Shield of Sparrows

Water dripped from the hem of my soaked dress, leaving a dotted trail as I tiptoed through the castle’s east-wing gallery. My heart raced, the rush from the cliff dive still coursing through my veins.

I’d been sixteen years old when I made that jump for the first time. A group of servant boys had hiked that hill on a scorching summer afternoon, and I’d followed them out of curiosity. I’d watched them from a distance as, one by one, they leaped off the edge.

By the time they’d all swam to the shore and retreated to the castle, I’d worked up the courage to approach the cliff. It had taken hours of assessing the drop before I’d finally made the jump. When I’d plunged beneath the cold water, kicking furiously for the surface, I’d vowed never again. But a week later, after a berating from the weapons master about my ineptitude at archery, I’d climbed that hillside.

I’d claimed it as my own.

In the moments when I needed to feel brave, to feel free and alive, that cliff was my salvation.

Today wasn’t the first or last time I’d sneak into the castle waterlogged. My slippers were gone, stolen by the sea, and my bare soles squelched on the white marble floors as I crept through the deserted gallery.

My ears stayed trained for the slightest sound as I inched past tapestries and paintings. Sneaking was probably unnecessary. No one came into this hall, especially Margot.

She didn’t like the artwork in this particular gallery. It was too gruesome for her tastes.

Every piece depicted the crux from generations past. The largest mural had been crafted after their last migration, nearly thirty years ago, when the massive, eagle-like monsters had flown over Calandra and slaughtered our people.

In the painting, an auburn male crux had severed a man in two with its enormous beak. Entrails hung from its open mouth. Its talon, sharper than any blade, punctured the heart of a woman crushed beneath its weight. The male’s thick, pointed horns dripped with blood and gore.

Margot wasn’t wrong. This gallery was violent. And maybe once I lived through a migration, I wouldn’t set foot in this hall again, either.noveldrama

It was written that the old gods, Ama and Oda, created Calandra’s animals as gifts to humans. As companions to share in this realm. The Mother and Father had been proud of their beautiful creations. They’d showered them with praise and glory.

But that pride enraged the gods’ children, and in a fit of jealousy, the new gods—the Six—made animals of their own. The Six crafted predators in the image of Calandra’s animals, though their variations were far more beautiful. Far more powerful. Far more deadly.

They birthed monsters to serve as a reminder to humans and animals alike that we were fragile and insignificant. And there was no monster more feared than the crux.

The first time I saw this artwork, that haunting mural, I’d gotten sick in a potted fern. But the next migration would be upon us soon, so I’d forced myself to return to this gallery, time and time again, until the scenes no longer made my stomach churn.

When I saw the crux fly for the first time, I would be prepared for the devastation our people would face.

The gods had truly outdone themselves with their creation.

There were monsters.

And then there were the crux.

According to the scholars’ predictions, the next migration could come as early as next spring. Less than a year from now. I had the luxury of protection within these castle walls when so many did not.

Tearing my eyes from the mural, I rounded a corner, about to make a final dash to the stairwell, when I nearly slammed into a body, pulling back a fraction of a moment before we collided.

“I’m sorr—” The apology died on my tongue as I stared up at the Voster priest. My gasp echoed off the walls as I inched away from my father’s emissary.

He stared unblinkingly from his towering frame, a head and bony shoulders above my own height. He was dressed in burgundy robes, the fabric draped around his lanky body, pooling at his ankles and feet as bare as my own. The nails on both his fingers and toes were thick and grooved with a dark-green tint. He had no hair, no eyebrows, and his skin was a chilly, pale white. His hawkish nose rested sharply above his thin, colorless lips.

My favorite lady’s maid said the priest’s skin gave her chills, but it was his eyes that caused a shiver to race down my spine. They were solid, endless pools without pupils, the color the same deep green as his nails.

Nightmares were born in those eyes.

I didn’t care what anyone else said about the brotherhood. The Voster were terrors far worse than any monster roaming the five kingdoms.

Power radiated off his body, rocking me onto my heels. The Voster magic crackled around me like sparks. It was dizzying. Nauseating. It was like jumping off my cliff, only there was no bottom. No end to the spinning of my insides or the pit beneath my feet.

Humans weren’t meant to be this close to magic.

I swallowed the urge to cry out as his power scraped and scratched along the bare skin of my arms.

