icy wind waking him from a dream. With his mind suddenly clear, Derek could hear the whistling of powerful wings beating above him. Odette had found him, just as she had two years earlier. She had come to lead him out of the mist to the island’s hidden portal.

Derek walked faster. The voices continued, but they were curiously muffled. The call of the swan had weakened their power. As his confidence returned, Derek began to jog.

He jogged for another mile, and another. He should have been getting more exhausted, not less, especially after the grueling row ashore. But a new energy pulsed through his veins. Whenever he began to feel disoriented or veered off course, the swan’s call returned to his left or his right, guiding him back to the correct path.

The last mile seemed to disappear beneath his feet. When the mist finally thinned, Derek slowed to a stop.

He had arrived at a lake surrounded by oaks and maples. The water sparkled in the midafternoon sun. To his right, a fortress of black stone lay in ruins. This must be the stronghold where Baron Von Rothbart had launched his failed coup over eighteen years ago. So King William destroyed it after all, he thought.

Derek searched for the swan that had led him here. But to his shock, an entire flock of white swans awaited him on the lake. For a moment his heart leapt—had Odette done it? Had she somehow brought all the lost swans back to Cymdros? But just as quickly, his hopes died. There were far more than thirteen swans here. There were dozens. And when he set foot in the lake, all the swans turned to him in unison.

“Odette?” he said. In response, half the swans lifted their necks and cried out. The dozen nearest to him flocked eagerly to his side. Then, at last, he understood.

It’s a riddle, he thought. It’s a riddle created by the portal. Derek knew, as anyone who knew anything about magic knew, that most magical portals weren’t open to everyone. Some required a password, or an answer to a test—and that test could vary by person as well as by portal. This was the final test he had to pass, if he wanted to open whatever portal led off this cursed island. He had to find Odette among a hundred other swans.

Feeling rather silly, Derek held up the golden necklace he had taken from Chamberg—the one item of Odette’s he still carried with him. When half a dozen swans tried to snatch it from his hand with their orange beaks, he put it away.

He closed his eyes. None of Odette’s clues had prepared him for this. How was he to know how Odette would look or behave as a swan? She was fierce, kind, loyal and reckless, but none of those traits were easily displayed here.

Think, boy! Lord Rogers’ voice now rang his head, as though he could bash Derek’s brains out with sheer sarcasm—as his counselor had no doubt often wanted to do. Would Odette leave something like this up to chance? Look for a swan that’s not acting like a swan.

Derek looked more closely. A handful of swans were behaving erratically. A group of four were spinning in circles with their wings outstretched, carving miniature whirlpools above the water. Another trio were doing backwards somersaults, their webbed feet kicking ridiculously in the air. And one was knocking its beak against a tree like woodpecker. Unlike the others, its wings looked dirty and mottled, as though patches of feathers had fallen out. 

Of course, Derek thought. A wounded swan. Like a breaking wave, Derek realized he had seen Odette as a swan before—in the night sky above Luthedain, a white swan battling a black one. As he waded closer to the tree, he heard a rhythm to the knocking of her beak. Four quick. Two slow. Four quick. Two slow. The same numbers on the cards she had left him. She hadn’t left this up to chance.

Drawing nearer, he saw her wings were flecked with dried blood where clumps of feathers had been ripped out. The swan stopped knocking the tree and turned to stare directly into his face. Derek reached out carefully and brushed his fingers against her feathers.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” he said.

He never found out whether his words or his deliberate touch broke the illusion. But every other swan vanished then, leaving the two of them alone on the lake. A yawning golden oval emerged suddenly beside her. Derek experienced just a moment’s confusion—every other magical portal he’d seen in his life was blue—before the princess-turned-swan swam away from him toward the portal. When she reached the edge, she turned back and tilted her head. He didn’t think swans could make facial expressions. But just then he would have sworn he saw a familiar glint of mischief in her eyes, as though she were teasing him. Come on, Your Highness. You’re not scared of a magical glowing door that just appeared out of nowhere, are you?

Derek followed her through—

and froze. The portal forked. Derek had never heard of a portal that could lead to two different destinations, but somehow this one did. To make matters worse, the swan he’d been so certain was Odette split into two identical swans before his eyes. Both swans took off down opposite paths. Which was real, and which was the illusion? Would the riddles never end?

To his left, he saw one swan flying down a moonlit corridor made of stone. To his right, he saw the other swan swimming on a lake beside a weeping willow. The lake looked very similar to the one he’d left behind, except for a fully formed black fortress in the distance.

As he watched, a pearlescent whirlpool enveloped the swan on the lake. When it fell away, a woman stood in her place with her back to him. She looked exactly like Odette as he had last seen her, right down to her ivory and green gown, radiant in the sunlight.

He wanted to follow her. His feet started to carry him to the right, and he tried to shake the feeling that something was off. He’d come so far; she was right there. What was he waiting for? The openings to both pathways were beginning to narrow. So was the entrance behind him. What would happen if the portal closed before he had chosen a path? Would he be trapped indefinitely in a dark limbo?

In that moment of terrifying indecision, Derek remembered the very first clue, spoken by a king gasping out his last breaths in the rain: It’s not what it seems.

Without thinking further, Derek turned away from the woman on the lake and bolted down the corridor to the left.

As he ran down the stone hallway, he felt as though he had plunged into another eldritch mist. There were windows, and yet the path ahead seemed to grow dimmer the further he ran. It was almost like a malevolent darkness was chasing him, flooding his ears, his eyes, his brain.

Muffled noises pierced through the pounding in his ears. He heard something like a large splash of water, followed by a sharp gasp and a woman’s voice echoing sharply, “Hurry, before he gets lost.” A loud scuffling followed. Finally, when the darkness was so thorough Derek could barely see two feet in front of him, a familiar voice called out,

“Take my hand! Derek, take my hand!”

His arm outstretched, their fingers fumbled in the dark until finally her hand closed around his forearm. The moment she grasped his arm, the darkness disappeared. They were facing each other in a corridor of grey stone. Cool beams of moonlight pierced through the enormous stained-glass windows on his left. Odette was drenched from the waist up, wearing a simple white blouse and a blue cotton skirt. They stared at each other for several seconds before Odette threw her arms around him.

“It worked! It finally worked!” she said.

Chapter Text

October, four and a half months after the Great Animal attack. Location unknown.

Derek stood in the grey stone corridor, where the middle of the afternoon had abruptly turned into the middle of the night, his arms full of a waterlogged princess.

“I thought you were supposed to be a swan,” Derek said. Why was he cursed to say the dumbest things at the most important moments?

“I was,” Odette replied. “But Lady Anisha threw a bucket of water on me in front of the window, and I changed back.” Before Derek could think of a reply—was he supposed to just nod agreeably, as though any of that had made sense?—Odette stepped away from him and covered her mouth. She looked shaken. When she lowered her hands and spoke next, it was with slow, careful precision.

“The warlock Von Rothbart turned me into a swan using the Forbidden Arts,” she said. “If I want to change back into a person, I need to touch water from an enchanted lake while the moon is shining on it.”

Her hands flew to her mouth again.

“I can tell you! I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to, but I can really tell you!”

Odette leaned against the stone wall and collapsed to the ground. She was laughing almost hysterically. Some part of Derek’s brain told him he should find her behavior a little disturbing. But he also knew he had been doing the exact same thing just two nights earlier, when he’d read King William’s journal and believed after months of dead ends, he’d finally found all the answers. So he did the only thing that made sense and sank to the floor laughing with her. They remained that way for several minutes, side by side in an incomprehensible state of relief, exhaustion and hysteria.

“Does it hurt?” he asked when they both had calmed down. “Turning into a swan?”

Odette looked first surprised, and then a little gratified, at the question.

“A little,” she said. “The first two months were the hardest. Before all this.” She made a vague gesture with her fingers at their surroundings. She turned to him with a serious frown.

“When you were in the portal a few minutes ago, did you see two paths?” she asked. Derek nodded. “What did you see in the second path?”

“I saw a lake. With a castle of black stone,” he said. He hesitated before finishing. “And you. I… thought.”

Odette closed her eyes again and nodded.

“Good,” she said. “Good.”

She was silent for several long seconds. Derek didn’t know what else to do, so he took her hand. In response, she pulled his hand closer and held it between both of hers. It was enough, that simple gesture of reassurance. Even though so many questions were still whirling in his mind, with that small action Odette had wordlessly answered the most important one. Yes, I want you here. I want to figure all of this out with you next to me.

Without releasing his hand, Odette opened her eyes and shifted her body to face him directly again.

“The lake you saw is the lake where Baron Von Rothbart brought me after he killed my father,” she said. Her voice had a curious flatness, as though she were trying to distance herself from her words. “If I want to become human, I need to touch water from that lake, while the moon is shining on it. And I can only stay human while the moon is on the water. The moon has always been the weakness of the Forbidden Arts. Even Rothbart can’t change that.

“The portal you came through originally connected just those two lakes—Rothbart’s old haunt on Nefynmor and his new one,” she continued. “Rothbart created it for his own use. But the archmages of Merduin rigged the portal, so it leads here too—for me and anyone I lead in by hand. It’s a sanctuary. What you saw with the second swan on the lake was an illusion. A failsafe.”

“Slow down,” Derek said. “I get that this portal has some…secret second door that lets you come here. But it’s still the middle of the afternoon on Rothbart’s lake. If you need moonlight there to be human, how are you…?”

Odette smiled primly.

“Loophole,” she said. “Come with me. It will make more sense when you see it.”

Odette rose and began leading him down the corridor, up a winding staircase. Derek could see clearly now the rows of stained-glass windows, decorated with runes and images of mages performing incantations. The windows, he noticed, showed the moon in different phases, from waxing to full to waning to new.

“This place is one of the wandering observatory towers of Merduin,” Odette explained. Her voice was rising in excitement. “It follows the moon. It’s always night here.”

Derek let out a slow breath. He’d heard of the legendary magical towers that floated in the sky. The mages of Merduin used them for spells that required near-constant moonlight, starlight or sunlight. But he had never expected to set foot in one.

“And the University of Merduin gave you sanctuary here as a…gesture of good will?” Derek asked as they climbed the stairs. Before he could stop himself, he added, “And why didn’t they just make a new portal for you to come here? Why did they have to use one of Rothbart’s?”

Odette stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“This place isn’t free. They asked for a favor in return. And no, they couldn’t use just any magical portal,” Odette said. “I promise, Derek, I’ll explain anything I can. But I can’t do it all at once.”

The staircase ended sooner than he expected for an astronomy tower—though perhaps, because it was already in the sky, it didn’t need to be that tall. A nondescript wooden door waited at the top, marked with only two carved runes that Derek recognized as journey and moon. Odette pushed the door open.

For a moment, Derek could only gape in amazement. The chamber at the top had an unbroken view of the night sky, with a circle of floor-to-ceiling windows and a glass dome at the top. In the center of the room, an enormous marble pool filled with water rested on the floor. A reflection of the crescent moon beamed placidly on the surface. And then his mind put the pieces together.

“Is that water from…”

“It is, Your Highness.” Lady Anisha Langley emerged from the far side of the room, holding a large wooden bucket. She wore a black tunic of mourning over grey trousers. “It hasn’t occurred to Baron Von Rothbart that one could get around his spell by simply moving water from his lake somewhere else, where the moon is…nearly…always shining.”

“Lady Langley,” Derek said with a bow. Widowhood had put a few more grey hairs in her dark braid, and her face looked thinner and sharper, like flint. But beyond that, King William’s horse mistress looked just as energetic as the day she had greeted him two winters ago in Cymdros, beside her husband, the late Captain Josiah Langley.

“Bromley told me it was you who buried the last clue beneath your tomato garden in Luthedain,” Derek said. “He figured out what the fire market riddle meant. I’m sorry I didn’t piece it together myself.”

“That’s nothing to apologize for,” Lady Anisha said. “You chose your friends well. That’s one of the most important things a king can do. Or a queen.”

“Of course, this tower doesn’t help when there’s a new moon,” Odette said, glancing at the sky. “But being a swan has advantages sometimes. It’s how I followed you to Luthedain, and how I knew you were on your way to the lake at Nefynmor.”

Derek turned to Odette again.

“I still don’t get it,” he said, nodding towards the pool. “If the moon’s been shining here for…days, and you can touch this water whenever you want, why were you a swan a few minutes ago?”

“I wasn’t supposed to be,” she said. “We had a plan. I was supposed to come out and meet you on Nefynmor as a person and guide you to the portal. That’s the only way I can let someone else in.”

“A cloud passed over the moon here,” Lady Anisha said in a clipped voice. “Just moments after Odette walked out of the portal. With no moonlight here, or on Rothbart’s lake, the magic forced her to become a swan.” Judging by the look that passed between the two women, Derek could tell neither of them believed that cloud had been a coincidence.

“Lady Anisha did some fast thinking,” Odette said. “She knew I’d need to touch moonlight and lake water at the same time to turn back into a human and help you out of the fog in the corridor. So she scooped up a bucket of water from the pool and was waiting for me beside a window once the moon reappeared. Though really, you didn’t need to drown me.”

“It got the job done. Stop complaining, princess," Lady Anisha said brusquely. She glanced back at Derek, looking almost sheepish. "To be honest, I wasn't sure it would work. We'd never tried it before."

A cloud, Derek thought. It seemed darkly humorous, that something so mundane could topple months of planning and magical craftsmanship. He stiffened as another chilling thought occurred to him.

“Do you think Rothbart sent the cloud?” Derek asked. “Is it possible he knows about this place?”

Odette frowned, but she looked skeptical.

“That’s not his style,” she said. “He’s too flamboyant. If he could reach us here, he’d stage something more dramatic. And he’d make certain we knew it was him.”

Lady Anisha nodded. “Baron Von Rothbart,” she said slowly, “is the least of our problems. He believes he’s mastered the Forbidden Arts, but in reality he is only their servant. He’s a pawn in a much larger game than even he knows.”

“Come downstairs,” Odette said, taking his hand again. “There’s a lot you need to hear. It may take a while, but there’s a kitchen two floors down and we have plenty of pillows. When was the last time you had a hot meal?”

