Palace of Silver

by Hannah West

  I stole a deep breath and responded with little regard for my cuts and bruises, little regard for anything but the comfort of his nearness.

  I wished he could come with me, but I didn’t dare ask. He had a family to care for, a king to serve, and the promise of a distinguished new position.

  Separate paths stretched before us. They would inevitably intersect, but our only promise was here, now, in this beautiful, transient place, and I forbade my thoughts from taking me elsewhere.

  FORTY-TWO

  KADRI

  DOGHAN, ERDEM

  THREE WEEKS LATER

  CLAY roof tiles shifted perilously beneath my boots as I crouched to wait for my quarry by the full moon’s light.

  Nighttime in Doghan was exciting, more so than any Nisseran city. Thieves prowled. Beggars plucked songs on poorly tuned instruments and laughed their toothless laughs. Street vendors stayed out late to overcharge drunken revelers and gamblers. Dancers and dishwashers alike practiced other occupations in the wee, black hours of the morning.

  The tracking map I had meticulously created to find Lucrez’s son had brought me here, to the wool factory, where the clacking of pedal-driven looms did not halt until long after sunset, when the overtired factory workers retired to their cramped bunks.

  The first time I had used Valory’s portal to come here, I planned to only watch, listen, and learn. My gut feeling was that Sami had never held a prestigious scribe apprenticeship, although it was possible he had simply been turned out on the street when Orturio stopped paying his tuition, and then got plucked up by this vulturine factory owner who worked his poor laborers to the bone.

  I hadn’t known which little boy Sami was until I watched him sneak out. The tracking map showed him peeling off from the group of workers clustered in the living quarters next to the factory. Then I saw his dark head peek out from a side door. He tiptoed down the steps to the alley to feed dinner scraps to a mangy gray street cat. My heart nearly burst with adoration.

  I had tried to approach him without scaring him away. But when he saw me, he was even more skittish than the cat, which morphed into nothing but a streak of gray hair as she darted down the alley.

  “It’s all right,” I had told him before he could run inside. “Your mother sent me.”

  I hadn’t planned what I would say to him. At that moment, I’d realized I needed to tell him the truth.

  I had rocked him as he cried and screamed silent screams into his trembling hands so no one would hear.

  And then he told me what had happened when he arrived for his supposed apprenticeship.

  Orturio had never paid a single coin for Sami’s care. Instead, he had sent the boy to work in the wool factory, for which he received a commission from the owner. An older boy had helped Sami write the letters and lie to his mother according to instructions left by Orturio.

  To get Sami out of the horrible situation with as little trouble as possible, I had paid the factory owner a good sum right then and brought Sami home with me. But after seeing the children’s dirty faces, their meager food and lousy lodging, the hopelessness in the eyes of the mothers and fathers and grandparents, I couldn’t leave them to pay their sweat to such a crooked man.

  I had planned to return.

  Sami had never seen any magic and feared stepping through the portal. He had not learned to trust me yet. But when he saw the palace at Beyrian, the opulent bedchamber awaiting him, the feast that could have fed ten growing boys, and the view of the infinite ocean, he hesitantly warmed to the idea of calling this place home.

  He still wanted his cat. And I wanted to end this corrupt operation for good.

  So here I was, back at the factory, watching and waiting for the owner to retire to his study for the evening.

  I had gleaned that he often lent money to the poor and forced them into labor when they struggled to repay the debt on time. He offered his services in seasons of desperation and set these poor people up to fail.

  As for seizing what he claimed he was owed, he had struck a bargain with Captain Nasso; the Jav Darhu would visit families who had missed their payments and personally deliver them to the factory to work off their debt. The factory owner would skim off the top of the workers’ wages to pay the Jav Darhu for their services, thus making it even harder for any of the debtors to repay him.

  After retrieving Sami, I had come one more time to watch and listen. I’d heard them discussing a delivery that would happen tonight, less than a quarter hour from now.

