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The carriage rumbled to a halt, and my abductor threw open the door. Guards in uniforms—peaked black caps and double-breasted maroon coats—hurried to surrounded us. Tall, crenelated walls encircled us on all sides, and the iron gate that had allowed us entry was already closing. My captor descended to the cobbled drive and extended a hand to me—a gesture more courteous and graceful than his former brutish dealings. Confused but curious, I took his hand and stepped down into the paved courtyard.
My kidnapper dropped his cloak’s black hood, revealing a young face framed by wavy, dark hair. Fierce black eyes regarded me from beneath his elegant brows. His stare seemed to reach inside and lay open my soul. I shuddered and dropped his hand.
“I apologize, Lady Thunder, for your harsh treatment.”
My heart leapt into my throat and pulsed, hot and burning. How does he know me?
Long and lean, he reminded me of a black heron eying a tasty fish. He raised his chin and peered down his long nose. “My lady, Křisnová Tereza Jagiellon, Empress of Bonhemm, asked me to fetch you, and under no circumstances was I to allow you the opportunity to refuse or escape.”
“The empress? How does she know who I am?” I didn’t bother denying the truth of my identity. “And who are you?”
He swept a hand across his chest, bowed, and rose in one fluid, graceful movement. “Otokar Kouzlo, the court’s Magician.”
The fire in my throat turned to ice in an instant. I gasped and stumbled back. “M-Magician?”
Otokar nodded, and a swath of dark hair fell over his brow in a roguish way. Something about his sudden dishevelment eased my dread. So did his grin. “Of course. How else do you think Tereza and I were able to find you?”
Without waiting for an answer, he turned on his heel, and his dark robes swished around his feet. He gestured for me to follow and led us through a slim archway in one of the surrounding walls. I hadn’t noticed the doorway before, but the passage opened to another, larger courtyard ringing a fountain spewing water in tall plumes. Beyond the fountain, a grand staircase rose to meet a set of heavy doors that opened as we approached.
Two men in servant’s attire bent their knees as we passed into an interior hallway. Dark shadows fell over marble floors, and the atmosphere reminded me of the inside of the Katedrála z Vzrostl Syn. Otokar paced beside me like a tall, dark wraith.
“I’ve been taken against my will before,” I said in hushed tones. “It didn’t go well for me.”
My escort peered at me from the corner of his eye. “We mean you no harm, m’lady, if that is your worry.”
“Of course that’s my worry. Why did the empress bring me here this way? She could’ve extended an invitation. It would’ve been much less alarming.”
“Would it? Would you have come if she had sent a messenger? Or would you have run like a rabbit sensing a fox?”
I bit my lip and looked away. We turned a corner and climbed a steep staircase. Light spilled into the second-floor hallway, revealing gold tones in the plush carpets and wallpaper. A cathedral-sized window framed the wall at the hall’s opposite end, and sunshine burned through clear glass panes. A flutter of hope awoke in my belly. Perhaps the empress and her Magician meant me no harm, after all. I swallowed my denial and answered Otokar plainly. “You’re right. I would have run.”
“For someone who seems to crave anonymity, you did a terrible job of hiding. Do you not know we could sense you out in that field, grasping for the thunder and storms?”
Stunned by his claim, I stumbled and lurched against him. He grabbed my elbow, holding me steady until I regained my footing. We stopped next to a potted fern perched atop a tall plantstand. More bristling green fronds adorned the hallway, placed evenly against the walls between doorways and framed portraits of Bonhemmish royalty. “What do you mean you sensed me?”
The Magician’s broad mouth turned down, but a playful light shone in his eye. “Tereza will be angry I told you so much already. She wanted to be the one to reveal everything to you. Might I beg you for patience, m’lady?” He winked. “Save me from the wrath of the empress?”
Moments before Otokar had me fearing for my life. Now he made me want to laugh. Was it Magic, or simply his natural charm? “I don’t owe you any favors.”