There it was again—the barely perceptible monotone in her voice, beneath a veil of kind pragmatism. Derek suspected that in her mind, Odette was already trying to distance herself from the memories she was about to relive. He reminded himself not to take it personally. It was her trauma, after all. Fifteen minutes later, the three of them were on the floor of the observatory’s kitchen, sitting on piles of musty, nearly flat pillows with their backs against the stone wall. A kettle of hot cider and a pot of vegetable stew were beginning to steam on the stove. After months of riddles, mad ravings and willful misunderstandings, they could finally speak plainly. And they finally had time.

Baron Von Rothbart’s enchanted lake; location unknown. Four and a half months earlier. June.

The attack was a shock, but the transformation was a relief. The moment Odette felt her arms morph into powerful, feathered wings, she felt as though an invisible burden had lifted off her shoulders. The waiting was over. The tension that had kept her awake for months, of feeling out of place in her own body, was gone. So was the guilt—the guilt of the survivor, spared by an accident of birth. She was going to join the other twelve lost swans. Her eighteen-year reprieve, bought with her father’s privilege and power, was at an end.

So she was surprised, and a little disappointed, to find herself on a rather mundane-looking lake with only two people watching her from the shore. For the first several moments she was so disoriented, she only partially heard the warlock’s first words.

“…doesn’t even last a whole day. Once the moon comes up—”

The whirlpool that rose around her then, and the abrupt transformation that followed, disoriented her even more. Odette had not expected to turn back into a human at all, let alone after a mere five minutes as a swan. If the warlock had intended to throw her off balance, he had—to her chagrin—succeeded.

“And that’s how it works,” he said. He was no longer looking down on her, now that she had regained her human form. “You have to be on the lake, of course.”

Odette straightened and studied the two figures on the shore. The scowling grey-haired woman was a stranger. But the woman’s companion was a familiar figure. Broad shoulders beneath an arrogant mouth, and a courteous posture that could not quite mask the occasional twitch of insanity. She recognized him from pamphlets stashed away in libraries, from the early years of her father’s reign. She reminded herself that she had been expecting this moment. She had prepared for this moment.

“Where are the others?” she asked.

“Others?” Rothbart said. “You’re alone, Your Highness. There’s no one here but you and me.” Odette narrowed her eyes.

“Let’s not play games, Baron Von Rothbart. I know for a fact I’m not the first person you’ve made disappear as a swan. I’m asking what happened to the other twelve children you stole.”

“Children?” Rothbart was chuckling now, but he looked genuinely surprised. “I’m not a monster, princess. Well, I suppose technically I am, but I’m not that kind of monster.”

Odette felt her heart flip painfully, as she realized that she believed him. He had no idea what she was talking about. Which meant that, less than a minute into their conversation, she had made the first mistake. Rothbart already had her at a disadvantage, and now she had given away information she could never get back.

“Though I suppose there’s no need for introductions, since you already know my name,” Rothbart continued.

“Of course,” Odette replied. “Your failure was legendary. The sorcerer who spent months attacking sheep and horses, but when he attempted to seize a throne, he didn’t have the chance to cast a single spell before losing everything.”

“Brilliantly summarized,” Rothbart said, honoring her with a mock bow. “Your father taught me a valuable lesson. And I’ve learned from my mistakes. Once you steal something, you spend the rest of your life fighting to keep it. I don’t plan to be a king with a knife over my head.”

“And where is my father now? Is he alive?” Odette asked. She hoped her voice did not quaver.

“It’s possible,” Rothbart said. “He would have grown frail indeed if merely being thrown from an unmoving carriage would kill him.”

Odette swallowed the bitter taste that rose in her throat. From her vantage point inside the carriage, she had seen the talons that ripped into her father’s robes, and the droplets of blood that spattered door as he fell. And she had felt those talons piercing into her newfound wings before she could even try using them. Rothbart knew as well as she did that wounds like that could prove mortal.

“So you’ve resorted to hostage taking,” she said. “You plan to use me as leverage against my father or the Council.”

“That would be one way, yes,” Rothbart answered. “Negotiation is cleaner and more effective in the long run than an all-out attack. But I don’t need to negotiate with your father or the Council, when I can negotiate with you.” He extended one of his amber-gloved hands to her.

“With you as my partner, we could rule your father’s kingdom legally,” he continued. “We could even keep your father’s dynasty intact. The Warlock King and the Swan Queen.”

Odette stared at him for several long seconds. Rothbart met her gaze unblinking. He clearly expected her to give his proposal serious consideration.

“I think your courtship is off to a rocky start,” she said finally.

“I’ll admit, eighteen years of exile has roughened my manners,” Rothbart said. “But think of the possibilities. When I bring eldritch magic back to Cymdros—I’m sorry, what your little kingdom calls the Forbidden Arts—I can make it the most feared and respected kingdom on the continent. Not the backwater afterthought it is now.”

“And how much do you know about eldritch magic, Baron?” Odette asked. “Can you find your way through an eldritch mist? Can you tell the real voices from the false ones?”

“I don’t need to. Eldritch mists never get higher than a hundred feet,” Rothbart replied dismissively. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I can fly.”

“Can you cure someone afflicted with eldritch blindness?”

“Healing isn’t exactly my specialty, Your Highness,” Rothbart said.

“Can you channel water to irrigate a field or put out a fire? Or can you move enough earth to make terraced farms in a mountain?”

“Those would be elemental mages,” Rothbart said, with a note of impatience. “May I ask what the point of all these questions is?”

“To find out if you have anything useful to offer Cymdros,” Odette replied. “But it seems your only specialty is transfiguration. Can you even predict the weather?”              

“And suppose I did learn everything you just named, and a few more useful skills. Then would you consider my proposal?” It was not a serious question. His smile indicated he was toying with her, the way an indulgent parent would play along with the games of a fanciful child. And Odette knew she had to keep playing this game; her only choice for now was to continue drawing this out.

“No,” she answered. “I can already tell you would make a deplorable monarch.”

“You’re a disappointment, princess,” he said. “You’re as narrow-minded about magic as your Council. And here I thought your father had raised you to be a bit more open.”

The barb about her father brought a fresh sting, but it kept her grounded. It reminded her of the sort of person her father was. And it reminded her of what, in the end, truly mattered.

“You mistake me, Baron,” Odette said coldly. “Your magic is irrelevant. You proved you’d be a terrible king when you said there were only two of us here.” Odette glanced at the old woman standing in Rothbart’s shadow. “A good king never forgets the people who support him.”

The old woman blinked. But if Odette had been hoping to gain an ally, those hopes quickly evaporated. The other woman’s scowl hardened into a glower. If anything, Odette’s recognition seemed to turn her anger into outright loathing. Never mind, Odette thought, she could play the long game. Right now she would settle for having the last word. Turning away from them both, she began to walk into the forest beyond the shore.

“Where are you going?” Rothbart asked. He was chuckling again.

Say nothing. Keep walking. You are a royal of House Cygnus, Odette thought.

“Wander as far as you like,” Rothbart said “Once the moonlight leaves the lake, you turn back into a swan. No matter where you are.”

Odette felt her chest turn to ice, but she continued walking as though she hadn’t heard. The news did not surprise her. Of course there would be a catch. But right now she needed a place to collect her thoughts.

She walked deeper into the forest, wondering if she had minutes or hours before the moon vanished and she would be forced to walk on webbed feet. As she walked, the wind began to sound like indistinct whispers, the whispers that had kept her awake for half a year—and kept her father awake for almost a quarter of his life.

In the back of her mind, she wondered how she could be so cold and cavalier, with her father almost certainly lying dead on Chamberg’s capital highway, bleeding out beside an overturned carriage. The thought did not last long, because even as she thought it, she knew the answer. Numbness and inertia were propelling her forward. And they would fade. The grief would come, and when it did it would flood her mind and leave her a shaking, paralyzed wreck. But that moment was not now.

Her second transfiguration happened sooner than she expected. When it came, it felt like falling as her legs shrank and her neck, nose and mouth stretched to many times their normal size. Transforming into a swan, it turned out, was a little nauseating. When Odette glanced up, she saw a black cloud had passed over the moon. Apparently she wasn’t even guaranteed a full night as a human.

But the whispers were clearer now, like wind chimes piercing the breeze. They had never been so clear when she was human. She could not count how many different voices she heard. Some were high and light; others deep and resonant. They were all achingly, terribly beautiful.

Welcome to our domain, little swan.

This is your domain?  Odette thought. She could not speak with her rigid beak, but she knew from experience that thinking was enough for these conversations. I’m not even with the other twelve swans. What absurd game is this?

The warlock began the game. He tore a curtain he did not understand. We did not start the game, but we will finish it.

Is what Rothbart said true? she asked. Can I become human again anytime the moon shines on the lake?

Assuming you remember you are human. Some of your cursed siblings have forgotten they ever were.

Where are they now?

In our home beyond the faithless curtain, where the moon never shines and the white wood never burns. Where the wind brings whispers that drive mortals mad.

Not all mortals, Odette replied. A sudden warmth filled her chest. My father saw behind your curtain. He heard your whispers, and you failed to drive him mad.

The chimes that followed her retort sounded like laughter.

Your father was stronger than most. But we claimed him too in the end. Did you know he died a babbling dotard?

If he died, he died a king, Odette thought, even as her chest turned to ice again. What are you? Lackeys to a middling warlock? Doomed to help an upstart pretender steal a crown that was once yours?

Be careful with your mockery, little swan. We promised the warlock a crown. We never said how long he would wear it. The warlock is as expendable as you.

You’re weak, Odette thought. You’re barely even vapor. All you can do is whisper.

Yes—whispers. Echoes. Fragments. When the would-be usurper Rothbart first tore the curtain eighteen years ago, we could send only pieces of ourselves through. But one of us was already here. The Black Swan has been paving the way for us. We are the Masters of the Eldritch. The True Keepers of the Forbidden Arts. We are the Veiled Ones, and we are coming to take back what is ours.

The sound that followed was like the clear peal of a dozen bells. All the voices seemed to be laughing at once, as though they each wanted to share in the declaration of triumph. It was hard for Odette to think. But she managed one final question.

The old woman. Rothbart’s assistant. Is she one of you?

The silence that followed stretched on so long, Odette believed they would leave her without an answer. When a reply finally came, it was hardly an answer at all.

Pity. You might have made a good Swan Queen after all. Take care not to fly too high, little swan. It is easy to lose yourself in the skies.

Then the chimes were silent again, and though she waited several minutes, they did not return.

Odette closed her eyes. She tried to pull her wings closer—in her swan body, it was the closest she could come to wrapping her arms around herself. She desperately wanted to imagine what her father would have done in this situation, but that was dangerous. She couldn’t afford to break the dam holding back her grief and her fear. She needed to think of another mentor—someone who might still be alive. Her mind shifted to Captain Josiah, whom she had last seen slouched over his horse, riding at full speed toward Queen Uberta’s palace.

Don’t worry so much about thinking outside the box, little cygnet, he had told her once, during one of their fencing lessons. How old had she been—thirteen? Fifteen? Think about using the box in a way no one’s thought of.

Rothbart assumed she was desperate to be human. He intended to use her forced existence as a swan to break her will, believing she would return to his lake every night just to escape it. But she didn’t have to. With an aerial view and the power of flight, what couldn’t she do? How hard could it be to scrawl a message on a piece of bark and fly it to Cymdros or Chamberg? The journey might take days or weeks—she had no way of knowing where she was yet—but she had nothing to lose. Even if the people who read her message couldn’t break her spell, they would at least know where she was and what was at stake. Being a swan wasn’t a liability; it was an asset.

Odette stretched her new wings experimentally. They felt stiff and awkward, but still immensely more powerful than her human arms. Craning her awkwardly long neck, she glanced up at the forest canopy, spread her wings and prepared to take flight.

Her feet remained stubbornly grounded. She tried again, standing on tiptoe and flapping her wings more rapidly, but still with no effect.

She paused. She would not get discouraged. She reminded herself that she was a large bird, and large birds often needed a running start before they could become airborne. She needed a flat surface and a high place to launch, where she could glide and take advantage of the updrafts. And while she didn’t like it, she knew where to find one.

With her slow, ungainly waddle, the hike that followed felt like it took hours. The forest understory did her no favors either, cutting into her webbed feet and sometimes growing taller than her legs. But she made her way to the rock ledge above Rothbart’s lake that she had spied out of the corner of her eye. The ledge offered a good thirty feet of distance for her to take off. She braced her feet against the ground and began to run.

The moment her feet left the ledge, her body began to plummet and no amount of flapping could stop it. The lake’s surface crashed first into her tail feathers, followed by her back and her wings and her neck. For a few heart-stopping seconds she was completely underwater. Her webbed feet—finally in their natural element—paddled furiously until she was upright again, gulping in the night air.  

Odette felt the first stirrings of panic grow inside her then.

I can’t fly. I can’t fly!

The wandering tower of Merduin. Present. October.

“Rothbart was the catalyst,” Odette said. “He set things in motion, but he lost full control the moment he did, even if he doesn’t know it.”

“And we very much hope he doesn’t know,” Lady Anisha added.

Odette was pacing around the kitchen, holding a mug of cider in her left hand. She had never been a pacer as far as Derek could remember. But during the retelling tonight, she had alternated between padding across the stone floor and returning to sit beside him, with her shoulder resting against his. He wondered if this was a new quirk she’d developed after months of living as a swan. The simple act of walking was something she could only do comfortably as a human.

“You already found the Black Swan, didn’t you?” Derek said. “That was you fighting her two nights ago, in the skies above Luthedain. I saw her tearing your wings.”

Odette nodded. Lady Anisha folded her arms and frowned.

“You took on the Black Swan on the night of a new moon,” she said acidly. “You know that’s when she’s strongest. You’re lucky she didn’t do worse. She could have clipped your wings permanently.”

“I didn’t choose the timing. It got the job done,” Odette said in a tired voice. She turned back to Derek. “She pretends to be Rothbart’s mute assistant. He calls her Bridget, but we believe her true name is Odile.”

“The Black Swan has worn many faces,” Lady Anisha said. “In one of her guises, she persuaded Rothbart to adopt her as his daughter.”

“So she’s the one who cursed our kingdom to hear no evil,” Derek said. “Rothbart has no grudge against Chamberg. But my great-grandmother was part of Veiled Kings’ War.” Both women nodded.

