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Chapter I

The Rawkner Family Farm

Like the silvered nib of his Netherflame needle, Orpheus’ paintbrush swept across the board. Red, bright and ardent, stood bold against the white surface. The arc was smooth. The angle perfect. The balance of size, shape, and the negative space between each stroke expertly executed. Years of casting sigils had given him a knack for precision. A spell could easily go awry from one ill-conceived mark, but it was the artist inside him who stirred now.

The world around him fell away: the squeal of laughter, the pounding of tiny feet, the birdsong and low moan of wind through trees, the stripe of sunlight that burned a path across the top corner of the board, burnishing the red paint dark like the smear of spilled blood. There was only Orpheus and his brush, shaping the power of the human condition, charging it with purpose, a destination.

This sign would make its mark. Impart to all the world the gravity of its existence—

“Roland, over here!”

A shadow fell across Orpheus, the world blotting black for the split second it took for something the size of his head to fall from the sky and crash into his board. It bounced with a hollow twang, Orpheus holding his breath while the buzz filling his head grew louder, the pounding footsteps closer.

It’s fine, he thought as the ball rose again, shadow arcing across the board like the moon did the sky. Everything’s fine.

Below, the sign remained intact. The paint dry. His marks safe.

“I’ve got it!”

An ear-splitting squeal pierced the air, one small body careening straight towards him—

Orpheus leaped out of the way when a tumble of wild blonde hair and pale blue eyes charged him, skinny arms reaching towards the sky—towards the ball—spindly legs kicking up grass and dirt and—and—

Paint. His bucket of paint.

Oh no. Time slowed as an arc of bright red paint splattered square across his sign.

Astrid squealed again, lifting the captured ball over a head of hair nearly the same shade as Fenrir’s, bare feet dancing across the grass to track paint in a half-circle around him.

“Sorry Mr. Fifi!”

Sorry?

Hours of work, wasted. His sign, destroyed. The crowning was tomorrow and the fairgrounds were no more than a haphazard maze of tents, the stage barely-realized, the latrines hidden behind a fabricated tree line he’d insisted they create from a cache of artificial pine trees those freaks in the Labs had offered Fenrir like some kind of tithe to a king.

Look, they even light up! And they had, but Orpheus hadn’t understood why—

“I can help!” Astrid was on her knees, grin splitting her face while her tiny hands swept two red smears across the board, destroying any legibility that remained of the large, bold letters.

“No, wait!” Orpheus scrambled to his hands and knees, reaching for the board like he could save it, hand falling to his side when he realized he could not. Astrid squealed again, fingers squishing into the board, the ends of her long blonde hair dragging through wet paint, staining it red. The ball sat forgotten in the grass, Roland’s figure a dark silhouette at the crest of the hill, blue sky bigger than the hazy mountain breaking up the distant horizon.

Not for the first time that day, Orpheus wondered who in their right mind decided to make him babysit their hells-damned kids.

“We can put it back, Mr. Fifi,” Astrid announced, scooping up paint and reaching for the overturned bucket. Orpheus ground his teeth when blades of kicked-up grass were swept up and deposited into whatever leftover paint hadn’t spilled all over his sign.

Ruined. Everything was ruined.

“You absolute menace,” he snarled, teeth bared. “You—you—hellion of the deeps. You infernal rascal!”

“What’s a hellion, Mr. Fifi?”

Orpheus saw red, and it wasn’t the paint. “Stop calling me that!”

Astrid froze, hands over the bucket, bright and red and dripping like blood. She looked up at him with big, wet eyes, tears building in the corners, threatening to spill down her ruddy cheeks. She was five. Maybe six. Old enough to know better but too young to understand why.

Immediately, Orpheus realized his mistake.

He was too late.