  Greedy bastard, I thought as I watched the owner retire to his study and cozy up to the desk to frown over documents—probably contracts on which people had signed their lives away.

  Tiptoeing down the slope of the roof, I leapt over the narrow alleyway, landed on a broad concrete ledge, and pinned myself to the exterior wall to catch my balance. From there, I planted my palms on the windowsill and whispered “erac esfashir” to break the glass.

  The factory owner gasped and nearly fell out of his chair.

  “You!” he said as I swung my legs over the ledge. “You’re back. Why? I let you take that boy.”

  I stalked over to perch on the edge of his desk, toying with the trinkets and shuffling a stack of coins. “I’m here to politely ask you to cancel the debt of every person who works for you and let them go free,” I said.

  He laughed in response.

  “I amuse you?”

  “They signed contracts,” he said, opening the drawer and flinging a stack of parchment on the desk. “They knew what they were agreeing to.”

  I smacked a hand on top of the contracts and slid them over, peering at them as though giving them a once-over. Instead, I tore them up and smiled at him. “The polite part is a one-time bargain.”

  “The Jav Darhu are making a delivery tonight,” the man grumbled. “I don’t know who you are or where you got the money to buy that boy, but you had better hope you’re gone by the time Captain Nasso arrives.”

  I pursed my lips. “I think I’ll stay. I was going to track Nasso down, but this saves me the work. I have plenty, seeing as I am the elicromancer queen of Yorth and the newly appointed leader of the Realm Alliance. I’m quite busy.”

  I lifted my elicrin stone out of my collar. The man balked.

  “I’ll give you a week to cancel your workers’ debts and set them free,” I went on. “You will make sure every lone child in your care has a guardian. You will employ people who need work and pay them a dignified wage.”

  “It is not against the law to demand what you are owed,” he growled, growing flustered. “I will appeal to King Agmur to overturn whatever authority you claim to have here. Go back to Yorth and make your own laws.”

  A downstairs door opened and shut. The factory owner looked me in the eye, tilting his head, thinking that he had surely called my bluff. Everyone in their right mind ran from the wrath of Jav Darhu.

  The longer I waited him out, the more he squirmed. When footsteps trampled to the landing outside the study door, I crossed my hands and waited.

  The door flung open. Captain Nasso and two of his men escorted a middle-aged man and his daughter, who looked only a few years younger than me and terribly frightened.

  Captain Nasso’s unflappable expression changed to surprise. “Kadri Lillis,” he said sedately. “I heard Rasmus Orturio was bludgeoned to death with a fire iron.”

  “You heard correctly.”

  The creaks behind me signaled that the factory owner was again squirming in his chair.

  Nasso flicked his brown eyes to the elicrin stone around my neck.

  “Let’s talk,” he said. “What do you want?”

  “You cannot bargain with me, Ardjan Nasso.”

  “The kidnapping was not personal,” he said, as though that made it any less heinous. “I delivered on a promise. It’s what I do. You should be angry with King Agmur.”

  “Oh, I am angry with him. But it’s very important that you know, Captain, that people do not belong to oth
er people, even if your clients’ pockets tell you otherwise.” I looked over his shoulder at the man and his daughter huddling in the corner. “You’re free to go and your debts are cancelled.”

  They turned to take advantage of the opportunity I had given them. The two mercenaries behind Captain Nasso began to draw their curved swords to block them from leaving the room—ever protective of the goods to be delivered.

  I nocked an arrow and sent it straight through one’s shoulder. The other, I hit with the thrusting spell. My next arrow went through Nasso’s calf. He yelled through his teeth.

  The man and his daughter ran.

  I strode toward Nasso and stared him down.

  “I have a tracking map with your name on it,” I said. “If something happens to it, I can make another. I can stalk you, haunt you for the rest of your days, which won’t be many if you cross me.” I clamped his broad, bearded jaw. “You will find other employ, Ardjan Nasso, or your torment of me will look charitable compared to what I do to you.”

