Chapter
Two
Galantia Past, Tidestone
killed my first Raven the day my brother died in his cradle.
That morning, Mother’s deep-throated groans echoed from her chambers along the balcony ofI the inner sanctum. They carried through the door and into my room, like they had all night, turning my belly. How much longer would she labor? Would my little brother have my hair, creamy like the cut oats in the larder?
“Galantia…” Risa straightened in her pale green robes, my nursemaid ever so displeased with my wandering thoughts, and shoved a strand of brown hair interwoven with gray back under her bonnet.
“Why did our good King Barat—may the gods keep him and Dranada safe—declare war against the royal House Khysal all those years ago, and eventually attack the city of Valtaris?”
“Because the Raven King, Omaniel of House Khysal, had kidnapped King Barat’s human betrothed many years prior.“ I looked down at the painting of the offender in the book before me, his long black hair braided back, his breastplate engraved with the sigil of his house: a raven sitting on a skull. “He’d forced her to marry him for—” My eyes snapped to the door. Had Mother just screamed?
“Political… political gains.”
A subtle cough. “What political gains?”
“Lands.” My ears pricked at each hurried footstep behind the oak, each murmur of hushed voices.
Was my brother born? “Or strongholds.”
“Galantia…”
My spine straightened, but my eyes remained on the door, ever so disobediently. “Armies, maybe.”
“Or perhaps all three.” Risa sighed the way she often did when I was too excited, which was as perilous as running. “Galantia, will you—”
“How much longer? Can I visit Mother now?” My legs tingled as if they wanted to run. “Do you think the baby is here now? Do you think it’s a boy, like the healers say?”
“Gods be good, they better make it so, and finally place an heir in that dusty cradle.” Turning the page in the book, Risa shook her head, her forehead lined with deep frowns. “Your lord father needs to secure his line and allies now more than ever. It’s the only thing that’ll keep those Ravens in hiding
from another uprising.”
Outside, a scream echoed.
High-pitched. Gargling.
“He’s here!” I jumped to my feet and ran toward the door, the green skirts of my dress fanning out behind me. “My brother is here!”
I lifted the bolt, opening the door just wide enough for me to squeeze through the gap and out onto the balcony. My feet slipped each time I pushed against the tiles damp from fog. I wouldn’t let that stop me.
“Galantia!” Risa shouted behind me. “Come back here at once! Your mother does not permit you to run!”
Oh, but how could she be displeased with anything on such a day? I hurried along the carved stone banister and columns that supported the roof, following the wails of my brother. Only a boy could scream so loudly! The future Lord of the House Brisden.
But his cries grew fainter the closer I came to Mother’s chambers. By the time I stood before the
tooled wooden door, there was silence.
Belly-churning silence.
Why was it so still?
I wanted to grab the handle, but my arm wouldn’t lift. What if my brother was dead like my little sister? Risa had told me that Mother had lost two babies after me. I didn’t know how many she’d lost before me. Enough to put her aside, Father once scolded her, making Mother cry.
Against the ache in my belly, I pushed down on the handle. The large door croaked on its heavy iron hinges, but only until I snuck inside and pushed it shut. What was that smell?
A strange sweetness wafted around my nose, the air inside Mother’s chambers otherwise stale and depleted. Maids scurried about the room, changing sheets, scrubbing drops of blood from the floor, wringing out cloths over a water basin that stood on a stool beside Mother’s bed.
My chest lifted.
There she sat, the fine golden hairs at her temples curled and clinging to her damp forehead. A smile as big as none before lined Mother’s lips, making all my fear go away. She gleamed down at the baby she cradled in her arm, hushing and rocking the bundle in its woolen blanket.
On light steps, I walked over to her bed. How pretty she looked. How happy.
“Mother,” I said softly as I stopped by the edge of her bed, the heavy green curtain pulled back all
the way so the maids could fluff the pillows, shake the sheets. “Are you well?”
“Shh…” she hushed when the baby scrunched up its nose, rocking the red-faced thing with one hand while the other stroked a gentle finger over its wild fluff of brown hair. Father’s hair. “You’re
all I ever prayed for.”
Something shifted in my belly.
Maybe I was hungry.
“So it’s a boy?”
No answer.
Oh, she probably hadn’t heard me.
I stepped closer to her bed, cleared my throat, leaned over a bit so she would see me standing there. “Do I have a brother?”
Mother continued to stare down at the baby while the room somehow blurred around me. Why was she not hearing me? Not seeing me? I stood right there!
“Mother?”
“Aye, it’s a boy, litta’ lady,” one of the maids said, who knelt beside me and scrubbed the floor with ash even as she glanced up at me with frowns between her eyes. “We already sent word to ye’ lord father. Ach, they’ll ring the chapel’s bells for three days.”
“Three days…”
So small, my brother, yet so important. How many days had Father commanded the bells to ring when he’d found me in the cradle? One? Two?
“He’s so handsome,” I said, even though it was a lie. His head looked strangely shaped, and his face was covered in white peelings, but I did not dare say so. “Can I touch him?”
