Two days ago, Edwin had sat in the rose garden at Sutton Cottage and called up an echo-illusion of Flora Sutton carefully cutting a bloom with scissors. It wasn’t her true spirit; only a memory imprinted on the air. She couldn’t hear Edwin, when he pledged himself to avenge her and Reggie the only way he knew how: to continue her work with the old magics, and to find her contemporaries and warn them. To do his best to ensure that nobody would use the contract as she’d feared it might be used.
He could only hope that her land, which was now Edwin’s land, and in whose thriving green lawn he’d buried his fingers as the image of the woman faded, had both heard and felt the strength of his intent. Mrs. Sutton had lived her last hour with the guilt of sending Reggie to his death. That guilt, along with the burgeoning kinship she’d felt with Edwin’s magic, was what had been enough at the moment of her death to tip Sutton over into accepting Edwin as her heir, and thereby save his life. Edwin was sure of this without being able to say why. He could only assume it had been written on the blank spaces of him, somehow, in the incoherent moment when he banished Walt; when he was the Sutton lands, and the house.
It wasn’t up to Edwin to decide if he was worthy. He had been chosen, and he would fight to live up to it. Chosen twice over, in fact; his heart lightened again as he met Robin’s affectionate smile.
“I did have something to show you,” he said, trying for offhand.
He came and leaned against the desk next to where Robin sat. He breathed deeply and bent his will to the thought of what he wanted to achieve. One hand position. And then another. The transition was important; he’d discovered that after weeks of stubborn experimentation and muscle cramps.
Edwin hadn’t realised how rigidly his mind had grown around certain structures until he’d begun, painstakingly, to deconstruct them. Performing magic with single-handed gesture was like learning a new language from scratch—more, it was like building a new alphabet yourself because none existed that would suit. It felt like grinding away at a piece of sandstone, slow and wearying and deeply satisfying.
Robin gave an encouraging whoop. “There! I can see it!”
There. In proper daylight it would have been barely visible, but here in this poorly lit office the tiny white light made Edwin’s fingers look ghostly.
“A none too marvellous light,” said Edwin dryly. “For my next trick, I shall fly to the top of Nelson’s Column, and bring the lions to life.”
Adelaide tucked a pencil behind her ear and came closer to look. “It’s still something. Good job.”
Edwin watched the pale glow in his palm, unfelt but undeniable. Despite his sarcasm he was fiercely, wonderfully proud, even if that feeling was new enough that he was still making space inside himself for it.
Walt had been right: Edwin was safest on Sutton grounds, but he’d inherited far more than power and property. He wasn’t going to skulk there within the warding like a fox in a hole. Not when there was so much to be done. He thought about all of the books yet unread, and the blond woman, and Lord Hawthorn, and the danger of setting themselves up against a group of powerful figures who included Edwin’s brother.
He leaned sideways and encountered Robin’s shoulder, firm and warm against his.
“It’s a good start,” he said. “Let’s see if I can get it any brighter.”
And he paused, in the space between inhalation and exhalation, and invited magic in.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It’s long been a suspicion of mine that you can tell a debut novel by the length of the acknowledgments, and I’ve no intention of diverging from tradition. Buckle in.
Firstly, a book about the responsibility we owe to the places we live would be incomplete without the acknowledgment that I wrote most of these words on unceded Ngunnawal country, where the traditional owners have been the land’s caretakers for many thousands of years.
And now for all the thanks.
To Alex and Macey, my co-conspirators and fellow serpents. Everyone should have writer friends, I have a tendency to say, cheerfully and sagely and with deceptive ease. What I mean, every time, is: find someone who’ll support you and laugh with you and share the journey with you, the way you two have for me. I have now used up my allotment of sincerity for the decade and you can expect nothing from me but irony and dry insults until 2030.
To Magali Ferare, for devouring each chapter as it was written. To Emily Tesh, for caring so hard about these boys. To Kelsey, Becca Fraimow, Marina Berlin, and Iona Datt Sharma for their invaluable comments on various drafts. To Sam Hawke and Leife Shallcross for sitting on my couch and letting me make them cocktails. To Jenn Lyons for keeping me motivated and laughing, even when it was my turn to hold the self-pity stick.
To the people of Fox Literary: Isabel Kaufman, Ari Brezina, and my indomitable agent, Diana Fox, who never stopped believing in this story and who told me to stop sending characters into sex scenes with severe injuries. Sorry. I’d say I don’t intend to do it again, but we all know it would be a lie.
To the team at Tordotcom Publishing: my incredible editor, Ruoxi Chen, who fought for this book and made it better, and everyone else who made it happen, including but not limited to Irene Gallo, Caro Perny, and Renata Sweeney.
At Tor UK, I have to thank the fabulous Bella Pagan, Georgia Summers, Becky Lushey, and the enthusiastic Black Crow PR team. I’m so glad the book found a home with you too.
Especial thanks to Will Staehle for that stunning, grabs-you-and-won’t-let-go cover design. And to the late Misters Morris and de Morgan, to say nothing of Singer Sargent and Turner and Rennie Macintosh and every other artist whose visuals found their way into this book. I’d like to apologise to Wightwick Manor for nicking so many of its design elements—Penhallick, the Cambridgeshire house with the Cornish name, was heavily inspired by this wonderful National Trust property in the West Midlands. If you’re in the area, I highly recommend a visit.
To the coven of booksellers who read and championed this book even before it had things like “a cover” or “physical form,” and to everyone who’s blogged, tweeted, ’grammed, ’tubed, or ’tokked about it: I’m in awe, and thank you.
To all the writers who came before me and created the stories that were my building blocks, the books that held me together and made me strive to do better. A fond and grateful toast to the memories of Terry Pratchett, Diana Wynne Jones, Georgette Heyer, Joan Aiken, P. G. Wodehouse, Dorothy Dunnett, and Dorothy L. Sayers. And to my contemporaries in SFF, who are making the genre wider and deeper and richer and weirder and queerer: I’m thrilled and honoured to be working at the same time as you, in the same spaces as you.
To Cosmas, who I hope reads this one day: you were the warp to my weft at a time when the fabric of me was forming, and I know I wouldn’t have made it to this point without our friendship.
To my siblings, for growing up wrapped in fantasy books along with me and sharing my exact sense of humour, and to my parents for being wonderful, loving, supportive people who are nothing whatsoever like any of the parents in this book. (And a special shout-out to my mother, who was the first person to tell me that she couldn’t put this book down, and who forgave me for making her read the sexy bits.)
And finally, I owe thanks to everyone who watched me learn to write, live and in technicolour on the internet, and whose comments and fellowship kept me going through the long years while I built my toolkit. Fandom, this one’s for you. Keep talking about the things that interest you; don’t let anyone teach you otherwise.
PRAISE FOR
A MARVELLOUS LIGHT
‘A magical world of exquisite refinement, where peril skims beneath manners, interiors bespeak both faultless taste and deadly secrets, and the sexual tension crescendos until it literally makes sparks fly. A dazzling debut’
Shelley Parker-Chan
‘Mystery! Magic! Murder! Long looks full of yearning! This book is a confection, both marvellous and light’
Alix E. Harrow
‘An absolute delight . . . If you ever wished Downton Abbey was sharper-edged and full of magic, this is the book for you’
Kat Howard
‘The prose is sublime, the world-building top-notch and the magic system is fascinating and unique. But what made me the happiest is how delightfully queer this story is’