  The summer sun baked the sand and salt water onto our skin. Rynna and I reclined on the beach, watching Sami’s fastidious attempt to build a sandcastle that looked like the real palace.

  Rynna’s slender fingers traced my palm. The scar from the scourge in the forest marred her wrist, and she was not the only one of her people who bore such a mark. Over the past weeks, I had found myself pressing my lips to that scar out of gratefulness that this trial was over, that the Fallen were banished, that I had been able to return to this life and to her.

  “When they took you, I feared I might never see you again,” Rynna whispered, playing with my tresses, which were hot as coals in the midday sunshine.

  “You had to know I would do anything to come back to you.”

  She nodded. “I knew.”

  “Why do you love me?” I asked. I had never asked her this, though I wondered every day. “You’ve lived a much longer life than I have. Your people don’t care for mortals or elicromancers.”

  She sighed. “Over the centuries, the fay nearly let Nissera tear itself apart time and time again without ever revealing ourselves or stepping in to help. Mercer was right; we only intervene when it benefits us. That’s probably why the scourge of Apathy threatened to destroy us so swiftly and completely—it fed off of our own apathy. We lent it power.”

  She raked the sand with her fingertips, thinking. “I was drawn to you because you cared,” she said softly. “You cared so deeply. About your mission, your friends…about saving innocent people. You may have been a mortal, but you set out to take down Emlyn Valmarys like you had every chance in the world.”

  She flicked the cylindrical elicrin stone resting at my sternum. It was beautiful, no doubt, but not nearly as beautiful as the long-lashed periwinkle eyes that blinked up at me. “You’re modest and kind, but you’re not going to give up that elicrin stone simply because it stirs controversy. I love your spirit.” She leaned on her elbow and hooked her other hand around my waist, dragging me through the warm sand toward her. “And your beauty drives me mad.”

  When she opened her lips against mine, they were softer and sweeter than rose petals. Every touch had already been precious before the Jav Darhu yanked us apart, but now they were scorchingly soft, unimaginably dear, never enough to satisfy, yet somehow everything I ever wanted.

  “I love you, Rynna,” I whispered.

  “I love you, Kadri,” she replied. “Are you sure Fabian approves of this sort of public display?”

  “Since when did you care if he did?”

  She nudged my shoulder. “Since I cared that you cared.”

  “Well, he doesn’t,” I said. “We’ve decided that we’re not going to hide anything. We love each other; that’s not a lie.”

  “Plus,” she purred, “you’re the leader of the Realm Alliance. You do whatever you wish.”

  I snorted. “Sure, within reason, and if the majority agrees with me, and if—”

  She shushed me with her lips, not for the first time, and we both laughed.

  I didn’t know how the Realm Alliance would govern now, what we would do about the mortals flocking to ask Valory for power or the precarious relationship with King Agmur of Erdem.

  At least now I understood what home meant to me. It was not Wenryn or Erdem, but the best parts of each, nestled in this warm and peaceful place between.

  EPILOGUE

  VALORY

  For hours, days, weeks, the creature hovering at the edge of my mind tortured me until I longed for death.

  I couldn’t sleep and therefore couldn’t dream. I saw Mercer, but I couldn’t speak to him.

  And he couldn’t set me free. When he tried, it felt like he was ripping me apart.

  I began to fade, and the creature filled what empty space I left behind.

  Say yes say yes say yes say yes, it chanted without ceasing.

  Someday I would succumb.

  No soul could endure this.

  When Mercer returned with a golden blade and leapt into the pit, I thought I had at last gone fully mad.

  Or maybe Mercer had returned to end my misery somehow. Yes…instead of hacking at the roots around me, he lifted the sword high.

  And sank it between my ribs.

  The roots recoiled. I choked and sputtered and finally gasped a breath of life anew.