“Odile is the last daughter of the Veiled Kings,” Lady Anisha said. “She was left behind as a child, when your great-grandparents sent the rest of the Veiled Ones back to their own world. She’s been trapped in our world for over a hundred years. She only wants two things: to be reunited with her true family, and to destroy both your houses for tearing her away from them.”

Chapter Text

Baron Von Rothbart’s lake. June.

Odette made a vow to herself that first bitter night on the lake. She would not allow herself to become human again until she could fly. Had she known then how long it would take—how many days and nights she would spend bobbing on the water or crouched in the forest just watching other birds take off, how often she would pay in scrapes, bruises or torn feathers as she fell through the branches—she might never have made that vow.

It didn’t help that by the end of the first week, she was horribly malnourished. Despite having seen swans all over her kingdom, she’d never paid close attention to what they ate. She spent most of the first few days scavenging for food, learning by trial and error which plants were palatable. On the fourth day, desperate for anything with protein, she briefly considered eating a caterpillar. She’d nearly closed her beak around it when she had the chilling thought, What if that bug was a person once too?

That was also the day she discovered the alligators. An entire swarm of them had congregated in a small inlet on the far side of the lake, hidden by cypress and willow trees. The sight of them made her heart stop dead. Alligators were ambush predators. They could break her neck with a jaw snap or drag her beneath the surface and drown her. She was not willing to bet her life that the alligators knew Rothbart wanted her alive.

For the next few minutes she was so intent on scrambling to shore, she didn’t stop to wonder why so many alligators had gathered in such a small spot. Only after she had hidden herself among the reeds several feet from the lake did she notice the glowing amber rift deeper within the inlet. The alligators were guarding a portal.

The portal shimmered like an angry orange gash, knifing from ten feet in the air down to the water’s surface. Odette had no way of knowing where it led. But it was obviously somewhere Rothbart did not want her to discover. That alone, even without the insufferable monotony of her new life, made her determined to find a way through.

She remained in the reeds long past sundown, watching the alligators weave back and forth in the water. She counted twenty in total. But after several hours of observing them, she noticed something else odd. Most of the alligators had curiously repetitive movements. When she worked up the courage to toss pebbles in their direction, they didn’t react, even when the stones landed right on their faces. Eighteen of them were illusions, she realized. She didn’t need to get past twenty alligators. She only needed to get past two.

In the heat of the following afternoon, while the two real alligators dozed, Odette threaded her way through the eighteen false ones. She floated through the orange portal and found herself…

…on another lake. A lake surrounded by white trees and white grass. The entire landscape was so immaculate, it was painful to look at. Only a ruined black fortress and a sickly green mist on the lake’s far side broke the pallor.

This was Nefynmor—the cursed island her father had ordered evacuated a year ago. The island where Rothbart had launched his first assault on her kingdom eighteen years earlier. She was back in Cymdros, but she was no closer to home than she’d been before.

Why would Rothbart create a portal back here? she thought. Her best guess was that he needed something from his old keep—or that he planned to use Nefynmor as a base to strengthen his grip on the rest of her kingdom. She had to admit, it wasn’t a bad plan now that the island was deserted. No one would notice he’d broken the laws of his banishment.

A flash of orange light shimmered on the water to her left. At first, she thought it was the reflection of the portal she’d just come through. But when she looked up, she saw something she did not expect—a second orange portal hovering in the air. Unlike the first portal, this one seemed almost alive. It pulsed like a heart with no body. As she stared at it, she felt her own heart matching its rhythm, beat for beat. She could feel the eldritch magic coursing through her feathers.

The warlock started the game. He tore a curtain he did not understand. That was what the voices had told her earlier. Odette knew, with a chilling certainty, that if she went through this portal she would find the other twelve swans. And she might see what no one in her kingdom ever had—the true faces of the Veiled Kings. This was the curtain Rothbart had to tear, to gain full access to the Forbidden Arts that the Veiled Kings guarded. The portal was a good twenty feet above her. She couldn’t hope to reach it. The ground had never felt like such a prison.

“Cachez! Cachez! Mademoiselle, cachez!”

Odette looked around frantically, but she saw no one. On the edge of the mists, she thought she could make out a frog hopping on the shoreline. But a split second later, something else caught her eye—a dark bird soaring out of the castle toward the portal. A black swan.  

Odette ducked underwater on pure reflex. She tried to swim toward the portal back to her own lake, but when she finally surfaced for air she realized she’d veered wide. The black swan was nowhere in sight. Perhaps it had plunged into the mist. But whatever the strange voice was, it had broken the eerie pull the second portal had on her mind.

Leave! Now! Before the real alligators wake up! she thought. For two minutes that felt like thirty, she made her way through the first portal and out of the alligator-infested inlet. The open lake had never been such a welcome sight.

In the end, learning to fly took almost a month. The moon had been full when she arrived at Rothbart’s lake. It had shrunk to a waning half-moon by the time she learned to glide from an elevated outcrop on a gust of wind. But taking off from the ground, unaided, took nearly twice as long.

She stumbled on the missing piece almost by dumb luck. Aggravated with her dirty, disheveled and itchy feathers after weeks on the lake, Odette threw herself into a furious preening one sweltering afternoon. When she was done, her wings felt smoother and lighter than they ever had. She didn’t achieve total liftoff when she ran across the lake a few minutes later, but she could feel the air pushing beneath her outstretched wings, attempting to buoy them up.

The experience left her both elated and dejected. She’d been sabotaging herself the entire time. All the practice, strength and technique didn’t matter when her feathers had been holding her back. She’d wasted nearly four weeks because she’d never thought to preen.

But the result was worth it. Two nights later, when she finally gathered enough speed and lift to rise above the lake, the thrill nearly stopped her heart. She could see everything. This was her domain, her freedom, her power.

Odette did not return to the lake at all that night or the following day. During some of the more intoxicating moments, she wondered what would happen if she never returned at all.

When she did come back and at last let the full moon do its work, the transformation back into a human was jarring. Her legs gave out, unsteady after a month as a swan. She heard the warlock chuckle as she fell to her knees in an ungainly stumble. The water was only ankle deep, but the fall soaked her clothes up to her knees. She was still shaking as she stood. Dark rivulets of mud stained her white gown.

“You know, you don’t have to wait for a full moon to become human. Any moon will do,” Rothbart said. “Are you finally tiring of our little game?”

Laugh as much as you want tonight, warlock, Odette thought. Tomorrow I am going home.

Odette had never left Chamberg. She had learned that much from her exhilarating flight the day before. She was on the outskirts, though—deep in the north, in the Nurimveld Forest that the monarchs of Chamberg had so far left wild. It was a grim testament to the cleverness of her captors. If Rothbart had brought her to a lake on Cymdros, she could have flown with impunity. Swans were protected in Cymdros; in Chamberg they were hunted like prey.

The discovery opened a troubling possibility. For the past month, her main goal had been to return to Cymdros. To the winter palace and whatever remained of her father’s Council. To learn what had happened since she had disappeared…and to warn them of what was coming. But she’d never imagined Chamberg was so near. Was it worth the risk, to attempt sending a message to Derek first? Would he want to help her, or was he still feeling bruised after their last meeting? And if he only helped her out of a cold sense of duty, would that make a difference?

I can’t do this alone, Odette thought. But even as she thought the words, she knew they were not the full truth. I don’t want to do this alone.

Tonight, back in her human body for the first time in weeks, she finally had the materials and the means to write a message. She considered it a small miracle that Rothbart had left her alone for a brief time while she was still human, though she wondered if he had his own ways of spying on her. She tried to dismiss the thought. If Rothbart could see her, there was nothing she could do about it.

Paper and ink were her most precious treasures now. She’d pilfered them here and there during her flight and stashed them in the hole of a tree nearly a dozen yards from the lake, hoping she would find an opportunity to use them. Suffering one last glance at the moon, she fingered the white quill she had ripped out of her wing.

Dear Derek,

If you are reading this, I am dancing on a pool of tears guarded by a king with seven heads.

Odette looked down at the paper in disbelief. Where had those words come from? She closed her eyes and tried to think of the simplest, most concise way to explain what had happened to her. I am Odette. I was transformed. A warlock named Rothbart is setting the Veiled Kings free. I am Odette. I was transformed. She began to write again.

Heal the broken doll. It will defend you from the mice inside your castle. You must let the dewdrops dance, but only after the flowers and before the sugar plums.

Her fingers felt compelled to complete the nonsensical sentences, even though they were not what she wanted to write. Was this part of her curse, that she was unable to talk about it to anyone? Slowly, deliberately, Odette set the pen down and forced herself to take a step back. There was a chance, a very small chance, that she simply couldn’t write to Derek. Or perhaps she couldn’t write to anyone individually. She would try one more experiment, and write something for anyone to see. She would write only her name. 

She drew her name in the air several times before putting her pen to paper again.

Herr Drosselmeyer, the paper said when she was finished.

Odette crumpled the paper into a misshapen ball, the paper that had cost her so much time and effort to acquire just hours earlier. Still kneeling on the grass, she buried her face in her hands and let out a silent, wordless scream.

As she knelt there, her shoulders shaking, she wondered if the mocking eldritch whispers would return. A part of her wished they would. She hadn’t heard their voices since her first lonely night on the lake, and now she felt even lonelier. But she heard nothing beyond the chirping of crickets and bullfrogs. If the Veiled Ones were laughing at her, they were doing it privately. Or perhaps her paltry efforts were beneath their notice.

This changes nothing. You were already planning to fly to Cymdos first, she thought to herself. But another thought countered the first almost immediately. This changes everything. What hope do you have, if you can’t speak or write to anyone?

A king’s first job is to listen, not speak, she remembered. Understand your people. Know their joys. Their fears. Their true capabilities. It was her father’s voice in her mind now. This was dangerous territory, dancing on the edge of the grief she was trying so hard to stave off. But memory was her only guide now, and she knew there was wisdom in his words. Visiting her kingdom even as a swan would not be a wasted mission, if she could learn what was happening there.

She would return to her father’s winter palace on Cymdros. She would fulfill her silent promise, slip through the hidden portal that led into Nefynmor and go home. But this time, she wouldn’t need to wait for the alligators to fall asleep. She would fly above them.

Chapter Text

Cymdros, capital island of Myneddu. July 8.

The journey home was long and hard, far harder than Odette had bargained for. To get to island of Myneddu—home to her father’s winter palace and the Council of Seven—she had to cross all six islands of her kingdom. The flight took nearly a full day. Perhaps if she had waited longer, practiced longer, or at least waited for a tailwind, she could have flown faster. But she’d waited a month already. She needed to know what was happening in the heart of her kingdom.

Black and silver banners greeted her when she arrived, drooping from the flagpoles and parapets of Caer Mynedd. Odette had expected the black banners. And yet the icy stab she felt on seeing them surprised her. She had not realized until then how much hope she had buried that her father might still be alive.

She flew to the window of her bedroom. It was bolted. But she could see that her belongings had been locked in trunks and her furniture covered with sheets to protect them from dust. She was not dead to the royal palace yet, but she was gone. Odette abandoned yet another hope. With all her personal belongings behind padlocks, there was no chance she could seize something of hers as proof of her identity. She would need to find another way to make herself known.

She flew to the meeting chamber of the Council of Seven, but it was empty, and the windows were likewise bolted. Of course, it was a foolish dream that the Council would be meeting the exact day she arrived.

Feeling aggravated and restless, Odette began to fly aimlessly over the ramparts. She passed over several servants and nobles she recognized. There was Osric, her father’s personal valet. There was Mistress Aethelflaed the falconer, teaching her apprentice to fasten the birds’ hoods. And there was Councilor Andreas, talking to Abbess Branwen as they walked across the inner bailey toward the chapel.

Hello! Hello! she tried to cry out, but managed only a trumpeting warble. She hadn’t really expected anything different, so she could hardly be disappointed.

Councilor Andreas glanced up at the sound of her trumpet. For a moment, an expression almost like hope passed across his face. But just as quickly, the councilor looked away and made the sign of divine protection on his forehead.

I’ve become a ghost, she thought. With a dull ache in her chest, Odette realized it was finally time to do what she had been dreading. It was time to find her father.

They had buried the king in the hills a quarter mile outside the winter palace, with the other Swan Kings and royals of House Cygnus. His tombstone rested beside that of her mother, Queen Aubri. Odette looked closely at the dates: September 23, 502 - June 9, 572. She closed her eyes. He had died the day of the attack. The Veiled Ones had not lied about that.

Did you die alone in the rain? she thought. Did anyone hear your last words?

The tombstones of the kings and queens all had life-size marble statues of swans in different postures. The tomb of King William II showed a swan sheltering six marble cygnets beneath its wings. The gentle king, protecting the six islands under his care. Dozens of bouquets crowded around his tombstone, many wilted but others still fresh and vibrant. Her people loved him. They were showing it even now.

As she wandered amid the flowers, something else caught the corner of her eye. A flash of red, peeking out beneath the marble swan on her mother’s tomb.

Queen Aubri’s tombstone showed a swan looking towards her husband, but with one wing stretched out to the west, toward Chamberg and the rest of the mainland kingdoms. It was well known that Queen Aubri and Queen Uberta had been friends. Less well known was that Queen Aubri was the driving force behind Cymdros’ brief period of openness. Aubri had encouraged William to renew the kingdom’s old alliances and loosen some of the restrictions on magic. And he had listened to her counsel. Odette knew this, because her father had told her.

Odette moved closer to her mother’s tomb. Wedged beneath the swan’s belly, in an unobtrusive spot towards the back, was a red sealskin satchel for protecting letters or other important documents. Odette forced it out with her beak. A leather thong held it together, but loosely—something else she could easily slide off with just her beak. It was a little unnerving. Whoever had placed this here had expected someone to look at the queen’s tomb, not the king’s. And they may have even guessed the recipient wouldn’t have fingers.

She nudged open the satchel. When her eyes fell on the letter inside, the greeting and the handwriting were so familiar she nearly cried.

My dear little cygnet,

If you are reading this, you must have found your wings. Now you must find your voice. Our enemies seek to conceal the truth by making it appear like nonsense. If you do not know this already, you will soon enough.