He ducked his head and lowered his gaze, playing humble. “You do not. But the issue is irrelevant, now.” He raised his knuckles and rapped on the door beside us. A feminine voice answered from within, and the door opened. He motioned for me to enter, and I stepped past a waiting footman into a sweeping, sunny room full of light and color. Thoughts of oyster shells came to mind as I noted the fabrics, paintings, and fixtures all done up in nacre iridescence, a cacophony of pastel, rainbow hues. At the center of it all sat a beautiful young woman, a dark pearl among the light.
Not knowing Bonhemmish court protocol, I paused and averted my eyes. I struggled to keep my mouth closed and not gape at the splendor any more than I already had. I must look like a complete rustic idiot. Fallstaff had been grand, but it had never been a castle or a palace. We had been comfortable there, and I never wanted for anything, but compared to Prigha Castle’s magnificence, my former home had been humbler than I’d realized.
Since fleeing Fallstaff, I’d lived in an attic, a ship’s hold, roadside camps, and a shabby apartment. Perhaps part of me had forgotten places like this still existed.
Otokar appeared at my side and issued another of his graceful bows. I shifted into a curtsey and spotted several loose threads along the hem of my trousers. Mud had dried in crusted splotches on the tips of my boots, and several dark spots of dubious nature stained my cuffs. A flush rose in my cheeks, but I endured the empress’s scrutiny in silence.
Like a bird, she twittered something at Otokar. He answered in his low rumbling voice and motioned to me. “May I present Evelyn Stormbourne,” he said in Inselgrish. “Lady of Thunder, Crown Princess of Inselgrau.”
I straightened my spine and held myself rigid while the Empress of Bonhemm smiled as though she had a secret. Ebony curls crowned her head, and a sparkling comb pinned her complicated coiffure in place. A faint olive tint relieved the paleness of her creamy complexion, and her eyes were dark but bright. “Welcome, Lady Thunder.” Her melodious voice revealed undercurrents of a Bonhemmish accent even thicker than Otokar’s. Everything about her was lovely, petite, and perfect. “I have been so anxious to meet you, although I suspect you will not say the same about me.”
“Your Highness, you have me at a disadvantage. I wasn’t aware you knew of me.”
She rose from her chair, a golden padded settee, and approached. Her blue gown captured the color of the clear sky outside, and I half expected her to sprout wings and flutter away like a dragonfly. “Please call me Tereza. I did not bring you here for such formalities. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
I swallowed an expression of surprise and nodded. “Then please call me Evelyn—Evie. It’s difficult to accept a title when I have no throne.”
Tereza snorted and rolled her eyes in an exceedingly unroyal expression. “You may be a long way from your homeland, but that does not change who you are, or what you are.”
I paused and contemplated her meaning. “What I am, Highness?”
She scowled. “I told you not to call me that. Come.” She motioned to a table and chairs nearby, all pale wood inlaid with mother of pearl accents. “I have ordered luncheon.”
Otokar pulled out a chair for the empress then for me. “May I take your cloak?”
I fingered my Thunder Cloak’s lapel and shifted my feet “I’d, um—I’d rather keep it with me.”
The Magician’s eyebrow twitched, but he backed away and drew out his own seat. Servants scurried, bringing trays laden with roasted hen, potatoes, and a tureen of soup. “Let us not pretend,” Tereza said. “I know your father was the Lord of Thunder, that he was one of the last elementals gods who still had any claim to power. I also know what you have been trying to do in that field outside the city. Otokar can sense you.” She flapped her hand at our imposing companion and pointed at herself. “Even I can sense you.”
I blinked at her, wide-eyed. “You can sense me?”
She removed a napkin from the table, shook it out, and laid it in her lap. A servant leaned in and poured wine from a shimmering bottle the color of a sunrise. He made his way around the table, filling my goblet and Otokar’s as well. “We may not have the god’s ways in Bonhemm anymore,” she said, “but we are still their descendants. My great-great-grandfather was Lord of Ore. Iron, lead, copper, silver, gold—he could...what is the word?” She glanced at Otokar and waggled her fingers.
He grinned. “Manipulate, I think.”