Mother said… nothing.
She continued to hush my brother, gently rocking from side to side, humming a melody I’d never heard from her lips. “I prayed for you,” she whispered gently between tunes. “You are so perfect.”
Another hum. “I love you.”
The longer she told him these things—things never spoken to me—the more my legs tingled as if to run once more. But where to? Around the room? No, Mother would scold me, but… if she scolded me, would she not also look at me? See me?
I turned away… …and bumped straight into the stool.
It tipped, sending the washbasin to the ground with a loud clank. A flood of bloodied water splashed across the floor, sending the maids to scurry away under yelps and squeals. My brother threw his little arms up in a jerk. His deafening scream followed.
“Look what you’ve done!” Mother finally bore her angered gaze into me, then looked at something behind me. “What is she doing here? Get her out of my sight.”
My heart cracked. “But I didn’t mean to scare my little bro—”
“Hush, child…” Risa suddenly took me by the hand, spun me around, and ushered me back out the door. “Let’s give Lady Brisden time to rest while we see about the orchard, yes? Maisy can cook you up some apples, mash them, and serve them with honey, just how you like them.”
My face tingled and my eyes burned until everything blurred. “I don’t want stupid apples!”
“Galantia…” Risa squatted down in front of me on the balcony, cupping my face between her hands and running her thumbs over my eyes. “Don’t cry, Galantia. Never cry. Come on now… be a good girl and breathe. In and out, just like I showed you.”
My teeth clenched.
I didn’t want to be calm.
But if I didn’t comply, then Mother might hear of this, call me difficult, and send me to my room without Risa. I didn’t want to be without Risa. Didn’t want to be all alone.
Breathe in. Don’t cry, Galantia.
Breathe out. Don’t cry, Galantia.
“That’s my good girl,” Risa said with a smile and righted herself, taking my hand into hers.
“Better?”
“A little.” I blinked away my tears and forced my lungs into an even rhythm, just like she’d taught me. “Will you still take me to the orchard? Outside the walls? Please?”
“This once, and only briefly. Come now.”
She guided me along the balcony. When we descended the stairs, one of the chapel’s bells tolled.
By the time we reached the inner sanctum at the bottom, both bells rang until my ears ached.
“It’s so loud.” When the stable boys and guards clapped in celebration, I held her hand tighter.
“Did the bells ring when I was born?”
“Your lord father wasn’t here the day you came into this world; he was gathering bannermen for King Barat before he came home to see the little lady.”
“Did he command the bells to ring, then? When he finally came and saw me?”
Her lips narrowed until she finally shook her head. “No bells.”
No bells.
That tingle in my face was back, creeping toward my eyes, my ears, my mouth, itching me until my lips parted on their own accord. “They cheer for my brother as if he’s the prince himself. He’s ugly.”
“Galantia!” Risa scolded. “How can you say such a terrible thing? And about your own brother?”
My feet dragged heavily over the crushed seashells as we passed the western wall, the kennels quiet since Father had gone out to hunt earlier. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”
I’d wanted a brother or sister since forever. Someone to play catch with, hide and seek, read books to. Anything to pass the boring hours where I wasn’t allowed to run, to ride… or even play
with the servants’ children.
It was always just Risa and me.
During bad storms, she allowed me to come to her bed. Sometimes, she even hid me away under a servant girl’s dress and took me to the beach, letting me play with the waves for hours.
My heart expanded at those thoughts.
Still, it never felt quite full.
Always felt a bit… empty.
Risa stopped and turned to me, narrowed lips slowly lifting into a soft smile. “You will ask the gods for forgiveness before you go to bed tonight.”
“I will,” I said, ears pricking at an ominous howl, like when the wind cut across the gaps in the cliffs where seagulls nested. “I promise.”
“Good,” she said. “It’s not decent to speak of…”
She said more after that, but her voice faded away under another howl coming from a black gap in the door beside us. A bad smell drifted on the current, like the hound dung from the kennels mixed with the stench of the innards Father fed them after a hunt.
The dungeons.
My stomach clenched.
My chest, however, lifted ever so curiously. It did that sometimes when I passed by this place.
Maybe because of the noises coming from the inside? I heard them through the stones when I snuck
away sometimes. Moaning. Grunting.
Crying.
“Whatever is it now, child?” Risa gave a tug on my arm, and when I only stumbled forward a single step, her gaze followed my line of sight. “Never go down there. Do you hear me, Galantia?”
I kept staring at the slit of gaping darkness. “What’s in there? Thieves?”
“I’ll tell you what’s in there,” she whispered and held my gaze with shivering resolve. “Rats!” A laugh escaped her at the way I jumped, then she tugged me back into motion. “Rats as big as the corn ears in the larder!”
I followed Risa out the western gate, glancing back over my shoulder whenever she wasn’t looking. Was that what I’d heard? The squeaks of rats and the scuttling of little claws over rock?
“Rats aren’t that big,” I said.
I looked up at the dreary sky, catching a whiff of the salty breeze that drifted between the walls.
