But despite being a year older than Quin—and infinitely more qualified—Karri would never rule the river kingdom. Ronan had seen to that.
Mia stared at the prince. He was currently hard at work spearing a fresh green pea on the end of his fork. This was the heir apparent.
“Perhaps,” Quin said, keeping his voice low, “instead of a ring, I should give you a pocket watch.”
A servant fluttered a cloth napkin in Mia’s lap and set a goblet of blackthorn wine before her. She took a not-very-ladylike gulp and shut her eyes, hoping it would dissolve the knot of pain inside her head. Perhaps it would make Quin disappear, too.
She opened her eyes. He was still there.
“Some good it would do me,” she muttered, “since I don’t have a single pocket in these doll clothes your mother insists I wear.”
The prince swiveled in his chair. “Wulf!” he called. “Beo!” His two dogs trotted eagerly to the feasting table, and he bent down to scratch their ears. Their dusty fur was Killian gold, or—if you preferred—the color of Quin’s mop of curls.
Wulf rested his chin on Mia’s knee and stared up at her with doleful brown eyes. “They like you,” Quin said. “And they don’t like anyone.”
She might have smiled, if not for the tiny monsters lighting sulfyr sticks inside her skull. Perhaps the Grand Gallery was to blame. It boasted two gigantic stone hearths on either end, and the walls, floors, and ceiling were all lustrous black. The onyx didn’t just reflect the fires and people; it magnified them, giving Mia the distinct feeling she was trapped in a giant black die.
She pressed her hand to her chest and felt the fojuen wren. After leaving her father, she’d made a brief stop in her chambers to stash the journal, slip on a velvet gown, and tuck the key into her corset. She wasn’t sure why, but it gave her comfort to have her mother’s ruby wren so close to her heart.
Mia noted thirteen familiar faces at the far end of the Gallery. The twelve Hunters—and one Huntress—were clustered around a gray slab table, eating in tense silence. They had quivers of arrows slung over their shoulders and daggers tucked beneath their plates. Any good Hunter knew to keep his weapons close. Spot a Gwyrach from across the room and you might stand a chance. But if she were close enough to touch you, you were close enough to die.
Mia’s eyes came to rest on Domeniq du Zol, her childhood friend. Dom had started training with the Circle around the same time she did. They shared a common wound: the Gwyrach had killed his father. Yet even in the wake of that earth-shattering loss, Dom’s wide, crooked smile could light up a room.
He was smiling now, laughing at something one of the other Hunters had said, the firelight warming his dark, mellow-brown skin. Mia’s gaze fell to the silver dagger at his fingertips. The blade was serrated, the scabbard limned in pale-green stone. Was it aventurine? Jade? What other surprises had Dom dug up while she was trapped in the castle playing damsel-in-distress?
Mia was flooded by longing. She didn’t crave Dom; she craved the life he was about to live. She was meant to be with them, on the cusp of a great adventure, soon to bring her mother’s killer to justice. She should have been at that table with a pack of Hunters by her side, not Prince Quin forking peas.
In her periphery she saw the prince staring at the Hunters. Had he ever seen them before? Unlikely. They were an unsavory lot of criminals and assassins, men with less-than-sterling reputations and a keen ability to wield a blade.
When Quin realized she’d caught him looking, he quickly turned away.
Mia’s mind kept snagging on the journal. It didn’t make sense—she’d seen her mother write in that book a hundred times. Had her father replaced the inked pages with blank ones? She stole a glance at him. Even he wasn’t that cruel.
And then she was worried about something else entirely: the fact that cousin Tristan was leaning wolfishly close to her sister. He whispered something in Angie’s ear that made her blush. Mia watched uneasily as the duke tore into his duck with bloody abandon. He had clearly worked up an appetite cudgeling innocent candles and who knew what else.
Tristan looked straight at her, a smirk pinned to his face. “Perhaps you can enlighten us, Lady Mia. We were just discussing the efficacy of your father’s Hunters.” He brandished his fork toward the Circle. “They take the sacred oath to eradicate magic across all four kingdoms. But is it not true that the more Gwyrach they kill, the more there seem to be?”
“All the more reason the Circle must keep up their numbers and their strength,” Mia said tartly.
“It seems to me the Gwyrach have become like the ancient Máiywffan. Cut off one head, and ten more rise from the bloody stump.”
“Four kings.” Karri’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes sparkling. “You believe in mythical sea monsters now, do you, Cousin?”
A loud pop echoed from across the Gallery as a servant tossed another log onto the fire. The flames raged and crackled beneath Mia’s skin.
A scullery maid knocked into her shoulder with the flambé.
“Forgive me, Your Grace.” The maid’s thin eyes flashed, her tawny amber skin gone a few shades paler. Servants were whipped for less clumsy acts than this.
“It’s all right,” Mia said quickly. “You’re all right.”
The girl ducked her head. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
“Incompetent fool,” Rowena hissed. She turned to Ronan. “But then, you don’t employ them for their scullery talents, do you, my love?”
If the king injected his words with menace, the queen had a gift for filling hers with venom. Mia’s head was beyond aching—she felt as if her medulla had come loose in her skull. On a good day she couldn’t stand the royals, but tonight they were even worse than usual. The dogs were the most decent people there.
King Ronan ignored his wife and fixed Mia’s father with a penetrating stare.
“One does have to wonder, Griffin. You’ve brought us pitifully few Gwyrach in recent months. My Hall of Hands is hungry.”
A gust of cold brushed over Mia. The monsters in her head were carrying pitchforks now, gleefully jabbing her in the temporal bones. What in four hells was happening? Her body had become a foreign instrument, fine-tuned to a symphony she couldn’t hear. Crash and crescendo, freeze and burn.
Princess Karri spoke first. “Your methods are barbaric, Father. The Gwyrach are merely women. Some of them have children. Many are but girls themselves.”
Ronan turned on her with cold, calculated fury. “If you believe this, you are no daughter of mine. Why do you persist in seeing goodness where there is only wickedness and perversion? They are bastards descended from the union of gods and ruined women. They are not people. They are half-breeds who seek to do us harm.”
“They also have the power to heal. They can stanch the flow of blood and knit flesh back together with merely a touch of their hand.”
This was true: Mia had read about it in her books. In olden times, the Gwyrach were simply Gwyddon. Creatures. Beautiful and young, they were treated with curiosity and affection, even wonder. The Gwyddon were thought to be blessed by the four gods. But their fledgling magic soon warped into something dark, a way to exert power over the innocent and weak.
“You know it wasn’t always like this,” Karri continued, gaining steam. “Magic ebbs and flows—the only thing that changes is our response to it. When your sister sat on the river throne, she encouraged the study of magic. She invited scholars and scientists from all four kingdoms to come to Glas Ddir. Before you closed the borders—”
“Your father had every right to close them,” Tristan said coolly. “Our neighbors were permitting unnatural perversions to flourish.”