Please do not think I have abandoned you. I have done what all loyal subjects do and gone to seek help wherever it can be found. Now you must do what all good leaders do and choose whom you will trust to act on your behalf. If I have earned your trust, meet me back here by the light of the Grain Moon and I will share whatever assistance I can.

Remember, our enemies are not what they seem, and neither are you.

June 30, 572

The letter had no signature. But Odette knew its author: Lady Anisha Langley, one of just three people in Cymdros who knew she had been cursed to become a swan, and the only one of the three still alive. A dried black tulip lay pressed against the letter. That could only mean Lady Anisha was in high mourning. Her husband, Captain Josiah Langley, must be dead as well. Odette could guess what Lady Anisha had not said—she must have gone back to Merduin, to continue searching for a magical solution to Cymdros’ troubles.

The Grain Moon was the first full moon of August. Unless Odette could fly to Merduin—and that journey would take several days—she would have to wait almost another month to speak to her mentor again. She was so tired of waiting.

I need to find a way to send a message without words, she thought. She pictured the black banners hanging from the castle walls. Banners that should have come down days ago, she realized. And she knew exactly what she needed to do.

Making a gap for herself amid the flowers, she settled into the sleeping posture that had become second nature, balancing on one leg with her head tucked under her wing. She would fly again tomorrow, but tonight…tonight she would sleep with her father and finally let herself grieve.

Odette awoke before dawn. It took over an hour to find the two things she needed: a small knife and a red and white banner of Cymdros.

The black banners should have been down by now. By custom, the palace hung black banners for seven days when a member of the royal family died and twenty-one days for the death of a monarch. If they were still up now, either her people were breaking with tradition or they were mourning something else. Either way it was time to bring them down.

She flew low at first. The banner was a heavy thing, made of thick canvas, but that wasn’t the only reason. She wanted to be seen. She soared over green sheep pastures and cherry orchards. As she neared the castle, she dove into the artisan streets, weaving her way between booths and clotheslines. 

At last the market square came into view. Hundreds of people mingled and argued among the stalls. On the far side, the stone walls of Caer Mynedd loomed over the throng. The black and silver banners of mourning still draped over the ramparts. Now, Odette finally allowed herself to soar. Landing on the castle parapets, she dropped her red banner and knife on the walkway along the walls. Then, repositioning the knife in her beak, she began sawing at the thick ropes that tied the black banner to the stone crenulations.

No one noticed at first. She was just another swan, and swans were not that uncommon in Cymdros. From this height, they probably couldn’t even tell she was holding a dagger. But at one point her feet slipped. Her blade drew a long, jagged gash down the black banner, as she tumbled downward and struggled to regain her balance. That drew some attention. As she continued to saw at the ropes, she could hear murmurs from the crowd below. After several more minutes, the murmurs turned into shouts.

A loud uproar was breaking out below. She saw ladders rising up beneath her, and servants and guards rushing onto the parapets above to see what had caused the commotion. Odette felt her chest grow cold. She’d known there was a risk her stunt would backfire, but she hadn’t expected it to backfire this furiously.

One of the ladders slammed into the wall almost directly beneath her position. A bearded merchant she didn’t recognize clambered up, holding a knife in his teeth. Feeling panicked, Odette began to flit away from the parapets. His fingers closed around the crenulation at the top of the wall. He swung himself over the edge and immediately began…sawing at the ropes next to her.

Odette raised her long neck to look again at the crowd. Along the ramparts, more people were scaling ladders to cut the black banners down. Her people weren’t trying to stop her. They were helping her. She began to make out fragments of the murmurs below.

“King William’s spirit….back as a swan.”

“…soul of his grandfather, King Siegfried…”

“…some dumb animal gone crazy…”

“…didn’t think birds could go rabid.”

As she scanned the crowd, she recognized Councilor Andreas standing beneath the walls. He wasn’t cheering, shouting or moving at all. His hands were clenched in fists, and his face was the color of pale ash.

When the merchant beside her had cut the last rope, she watched the black banner flutter to the ground. Others followed it across the walls, like an obsidian cascade. She hopped down and seized the red banner in her beak. Four hands helped her drape it over the walls. One of them set a brick on each side to hold it in place. She looked up and recognized Osric, her father’s valet. He winked at her.

Now everyone in the market could see the crimson banner of Cymdros, with its sigil of a white swan crowned in seven stars. She heard a great cheer erupt from the crowd below. Perched on top of the banner, Odette realized it didn’t matter that none of the people below knew who she was. She had become a symbol, and right now that was what her people needed. The cheer swelled into a chant. Her kingdom’s mantra, a mix of high Cymdraeg and common, filled her ears:

“Cofia Loerenys! Cymdros cyfod! Remember Loerenys! Cymdros arise!’

The cheer continued for over a minute when she heard a scuffling beside her. Councilor Andreas had rushed to the parapet where Osric and the bearded merchant were still standing.

“Move aside,” he said sharply. He peered at her very closely, his face still deathly pale. “Do you know me?” he asked. His voice was barely above a whisper. She nodded.

“Are you one of the twelve?” he asked. “Are you mine?”   

A fierce desperation filled his grey eyes. Slowly, deliberately, she shook her head. Twice. She watched his face fall and knew she was looking at a bereaved father. He had lost a child to the same curse that had taken her.

“But you understand me,” he said. “How…?”

Odette nodded away from the castle, in the direction of the royal cemetery. She took off, hoping he would understand enough to follow. He did.

Andreas was the youngest member of the Council of Seven, but he was no athlete. Flying, she reached the cemetery a full twenty minutes before he did. He found her perched on her father’s tombstone. Watching him closely, she hopped from her father’s tombstone to her mother’s and then hopped down directly between them.

Andreas shook his head, perplexed. He didn’t understand. She waddled over to her mother’s tombstone. With her beak, she pointed at the date of her mother’s death—the same day she had been born. November 14, 553. With her wings, she gestured at herself and tried to pantomime rocking a baby. It felt ridiculous.

Come on, Councilor, she thought. Figure it out.

 His eyes widened. He dropped to one knee.

“Your Highness,” he said. “You too…”

She nodded. A rush of relief passed over her, followed by a twinge of fear. She wondered, now that Councilor Andreas knew the truth, if he would be able to share it with anyone else or if he would become as tongue-tied as she was.

“Can you…” He patted the chest pocket of his robe, as though looking for a pen. She shook her head. Instead she nodded at the book he carried in his purse. Councilor Andreas was a devout man; he always carried the Sacred Proverbs of Rhiannon him. He put it on the ground in front of her. Turning the pages with her wings, she pointed to one word at a time with her beak. It was an excruciatingly slow process.

Old. Enemies. Return, she pointed. The councilor’s eyebrows furrowed.

“Your father’s enemies?” he asked. “Or your great-grandfather’s?”

She nodded. Twice. His face grew pale again.

“Both?” he repeated. He let out a slow breath. She turned more pages and gestured to other words with her beak. He followed closely.

Find. Friends. Trust. Dark. Lady. Of. Steeds.

“Dark lady of—the horse mistress? Captain Josiah Langley’s wife?” For the first time, she heard him scoff. “Anisha Langley wasn’t even born here. What could she possibly—”

Odette cut him off with an exasperated glance and pointed to one of the words again. Lady. He closed his eyes. She had suspected this would be difficult for him to swallow.

“Forgive me, your Highness. Lady Anisha Langley,” he amended. “Human or swan, you are still our ruler. I’ll make sure the Council gives her a hearing if she comes back.” His tone suggested he thought Lady Anisha’s return was almost as unlikely as her own, even though Lady Anisha had barely been gone more than a week.

Councilor Andreas let out another slow breath. His jaw twitched, as though he was making up his mind to say something difficult. She waited.

“I’m sorry, your Highness,” he said after a long pause. “I need to ask. Did you see any more swans…like you?”

His grey eyes contained a mixture of hope and suspicion. When she shook her head, his jaw twitched again and a small shudder shook his frame. The display felt familiar to her. It was the way her father had acted, when he was fighting off the urge to weep. She moved closer and pointed to another word on the page.

Name?

“Nia,” he said in a clipped voice. He flexed his fingers, and the expression passed. “Will you stay here and wait for Lady Langley?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Where will you go?” he asked. She pointed to one final word. He nodded, looking grim. She understood. Hope did not come easily to him; he would not hope again lightly.

Councilor Andreas stood and gave her a stiff but full bow from the waist. Odette turned and prepared for the mad sprint that would get her aloft again. Then she flew west, in the direction of Nefynmor and its two enchanted portals. The last word she had pointed to was, Through.

Cymdros, island of Nefynmor. July 9.

The sun had nearly set when Odette returned to the lake on Nefynmor—cold, aching and exhausted. The waning gibbous moon had already risen. If she flew through the alligator-guarded portal to Rothbart’s lake, she could become human again, and perhaps her body wouldn’t feel so tired even though her mind was spent. But the second portal—the pulsing, amber one hovering in the air, the one she was certain would lead her to Councilor Andreas’ missing daughter and the eleven other swans—pulled at her. She had promised to go through it. She didn’t want to do it tonight, didn’t think she should do it tonight, but she felt an overpowering desire just to look through it.

“Attendez! Attendez! Wait, mademoiselle, wait!”

Odette looked down from where she hovered in the air. This time, she was certain she saw a frog hopping on the shore. It was standing on what looked like a turtle shell, waving its spindly green limbs frenetically.

“Do not go through! Come down, please!”

Curious but wary, she glided down to the lake’s edge. The frog really was standing on a turtle, and it looked out of breath.

“Merci, mademoiselle,” the frog said. “Thank you for not being an imbecile.”

“Real smooth, Jean-Bob,” the turtle said dryly.

“What? Do you want her to get lost in there like the last swans that went through?” the frog demanded. “It took us months to track them all down. And they are still stuck in there like mouches in a web.”

Odette stared at them, nonplussed. After such close encounters with magic, she supposed a couple of talking animals shouldn’t have surprised her. But after all, she had tried talking as a swan just a day earlier and failed.

“You’ve seen other swans? In there?” she ventured. She wasn’t sure how her rigid beak was making the words, but it was, so she pressed on. “They’re not swans. They’re people. Tell me where they are.”

The turtle regarded her with a patient frown. He waited a beat before responding.

“I’m Lorenzo. Friends call me Speed. And this is Jean-Bob,” he said pointedly. “Nice to meet you.” Odette looked down, embarrassed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s been a while since I’ve spoken to anyone.” Anyone worth speaking to, she might have added. The frog touched her webbed foot with one of his own.

“We understand, mademoiselle,” he said. She took a deep breath and tried again.

“My name is Odette. Were you both…human once too?”

 “Dunno. Maybe,” Lorenzo said.

“Speak for yourself, ma puce. I was a prince,” said Jean-Bob. Lorenzo only shook his head. Clearly they’d had this conversation many times.

“I didn’t think we could talk. To anyone,” she said. “How are you doing it?”

“Because…magic?” Lorenzo suggested. “We’ve been trying to get your attention since you first came through here, but you kept taking off so fast. We’re trying to help.”

Odette felt embarrassed again. But her more politic side warned her to be cautious.

“That’s very kind, but why would you offer to help a complete stranger?” she asked. “I could be a power-mad sadist, or a murderer. Perhaps I deserve this curse.”

The frog and the turtle both looked at each other, but not for long. The frog waved his hand dismissively.

“It’s a matter of honor,” Jean-Bob replied. “We helped the other twelve swans find a home when they were lost. Why wouldn’t we help you?”

“He’s saying it’s not really about you,” Lorenzo said kindly. “No offense.”

“Are they still alive, the other swans?” Odette asked, her heart quickening.

“Last I checked,” Lorenzo said. He scratched his neck with one of his front legs. “They kinda do their own thing now, but they generally don’t go too far from the lake we showed them on the other side,” he added, nodding to the floating portal.

“Can you take me there?” she asked.

“No,” Lorenzo replied. Odette opened her mouth to protest when the turtle took a step forward. He planted his foot firmly in front of her. “You can’t help them by going in there. Not now.”

“But I promised someone I would,” Odette said.

“Why would you make a promise like that?” the frog demanded. Lorenzo shot his friend a warning glare. When he turned back to her, his voice was soft but firm.

“If you go through that portal, five minutes later you’ll forget why you did. You could even forget who you are,” he said. He glanced at the portal again. “That place fills your head with its own crazy dreams. We watched it happen to the other swans like you. Most of them remember they lost something, or someone, but they don’t know what.”

Odette let out a slow breath of frustration.

“Is there another way in?” she asked. “Or an antidote?” She felt like she was grasping at straws, but straws were all she had.

“Stop being so gloomy. Honestly, you always lead with the worst news first,” Jean-Bob told the turtle. He turned to her. “What you need is a tether, mademoiselle. Something you can take with you in there to remind you who you are.”

“Something you care about,” Lorenzo added. “Something you’ve had for a long time.”

Odette felt her wings begin to relax. This was starting to feel more manageable. She looked at them both intently.

“And if I could go in there,” she pressed, “and remember why I did, and find the other swans, is there a way to break the spell?”

Odette could have sworn she saw a half smile on the turtle’s face. He looked as though he’d been waiting for someone to ask that question for years.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, there is.”

Chapter Text

Present. October. The wandering tower of Merduin.

“There’s a way, then,” Derek said. “A way to break the curse and bring all the lost swans back.”

Odette nodded. They were still sitting in the small kitchen inside the floating astronomy tower of Merduin. What remained of the cider and vegetable stew had long since gotten cold. It felt as though they’d been talking for hours. But in a tower that followed the moon, where night lasted forever, it was difficult to keep track of time.

Odette folded her arms. She was silent for longer than Derek expected.

“Their parents,” she said finally. “Their parents need to profess that they still love their children and always will. And they need to prove it.”

Derek blinked. He hadn’t expected the answer to be so straightforward. He wondered why that had been so difficult for her to say, and then wondered if there was something else she wasn’t saying.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “If love is enough to break the curse, it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

“Well, thank goodness,” Lady Anisha said with a dry smile. “And here I thought you were going to say a talking turtle doesn’t make any sense.”

Derek managed a chuckle, though it was half-hearted. Her remark made him realize suddenly how much he missed Lord Rogers. His advisor would have managed at least a dozen quips by now that would have made everyone in the room stop taking themselves so damn seriously.

