Chapter
Three
Galantia Present day, Road to Ammarett
he painter probably rendered him double as handsome.” Back aching from too many hours of“T sitting in our carriage, I held up the gold-framed likeness of Prince Domren. “Which means he’s truly only about half as good looking as the donkey in the stable. Quite literally. Rather long in the face, this one.”
“Galantia!” Risa’s sharp scold drowned beneath its familiarity where she sat across from me beside Mother. “It’s not becoming of a lady to speak so ill about any man, but certainly not when he’s
no less but a prince.”
Not any man.
Not even any prince.
My betrothed.
“Oh please, I’m merely practicing my future role.” I tossed the likeness wherever it may fall, and folded my arms beneath this ridiculous nest of pinned creamy curls I was forced to wear—its torture second only to my stifling gown of heavy brocade. “If a wife cannot speak ill of her husband, then
what joys are there left for her in marriage?”
Risa sighed the way she’d done daily for the last decade, except that she’d also started to weave her frustration with me into whatever she was currently knitting. Another shawl in the color of our house, by the looks of the pale green rows, which she pulled from the wicker basket on the floor to place beside her on the golden velvet coverlet.
I rose, slipped off my seat, grabbed her knitting needles from the basket, and reached them to her gouty fingers before I sat back down. A silent apology for every contemptible remark I’d made over
the last two weeks on this road.
And the remarks still to come.
I couldn’t help it.
Mother called me quarrelsome, obstinate, or worse each time she had to spend more than ten minutes in my presence. Being forced to endure my company in this carriage for so long didn’t improve her harsh assessments of me, and it positively diminished my ambition to prove her otherwise. Poor Risa was caught somewhere in the middle.
“Rotten.” Mother continued to stare out at the fields of brown and green-speckled wheat stalks, which weren’t a novelty as of late, so the word was likelier another timely appraisal of her disagreeable daughter. “The union between House Brisden and the crown is as much an honor as it is a blessing, even for a spoiled being such as yourself.”
My throat narrowed.
Spoiled… Oh yes, the Lady Brisden had always been quick to give me everything I’d never asked for, and nothing of what I’d so desperately wanted. Her hug was in the tightness of my silk corsets. Her caress in the rich fabric of my dresses. Her kiss in the green gemstone that sat in a golden socket against my sternum.
“Spoiled at your command, Mother,” I said. “Surely you will not blame a daughter for her parents’ poor choices where her childhood rearing was concerned?”
“Always so clever in your responses.” Her eyes narrowed, a rare display of emotion that looked utterly out of place on her usually straight face. “I should have allowed Risa to take a belt to your behind.”
I shifted, my breathing somehow spurred on by the sudden image of leather striking my rear. What kind of pain would it cause? A hot sting? Or more like an expanding chill? I wouldn’t know.
Pain was a stranger.
“Perhaps you should have,” I challenged, as if I was ready to lift my skirts to Risa, even though I stood over a head taller than the old woman. “Why didn’t you?”
Something restless swirled around in my chest as I waited for a response. A remark on my impudence, my mulishness, my disobedience. Anything! How about my lack of a penis? She hadn’t
lamented about it for months.
Mother only clenched her lips.
Cold. Distant. Silence.
How… disappointing.
I watched this woman who’d birthed me—and under great strain, if Risa’s accounts were to be believed. The dreary bit of light that caught on Mother’s pearl-embellished braid only emphasized her graying hair, and the way her jaws clenched distorted her regal features. Worse was how I still found her beautiful, with a natural grace that must have been the envy of all nobility once upon a time.
With seemingly nothing left to argue about, I brushed a curl from my face. Those erratic coils Risa
had put in my hair were subdued by the same pearl pins Mother wore. She hadn’t bothered to remark on them, probably hadn’t even seen them, for that would require her to look at me. Might as well get rid of them.
I pulled one from my hair, lowering it onto my coverlet. Why had I even chosen them? As much as Mother loved pearls, they never truly stood out against my alabaster tresses.
“But I agree,” I said after endless moments of uncomfortable quiet. “This betrothal is a blessing.
Unto the crown, that is.”
After all, Tidestone remained the last stronghold between the Raven’s ruthless revenge and Dranada’s capital, Ammarett. Whereas some human lords had sworn fealty to the usurper who led those black-haired warlocks and witches now, Father remained steadfast in fighting off their attacks.
What better way to keep the Lord Brisden loyal to King Barat than to join houses?
“You should thank your father for arranging this match, and all he has given you.” Mother waved her hand over the ornate interior of our carriage, likely as a reminder of all the niceties I’d been afforded in lieu of something as simple as a kind word uttered from my parents’ lips. “Truly, Galantia, there’s no room in this for your dismay.”
“Dismay?”
Stifling a laugh, I ran my hand over the fine threads of gold that adorned my ivory dress, every stitch carefully placed to bring out the value of my womb. If anything, I was looking forward to a life away from Father’s silent disappointment and Mother’s vocal disdain.
Not to mention the suffocating restrictions of nonsensical rules that had wrapped me like porcelain for years. Don’t run, Galantia. Don’t cry, Galantia. Don’t walk in the rain, Galantia.