“Yes, yes.” The empress rolled her eyes again. She plucked a roll from her plate and tore it open. “Man-ip-u-late. He could find these metals anywhere, and he could make them into anything.” She snapped her fingers. “Simple as that. Very useful.”
“But you don’t have those ways anymore?” I nearly bit my tongue for asking something so gauche.
She flicked an eyebrow in the way an annoyed horse flicks an ear. “I do not. Although I would say I am still very...em...sensitive.” Her gaze flashed to Otokar. “Sensitive?”
Otokar flipped an affirmative wave and forked up a slice of meat. Someone had filled my plate with a quarter of roasted bird and several small potatoes gleaming in butter. For propriety’s sake, I picked up my fork and stabbed a potato that smelled of rosemary. My formerly absent appetite stirred and pronounced its interest.
“So,” I said. “You’re sensitive to metals. What does that mean, exactly?”
Tereza scooted to the edge of her seat. “If you were to hide a bit of iron in this room, I could find it, perhaps, the way a hunting dog finds a pheasant in the tall grass.”
“You smell it?”
“No, do not be ridiculous. I sense it, as if I have an...em, an itch. When I come close to the iron, or the copper, the itch becomes stronger.” She peered at the ceiling, and her gaze lost its focus. “Otokar, you are wearing your silver dagger today. Am I correct?”
The Magician gulped the bite he’d been chewing and brushed his napkin over his lips. “Yes, m’lady.”
Tereza’s gaze dropped to me. “My ancestor could have turned his dagger into a cuff, or a necklace, or a useless lump simply by thinking about it.”
“But not you?”
Her lips thinned. “No. Not me.”
“I don’t mean to be rude, it’s only that I’ve never met anyone remotely like me—someone descended from the old gods. I’ve come to realize I lived a very sheltered life before my father’s death.”
“Hmm....” She arched a sleek black eyebrow. “Indeed. Whereas the history of the gods was a mandatory part of my education, as well as the study of their ancestry and the state of their powers today. The Lord of Thunder was truly one of the last. The people of Inselgrau must have been very...em....”
“Devout,” Otokar offered for her. “They must have had substantial faith.”
“‘Had’ being the pivotal word,” I said. “Whatever regard our people had for my father failed upon his death. I was unceremoniously ousted.”
Tereza motioned for a servant to refill her wine goblet. “We know about that. Our Inselgrish diplomat gave us a report. But that was not a homegrown, em, revolution, after all. Or am I misunderstanding?”
She had the gist of it. It wasn’t the people of Inselgrau who had chased me from my home, but rather a plot born in Dreutch, in the castle of Aeolus Daeg, a cousin so far removed I couldn’t possibly account for our familial connection. Somewhere along the way, though, Daeg and I had shared blood, and he’d wanted the power still running through it. “You’re correct, m’lady.”
Tereza blotted her napkin against her lips. “So, why are you hiding in a Prigha slum?”
Heat rose in my cheeks, and I dropped my gaze to the tabletop, staring hard enough to burn holes through the wood. “Because my powers are unreliable, my allies are few, and I have good reason to believe I’m being chased by a group of powerful and malevolent Magicians. It’s not safe for me to go home yet.”
Otokar gasped beside me and sat up straighter. “Indeed? Who are these Magicians of which you speak?”
The thought of naming Jackie and his cohorts put a bitter flavor in my mouth. “Have you ever heard of Le Poing Fermé?”
His brows arched to his hairline, and his mouth fell open. He quickly recovered his composure and cleared his throat. “Le Poing Fermé, you say? Are you certain?”
“Yes. Quite.”
“What do they want with you?”
I glanced away and toyed with the edge of my napkin. If simply naming the cabal had brought me so much distress, how could I bear repeating the details of their terrible scheme? No. Refusing to speak of it only gives my fear more power.
“They wanted a child.” I stopped. Otokar cocked his head to the side and arched an eyebrow, his gaze intent on me as he waited for my reply. I closed my eyes and spit out the rest of their conspiracy. “They wanted my child—one born from the blood of both god and Magician. They wanted me to marry one of their virtuosos and bear him an heir, of sorts.”
Both Tereza and Otokar gasped.
