Dedication
For all my fellow ADHD girls and boys out there,
You are weird. You are wild. You are witty.
And that is what makes you wonderful.
CHAPTER ONE
Mirror
Surrounded by ancient, corroded mirrors, Larkin braced herself as her grandmother, Iniya, wrenched a brush through her curls until they resembled a very robust weed. Iniya muttered curses as she pinned down each wayward bit of fluff; Larkin’s head was heavy with pins that poked and pulled and weighted her down.
That finished, Iniya pasted thick makeup on every inch of Larkin’s exposed skin. She dusted her eyes with gold flakes and painted her lips vermilion. It all seemed a bit much for so early in the morning, but they had over three hundred embedding ceremonies to get through today, which would put them finishing late in the night.
Finally, Iniya stepped back. “There. Now you look like a princess instead of a wild thing, though no amount of finery can hide those hideous scars.”
A long, ragged slash across her neck and the pitted scars on her arms were the most noticeable. But there were others. A thin, crooked line on her palm. Numerous sword kisses. Not to mention the ones her father had given her for the sin of being a girl. She also bore a chipped tooth from gritting her teeth too hard the night the wraiths nearly turned her husband into a monster.
Larkin was neither ashamed nor proud of her scars. They just were. And she would not let her grandmother bully her into being self-conscious of them.
“Remind me why I let you help me?” Larkin muttered.
“Because I know what it takes to make you a queen.”
“Do you?” Larkin immediately regretted the bite of her words, but it was too late to take them back.
Iniya stiffened. “I kept my end of the bargain. I got you into the druids’ palace.” Never mind that Larkin had been captured shortly after. “You have yet to keep yours.” To return Iniya’s title as queen of the United Cities of the Idelmarch.
Larkin bit back her groan of frustration. “We’re working on it.”
Iniya gathered up her things. “Work on it faster.” Cane tapping out a steady rhythm, she left in a huff.
To her right, the tiara stared Larkin down from its green silk pillow. With a steadying breath, she reached out, a thousand copies of herself doing the same, and traced the splay of sacred tree branches that wove to a sharp point, where a single emerald had been set.
Larkin been born and raised in the mud with a drunkard for a father. There had never been enough food, and her clothes had been little better than rags. Now, she wore a fancy Idelmarchian dress, a priceless cream piece with a gold, opal, and emerald belt cinching her waist. Around her neck hung two amulets—one a stylized version of sacred tree and the other a leaf.
And of course the dress was backless to show off her monarch sigil—raised white lines that formed a geometric copy of the White Tree. A sigil she was the only woman in three centuries to bear. A sigil that proclaimed her a princess and gave her more magic than all, save her husband, the prince.
I’m not sure I can do this.
She didn’t have a choice. She’d been hiding for the past two months, ever since she and Denan had returned to the Alamant after the battle that had come to be known as Druids’ Folly.
It was time to stop hiding.
She reached for the reassuring power of her magic. The sigils—including the two on her left arm and one on her left hand—flared opalescent, the edges trimmed in gold. They were all in geometric patterns of leaves or flowers. Her favorite were the wedding sigils—vines that twined up her hands and wrists nearly to her elbows like lacy gloves.
The comforting, somewhat painful buzz reminded her that she was not the helpless girl she’d once been. She took the tiara between her fingertips and centered the emerald on her forehead. Another steadying breath, and she turned to face her reflection.
All that light—all that refinery and beauty—couldn’t disguise the dark circles under her eyes. The paleness that made her thick freckles stand out like a constellation of dark stars against a bright sky.
She’d come to accept herself as Denan’s wife. And then as a warrior. But a princess?
“You look lovely.”
Denan leaned against the doorframe to her left. He was dressed in the simple manner of the pipers. Backlit by the rising sun, her husband’s dark gold skin and black hair paired nicely with his forest-green tunic and trousers embroidered all over in gold. A wild crown of branches and opals graced his head. His leather mantle—embossed with a three-headed snake knotted in a circle—had points at the shoulders and front and back, precious cabochon stones hanging from each. On his chest, his monarch sigil gleamed golden through his clothes, a sigil that marked him as prince, as much as hers marked her a princess.
Like her, Denan bore marks of strain. For him, it was in the stiff way he carried himself. The way he sucked in a breath if he moved the wrong way. Though the wound the wraiths had given him had closed, it had never truly healed. And the way he sometimes stared south—toward the fallen city of Valynthia—with a look of hopelessness and dread.
Tonight wasn’t a night for such thoughts.
Larkin forced a smile, crossed the room—a hundred other reflections following suit—and hugged him. “And you, my Piper Prince, look just as lovely.”
He held out a velvet bag. “I brought you something.”
He’d bought her so many things over the last month, including this dress. As if he were trying to make up for the nightmares that kept her up most nights. Nightmares of her friends turning to mulgars. Of men she’d killed. Of living shadows that snatched at her, drawing her into the dark that lives beneath the grave.
Shivering, she took the bag, something clinking delicately inside. She tugged open the drawstring and carefully upended a pair of emerald earrings into her palm. The stones dangled from a geometric pattern of delicately wrought gold vines that perfectly matched her wedding sigils.
“You had these made.” More than once, she’d caught him sketching her. Sketches he would never show her. He’d been capturing her sigils to have a jeweler remake them.
She tipped up on her toes and kissed him. His lips smiled against her mouth. “Do you intend the whole of the Alamant to see me wearing your lipstick?”
She pulled back and gave him a wicked grin. “Maybe.” She slipped the earrings in her ears and admired them in the closest mirror. “They’re beautiful.”
He offered her his arm. “Shall we?”
I can do this. She eased her hand through the crook of his elbow and passed through the magic pane that kept out the weather. There was the cool feeling, like walking through glass, and the taste of stardust on the back of her tongue. Then she stepped from the platform onto a branch of the White Tree. The opalescent white bark hummed with magic that echoed beneath her skin.
They made their way down to the main platform—a curved, bowl-shaped depression where the trunk met the boughs. On the far side was a delicate arch; beyond it, circular stairs led down to the lake, from which a city of enormous hometrees grew.
Almost directly beneath Larkin was a dais. At its center, the font gleamed with the wicked thorns that granted magic. Behind the font, the musicians were almost set up. Servants laid colorful platters of food onto tables that circled the perimeter. Most of the Alamantian dignitaries had arrived. The Idelmarchian delegation—nearly all of them Black Druids—wouldn’t be far behind.