Don’t touch the knife, Galantia.
For someone who only ever found scorn for me, the Lady Brisden had an unhealthy obsession with my safety—something I used to tell myself was her way of showing that she loved me. In the end, I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t so much a desire to keep me alive, but simply not to watch another child of hers die.
“You mistake me, Mother.” I opened one of the panes on the window, the fields stretched before me burnt black, which we passed at a fast trot. “I am quite pleased with the match.”
I would marry King Barat’s only living son, heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Dranada. That he was about as appealing to look at as mutton stew was of no concern to me. Maybe it took a ghastly prince to make me feel wanted. Adored. Loved.
For just once in my life.
In the field ahead, a woman knelt in the blackened mud, her white bonnet smudged and her threadbare dress coming apart at the seams. Not once did she glance toward our carriage, her entire focus on tilling the ground while the baby strapped to her back with linen wailed.
“Why did they burn all the fields?” I asked.
“Plant lice, potato wilt, worms, swarms of crickets.” Risa shook her head, letting the polished bone of her needles clank together in quick succession. “The only way for the farmers to get rid of these pests is fire.”
Pests the Ravens had spread across the lands, leaving Father’s subjects starving and his army at half rations. I’d overheard a kitchen maid tell another not long ago that entire flocks of them had darkened the sky, devastating our harvests.
My temples ached with each piercing cry as we passed the woman and her baby, and the road so deeply furrowed after days of rain, the carriage jostled me around. “It’s strange, don’t you think? That the Ravens have been holding Deepmarsh Castle and the Hanneling Hold for months now, but never
attacked Tidestone?”
“It’s the ocean breeze and the wind cutting along our cliffs,” Risa said, her hair long since as white as her bonnet, pinned-back under the cotton as strictly as ever. “Thank the gods, Ravens struggle to fly in those currents, making them easy targets for our arrows and nets. Without them, no doubt this… Lord of Shadows would have turned our guts into a feast for his followers by now.”
Lord of Shadows.
That name was whispered with fear and worry from the kitchens to the stables. With nothing but a thought, that warlock could cast an entire village into the blackness of his shadows, or so rumors had it. Where he’d come from, I didn’t know, but in five short years, he’d managed to assemble a devout army of Ravens around him.
“He is no lord,” Mother said, her tone sharp. “Speaking of him as such elevates this usurper above what he truly is: a criminal who pillages, kills, and rapes his way across the kingdom, sparing no human soul.”
“Of course you are right, my lady.” With a dip of her head, Risa returned her attention to the row that had slipped off her needle, carefully gathering it back up. “Our lord has crushed a great many rebellions over the years, and so it will be with this one.”
My teeth clenched.
This was no mere rebellion.
We’d had a great many of those ever since I was a child. Over the years, surviving Ravens had rallied together, vowing to avenge the decimation of the royal House of Khysal. They’d always ended up slaughtered—not comfortably seated inside our strongholds.
It was open war.
And I wasn’t sure we were winning.
After a while, a pound on the roof of our carriage had Mother blow out a long breath. “We might as well be on this road for two months if we keep pulling into each forsaken village.”
The steady beat of hooves slowed to a walk as the carriage turned, letting the fields beyond the window change into age-cracked wattle and daub. A forge soon came into view, where red embers slept inside a massive stone hearth, the bellow as quiet as the black anvil that stood nearby.
Mother opened the gilded shutter and her window, wrinkling her nose deeper the longer she glanced about the sizable village. “Why are we stopping?”
“It’s one of the horses, m’lady,” a soldier’s voice sounded from outside. “It’s gone lame after throwing a shoe.”
“Again?” An exaggerated sigh and a dismissive wave of her hand later, she slammed the window shut once more, looking close to a headache with the way she pressed two fingers against her temple.
“This journey is insufferable.”
Alas, finally, Mother and I agreed on something. “I will take some fresh air.”
Perhaps for the first time in my life, the Lady Brisden neither confined me to the carriage with a command, nor preached how the autumn air carried the white plague. Oh, my poor mother must have grown weary indeed. Two weeks of pretending I didn’t exist cannot have been easy while sitting right across from me.
With no time to spare, I gathered my skirts and made my way to the end of the carriage. “Open.”
The wooden door lowered down into a short set of steps, and a soft drizzle settled on my face.
Even though dark clouds blanketed the dreary sky, I squinted at the sudden brightness after hours inside this thing.
“Water and hay the horses. Have the innkeeper ready rooms for her ladyship.” Captain Theolif
shifted in the saddle of his mare, his hair shorn as short as those whiskers on his face. No human cursed with black hair wore it with much pride these days. “House guards! Stay by the Lady Galantia’s side!”
“Oh, these knees will be the death of me,” Risa murmured behind me, making her way down the steps on wobbly legs. “Your dress will get dragged through the muck, Galantia. It’s best to stay in the carriage, not catch a cough out here.”
“However would I survive it?” I clasped her arm to help her down. “Curse this drizzle, but I need a moment away.”