“But that...” The Magician pushed away from the table and stood. He strode toward one of the windows, paused, and turned to face me. The harsh set of his jaw and the lines on his brow clearly demonstrated his outrage. “That would be an abomination.”
“My words exactly.” I explained the dominion Ruelle Thibodaux, leader of that Magical cabal, had maintained over me. How he kept me bound in his home, and how he turned me into a quivering mound of jelly whenever I attempted to escape.
“If I could sense you reaching for the Thunder, Le Poing Fermé could as well. They might already be here, searching for you.”
My fledgling appetite retreated, and I pushed away my plate. “I know. I wasn’t planning on staying in Prigha much longer. I was hoping to obtain information about the location of a certain band of Fantazikes before I left, though.”
“Fantazikes?” Tereza’s dark eyes sparkled. She paused with her wineglass halfway to her lips. If I had to guess, the fantastical nomads mesmerized her as much as anyone who had ever met them. “Why are you looking for them?”
How much could I tell her? Revealing secrets to this girl I barely knew and certainly couldn’t afford to trust would be imprudent and risky. “They made me a promise, and I want to collect on it.”
Otokar’s eyebrows arched high, and he glanced at the empress. The two aristocrats had received a month’s worth of amusement from me in the span of one afternoon. Suddenly I’ve become their court jester. “The Fantazikes owe you a favor?” he asked.
“Not a favor so much as an agreement of sorts. I have friends among them. Allies.”
The two glanced at each other again, and amazement shone plainly on their faces. Tereza’s attention returned to me. “Instead of running away, Evie, why do you not stay in the castle with us? No one would dare to threaten you here. I will provide whatever resources you need to help you find your friends.”
I swallowed my surprise and struggled to maintain a neutral expression. It was too soon to raise my hopes. “Why would you help me? You don’t owe me anything.”
She snorted and rolled her eyes. Raising her wineglass to her lips, she drained the remaining contents. Then she rose from her seat. I stood as well, relying on the morsel of protocol training my father had managed to instill in me. The tiny empress offered her hand to her Magician. Otokar hurried to curl her fingers into the crook of his elbow.
“Our kind are rare, Evie.” Despite her diminutive stature, Tereza’s gaze settled on me with the weight and force of a woman born and trained to rule a nation.
I could have been like her, I thought. I should have been like her.
“We are like precious stones, to be cultivated, maintained, and protected. I would hope, if I were to ever find myself in your, em, situation, that I could depend on you to provide for me in a similar way.”
A blaze of longing erupted inside me—a hunger for belonging, a want for safety and security. Not that Gideon wasn’t formidable when he put his mind to it, but I resented relying on his protection, and without the use of my powers, depending on him had become a necessity. I also hadn’t known anyone in years who understood what it meant to have the blood of a deity, even a reduced demi-god, running through her veins. Tereza and her high castle walls and her personal Magician offered an alluring enticement. “What if I say no?” I asked.
She tossed her head, reminding me of an impatient filly, eager to run. “You are not my prisoner, Evie. But things would be much more interesting if you were to say yes. Would you not agree?”
My thoughts shifted to Gideon and Marlis. “I have two friends here—a guardian and his sister.”
She flapped her hand. “Yes, yes, we know of them as well: your big handsome soldier who works in my stables, and the girl who takes in mending and wash.”
“H-how do you know?” Unease, like nausea, stirred in my stomach. The empress knew so much about me. Maybe too much.
“Do you think we would not find out everything about you before I brought you here?” Otokar asked. “That I would put my lady at risk before knowing if you were a threat to her?”
Finding my backbone, I squared my shoulders and raised my chin. “After bringing me here under duress, do you expect me to take kindly to the news that you’ve been spying on me? You pressure me to stay here with you and expect me to trust you?”
A flush rose in Tereza’s cheeks, and her lips thinned. “Do you accept my request or not, Lady Thunder?”
My pride urged me to refuse, but prudence overruled. Even if I didn’t trust Tereza and Otokar, the castle offered more protection than my humble little flat. And if she would truly offer her resources to help me track down the Fantazikes, hers was an offer I couldn’t afford to reject. “You still haven’t said whether Gideon and Marlis are welcome, too.”
