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CHAPTER ONE
Calliope
Calliope jerked awake on the cold stone floor of her cell, sending the rodent nibbling at her fingertips scurrying back to its burrow in the wall.
Her hand flew to her chest, where her heart did its best to burst through her ribs.
She wasn’t too late—thank the Goddess—but it was only a matter of time. Sooner or later, she would sleep too hard and the rats would have their pound of flesh. The guard who brought her meal each evening had joked that no one came out of the dungeon with as many toes as when they went in.
As soon as he’d left, Calliope had torn the sleeves off of her nightdress and wrapped them around her feet, hoping to keep her cellmates from getting any ideas. She was colder without the sleeves, but the trade-off seemed worth it.
“Cold arms, safe toes,” she muttered, wincing as she rolled to her side on the stones, feeling every bruise she’d acquired in the past two weeks of bedding down on the floor in her flimsy gown.
But she hadn’t bothered feeling sorry for herself. Of course she hadn’t been abducted from her home during the daylight hours when she would have been wearing shoes and warmer clothes. It was the story of her life. Misfortune was as much a part of her existence as her magic—as inseparable from her as her skin and bones.
She had learned to live with her own bad luck. She hadn’t learned to live with the pain her magic so often caused others. She regretted every spell gone wrong more than she could say. And so a part of her felt she deserved to be thrown in the King of Outer Kartolia’s dungeon and left to rot while the king was away in Kingdom City.
She would begin to rot soon—or at least to fester and lose the last of the color in her skin. She had been given one meal a day and the luxury of a cold shower the day before yesterday. Other than that one trip to the dungeon’s bathing room, however, she hadn’t been out of her cell for fourteen days.
But surely she was still better off than Rosamund. Poor Rosamund, trapped in an enchanted castle, destined to sleep her life away until a prince outsmarted the castle’s defenses and freed her with a kiss and a proposal.
Sadly, even the spell-modification Calliope had made in an attempt to fix her first spell was a nightmare.
A prince’s kiss? Just any old prince?
And Rosamund will actually have to agree to marry this man in order to gain her freedom. What were you thinking?
“I was very young, and had read too many fairy stories,” Calliope spoke aloud to the walls. “I was only seven when Mother asked me to gift at Rosamund’s birthday celebration.”
The stones were quiet, cold, silently condemning both her and her mother.
“But in Mother’s defense,” Calliope hastened to add, “she had no way of knowing my affliction until it was too late.”
The “affliction.” That’s what her mother had called Calliope’s rotten luck with magic, but it had all too often seemed that she was talking about Calliope herself. The “affliction” forced them to move to the most unpopulated regions of Outer Kartolia to prevent Calliope from doing injury to other children with her magic. The “affliction” drove Calliope’s father away, causing her mother to die alone and friendless except for her only child…a talentless daughter, her own “affliction” to bear to the end of her days.
“But I haven’t cast a single spell since Mother’s death. Mother was the one who refused to give up on my magic. I never cared.” Calliope walked slowly around the circular edge of the cell, dragging her fingers over stone, then bars, then stone again, imagining that she was talking to the animals on her farm. They would be a kinder audience than the dungeon walls.
She had lived alone for nearly five years now, just her, the pigs, the goats, the geese and a cat or two who preferred to keep the relationship casual except during feeding time. It was odd, she supposed, but if she hadn’t started talking to the animals, she would have gone mad. Just as she would run mad in this dungeon if she didn’t find something to occupy her mind.
Wouldn’t need to occupy your mind if you had the power to free yourself. Her mother’s voice echoed in her mind, as harsh and disappointed as it had been in life. Without your fairy magic, you’re no better off than a human.
No better off than a human—truly a fate worse than death to Heliotrope La Fae.
Calliope’s mother had loved a human once, of course. She had given Calliope’s father the gift of her body, her magic, a child, and, finally, magic of his own. She magicked Calliope’s father the gift of longevity, charisma, and a knack for finding riches.
He was gone within a month of receiving the gift, off to take the world by storm and forget he’d ever been saddled with a wife and child.
“It was terrible, but just one man’s terrible. There are humans who are ki
nd.”
Humans will rip your heart from your immortal chest and stomp it to bits on those stones if you let them.
Calliope’s brow furrowed. “We’re not immortal, Mother.”
Compared to them we are. We are ancients. We should be their gods.
