Page 8 of The Hopeless Romantic’s Guide to Enchantment

By

CHLOE NEILL

CHAPTER ONE

I say we go back now. We haven’t found anything, and we’ve been out here most of the day. I’m sodden to the bone.”

I sighed, pushed back the hood of my damp cloak. Winter hadn’t yet turned to spring, and the Edgelands were wet and gray. It would be two more moons before the rain stopped and high summer dried us out like laundry on a line. At least until the snows came again.

“We’ll make one more round,” I said. “Just in case we missed something in the fog. And then back to the hall.”

Like all citizens who’d reached eighteen summers, we took our turns patrolling, looking for the reivers who roamed the Edgelands’ southern border with Intarha. They made their living stealing what they could from us – sheep, grain, horses, tools – and selling it in their country. The Edgelands was a challenging place, a crescent of tundra that cupped the northern mountains that held back the Broken Sea. With care and planning, we lived just between feast and famine. Reivers upset that careful balance.

Voices emerged from the southeast through the incessant drip of water to the east.

I put my hood up in an instant; Graene did the same. We both pressed back against the trees, nearly invisible beneath the dark fabric. Our monochromatic world made hiding easy, so we listened and we waited.

More voices, now arguing about horses and borders and food stores.

“Reivers,” Graene murmured, and rubbed the tiny wooden pendant she wore on a leather cord – a squat, rounded carving of the god of hunters. Our realm, Terra, had gods for every occasion.

The voices moved closer. Still south of us and mostly moving straight. I held up a hand, traced a meandering line across my palm. Graene nodded her understanding. They were walking along the streambed below us, maybe foraging for food – mushrooms or thornberries at this time of year – or looking for tracks. An animal they could stalk, or a human they could surprise.

We crept forward, looked over the edge of the gulley.

Not reivers. Soldiers. Thousands of them, in a narrow line that snaked through the land beyond the forest and stretched to the horizon. They wore leather armor, carried short swords, and marched in unison.

There was no need for an Intarhan army to come this far north. They never made good on their promises to control the reivers, and that wouldn’t have required an army this large anyway.

We’d heard rumors of fighting to the south, of conquests in two of the other Four Kingdoms by a man they called the ‘Golden King’. Even the greediest warmongers ignored the Edgelands; ice and stone and the little else we managed to hide from the reivers weren’t worth their trouble.

I guess that had changed.

“Back to the hall,” I said. My father was the Edgelands’ king, the third generation of his line to hold the throne. We had to tell him what we’d seen. We had to prepare.

We moved back from the gully and started running. The land between the trees was mostly flat, boggy in spots and speared through with stone in others – great boulders rising like they’d sliced through the forest’s skin. The world was quiet… until the sound of heavy footsteps echoed behind us.

My heart, already quickened by the run, pounded harder. And then the voice followed.

“You there! Stop!”

If they caught us, they’d kill us. Otherwise, we’d ruin their plan – the surprise attack they apparently intended against the village. We had to reach the village first, or at least one of us did. And Graene was taller than me, with longer legs and strides.

I came to a stop. “Go,” I told her, and pulled the bow from my shoulder.

“Dahlia—”

I took an arrow from the quiver on my back, nocked it. “I’ll give you cover.” She nodded, touched her pendant, and took off. She was gone in a heartbeat.

I was wet and cold and my cloak was soaked through. Rivulets of rain were now slipping down my back. But none of that mattered. Not when I held a bow.

I turned back on the soldiers who’d chased us. One in front, three behind him. All on foot, all in uniforms, minus the leather armor. Maybe these were rangers, scouting for the rest of the army. I raised the bow, aimed at the man in front.

And looked, for the first time, at his face.

Gods might have made it – honed the cheekbones, the brow, the mouth made for a woman’s pleasure. A straight nose between honey-colored eyes that would have suited the lions I’d seen in storybooks. His shoulder-length dark blond hair was damp with rain, leaving a wave of it across his brow.

His gaze met mine, confusion and surprise in his eyes. And for three long heartbeats, we stared at each other. A shiver ran down my spine, a sharp heat that for a moment chased away the chill of clouds and rain. I wanted to touch his face, to push that lock of hair behind his ears… and maybe let my hand linger on the breadth of his strong shoulders.