“But it doesn’t make sense,” he insisted. “Those parents never stopped loving their children, did they?”

“Maybe not. But the magic thinks they did,” Odette said. “There’s a reason the barrier between our world and the world of the Forbidden Arts is called the faithless curtain. The magic punishes people it sees as unfaithful. As far as the magic is concerned, those parents betrayed their children by offering them up on the lake eighteen years ago, to stop the first blight on Cymdros.”

“But they didn’t know what would happen,” Derek pointed out. “Even your father didn’t know. They didn’t intend to curse their own kids.”

“The magic doesn’t care about intent,” Odette said quietly. “It only cares about actions. That’s why it demands proof to break the spell.”

“So we need to track down all their parents,” Derek said. “Other than Councilor Andreas, do we know who they are?”

“King William was good enough to leave a list,” Lady Anisha said. There was no irony in her voice this time—now she sounded only tired. He really missed Lord Rogers, he thought.

“He kept it in a locked drawer in his private study,” Odette said. “The names of every child and parent on the lake that night. He told me he looked at it every year, on the anniversary of their disappearance. He said a ruler needs to remember the subjects he’s failed.”

Derek rubbed his forehead. About a half dozen more questions had just entered his mind. He paused to decide which one to bring up first.

“Did the mark appear on you too?” he asked Odette. “The forked mark the other children had?”

Odette shifted on the floor, moving her feet in front of her blue cotton skirt. Wordlessly, she pulled off the brown boot and stocking on her left foot. There it was—the black mark in the shape of a bird’s foot, the mark that King William had mistaken for a trident.

“I first saw it in mid-April, I think?” Odette raised her hands in a half-hearted gesture. “I’m not sure when it first appeared. I didn’t feel anything. How often do you look at the soles of your feet?”

“She was still studying abroad in Yoringard then,” Lady Anisha said, nodding at Odette. “We asked their mages about the forked mark. They told us it was an old eldritch rune sorcerers once used to transform into birds. Themselves or…others.”

“We sent a message to Captain Josiah,” Odette added. “Carefully worded, of course, but we were able to show him the mark.”

Odette glanced at Lady Anisha. Perhaps she was asking permission to continue. This was her late husband they were talking about, in the last weeks of his life. Lady Anisha silently gestured for Odette to go on.

“Captain Josiah’s reply reached us three days later. His letter just said to come home immediately. Nothing else,” Odette said. “I’d never seen anything like the expression on his face when we got back. He said this was above his station. I needed to show it to the king.”

“My husband was with King William on the lake that night, when the magic transformed the other twelve children into swans,” Lady Anisha said quietly. “That’s why he recognized the mark. But neither of us knew Odette had been cursed as an infant as well, and that King William had refused to give her up. That was the king’s secret.” 

Derek sat up straighter.

“What day was that?” he asked suddenly. “What day did you show your father the mark?” Odette raised her eyebrows at the question. A half-smile that might have been approval crossed Lady Anisha’s face as well—they both knew why he’d asked.

“April twenty-seventh,” Odette replied.

“That’s the same date as the note you sent me from his journal,” Derek said. “The note that explained everything—about Rothbart’s coup and the eldritch mark and the cursed swan children. He said that you…”

“He said I knocked on his door that night,” Odette said with a nod. “That was why.”

“Then that’s why he didn’t burn the journal entry,” Derek said. It seemed like such a minor detail, but he felt surprisingly animated. “He kept saying in his note that he would burn it, but you interrupted him and he showed it to you.”

“And six months later, we were finally able to give the note to you.” Odette looked down into her mug of cider, which was still more than half full. A shadow passed over her face.

“We thought we were so clever,” she said. “Everything I learned going abroad last year—in Lincolnshire and Yoringard and Merduin—my father knew half of it already. He told me he’d tried for years to get those children back. He said he would have ripped up every magical restriction in our kingdom if it would have brought them home.”

“He would have,” Lady Anisha said.

All three of them let the silence hang. Derek fingered his own mug awkwardly, thinking of the giant enchanted elephant still in the room.

“Not to make things darker,” he said, “but if we do break the curse on those kids, they won’t be kids anymore, will they? Even the youngest ones will be older than me. And if the turtle is right about the other realm erasing people’s memories, they won’t even remember being human.”

“You’re half right,” Lady Anisha said. “There’s a very real chance these children won’t recognize their parents. But they will, we think, be children.” She paused to nod at Odette.

“Do you remember how I told you when I first arrived at the lake, I didn’t transform back into a human for a solid month?” Odette asked him.

Derek nodded.

“I had injuries from the first attack. Minor ones—” She raised her hand to cut him off, probably noticing an expression of alarm that he’d failed to conceal. He had found their carriage toppled over at the scene of the attack; of course Odette had probably been inside when it happened. “Scrapes. Bruises. A gash on my left leg,” she continued. “The point is, they were ordinary. Nothing magical about them.”

“And they were still there a month later, when you became human again,” he concluded.

“Derek, some of them were still bleeding,” Odette said. “The point is, when someone transforms into another shape using the Forbidden Arts, it’s like time stops for their human body. If the swan children can change back, it’s possible their bodies won’t have aged at all.”

“If they can change back?” Derek repeated. “They can’t change back when the moon is out, like you?”

“If they were on Rothbart’s lake, they probably would,” Odette said grimly. “But there’s no moon in the realm of the Veiled Kings.”

“That’s why the moon is the weakness of the Forbidden Arts,” Lady Anisha explained. “Its light is foreign. It doesn’t exist where the Forbidden Arts were created.”

Derek leaned against the wall and glanced outside the window, where the waxing moon was little more than a sliver. The news should have been at least a little encouraging. There was a way to free all the cursed swans, and they wouldn’t have to lose their childhoods in the process. But even if they succeeded in that, they would still have to deal with the other looming threats—Odile and the Veiled Kings, their pawn Rothbart and the lingering curses on both their kingdoms. He hadn’t been naïve enough to assume finding Odette would solve everything. But he’d at least thought the answers would fall into place. Instead, the path forward seemed more treacherous than ever.

Those children would need so, so much counseling, he thought.

Odette must have read the dourness in his face, because moments later he felt her hand close around his wrist. She slid closer to his side.

“Thank you for helping my father at the end,” she said. Derek looked at her strangely.

“I didn’t,” he said.

“He didn’t die alone,” she said. “You did help him.”

And it struck him then, with the force of an icy gale, why Odette had hesitated earlier when explaining how to undo the curse. Whatever solution they came up with, she would still be trapped. Odette didn’t have a parent to break the spell for her.

Derek still had no clue what time it actually was, in Chamberg or any other part of the world. His body had other ideas though. After being ignored for hours, it was now insisting that he really, really needed to sleep. And he didn’t care how flat the pillows were in whatever cramped closet the scholars that made this tower called a bedroom. But there was one more thing he needed to do, now that Lady Anisha had retired and he and Odette were alone in the kitchen.

“The frog said you needed a tether to go into the other realm,” Derek said. “Something important to you, that you’ve had for a long time.”

He held out his hand. Odette’s lips parted in surprise when she saw the golden necklace resting on his palm. The necklace she had worn nearly every day of her life—the swan-engraved necklace he had given her at her christening, though technically they both knew it was really a gift from his mother. Derek had been all of three years old at the time. Perhaps that was why Odette had worn it so often. Even when the two of them were locked in their childhood loathing, she had always gotten along with Queen Uberta.

Odette reached out. But instead of taking the necklace, she closed his fingers around it and shook her head.

“Thank you,” she said. “But I don’t think this tether will work. And I can’t risk trying it.”

Derek couldn’t help feeling deflated. After so much time floundering in the dark, searching for answers from other people, he’d finally felt like he had something useful to bring to the table.

“How do you know it won’t work?” he pressed. “You’ve had it almost since you were born. I thought you liked it, even when—” He cut himself off. He had been about to say, Even when you didn’t like me.

“Help me understand,” he said. “If this isn’t what you need, what was all this for? Why bother trying to reach me if I can’t do anything?”

“Why bother trying to reach you?” Odette repeated. “Because I care about you, you tomato-brained idiot!” She exhaled slowly. Then she folded his hand inside both of hers again.

“I can’t take this in there because it’s something that makes me happy, and because it’s something from you,” she said. “I can tell you more tomorrow. But I’ve already been to that realm once, and the turtle was right. The magic in that place messes with your mind. And I’m sorry, but I’m not going to let it mess with my memories of you.”

She moved toward the door. Derek sidestepped to intercept her.

“Tell me now,” he said, not caring how stubborn or petulant he sounded. Odette looked at him skeptically.

“Derek, you’re dead on your feet. You’ll forget half of what I tell you by tomorrow…”

“So remind me, and you’ll get to call me an idiot again. I’m sick of waiting. Just tell me what you saw on the other side,” he said. Odette tilted her head but met his gaze evenly.

“I saw a dead queen and a blind prince with your face,” she said. “Are you sure you want to hear this tonight?”

Chapter Text

A dead queen and a blind prince with your face, Derek thought. Odette was probably right; he wasn’t in a fit state to hear this story tonight. But he also wasn’t likely to get any sleep now if he didn’t.

“Did you see my mother in the other world? Is something going to happen to her?” he asked.

“I did. But she wasn’t the dead queen,” Odette replied. Derek had never been more grateful for Odette’s directness. She wouldn’t draw things out or stretch his emotions to a breaking point just for dramatic effect. Odette looked askance, and even in the dimly lit room Derek thought he saw a bit of color rise in her cheeks.

“I thought you’d be worried about yourself first,” she said. “I underestimated you. I’m sorry.”

Derek didn’t know what to say to that. At the moment, he was too exhausted to think of a clever reply. Odette looked back at him again.

“I’ll tell you everything I saw in the Veiled Kings’ realm, but will you answer a question for me first?” she asked.

“Go on,” Derek said. Odette took a deep breath.

“Did our parents force us to build a treehouse together one summer?”

Derek blinked. That was not the question he’d expected, but he tried to hide his bewilderment.

“Yes, after you kicked down the first one…” he said. Odette leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. Just for a moment, it looked as though she was laughing to herself. Only for a moment, and then she opened her eyes and her face was all seriousness again.

“Thank you,” she said. “I needed to hear that from you. All right, let’s begin. Sit down, please.”

She reached for his arm, and Derek let her pull him to the floor.

The portal to the realm of the Veiled Kings, at the lake on Nefynmor. Mid-July.

Odette could not enter the realm of the Veiled Kings as a human. The glowing amber portal was at least twenty feet above the lake. She could only pass through as a swan. But as she stared at the yawning circle, waiting to swallow her like the mouth an invisible monster, she wondered if her wings would cooperate. Rothbart had opened this portal over a year ago, in his quest to release even more of the Forbidden Arts into their world. And it had turned this island into the pale wasteland it was today.

“Lorenzo,” she said slowly, “if this portal has been open for more than year, why haven’t any of the other swans come out?”

“We kinda hoped they would,” the turtle replied. “We waited. But I guess they never found it.”

“You must understand, princess, we were right beside the portal when it opened last year,” Jean-Bob said. “The two of us were swept up by the wind these portals make when they appear, and dropped down here. But the swans were miles away. Leagues away.”

Odette nodded. Jean Bob hopped onto her back. He would be her guide to find the twelve lost swan children. And the rose-colored shawl tied to her ankle would be her tether, to keep her from losing her mind in the other world.

“You sure that’s the tether you want?” Lorenzo asked. “Like you said…it belonged to someone you’ve never met.”

“It’s something important to me that I’ve had for a long time,” Odette replied.

“Sure, but why not use something of your father’s? You’ve known him your whole life,” the turtle pointed out.

Odette did not feel up to answering that question. The truth was, she didn’t think she could handle bringing something of her father’s across the portal. The grief felt too fresh. The satin shawl she had chosen had belonged to her mother. As a child, she had wrapped it around herself in her bedroom more times than she could count, until the sections that touched her shoulders had become almost threadbare. It was the closest thing she had to a mother’s embrace. But most importantly, she could live with her mother’s loss. She had lived with it for her entire life. This tether couldn’t hurt her.

Odette took a few more steps back and began the running start that would get her airborne.

“Hey,” Lorenzo called out as her feet left the ground. “Don’t let Jean-Bob stay out of the water too long. And when you get back, call me Speed.” That was the last thing she heard before she crossed the portal.

There was no moon on the other side. This realm didn’t need one—because the trees here glowed. Tens of thousands of bioluminescent leaves illuminated the night, above branches of pearlescent white. They dazzled the terrain beneath her with violet and blue and green and rose. Odette hovered in the air for several seconds just to absorb the spectacle. The fire markets of Cymdros looked like pathetic knockoffs compared to this.

A warm breeze ruffled the leaves. A light pealing, like wind chimes, came with it. Odette felt a chill. She knew what those chimes portended.

“They know we’re here,” she told Jean-Bob.

“Focus, please!” Jean-Bob reminded her. “Concentrate. Shawl. Swans. Escape.” Odette shook one of her webbed feet, so she could feel her mother’s shawl streaming behind her.

A pretty thing, said a voice, gentle and soft. Does it comfort you here?

Odette tried to ignore the voice—one of many that had become familiar to her.

“Jean-Bob,” she asked, “what tether do you use, to keep your memories when you’re in here?”

“My betrothed gave me a kiss, before I was banished here,” he said proudly. “As long as a speck of that kiss remains on my cheek, I remember who I am. The lost dauphin of Ranarium. When she kisses me again, I will regain my true from.”

Odette thought she heard laughter on the wind now.

You put your faith in a delusional frog who dreams of being a prince? the gentle voice asked. Who do you think gave him those dreams, little swan? How can you be sure that even you are a princess, now that you’re here in our domain?

I am the daughter of Queen Aubri and King William the Second of Cymdros, Odette thought to herself. I am wearing the queen’s sigil around my leg. I am the daughter of Queen Aubri of Cymdros.

They flew in silence for several more minutes, with Jean-Bob nudging her wings whenever she needed to change direction.