The Voster cocked his head sideways, like a bird, as he took in my wet clothes. He lifted a bony hand, holding up a single finger. With a flick of his wrist, the water spun from my hair.

It swirled around my face, the droplets merging and lifting, until there was a ball of clear water spinning above my head. It stretched wider, thinning into a roped circle with a hollow center. Spikes stretched from the water, like it was being drawn toward the vaulted ceiling.

Around and around and around it spun until the priest had shaped the water into a crown that loomed over my head.

Father said the Voster brotherhood often used their fluid magic to deliver a message. That they manipulated air, water, and blood to make statements.

Well, whatever this crown of water meant, I wasn’t going to ask the priest to spell it out. I bolted for the stairs, racing up the first flight, taking the steps two at a time with my soaked skirts balled in my fists. At the landing, I glanced back.

The priest’s dark eyes were waiting.

Another shiver chased over my shoulders before I gripped the banister and forced myself to climb. It took until the third floor for the sensation of spiders crawling across my skin to ebb.

I wiped at the sleeves of my wet dress, like I could brush the prickling feeling away.

Why couldn’t the priest have dried my dress instead of my hair? That would have been helpful. I could practically feel the frizz radiating through my curls.

So much for braiding it wet.

The Voster was yet another reason I didn’t want to go to this meeting with the Turans.

The priests rarely visited the castle, but six days ago, without warning, Father’s emissary had arrived. Every encounter with him had left me queasy.

What was he even doing here? Maybe the brotherhood had gotten word that Father had hired the Turan rangers. Or maybe he’d come because of the Guardian.

The Voster were elusive and avoided most people. At least, that’s what I thought, considering the only priest I’d ever seen was Father’s emissary, and on his visits, he stayed close to the castle.

I wasn’t even sure how many Voster made up the brotherhood. Hundreds? Thousands? There was one and only one book in the castle’s library about the Voster, and it was short. Very, very short.

Father’s emissary visited for important political events, significant weddings, and royal funerals. Probably to make sure we were all behaving and following the terms of Calandra’s magical treaties.

I’d asked a tutor once what it was that the Voster actually did besides wield fluid magic and craft blood oaths for kings. If the priests were humans who’d inherited magic or if they were something else entirely. He’d told me it was complicated—which meant he didn’t know, either.

Father seemed on good terms with his emissary, but they certainly didn’t appear to be close friends.

Well, whatever the reason the priest was here today, I was more than ready to see him go. With any luck, he’d be gone the moment the Turans left Roslo, returning to wherever it was the Voster called home. Another mystery about their people. No one knew where they lived.

Just the idea of an entire town of Voster, streets and buildings festering in their magic, made me queasy.

A niggling feeling ran down my nape like I was being watched. I twisted, expecting to find the priest, but I was alone in the stairwell.

“And clearly paranoid,” I muttered as I stepped off the last stair to the fourth floor’s grand hall.

“Why is your dress wet?” Margot’s question caught me by surprise, my hand slapping over my breastbone. “And what happened to your hair?”

I groaned. So much for sneaking in unnoticed. Damn.

“Sorry, Margot.”

This was the Voster’s fault—the creep. Normally, I’d check the hallway to make sure it was empty before I crossed the carpet to my room. Instead, I’d been too distracted by the spiny touch of the priest’s magic to pay attention.

“Odessa.” There wasn’t a person in Calandra who could infuse as much exasperation into my name as my stepmother.

“I’ll be ready in time. I promise.”

Her ocean-blue eyes with the Quentin amber starburst were as sharp as daggers as she pointed to my door. “You’re already late.”

“Not yet.”

My stepmother’s nostrils flared as I scurried past her for my rooms.

“Fine. I’m almost late.”

“Hurry.” She followed me inside and to my dressing room. As I pulled my hair—very dry, very curly, and very not-brown hair—over a shoulder, her fingers went to work freeing the buttons on my dress.

“You don’t have to stay,” I said. “Brielle or Jocelyn can help me.”

She yanked so hard on the last button it popped free and went skidding across the floor. “Do you see Brielle or Jocelyn anywhere?”

“Um, no.” My rooms were empty and the sleep clothes I’d shrugged off this morning still pooled on the floor beside the changing partition.

My lady’s maids either had been reassigned to Mae for the day or were off spying on the Turans. My guess was the latter.

“They’re busy in the southeast wing,” Margot said.

Ah. Wasn’t that where the Turans were staying?

