Page 10 of The Hopeless Romantic’s Guide to Enchantment

“The Edgelands,” I said. “Spread the word.”

CHAPTER TWO

We had two nights of peace before the army arrived. Two nights to send villagers into the mountains for safety, to bury our stores, to move sheep off to higher pastures. My mother had urged me into the foothills with the others, but if the army thought a king’s daughter would be a valuable prize, they might hurt others to find me. I wouldn’t allow that.

It started with rumbling, with the shaking of ground that the skeptical villagers decided was just shifting of the ice river or Broken Sea that lay beyond it. But there could be no denying once the soldiers appeared.

They arrayed themselves in a semicircle that traced the wall’s arc and waited there, giving us time to take in their numbers, their power. And then the message arrived – a square of fine folded paper that read, in scratchy handwriting:

We are come to unite the Four Kingdoms.

Submit or face the consequences.

There was no signature.

We stood in the Great Hall, my father, mother, and I. It was a long room of golden wood with a wide stone hearth, roaring fire, and benches for the villagers to hear my father’s proclamations or share his icewine.

My father crumpled the message, strode to the hearth, and tossed it in. Flames licked it into ash in an instant.

“Icy and inviolate,” he said, then turned back to us, the silver in his dark curls glittering in the firelight. I’d inherited the silver, but not the curls, and kept my hair chopped at the chin to better hide my pale hair in caps and cloaks.

“That’s what the Edgelands are called in the other kingdoms,” he continued. “Icy and inviolate. Beneath the notice of the other kingdoms. Their haughtiness kept us safe from everything but weather and reivers.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I’m going to keep the community alive to see another solstice,” he said. “I just have to figure out how.”

He told them no, and the bombardment began immediately. The world trembled beneath our feet. Once, then twice, then once again, stronger than any quake I’d felt from the ice river. Even the Great Hall shuddered in protest, logs in the fire shifting and sparking in the grate. Our archers fired volley after volley of arrows, but the soldiers were well armored, and their rams had wide iron shields to protect the vanguard.

My father’s counselors joined us in the Great Hall. Some demanded immediate surrender, others that we fight to the death. Edgelanders could be tricksy; we knew the woods and foothills, and might have been able to stir trouble in their camps. But even if that eliminated a portion of their fighting force, it wouldn’t be enough to best them.

Still others chose denial. “They won’t be able to breach the wall,” my mother said quietly. “Ten solid feet of packed earth.”

There were shadowed hollows beneath my father’s eyes. “Walls are breakable, just like everything else.”

And so they were. By midday, there were half a dozen gaps in the wall. The Golden King hadn’t yet moved into the village, but there was little doubt he could. Or would.

A messenger ran into the Great Hall bearing another square of paper, offered it to my father. We waited to see what future might spring from its folds.

My father read it, closed his eyes, rubbed his beard. And when he opened them again, there was grim reservation on his face. “Invite him in.”

* * *

The Great Hall wasn’t full with so many in hiding, but there were still enough bodies to thicken the air with heat and tension. Those gathered split apart as a man entered, a brace of soldiers behind him. Their leader was tall and broad-shouldered, with golden hair and honeyed eyes. And he’d dressed the part of warlord now in an ensemble of black and gold armor and a cloak the color of good wine.

“Well, well,” Graene murmured beside me. “Your aim was better than we thought.”

The man I’d shot in the woods hadn’t just been a soldier – but the Golden King himself.

While Trevellyan was arrogant because his parents had been wealthy, this man looked fully capable of changing the world to fit his desires. Why did that send a shiver down my spine?

His eyes were hard as he searched the room, probably for me. Graene and I moved backward into shadows, pulling our cloaks a bit tighter.

He approached my father on his wooden throne with its carving of the Two Sisters, the jagged peaks rising as if in warning. His gait was uneven; he favored his right leg, and little wonder since there’d been an arrow in the other one.

He paused a few strides away and waited in silence, giving everyone a chance to look at him and his companions.

My father broke the silence. “I am Cyrus Advaen. King of the Edgelands. You are the one they call the Golden King?”