Waves clashed against the nearby cliffs upon which sat Tidestone, rumbling to the squawk of a gray gull that glided on the wind toward the deep, wide sea.
My chest expanded at the sight. “Where do you think it’s going?”
Risa abruptly stopped. “Oh, no, we’ve come too late, Galantia.”
She waved at the path that passed through the meadows that stretched out before Tidestone, strewn with field stones as big as my head. Apple trees grew like soldiers standing perfectly in line to one side of the road—all of them empty.
I pointed at a lonely cart that stood by the edge, holding woven baskets, each filled with red and yellow apples. “What about those?”
“It wasn’t our sweat that shook those off the trees.”
“But trees grown on my father’s lands.” I released Risa’s hand, climbed onto the cart, and lifted an empty grain sack from a basket of apples. “We only need one. Nobody will miss it.”
“Catch him!” The shout coming from within the gate made me jump up. “Don’t let the prisoner escape!”
My heart thundered inside my chest when my eyes caught on a tall, older boy who slunk around barrels. He sprinted down the path, his long black hair knotted and filthy, his trousers torn, the green- bruised legs poking out beneath like thin stilts of brittle wood. He frantically looked back, as if a wolf was after him. Where had he come from?
Within the blink of an eye, tendrils of black shadows whirled around his wobbly legs, his skinny arms, his sunken-in cheeks. His bare foot caught on one of the field stones, ripping him to the ground.
But he never hit it.
Instead, he burst into a flock of one, two… five ravens. The black-plumed birds flapped, croaking their hoarse kra-kras, but they never left the ground. As though their wings had been broken, they all jostled and rolled across the path, never taking flight.
With a surge of black feathers that danced on the breeze, the birds came back together, only for the boy to keep running. Falling. Pushing back up and running again.
My fingers numbed.
A Raven.
Nothing but warlocks and witches with magic as black as their plumes, Father always said, and blood like pitch in their corrupted hearts. They were wayward beings. Wretched. Corrupted. Vile.
“Don’t let the Raven escape!” one of the guards shouted. “Catch him!”
My muscles tensed.
Yes, we had to catch him!
As if curled by the chill running through my limbs, my fingers tightened around the woven edge of the apple basket. I looked at the boy, then I tipped the basket with all my strength.
Dozens of apples rolled off the cart and over the ground. He stepped on one, which ripped his pale-bruised leg out from underneath him. Paddling his arms like useless wings, he stumbled and fell.
Thud.
His head hit a field stone, rocking his face sideways. His matted hair fell away from a birthmark that sat right beneath his earlobe, black and round.
The boy stared at me, unblinking. And he continued to stare at me even as the crushed rock beneath his face swelled with blood, forming a perfect circle around his pallid features.
Not black like Father said.
Crimson.
“What is this?” Father’s deep baritone resonated the area to the hoofbeats of his stallion before he brought the horse to a stop. He dismounted, casting his hazel eyes—which I had inherited from him— over the dead boy first before he finally looked at me. “Your mother will be out of her wits if she learns you left the walls.” He looked over at the boy once more. “What happened here?”
Another guard bowed his head as he slowly approached Father. “The prince escaped with that…
evil magic of his.”
Prince?
I eyed the boy. He didn’t look like a prince. Princes were handsome, gallant, and strong. This boy was filthy, skinny, and dead.
“While the others took care of the commotion in the cells, I pursued the prince but…” The guard looked at me. “It was the Lady Galantia who stopped this one for good, or so it seems.”
“Mm-hmm, just as well. This one was useless in lifting that blasted curse from Valtaris.” Father cast his judging stare over the scene once more, the sun glinting off a white stone amulet around his neck, but it softened slightly when he set his gaze on me. “Is what the guard tells me true? You brought this Raven to justice?”
I swallowed past a lump in my throat, for Father rarely spoke to me unless he was pleased with me, and he was never pleased with me. “Y-yes, my Lord—”
“My Lord!” Healer Targen scurried out the gate and hurried over to Father, his thin strands of white hair blown in all directions on his speckled scalp the same way the wind tugged on his brown robes. “My Lord, I bring… gods forgive me for what I must say.”
Father straightened in his brown leather hunting outfit, jaws tightening for a brief moment. “Do you bring news of my firstborn son?”
“My Lord…” Targen bowed his head, leaning closer to Father where he murmured, “Your son lived but a short while, looking content one moment, only for his breaths to fade into silence the next… just like the others.”
My muscles tensed when I watched Father’s hands first tremble, then fist by his sides. Did that mean my brother was dead? Like all the others before and after me?
Father looked toward the bell tower of the chapel for long moments, then his attention returned to me. He unclenched his hand, placing it atop my head. Nothing but a single pat, but it made my heart dance in my chest.
He walked off, shouting to his guards, “If anybody asks why Tidestone rang the bells this day, let it be known it was because my strong, dutiful daughter, the Lady Galantia, killed a filthy Raven.”
A single tear rolled down my cheek, then another, turning my chest heavy as if they all collected inside my heart. For the first time, it felt full. For the first time, I felt loved.