  Mercer scooped me up and rocked me, untangling me from the receding mass of roots. He kissed my forehead and cheeks and eyelids and lips with fervent love. I hoped this wasn’t a dream.

  Within minutes the invasion had retreated beneath the black rocks. Mercer carried me out of the pit. The forest around us was scarred, gray and barren, but no longer insidious and alive.

  “I was so scared,” he said, tears shining in his eyes.

  “Ambrosine?” I asked, my tongue thick, dry, lazy in my mouth.

  “She’s dead.”

  I rested my head in the hollow of his throat and wept with relief.

  He wanted to carry me, but I mustered the strength to stand. The battle wasn’t over.

  Before Mercer helped me limp back to the portal, I stared down at the bald black rocks, seeing the empty Water pit for what it was, for what I had helped it become when I touched it without permission:

  An opening.

  A passage.

  A tear in the fabric of the mortal world.

  DON’T MISS THE BITTERWINE OATH, BY HANNAH WEST

  San Solano, Texas, is a quaint town known for its charm, hospitality, and history of murder. Twice now, twelve men have been brutally killed, and no one knows who did it. A shadowy witch? A copycat killer? Or a man-hating murderess? Eighteen-year-old Natalie Colter is sure that the rumors about her great-great-grandmother’s cult of wronged women are just gossip, but that doesn’t stop the true-crime writers and dark tourism bloggers from capitalizing on the town’s reputation. It’s an urban legend that’s hard to ignore, and it gets harder when Nat learns that the sisterhood is real. And magical. And they want her to join.

  The more Nat learns of the Wardens’ supernatural history, the more she wonders about the real culprits behind the town’s ritualistic murders. Are the Wardens protecting San Solano from even darker forces? As the anniversary of the murders draws near, the town grows restless. Residents start getting “claimed” as this year’s planned victims, including Levi Langford, the boy whose kiss haunted Nat for a year.

  Nat knows that no one is safe. Can she and the sisterhood stop the true evil from claiming their town?

  @HolidayHouseBks • HolidayHouse.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing this book was a lonelier labor than usual, but that only made the people who were a part of the process all the more valuable. To those who have been patient through my (sometimes tearful) struggle to wrangle my creativity into the confines of publishing deadlines, bless you.

  Thank you to my husband, Vince, who has been so supportive of my passion. I can’t imagine sitting down to write every day without the backbone you
r encouragement.

  Thank you to Sarah Goodman. Your critique partnership is as valuable today as when we were clueless querying writers teaming up to take on the world, and your friendship is far more precious than even that.

  Thank you to my parents for always investing in my creativity and providing a foundation of love and acceptance. I know there have been many times when I took that for granted.

  Thank you to Sally Morgridge, my saint of an editor at Holiday House, who fielded a 4:00 a.m. freak-out e-mail with such grace. Every stroke of your proverbial pen has done nothing but make the magic shine (shimmer, scintillate, glitter, glimmer, glisten, glister, glint, gleam, glow) brighter.

  I also want to thank the other talented, hardworking people at Holiday House who have championed this series, especially Hannah Finne, Eryn Levine, Terry Borzumato-Greenberg, Michelle Montague, Emily Mannon, Faye Bi, Cheryl Lew, Alexa Higbee, Nicole Benevento, Asharee Peters, Miriam Miller, Derek Stordahl, Kevin Jones, and Mary Cash. Thank you to hawkeyed copyeditor Pamela Glauber, my one-woman comma cleanup crew. Thank you to Kerry Martin and the design team, cover artist Daniel Burgess, and illustrator Jaime Zollars for enriching these books with stunning artwork.

  Thank you to Jeff Goodman for your wise counsel on all things hunting and bow related that were not easily Googleable.

  Thank you to my many supportive friends and family members. I appreciate you more than you know. And thank you to the readers who have shared this series with book clubs or recommended it to fantasy lovers at libraries and bookstores.

  And thank you to young readers—the empathy you learn from books will save the world.