A sharp, warbling cry pierced the stillness without warning, followed by a low whistling sound that she also recognized—the beating of swan wings. Odette glanced to her right. But instead of another white swan like herself, a black swan glided above the canopy. Odette knew, deep in her core, that she had seen that swan before, soaring above Rothbart’s ruined keep on Nefynmor. The Black Swan has been paving the way for us, she remembered hearing the voices say. Was it really only a month ago that she had heard those words?

“What are you doing?” Jean-Bob said. “That is not one of the swans we’re after!”

“It’s the swan I’m after now,” Odette said. The frog tugged at her wings, but Odette had already made up her mind. She veered right, trailing the black swan from a distance.

The black swan led her deeper into the forest, into a mist so thick at times she lost sight of it and had to listen for its wings. When the mist finally thinned, a well-known shape greeted her: a castle of white stone with a pale green roof. Queen Uberta’s castle…but not as she remembered it. Several dozen shingles had fallen off the roof, and ribbons of vines covered the walls. Looking down, Odette noticed the drawbridge lay flat on the ground and was covered with moss, as though it had been stuck that way for years. The rusty portcullis hung partway open. The castle looked old and vulnerable. 

What’s happening in Chamberg? Odette wondered suddenly. Is this a sign of trouble to come, or is the trouble already there?

“Please! Princess!” she heard Jean-Bob say, though his voice sounded curiously muted. “I cannot stay out of the water much longer.”

“Just a few minutes. I promise,” Odette said. As she drew nearer to the castle, it occurred to her that this could be a trap. The Veiled Ones might be waiting inside for her, and their true faces might be the last thing she saw.

I want to see them, she realized. I want to see the faces of my enemies.

The black swan soared through an open window into the great hall. Odette tried to follow, but when she reached the window it had closed—not simply closed, but somehow been bolted against her. Odette could only watch as the black swan descended. When its feet touched the floor, the feathers melted away. In its place, Odette saw a figure like herself standing in the great hall, in a gown of black velvet trimmed in scarlet. She saw Queen Uberta and Derek as well, wearing Chamberg’s royal colors: Uberta in emerald green and Derek in indigo.

The inside of the castle looked just as decrepit as the outside. The great hall was only half lit. A dozen faded, moth-eaten tapestries decorated the walls. But Odette had no doubt the scene before her was a royal ball.

As Odette watched from the window, the woman with her face approached Derek. Their mouths moved, but she could not make out the words. Then they began to dance—a dance that began slow and delicate, but built up into something haunting and visceral.

It seemed the dancer wore three faces. Most of the time she looked like Odette’s twin. But sometimes, in brief flashes, she looked like Rothbart’s old servant Bridget, and then like a young woman Odette had never seen wearing a black and silver crown. And her eyes…her eyes were black opals with no pupils, with a feathery black mask that looked as though it had been painted over her eyes.

No one else in the ballroom appeared to notice anything strange. Even Derek looked riveted by her doppelganger’s sharp, seductive grace. For a few brief instants, even his eyes seemed clouded with the same pupilless jet black. The same black opals she had seen more than a dozen times before—in the faces of victims struck blind every time one of the Veiled Kings’ buried landmines went off.

This is the dance of the Black Swan and the Blinded Prince, she heard a raspy voice whisper. The dance that will destroy one dynasty and bring another to its knees. The dance where the twice-faithless daughter finally proves her love to her banished kin.

When the music finally stopped, a wave of applause rippled across the ballroom. Queen Uberta was positively glowing with joy; this was everything she had dreamed of. She was clutching the arm of another woman dressed in a rose gown, with a circlet of pink gems in her yellow hair—her mother, Queen Aubri, Odette realized. She blinked. Of course her mother was there; why wouldn’t she be? Hadn’t Aubri and Uberta been hoping and planning for this union for nearly two decades?

Derek began addressing the crowd, but again she couldn’t hear his words. She could only see the movements of his mouth. The room erupted into applause again. Then without warning, the doors burst open and a gust like thunder blew the windows open too, forcing Odette backwards. 

Everyone in the hall turned to the door and the shadowy figure in the threshold, except her mother. Her mother looked out the window, directly at her. The queen put a finger over her lips. Abruptly, the scene in front of her dissolved.

The great hall was empty now, except for Queen Aubri sitting alone on the steps. The room looked brighter and newer than it had before—as though whatever had made the castle start to crumble had not yet happened.

Her mother looked across the room and patted the steps next to her. Odette saw a young girl pelt out one of the side doors and run into her mother’s lap. She couldn’t hear what either of them said. But she saw the girl’s shoulders shaking and recognized her younger self, sobbing over whatever new hurtful thing Derek or Bromley had done. Queen Aubri rocked the girl until the shaking subsided. Why did this scene fill her with a curious longing? Hadn’t her mother hugged her like this a thousand times?

Her mother looked out the window again. This time the queen extended her arm, as though inviting her grown, cursed daughter into the same embrace. The window was open; Odette flew nearer until she could make out the queen’s words.

“You can stay,” the queen murmured to the girl in her arms. “You can stay right here with me as long as you like. I’m here to make it all better.” She removed her shawl and wrapped it around the younger girl’s shoulders. She whispered something into her daughter’s ear.

“Now, sweet girl, aloud. Say it aloud until you believe it,” she heard her mother say. The girl sat up and took a deep breath.

Odette blinked again. She didn’t hear whatever her younger self said, because the queen’s words pricked her. It was a feeling she’d had before, whenever a mildly embarrassing memory would suddenly resurface in her brain. The words circled in her head. Now sweet girl, aloud…Now girl aloud…No girls allowed.

A treehouse that Derek and Bromley had promised to show her when she was nine—and shown it to her they had, along with that humiliating sign: No Girls Allowed. That memory hurt. And it was real. And her mother had not been there to comfort her, because her mother had never once accompanied her to Chamberg. What had made it better?

I lost someone, Odette realized. Her back felt too light and too still. Where was the frog? Had he fallen off? How long had she been here? Jolted back into the present by a wave of panic, she flew back out the window into the moonless night.

“Jacques?” she called out. The name struck a false chord in her ears. “Jean? Jean-Bob?”

The shawl on her right leg now felt like a shackle. How could she have been so stupid, to think a tether from her mother would work? She didn’t have any real memories of her mother. Every thought she’d ever had of Queen Aubri was either given to her secondhand or the product of her own fantasies. The magic of this realm had seen right through her ploy and used it against her.

“Jean-Bob?” she called again. A soft but shrill voice pierced the air. She turned behind her and saw a small figure splashing in the moat around the castle. He’d landed somewhere wet, at least. The frog clambered onto her back almost as soon as she hit the water. Odette didn’t know what to say.

“I’m so sorry, Jean-Bob,” she said finally. “Are you all right?”

“C’est rien, princess. It was nothing,” the frog said. Though judging by the way he was shaking she suspected it was far from nothing. “Did you learn anything in the castle?”

“No,” she said glumly. “Only that I chose the wrong tether. Can you still guide us out?”

“Can you still fly?” Jean-Bob replied. Odette looked down at her leg. She would never be able to take off with the now-waterlogged shawl dragging her down. But it hardly mattered now. Once they had made their way onto the grass, she pried it loose with her beak and let it slide back into the water.

“Don’t feel too bad,” the frog told her as they flew back toward the portal. “At least your tether did something. The poor turtle didn’t have a tether the first time he came here. That’s why he doesn’t remember whether he was human before, like I do.”

Odette didn’t reply. In truth, she suspected both the frog and the turtle had long forgotten whoever they had been before they entered this realm. But after everything Jean-Bob had risked for her, she didn’t have the heart to say so. It would be a poor way to repay a friend.

The turtle was waiting for them on the edge of the lake when they touched down.

“You were right, Speed,” she said, looking at the grass. “I should have brought something of my father’s.” The turtle placed one of his scaled feet on hers.

 “Well, you remembered my name,” he said. “So I guess something worked, right?”

Odette didn’t answer right away, because she didn’t fully know the answer. The painful memory of Derek and Bromley’s treehouse, of all things, had broken the enchantment on her mind. That had been her tenuous tether, when her mother’s shawl had failed. But something else had made her want to escape—a desire to remember what had really healed the pain of that event. What had made it better?

She remembered kicking down the treehouse out of spite after seeing the “No Girls Allowed” sign. Even in the moment that hadn’t felt good at all—she’d only hoped it would feel good.

We built a new treehouse, she remembered. All three of us. That had been their parents’ command the following summer. The only other requirement was that they find some way—any way—to share the treehouse fairly. The project had taken almost half the summer. And yet for those few weeks, she, Derek and Bromley had a common goal. And when it was finally complete, the second treehouse had felt more real, more meaningful, than the first.

Was that the key to resisting the illusions of the other realm? A terrible memory that she didn’t want to lose, because it would erase something even more wonderful?

She glanced back at the portal, and another grim thought occurred to her. Perhaps the other cursed swan children had found the portal after all and simply didn’t want to leave. Perhaps the magic had found a way to fill the gaps in their hearts with an illusion of something they wanted, and that was what kept them trapped.

I need a tether that’s both beautiful and painful, she thought. Beautiful, painful and real.

Chapter Text

Dear Mother,

You worry too much what all the wrong people think of you. Save a place for Carabosse at the christening. Be kind to the Lilac Fairy if you see her, but pray you never need her help.

Derek dropped his quill and stared dumbfounded at the letter he’d intended to write to his mother. Since leaving Chamberg more than a week ago, he had already reneged on his promise to send the queen daily updates at least once. Now that he had real news for the first time, and a proper night’s sleep, he could finally make good. Except that all he could write was nonsense.

Odette looked over his shoulder and gave a sympathetic sigh.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It looks like your finding me didn’t break the tongue-tying curse over Chamberg. It just means you’re stuck here with us, on the other side of it.”

“So this is what it’s like, to know something terrible is happening and not be able to talk about it?” Derek said. Odette sat down beside him.

 “You can talk about with us,” she began.

“But you already know!” Derek said. He wasn’t in the mood for an argument, but really, her statement seemed so obvious.

“Yes. That’s the point,” Odette said patiently. She nodded in the direction of Lady Anisha, who was pouring over a different book in the small study beside them. “We could tell you about the swan spell, because by the time you found us, you already knew. You figured out the most crucial pieces on your own. It’s the same reason I could communicate with Lady Anisha and Councilor Andreas. They knew, or they figured it out.”

Odette rubbed her forehead. She seemed to know she wasn’t getting through to him.

“Do you remember the game we used to play as children? King in the Catacombs?” she asked. Derek nodded. “The child playing the king hides. All the other children try to find them. But when one of them does find the king, that child can’t go and tell everyone else. They’re forced to hide with the king, and the other children still have to find the king for themselves.”

“That’s the game we’re playing, then,” Derek said in frustration. “We’re all trapped together in this curse, and the next person who finds us is stuck too?”

“You just need to give someone enough clues so they can figure out the truth of the curse on their own,” she said. “Once they have that, we can share as many details as we want.”

“But my mother should have figured it out by now too,” Derek said. “I told Bromley to take the fastest route back home and to give your father’s note straight to her. He should have gotten there by now.”

Odette pressed her lips together and looked down. She drew in a breath as if to start speaking, but Derek interjected.

“And please don’t say he could have gotten lost. Bromley’s a lot smarter than he lets on.”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” Odette said. She frowned at him, a bit testily. “All I was going to say is that the magic won’t make it easy for him. Every time we bring someone else into the circle, the magic finds a way to make it harder to bring in anyone else.”

“In other words, what worked for me might not work for my mother,” Derek said. “The magic might…what, change the words on your father’s journal entry?”

“I wouldn’t rule it out,” Odette said. “But please don’t give it any ideas.” Judging by the expression on her face, she was only half joking. “Normal magic—the kind that’s legal everywhere except Cymdros—is predictable. It has rules. Laws. Formulas. The Forbidden Arts…” She trailed off, as though groping for the words. “It’s like they’re a living thing. They’re learning. Evolving.”

Intelligent. Purposeful. Patient. That was how King William had described the magic in his journal, Derek remembered. The king had used another word as well…vindictive. Odette folded her arms, and for a moment it looked like she was shivering. He started to put his arm around her, but was suddenly afraid to and couldn’t explain why. If Odette noticed the aborted gesture, she gave no sign.

Derek rotated his quill absentmindedly between his fingers while trying to clear his head.

“How did she do it?” he said finally. “How did the Black Swan inflict our entire kingdom with the same curse?”

“Our best guess is the water,” Odette said with a half shrug. “We think she put something in the wells. She would have done it during a high holiday, when even Chamberg’s foreign diplomats would have come home.”

“It seems like a lot of trouble, just to keep us from knowing what happened to you,” he remarked dryly. “Why not just curse everyone in the castle and stop there?”

From the doorway, he heard a sound like a quiet scoff. Lady Anisha stepped out from the adjacent study.

“Still the naïve, sheltered prince,” she said. “Keeping you two apart was never Odile’s main goal. It was simply a bonus. Odile wants to destabilize two entire kingdoms. What better way, than with a curse that makes anyone trying to warn your citizens of danger spout nonsense or go insane? The fear and confusion that creates is priceless.”

“Meaning there could be even more threats people have been trying to warn us about that we’ve been deaf to?” Derek said.

“Now you’re starting to think like a king,” Lady Anisha said.

“And if the Veiled Kings return and undo the curse, they’ll be seen as saviors,” Derek concluded. Lady Anisha nodded grimly. She walked over to the table where Derek was sitting and set whatever book she’d been reading face down.

“If you want to stop what’s coming, you need to understand exactly how your great-grandparents banished the Veiled Kings the first time and why Odile was left behind,” she said. “But I warn you, it’s an ugly story. You might not think your ancestors so heroic when it’s done.”

When is it not an ugly story? Derek thought.

“I’ve seen plenty of ugliness already,” he said. “I can take a little more.”

“You already know the official history of the Veiled Kings’ War,” Lady Anisha said. They were at the top of the observatory tower now, with a full view of the night sky in the glass dome above. Somehow it felt easier to talk about the Forbidden Arts and ancient tyrants here, beneath a blanket of moonlight and starlight. A swollen crescent moon shimmered in the basin on the floor, filled with water from Rothbart’s lake. That water allowed Odette to remain human even though—for all they knew—it was the middle of the afternoon on Rothbart’s real lake.