“Those rangers have tracked filth into our halls.”

Filth? “Haven’t they been sailing on the Krisenth? Where would they get dirty?”

“Odessa.” There was that irritation again.

“Right. Ask questions later.”

“Please.” Margot nudged me forward, sending me scampering behind the screen with the bodice of my gown clutched to my chest.

The garment landed with a plop as she thrust my new gown around the screen’s edge.

The fact Margot had managed to find a shade of gray drabber than the last was actually quite astounding. My lip curled as I stepped into its skirts.

“We’ll have to dye your hair. Again. And we have no time.” The tap of her foot was like being repeatedly slapped on the hand. “Swimming. Fully clothed. Why are you this way? Why can’t you have a normal hobby like archery or horseback riding?”

I loved to draw and paint, but did Margot appreciate my artwork? No. Instead, she’d get irked whenever my fingers were stained with charcoal or pastels.

She wanted me to be like Mae. To love swordplay and sparring. Those were acceptable hobbies for her daughter, her princess. But art and swimming, both relatively tame activities, were deemed troublesome and annoying.

Yes, I’d been swimming. Yes, it probably should have waited until tomorrow. At least Margot didn’t know exactly how I’d gotten into the water. No one did.

If anyone learned I’d been diving off that cliff, there’d be hell to pay.

“I’m hurrying,” I promised. “I lost track of time.”

“Girl, you test the limits of my patience.”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry.” No matter how many times I apologized, it wouldn’t make a difference, but that never stopped me from trying.

She was seething when I emerged donned in gray. “Turn.”

I gave her my back so she could fasten the gown’s buttons.

The fabric molded to my ribs and breasts. The neckline left my collarbones and throat exposed while the sleeves flowed to my fingertips. The skirts billowed around my hips, swishing and swaying with my movements.

In any other color, this would have been a beautiful dress.

In gray, I practically blended in with the stone floor. Maybe that was the idea.

“Hair.” Margot snapped her fingers and pointed to the vanity, standing behind me as I took a seat at the bench.

I hesitated to give her the comb. In her hands, it was a weapon she wielded often. My scalp would ache for hours after she finished with the torture. “You don’t need to do this. I can manage. I’m sure Mae needs you more.”

“She’s…occupied.”

Occupied. Meaning she was with the captain of the guard for their afternoon romp.

Why was it okay for Mae to fit in a little fun before this meeting with the Turans, but I was being chastised for a tiny ocean swim?

The double standards around this castle were stifling.

Margot ripped the comb from my grasp and dragged it through my curls, pulling so hard I had to grip the bench’s sides to keep from toppling to the floor. Once she’d worked through most of the snags, she snapped the fingers of her free hand. “Powder.”

I stretched for the opal jar on the vanity, pulling off the lid and choking on the dye’s pungent odor. The smell would fade within a few minutes, but gods, that first inhale burned my throat.

She shook the powder into my roots until my natural color was muted. Until the orange and red and copper and caramel strands were gone. Not a single curl was missed, and when I looked into the mirror, the familiar shade of brown stared back through the glass.

I didn’t mind the brown, not really. Margot said that it suited the coloring of my face. That it brought out the freckles across my nose and the gold striations in my eyes.

Mostly, I think the red reminded her too much of my mother.

I was too much of my mother.

“I have never in my life met someone who has such a penchant for finding trouble.” Margot tossed the comb aside and began tugging the locks into a braid. “You could have been eaten by sharks.”

“There are no sharks this close to shore.”

“Oh? And I suppose there aren’t any marroweels, either. Have you forgotten the reason the Turans are here in the first place?”

“No,” I mumbled.

The Turans were here to kill the monsters that had wreaked havoc on Father’s trade routes over the past year. What had started as sporadic attacks from the beasts had escalated, and as of this summer, only one in three ships made it to their destination. With every attack, the marroweels left no survivors.

Before this past year, before they’d started attacking our ships, they’d only been known to live in the deepest waters of the Marixmore Ocean, far from where our Quentin ships sailed. Why had they changed habitats? Had the monsters moved inland for food? Was there a new predator driving them toward Roslo’s shores?

Had the gods created monsters more terrifying than even the crux?

Not only were our shipments being lost, but Quentis’s best sailors were being drowned and eaten by the marroweels. It was becoming impossible—and expensive—to convince anyone to make the voyage over the Krisenth Crossing.