Tereza rolled her eyes again. “I will have Gideon installed as your personal guard if you like.”
“And his sister?”
“She can be one of your... em...” She twiddled her fingers at Otokar again.
“Attendants?” he suggested. “A lady-in-waiting.”
“Yes, yes. Attendant.” She snapped her fingers at a footman waiting as silent and still as a statue in the corner of the room. She babbled something in Bonhemmish, and he bowed and scurried from the room. “He will ensure your companions are brought here.”
“Gideon won’t take well to being abducted.”
“He already works in my stables. He will do as instructed.” She eyed me, making obvious note of my disheveled appearance. Her nose crinkled as she took in my worn boots and frayed hems. “Otokar, my zlato, show Evie to her rooms. Have Rebekah bring a few gowns for her, as well.”
“Gowns?” I tried to keep my lip from curling.
“If you are to stay here, I will not have you mistaken for a stable girl or scullery maid. You are royalty, Evie, and you must present yourself as such.”
I withheld my objections and allowed Otokar to escort me from the shimmering room and up several flights of stairs. The apartment Tereza had selected for me occupied a darker section of the castle. The windows were smaller and the walls were paneled in dark-colored woods. Deep-blue carpets covered the floors, and oil sconces flickered on the walls, relieving the gloom.
“Rather dreary, isn’t it?” I asked.
Otokar cocked his head to the side. “Dreary?”
“Dark. Somber. Quiet. Nothing like downstairs.”
“Oh, yes.” He stopped us before a heavy door and withdrew a ring of keys from his robes. After unlocking the door, he led me into an even darker space. When he snapped his fingers, a blaze roared to life in the fireplace, illuminating the sitting room of a spacious apartment. “Tereza refurbished that whole floor after she took the throne. Before then, much of the castle resembled these rooms.”
With a twitch of his hand, the Magician lit several tapers positioned atop end tables, book cases, and the stone mantel over the fireplace. The space smelled of stale fabric, dust, and the faint sourness of mildew.
“That wasn’t so long ago, was it?” I asked. “Tereza’s coronation?”
Otokar threw open a panel of draperies, and dull sunlight filtered through grimy windows. He clucked his tongue, muttered something under his breath, and the windows cleared, the dirt seeming to disappear. His Magic was impressive, but a few cleaning tricks failed to compare to Ruelle Thibodaux’s ability to inflict pain. If Otokar possessed such capabilities, I never wanted to know.
“Tereza was crowned less than a year ago,” he said. “The youngest empress to ever rule.”
“How old is she, exactly?”
He sniffed. “She’ll be eighteen by summer’s end.”
“What about her mother and sister?” Tereza had taken the throne after her father’s death—that much I’d learned from the gossip Gideon picked up at the stables. He had a knack for languages and had nearly mastered the Bonhemmish tongue in the few weeks we had lived there.
Otokar crossed the room and opened another door, revealing a dark bedroom. “The dowager prefers to spend most of her time at the family estate in in the Boyeskid Mountains. The princess, Karolina, shares Tereza’s apartments. I’m sure you’ll be introduced soon enough.”
I watched him make his way around the bedchamber, bringing up lights, opening windows, shaking off dust. When he returned to the sitting room, he gestured to a set of doors in the opposite wall. “The maids will see to the rest of the rooms and have them prepared for your companions. If there is anything else you require, be sure to let them know. Anything you wish shall be yours.”
I wanted nothing more than a moment of solitude to process everything that had happened, but a knock at the door took away that possibility.
“Oh, Rebekah is here. Good, good.” Otokar ushered in a woman toting bundles of bright fabrics: gowns with petticoats and corsets, no doubt. My stomach plunged at the thought of trying them on.
The Magician bowed with his usual grace. “I shall leave you two to get acquainted.”
He left before I could protest. I stared at Rebekah and her mountain of dresses and sighed. “Well then,” I said, hoping she understood my meaning, even if she failed to comprehend my words. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”