“The Veiled Kings ruled the Seven Isles of Cymdros for over four centuries,” Lady Anisha continued. “It was a glorious and horrific age. They made wondrous things happen, thanks to the power of the Forbidden Arts. But it came at a price for some of their subjects.”

“The Forbidden Arts are fueled by desire,” Odette explained. “The stronger you want something, the stronger they get. And the Veiled Kings knew how to harness that desire from other people as well as themselves. But this meant they could never make all their subjects happy. Someone always had to be left wanting.”

“At first the Veiled Kings would play the more powerful houses against each other, drawing strength from their ambitions and rivalries,” Lady Anisha said. “But eventually even that wasn’t enough power for them. So they started taking random prisoners—fourteen every year, two from each island. And every year on the Winter Solstice, they’d release half the prisoners and execute the other half.”

“It was a brilliant tactic,” Odette said. “For an entire year, every prisoner had the same intense wish, to be one of the lucky ones to survive. And the Veiled Kings could draw from that.”

“And not only the prisoners,” Derek said quietly. “Their families wished that too.”

Odette nodded.

“If they had only spared one person, some of the prisoners and their families might have grown resigned to death,” Lady Anisha said. “But half? That’s a big enough chance to keep hope and desire alive.”’

“The Veiled Kings lost their grip after the first revolt, about a hundred fifty years ago,” Odette said. “If they’d just quietly put the revolt down, or even publicly executed the ringleaders, people would have moved on. But they sank an entire island, just to prove a point. Eight thousand people lived on Loerenys. Everyone in the kingdom knew someone there. It was enough for people to realize that no one was really safe. That’s why my great-grandfather Siegfried was able to gain so many followers for the second revolt.”

“Including my great-grandmother, Queen Moira,” Derek said.

“Yes,” Lady Anisha said. “That’s one of the few parts the songs and storytellers get right. Chamberg came to our kingdom’s aid when no one else would.”

“The war lasted for five years, but there wasn’t a single real battle,” she continued. “Siegfried knew his forces would be annihilated in an open confrontation with the Veiled Kings. So he tried to wear them down with sneak attacks and strategic hit-and-run operations. Even Queen Moira’s soldiers never drew the Veiled Kings’ armies into open battle.”

That didn’t surprise Derek. Queen Moira was legendary as a warrior queen, and she had fought plenty of battles in her time. But even Derek knew that Chamberg’s most important role in the Veiled Kings’ War wasn’t to supply weapons or soldiers. It was to provide sanctuary to thousands of refugees who fled Cymdros to escape the war and the Veiled Kings’ wrath. Many had chosen to stay, and their descendants still lived in Chamberg today. The blood tying their two kingdoms together ran thick.

“We won by stealth, not strength,” Odette said. “That’s the part that never gets talked about. If you only go by the songs and tapestries, you’d think Siegfried and Moira beat them in some glorious battle at midnight, where everything was almost lost until Siegfried pulled out a powerful orb and banished the Veiled Kings into some subterranean cave.”

“Noon,” Derek corrected her. “The final battle was at noon.” Odette stared at him in disbelief.

“Derek, are you seriously lecturing me about my own kingdom’s history?” she asked. Derek held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

“I’ve heard the songs too,” he said. “‘They darkened the sky and hid the moon, making starless midnight at the height of noon.’ The Veiled Kings just made it look like it was midnight as a scare tactic. And you said this isn’t real history, anyway.”

Odette narrowed her eyes. Derek resisted the urge to smirk, but he had to admit he’d missed their verbal sparring matches, and he was willing to bet Odette had missed them too. Eventually Odette gave a dismissive shrug.

“Fine, if that’s how the bards in Chamberg tell it,” she said. “The point is, it’s all embellished rot. Siegfried and Moira defeated the Veiled Kings inside their own castle, and they did it through subterfuge.”

“They had a spy,” Lady Anisha said. “It wasn’t easy, getting a real spy inside the Veiled Kings fortress. The castle had plenty of human servants and guards, but as a rule they were all bewitched. This spy spent over a decade working his way up the ranks. All the while he had to convince his superiors he was under their spell while never being exposed to it.”

“The spy was never privy to the Veiled Kings’ secret councils,” Odette said. “But he succeeded because he befriended their princess, who still a child.”

“Odile,” Derek said.

“We don’t know her exact age back then, but the records suggest she was somewhere between six and ten,” Lady Anisha said. “Odile confided things to the spy that no one had guessed before. Like the fact that the Veiled Kings and their families abandoned the castle every month, on the night of the full moon. They retreated back into their own realm because the full moon was too painful for them. The castle’s defenses, its monstrous guardians, even the kings’ shapes and voices—they were all illusions on those nights.”

“And that there was a way to trap the Veiled Kings in that realm,” Odette added. “I don’t know the exact mechanics, but the Veiled Kings used some of kind of blood magic to create their portals. Siegfried’s spy was also trained in the Forbidden Arts. He figured out that by cursing their blood, he could make it so that the next time any of them created a portal, it would be a one-way trip. The portal would seal, and none of the Veiled Ones would be able to create another portal again.”

“Of course the spy used Odile’s blood,” Lady Anisha said with grimace. “Children fall down and cut themselves all the time.”

Derek felt a cold shudder pass down his spine.

“So the next time there was a full moon, the Veiled Kings made their portal and left…except for Odile,” he said slowly. “That’s why she was left behind. The magic wouldn’t let her through, would it?”

Lady Anisha shook her head.

“Somehow, the magic knew Odile was involved in her family’s downfall. The portal wouldn’t open for her. It exiled her to our world instead, as a punishment.”

The faithless curtain punishes betrayal, Derek remembered. Even the unwitting betrayal of a small, duped child. The magic doesn’t care about intent. He closed his eyes. He could picture the scene of victory now, and it looked nothing like the tapestry in King William’s winter palace. It looked like a little girl kneeling in front of an invisible wall, clawing at the air and crying for her family.

“So our great-grandparents didn’t just use stealth to win the war,” Derek said finally. “They used the Forbidden Arts and then lied about it.”

“You need to understand,” Lady Anisha said. “The people of Cymdros were desperate. Siegfried had already asked for magical help from the mages in Merduin, but they refused. The anti-magic purists didn’t come into power on Cymdros until after the war. And by then Siegfried was under enormous pressure to appease them.”

Odette folded her hands over her knees and looked down.

“You asked me earlier why the University of Merduin let me use this floating lunar tower to get around Rothbart’s spell,” she said quietly. “Lady Anisha negotiated a deal on my behalf this summer. They asked for a favor in return. They asked me to tell our people the true story of how we overthrew the Veiled Kings. Dispel the ancient rulers’ secret shadows, they said. It might cost me a throne, but I agreed.”

Filling Derek in on the rest of Odile’s history—a period spanning over a century—took surprisingly little time. Odile had left a trail of aliases in her wake, which Odette and Lady Anisha had spent most of the last two months trying to piece together.

She disappeared for nearly a decade after the war and then reappeared as a student at the University of Merduin. She had a different name and very likely a different face. The name Odile meant nothing to the mages at Merduin today. But a few remembered stories of a young novice named Sorsha from a century earlier. A novice with a flair for transfiguration, who always wrote with a black quill and styled herself the Black Swan in the university’s magical tournaments.

She didn’t stay at the university for long. Just long enough to gain admission to its restricted Hall of Whispering Lanterns, where the most advanced students learned to fight dark magic. Each of the nine lanterns in the room was lit not by a flame, but by a tiny fragment of the Forbidden Arts. Just enough for training and experiments, the professors had claimed.

“She stole one, didn’t she?” Derek said.

“She stole all of them,” Odette replied. “It set the university back decades in their power to combat dark magic. But we can’t find any trace of her doing anything with them once she had them. As far as we can guess, Odile only used them to keep transforming at will, so her original body wouldn’t age. That’s a trick only the Forbidden Arts can do.”

“So her theft was just a play for time,” Derek said.

“If there’s one thing we’re certain of, it’s that Odile is very, very good at biding her time,” Lady Anisha said.

“We think what she really wanted was to tear open the curtain between our worlds to bring her family back,” Odette said. “But that was the one thing she couldn’t do, even with the Forbidden Arts. The curse on her blood forbade it.”

“She needed someone else to do that for her,” Derek said. “Hence the need for Rothbart.”

“Exactly,” Odette replied. “She certainly took her time finding him, though. Seventy years, at least. An entire generation of Cymdrosi grew up and died before she made her next move.”

“We think that was intentional too,” Lady Anisha said. “There are a plenty of people who would have killed to get their hands on the Forbidden Arts she carried. But she waited. I think she was waiting for people to forget the terror of living under the Veiled Kings. Perhaps even waiting for a king like William the Second, who would want to bring just a little magic back.”

Odile had introduced herself to Rothbart as a rebellious young acolyte, chafing against the strict rules of the University of Merduin. For nearly a decade, she had let him believe he was tutoring her, taking her under his wing until he even called her daughter. And when the time was right, she arranged for them to discover, together, the cache of the Forbidden Arts she had kept hidden for almost a century.

And when Rothbart began preparing for his first assault on William’s throne, when Odette was just a few months old, Odile changed her face one final time. Neither Odette nor Lady Anisha knew why Odile had pretended to abandon Rothbart when he finally acquired the Forbidden Arts, and then taken on the form of a mute old woman named Bridget offering to be his servant. Perhaps she thought Rothbart had not been completely honest with her. Perhaps she thought he would let more things slip, if he thought she was a hapless drudge he could underestimate and dismiss. But whatever the reason, Rothbart had apparently never made the connection between the two women. He simply thought Odile had gotten cold feet at the end of their journey.

What happened next was well known to Derek. Rothbart had indeed ripped open an eldritch portal, releasing even more of the Forbidden Arts into Cymdros. But barely an hour after the portal opened, King William’s forces arrived to destroy it. His soldiers hadn’t fully understood how to destroy it—which was likely why a sliver of the portal remained open, even after the soldiers smashed every arcane-looking object they could find. But the damage was done. The tiny crack that remained open wasn’t nearly wide enough to let the Veiled Ones cross over whole. Whatever chance Odile had of reuniting with her family was gone.

“But the curse that turned twelve children into swans,” Derek said. “Wouldn’t Odile have needed some power left to…”

His voice trailed off as Odette and Lady Anisha exchanged a look.

“We don’t think Odile meant for that to happen,” Lady Anisha said slowly. “We think that was the Forbidden Arts acting on their own.”

“Do you remember when I said the Forbidden Arts are like a living thing? That they can learn?” Odette said. “We think at the last moment, the Forbidden Arts that made it into our world latched onto Odile’s grief and rage. They couldn’t give her what she really wanted anymore, so in a last gasp they did what they thought was the next closest thing.”

“Vengeance,” Derek said. “They stole the symbol of the Swan Kings, and made a mockery of it for their own curse. And they cursed children to be separated from their families…because Odile was a child when she was separated from hers.”

The silence hung for a long time after that.

“But Rothbart and Odile—or Bridget—did find a way to get the portal open again and reclaim the Forbidden Arts,” Derek said. “The portal you went through on Nefynmor has been open for over a year. Why haven’t the Veiled Kings come back yet?”

“Because Odile still has work to do,” Lady Anisha said. “Remember, the Veiled Ones want Rothbart to be king. And they want him to be a terrible king.”

Derek tapped his finger against the floor. Something else was nagging at the corner of his mind. Odette gave him an odd look but waited for him to speak.

“Matthias Windham,” he said finally. “The sorcerer I met in Luthedain. He said Cymdros would bow to a warlock king, and that his allies would execute your Council and put all their heads on spikes.”

This time it was Odette’s turn to shudder. She looked pale but not surprised.

“Odile has built quite a network of henchman over the years,” she said “We think they have plenty of horrors planned for Cymdros, but she’ll make sure Rothbart is blamed for all of them once he’s king. Then the Veiled Kings can sweep in and depose him, and our people will worship them for it.”

The twice-faithless daughter, Derek thought. Odile had unwittingly betrayed her blood family, but she would happily betray Rothbart, the man who once called her daughter as well. And what better way to prove her love, then to hand her ancestors back the kingdom they had lost, along with a second kingdom they could bend to their will?

“She plans to turn Chamberg into a vassal state,” Derek said. “Matthias said they wanted an ally, but I know what he meant.”

Lady Anisha nodded and let out another quiet scoff.

“They’ll let you keep your throne, but you would be little more than a puppet,” she said. “Odile wants to destroy House Cygnus. She’ll settle for the humiliation of House Rowan.”

Odette now sat with her fingers crossed over her lips, leaning forward. She looked deep in thought.

“Which means it’s time for you to go home,” she said at last. Derek felt his chest constrict. Of course he should head back to Chamberg; he had information his people needed, even if he would have to perform ridiculous verbal gymnastics to share it with anyone. All the same, he felt as though he’d just gotten here. He didn’t want to leave their circle of confidence so soon. Unless...

“Will you come with me?” he asked. “Both of you?”

“To your mother’s palace?” Odette asked. She and Lady Anisha both looked skeptical.

“It’s like you told Councilor Andreas,” Derek argued. “We need to reforge the old friendships. Odile’s counting on isolating our kingdoms with her separate curses. We need my mother and your Council to talk to each other, and they’re much more likely to do that with you in the room.”

“The logistics would be tricky,” Odette pointed out. “Even if I went with you as a human right now, there’s no guarantee I’d stay human. A cloud could always cover the moon again. It would be simpler if I just flew, but—”

“Good. I was counting on that,” Derek said. He felt a little bad about cutting her off, but an idea was building momentum in his head. Odette looked at him quizzically. A moment later her lips widened, and he knew she’d guessed his thoughts. If they timed things right and the weather was on their side, they wouldn’t have to say anything about her curse at all. They could make it obvious for the entire room.

Derek sat at his study table again, rereading the letter he’d finally managed to write. Riddles and nonsense, but at least it was nonsense he could control. He heard Odette and Lady Anisha shuffling upstairs. They were unrolling a large tarp to cover the basin and block the moonlight. He wondered what Odette was feeling right now. The next time he saw her, she would have wings instead of arms.

Dear Mother,

The mission you sent me on was only partially successful. I found a spot for the games next May. It’s inside a vale, but the owners are demanding a heavy tribute in blood and feathers. They’re also insisting on a lengthy puppet show as part of the entertainment. Our neighbors worked with them once, and they think we should turn them down. Uncle Bill would agree if he were still alive. I hope you were able to find his last letter.