The trade routes had to be secured. The grain we harvested and sold to Laine, Genesis, Ozarth, and Turah had to be delivered before another king took these missing shipments as an insult. As a default on the treaty. As an invitation for war.

No one could afford a war, not when the crux migration was coming so soon.

We needed to stockpile our resources. To have weapons, food, and supplies at the ready for when the monsters came. Gods only knew the destruction they’d bring. Our ships loaded with wheat, corn, and barley couldn’t go missing, especially when those crops had already been bartered for weapons and lumber.

The Quentin soldiers had tried to slay the marroweels, but the monsters were as vicious and cunning as any warrior. They moved with lightning speed, and the rigid bone that protruded from their skull could ram through a ship’s frame. Our men had managed to kill some monsters, but not enough. The terrors continued to sink our ships.

So Father had hired the Turans to purge the Krisenth Crossing of the marroweels. How? I hadn’t a clue.

“Do you think they’ll be able to kill them?” I asked Margot.

“Well, if the six dead beasts hanging in the docks this morning are any indication, then I’d say yes.”

“What? They already killed the marroweels?” I sat up straighter. “When?”

“They brought them as they arrived last night.”

Had I known, I would have skipped the cliffside and headed straight for the docks. I’d never seen one of the fabled marroweels in anything but books. “How big are they? Are they blue?”

Margot scoffed. “You’re more excited about six dead monsters than you are for your own wedding to Banner.”

She wasn’t wrong. I’d missed more planning meetings than I’d attended.

I twisted around. “How do you think they killed them?”

“Odessa,” she snapped, forcing my head to the mirror. “Hold. Still.”

Who cared about my hair? I wasn’t the woman on display today. No one cared about me. But I kept my mouth shut and let Margot keep braiding.

Before my mother’s death, Margot had been her lady’s maid, and since I had Mother’s hair, Margot was well practiced at taming the curls.

“I saw Banner earlier.” I waited until Margot’s blue eyes met the gold of mine in the mirror. “He told me that the Guardian arrived with the Turans.”

“Yes.” A crease formed between her brows.

The Guardian.

A man rumored to be more vicious and deadly than any creature crafted by the gods.

News of the Guardian had reached Quentis’s shores three years ago, and since, countless tales had been spun about his origins.

Some believed he’d crawled out of a grave in Turah. That he was more ghost than mortal being. Some said he was Izzac incarnate. That the God of Death had grown tired of his throne and disguised himself as a man to torment humankind for amusement. And others were certain he’d been gifted his powers by the old gods themselves.

He was more myth than man, and stories about him had swept across the continent like wildfire.

“What does it mean that he’s here?” I asked Margot.

“It means you should not go wandering without your guards. It means we should not be late.” She worked with furious fingers, pulling each lock into a thick plait. Yet today, even my hair seemed to protest this charade. When the third piece came loose around my temples, she threw up her hands.

“I don’t have time for this. Finish and get to the throne room.” She marched for the door, sending the skirts of her cobalt dress into a flurry.

As she passed a window, sunlight refracted through the jewels in her crown. Her silky golden hair fell in sleek panels down her shoulders and spine. She floated more than walked, her chin held high. She might not have been born royalty, but Margot Cross was every bit a queen.

Her daughter would be, too.

With my stepmother gone, I faced the mirror and slumped.

At times like this, I wished I was younger. That I was a child like Arthalayus. My half brother spent his days in the nursery, blissfully unaware of his obligations. Good. As heir to my father’s throne, Arthy would someday sign a blood oath of fealty to Father, like most royal heirs in the five kingdoms of Calandra, and soon have more obligations than I could stomach.

Poor kid.

Despite the twenty-year age difference between us, I hoped he’d come to me if he ever needed a reprieve from Father and Margot’s demands. Until then, Mae and I would bear that burden.

My hair was a mess, despite Margot’s attempt at a braid, but I wrestled it into feeble submission, leaving a few errant strands to frame my face. With the end tied in a satin ribbon, I plucked the crown that had been left on the vanity, fitting it to my head.

It was heavy, the metal cool and unforgiving. Inlaid into the gleaming gold were hundreds of sparkling amber jewels.

This crown was the only thing on me that wasn’t gray.

Gods, I hated gray.

I straightened my spine and assumed the posture my refinement tutors had drilled into me from the age of three. I stared into the mirror, and a princess stared back.

A princess who was late.