If for my own or Mother’s sake, I couldn’t say, but I immediately spun toward the team of six gray horses that snorted plumes into the chilled air. Two soldiers followed to guard my life, and Risa followed to remind me to guard my damn virtue.
Veering left, I followed along the jagged line of a fence, its stacked rails rough against how my fingers glided over the wood. “Where is everyone?”
“Sitting inside by a dry fire, I would assume.” Old knees forgotten, Risa huffed and puffed beside me, putting even the soldier’s brisk steps to shame. “Where are you going?”
“Anywhere.”
Anywhere that wasn’t Tidestone, with those thick walls I’d never left. I wanted to see a drunkard stumble from a tavern, a man haggle with a merchant over exotic wares, a woman loudly scold her husband. I wanted to see all those things I only ever heard maids whisper about!
When bellows and shouts shattered through the drizzle, I stopped. “Did you hear that? There’s commotion behind the chapel.”
I followed along the stone building, but the crowd of villagers didn’t appear until I rounded the apse in the back. Men, women, and children congregated in a half circle before a wooden platform that abutted the building, which held two wooden posts and a crossbeam.
Gallows.
My pulse throbbed inside my ears, drowning out Risa’s grievance about how this was no place for a lady. “Will they hang someone? Here? Now?”
“Hanging’s no good here, my lady.” A guard approached my side, clearing me a path through the crowd of gaunt faces with one plated arm, finally bringing a man into sight who violently brought down a whip. “Not for her kind.”
The hairs along my arms lifted more with each silent lash, not a single crack in the air. Only the jingle of metal hooks attached to the fall, which smacked and bit into the back of a woman who lay splayed out on the platform, her dress in bloodied tatters.
“Raven witch!” a man shouted at the top of his lungs. “She needs to burn!”
Blood-streaked fingers digging into the wooden floor, the woman struggled to lift her bruised face and let out a deafening cry toward the crowd. “I’m no Raven!”
“Hair as black as those bastards’ plumes,” the woman nearest the platform yelled. “She’s a Raven. I’ve seen this witch about the fields last night, blighting our crops, starving us!”
“It’s not tr—aah!” Another strike of the whip. “The only thing I’m guilty of is being born black of hair! Oh please… please, plea-ha-ha…”
Cold dread shivered down my spine until my shoulder blades pulled together. “What if she’s not a Raven?”
When men with lances stepped onto the platform and the crowd roared louder, the guard beside me rested his hand on the pommel of his sword, though his easy posture betrayed no immediate danger. “Then she’ll prove it.”
“Prove it, how? She’s been whipped halfway to death already.”
“To bring about her shift,” Risa muttered with a tug on my arm. “Galantia… your mother would not want you to see this.”
“Why? Is she concerned that it might give me cataracts? Nothing ever seems to—” Sudden numbness spread along my limbs when two young men carried a steaming kettle by two long handles, which they lifted high over the woman. “Surely they won’t—”
A gargling scream mixed with the splash of water as it hit the woman’s back. Steam billowed into the air, but it barely hid how the woman jerked and shook on the ground, nor how the hot water rinsed the blood off, sending a wave of pink across the wood before it dripped into the mud.
“Oh, gods…” My voice was merely a whisper since my lungs refused to take in the iron-scented steam that wafted toward us. “How much more torture does she have to endure to prove her innocence?”
“Even before King Barat attacked the city of Valtaris, Raven children were taught to endure great pain,” Risa explained. “Taught how to hide what they are for as long as they could, should it come to war.”
“Please,” the woman pleaded once more, her voice hoarse. “Oh, please… have mercy…”
“She’s no Raven,” I uttered, then a bit louder so the guard would hear. So the guard would intervene with this… atrocity. No creature could endure this to hide its wicked nature. “She’s no Raven.”
Another strike of the whip. Metal clawed into flesh, ripping another scream from the accused, along with drops of blood—and quite possibly pieces of flesh—that speckled the platform crimson.
Then it happened.
A plume of shadows and feathers puffed from the platform, leaving nothing behind but five black birds. They croaked and shrilled, flapping their bent wings and wobbling about. One of them rolled onto its feet, pushed itself off the platform, and into flight… Until the silver metal of a lance pierced through its body and sunk into the wood, pinning the dying bird down. Its wings twitched for eternal seconds, then stilled. More lances thudded into the wood. Four more, to be precise, skewing the rest of the struggling ravens.
My pulse fluttered in my throat at the sight of this carnage, but it exploded into my head when the crowd fell into turmoil. Men pushed through the mass of people while women slunk and elbowed through the gaps. They all tried to climb onto the platform. Some ripped the lances from the men’s hands and sprinted off, only to get tackled by another. Others grabbed for the pierced ravens, pulling until the birds tore into feathery pieces, letting red guts dangle from their bellies.
Nausea rose in the back of my throat. “What is happening?”
“Out,” Risa shouted. “Get her out.”
The guard gripped my arm, pulling me away from the chaos as I looked over my shoulder. And there, beneath the platform, cowered a boy. The shadows hid his dirt-smudged face, but not that bright white grin he carried. Not until it disappeared between black feathers as he bit into one of the dead birds.