I am sending my favorite pen and my heart with this. I hope to see you in a few days. Please continue calling off all hunting parties until I return, and whatever you do, don’t drink the water I’m sending with this. You’ll know what to do if you wait.

Your son,
Fletcher

Chapter Text

Chamberg, the royal palace. Late October.

Queen Uberta clenched her fist beneath the table where she thought no one could see, and wished the two people advising her right now weren’t a cynic and a buffoon. Not for the first time, she also wished one of her predecessors hadn’t seen fit to ban corporal punishment for nonviolent offenses. A flogging would be extreme, but watching Bromley and Lord Rogers squirm for a day or so in the stocks might mollify her growing fury.

“They’re also insisting on a lengthy puppet show as part of the entertainment,” Rogers read from Derek’s most recent letter. “Well, it’s obvious what that line means. Our enemies have kidnapped the crown prince’s favorite sock toys.”

“Could you not be a sarcastic know-it-all for two bloody minutes?” Bromley demanded. Uberta rose and held up her hand.

“For the first and I dearly hope last time, I agree with Bromley,” she interjected. “Stop trying to sound smarter than you are, Lord Rogers, and just admit you’re as clueless as the rest of us. And I’m not finished with you either,” she said, rounding on Bromley. To her satisfaction, she saw a smirk evaporate from the younger man’s face before it had even finished forming.

“I’ve told you everything I—” Bromley began.

“You have told me nothing,” Uberta said crisply. “Apart from the fact that you left my son and your prince, to pass along a message that makes no sense to any of us. Or did he really send you back just to tell us to stop hunting waterfowl?”

“Derek ordered me to come back before him. He said it was critical to the kingdom’s safety,” Bromley said.

“Derek is not the queen of Chamberg. Or did you forget that too?” Uberta returned “You follow my orders first. And I ordered you to protect him with your life, and whatever other debatable skills you might have.”

Uberta sat down again. Two nonsensical messages had fallen into her lap today. One Bromley had delivered that morning, breathless and barely coherent, but he’d insisted it was written by the late King William. The second—in Derek’s handwriting, but with his alias Fletcher—had arrived barely an hour ago, carried by the swan.

The swan. Of course, she had to deal with that now too. Still in her study, sitting on a large pillow beneath the window, with an inexplicable flask of water around its neck. Uberta had tried to shoo it away after retrieving the note, but Bromley had insisted that it stay. Predictably, he had not been able to explain why. “It’s the pen,” was all he could manage. Well, that only told her the swan was female, which she probably could have figured out herself if she really wanted to.

Thankfully the swan hadn’t shed any feathers or, even worse, the grassy brown droppings those animals were famous for. But it unnerved her. Its eyes darted back and forth between the humans in the room, as though it actually cared what they were saying.

Uberta fingered the second note again, the one that was supposed to be from King William. It was several pages thick, but every page except the first was blank. She looked at Bromley again, forcing as much calm into her voice as she could manage.

“Bromley, you told me this morning that this note was a private journal entry from King William, and that it had the answers to everything. You practically forced it into my hands, when I had barely begun breakfast, and said that Derek insisted I read it immediately,” she said. Bromley nodded. “And now you’re saying it’s not.”

“I thought it was, but that’s not what the king wrote! He didn’t write a poem!” Bromley exclaimed. That she could believe, Uberta thought. King William was many things, but a poet was not one of them. And she had certainly never known him to write nursery rhymes, even in his most obnoxious stages of new fatherhood.

“So you’re saying someone switched the note when you weren’t looking?” Uberta asked. Though she knew that explanation didn’t make sense either; Bromley’s note had been sealed with Derek’s signet ring. So unless someone had stolen that too…

Uberta studied the note again. She’d tried to conceal from Bromley how excited she had felt at the thought that the note was from William. Even an obsolete note, even one that wasn’t originally meant for her, anything to see her old friend’s handwriting again. But instead, she was treated to a vicious mockery:

Twelve little children went to the lake
One stayed home, for shame, for shame
Oh, what a sweet little dancing game
Those twelve young featherlight souls did make.

Twenty-four little hearts did break
But one alone would bear the blame:
The widowed king who knew every name
Of the twelve little children who flew from the lake.

“I realize you can’t tell us what the note originally said,” Uberta said patiently. “You’ve tried. But can you at least tell us if any of this is true?”

“All of it. It’s all true,” Bromley said.

“And does it have anything to do with King William’s death? Or Chamberg’s curse? Or…anything?” she pressed.

Bromley opened his mouth. He appeared to be concentrating very hard.

“It means…what it’s saying is…we’ll all fall asleep for a hundred years in a palace of thorns because of a contraband spindle.” Bromley put his head in his hands, looking defeated. Whatever he knew, he couldn’t share it. Chamberg’s hear no evil curse had put its own words in his mouth. Uberta was so exhausted with this nonsense.

Before Uberta could prevent it, the swan had plucked the letter out of her hand and dropped it on the floor in front of the fireplace.

“Are you sure that’s a—” Rogers began.

“Oh, let the swan look at it. It’s not as though we’re doing anything useful with it,” she said.

The swan began tapping its beak against the note. Bromley crouched down to peer more closely. A moment later, he waved them over and pointed at the line where the swan was tapping its beak. One stayed home, for shame, for shame.

“It’s her,” he said emphatically. “That line is about her.”

“Who?” Rogers demanded. “Her Majesty? Or the swan?”

“No—yes, it’s about the swan. Derek’s favorite pen and his heart, don’t you get it yet?” Bromley said.

The swan buried its beak in its wing until it had ripped out a feather. It held the feather over the page and then it looked at Bromley expectantly. Bromley blinked, nonplussed, but only for a moment. Before Uberta realized what he was doing, he’d snatched the jar of ink off her desk. Uberta watched, dumbstruck, as the swan dipped its feather into the ink and with great care drew a shape like a crescent.

“It’s a moon…” she said softly, before she could stop herself. The swan looked at her, with what Uberta could have sworn was a hopeful expression. Then the swan wriggled the small flask of water off its neck and nudged it toward Uberta’s feet. It hopped toward the window again, where a small patch of moonlight had filtered its way into the study. It raised its wings and nodded in the direction of the water flask again.

“I think…” Bromley said slowly, “I think she wants you to pour the water on her wings.” Uberta looked at Bromley, half wondering if he was speaking curse-induced nonsense again. But Bromley picked the flask off the floor and handed it to her. “I really think it needs to be you, Your Majesty.”

Uberta closed her eyes. She’d heard so much incoherent babble since Chamberg had been cursed, she was now starting to take some of it seriously. Still, she at least trusted the loyalty of Bromley and Lord Rogers. If she wound up looking ridiculous, the most she had to fear from them were a few snide comments in private.

The swan spread out its wings eagerly in front of the window. What have I descended to? Uberta wondered. Swallowing her pride, Uberta removed the cork and splashed a few large drops on the swan’s wings.

A blinding stream of amber light flooded the room. Uberta tried to cover her eyes, but her arm had barely reached her face before the light vanished. The swan had vanished as well. Odette, the daughter of King William the Second and crown princess of Cymdros, stood in its place. She was dressed informally and looked slightly worse for wear but otherwise herself.

“Good evening, Your Majesty,” Odette said cheerfully. “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you all more notice that I was listening.”

“Your Highness,” Rogers said finally. “This is awkward.”

Some things never changed, Odette thought. After overcoming her surprise, Uberta had been all tearful exclamations and hugs. Of course Odette would remain at the palace; why on earth would she return to a drafty academics’ tower? They could find a decent workaround for her swan curse right here. And what sort of birthday celebration would she like? She would turn nineteen in three weeks, and Uberta had always wanted to throw a birthday party for a daughter. Odette struggled to get a word in edgewise, but she had to admit it felt…wonderful.

However, this also meant she had barely enough time to share anything but the most critical details when Derek and Lady Anisha arrived an hour later. They had taken a longer way back, using the tower’s exit to Rothbart’s lake and then walking to the palace. Odette had initially opposed the idea. (What if you’re seen? Why do you think I led you to the portal on Cymdros and not right to that madman’s lair?) But unlike her, they couldn’t fly, and Rothbart’s lake was on the outskirts of Chamberg. Unless they could find a mage to create another portal on short notice, it was the only viable route. Odette had scouted the area by air before they left and reassured herself that Rothbart, Bridget-Odile and their alligators were nowhere in sight. Still, she was relieved to see their much-loved figures in the doorframe of Uberta’s study.

“So we’re all on the same page now?” Derek asked, when Queen Uberta released her son from one of her notoriously diaphragm-crushing hugs.

“If by same page you mean your betrothed can fly, twelve of her subjects beat her to it and a horde of phantoms from another world wants to control both our kingdoms, then yes,” Rogers said. “Happily, we’re all caught up.”

“King William’s note. Did it—” Derek glanced at the table. His face darkened when he saw the top page, blank except for the eight lines that had not been there before.

“It didn’t explain anything,” the queen said. “Bromley did his best, to be fair.”

“It was the magic. It erased the words and wrote something else,” Derek said. He glanced at Odette. “You were right. It’s working against us.”

“But we made it fight this time,” Odette said. As out of place as it felt, she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. In less than a week, the number of people who knew the truth about her kingdom’s curse and its origins had more than doubled. And most of those people were in this room. The circle is getting wider, she thought.

Before the silence stretched on too long, Queen Uberta stepped past her son and approached Lady Anisha, a little tentatively.

“Lady Langley,” she began, “I feel terrible that your husband was killed inside our borders. Captain Langley was well loved in Chamberg as well. I believe some of our soldiers mourned his death even more deeply than King William’s.”

Lady Anisha’s eyes watered. Her throat sounded constricted when she answered, “Thank you, Your Majesty. I hadn’t known that.”

Queen Uberta took Lady Anisha’s hand, and a moment later they were sharing a tight embrace. It should have looked strange, Odette thought, considering that the two women had never met and their personalities were leagues apart. But instead it looked like the most natural thing in the world. Then Odette remembered that Uberta was a widow as well.

“And of course, you can have asylum in Chamberg if you still want that,” Uberta said when they broke apart. “Derek passed on Odette’s request months ago. I’m sure we can find a place for someone with your horse skills. Most of our best paddocks are further south, but perhaps you’d rather remain in the capital?”

Lady Anisha smiled wanly.

“Yes, about that…” she said. “We need to return to Cymdros first. We have some unfinished business there.”

Uberta pulled away. She turned to Odette, looking crestfallen.

“But you only just made it back!” she protested. “We have so many things to celebrate, and Chamberg is so much safer…”

“It’s the parents,” Odette said quickly. “We know how to break the spell on all twelve children cursed to become swans, but we need their parents to do it. We sent a message to Councilor Andreas last night, asking him to bring them to my father’s winter palace. I need to make sure the message went through.”

Derek rose beside her. She felt his fingers close around hers, and a warmth settled in her chest.

“I’m going too,” he said. “The Council of Cymdros may have their doubts about me, but they need to know Chamberg is still their ally.”

“But surely we could invite them all here,” Uberta offered. Derek shook his head.

“Half the nobles on Cymdros are afraid their kingdom will be an afterthought if they merge with Chamberg, because they’re an island nation. Out of sight, out of mind. We need to go to them, to prove they matter to us. But I have to ask—” He turned to Lady Anisha. “Are you sure you want to go? Won’t the Council try to arrest you for breaking their laws and asking the mages of Merduin for help?”

“Technically, I haven’t broken any laws,” Lady Anisha pointed out. “Neither Odette nor I have cast a single spell in our lives. As for the rest…citizens of Cymdros are allowed to seek magical help from others under extreme circumstances, as long that magic isn’t performed on Cymdrosi soil.”

“It’s grey area,” Odette admitted. “No one would question that I’m in danger right now, but Lady Anisha doesn’t have that excuse. Which is why I asked Derek to grant her asylum in Chamberg if she needed it. I’m grateful you both agreed,” she added, nodding to the queen.

Uberta glanced out the window, and then back at Odette. “How long do you have, before…”

Odette looked at Derek before answering, and he nodded.

“To be honest, I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m only supposed to be human as long as the moon is shining on Rothbart’s lake. The tower’s magic usually fixes that. But when we all left the tower today, Derek left the basin of water from Rothbart’s lake covered up, so the moon there wouldn’t shine on it anymore.”

“I see. So you’ll become a swan again in the morning,” Uberta said.

“Or the next time a cloud covers the moon,” Odette replied, now glancing at the window herself. It wasn’t a clear night. She was a little surprised she’d stayed human this long.

“You must be planning on flying to Cymdros, then,” the queen said. “Well, I suppose being a swan has certain advantages.” If Uberta thought eavesdropping was one of those advantages, she was polite enough not to say so. She paused before adding, with a chill tone, “And the warlock? What do you plan on doing with him?”

Odette swallowed. She hadn’t told anyone about what happened during her meetings with Baron von Rothbart, which were growing more frequent. She hadn’t been returning to his lake every night. Choosing to remain a swan for an entire month at the beginning of her curse had set a cold but useful precedent. But now she feared if she didn’t return with some regularity, he would become suspicious. She had heard Bridget-Odile whispering in his ear, telling him that William’s daughter would never break, that he needed to try another violent assault on Cymdros if he wanted the throne. So for a few nights every week, Odette needed to play a part—to let him gloat, let him triumph, let him think she despised her wings and craved a humanity he still believed only he could offer.

“That really depends on him,” she answered finally. “Rothbart is the only one with enough power to close the portal and end the Veiled Kings’ threat permanently. If we can convince him his allies on the other side are planning to betray him, he might do it. But it’s unlikely.”

“Why?” Bromley interjected.

“Because even if he believed us, to close the portal he’d need to send back nearly all the dark magic he’s acquired,” Derek answered beside her. “What’s left behind would fizzle out in a few months without a channel to the other side. He’d be little more than a hedge wizard.”

“Not exactly the mythic Great Animal of nightmares,” Rogers said. “You’re really going to try, aren’t you?”

“Mythic beast or not, Rothbart will always be my father’s killer,” Odette replied. “And yes, I’m going to try.”