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She was wearing them the day she first met Magistrate Toris de Lena. He’d been watching her conduct an interrogation, and when he came up to compliment her performance afterward, the silvery buttons did not escape his notice. “What a perfect representation of Queen Iresine’s favorite earrings! She was such a beautiful woman, was she not?”
Later, as he began to take Isobel under his wing and helped sponsor her own ascension to magistrate, he walked her down the Hall of Kings in the royal palace and showed her the portrait of Iresine and her husband, King Costin. The queen, who was by then dead thirty years, wore earrings that were exact copies of Arceneaux’s buttons.
The next portrait in line was that of King Regus, Iresine and Costin’s only son. The face that stared back at Isobel from that frame was so like her own that she audibly gasped. His hair was blond and hers was dark, his skin was tawny while hers was more pale, and his eyes were a deep brown while hers were blue . . . but the structure of their faces, the shape of their noses, the set of their lips . . . they were all the same.
“Ah, yes,” Toris said thoughtfully, watching her. “The late king Regus in his youth. He was twenty-five when that was painted, not yet married to Genevieve. He was considered quite dashing in his day.”
Isobel stepped closer to peer at the brass plate beneath the portrait.
King Regus Costin Altenar
15 Primus 1567–27 Tertius 1612
King Regus had been born in midwinter, the year 1567, just a day before she was found.
That’s when she finally knew who she really was. An unwanted princess, sent away at birth to keep Renalt from having to make good on its treaty to Achleva. And this face—this familiar stranger’s face—was that of her brother. Her twin. A man who’d lived a prince and died a king.
They were on their way out of the hall when a small, unkempt slip of a girl crashed by them, running with wide eyes as if she had someone behind her, though there was no one else in the hall. Her feet got tangled up under her skinny legs and she careened into the portrait of Iresine and Costin, knocking it from its nail to the floor.
Isobel’s eye had twitched at the sight. She had heard the whispers about the princess—that there were things about her that just seemed off—witchlike, even—and had never given it much thought. But knowing what she now knew, Isobel felt rankled by Aurelia’s very existence. What was it about this unnatural little imp that had encouraged her royal parents to keep her, when Isobel had been abandoned and erased by hers? How was it fair that Aurelia had been raised in these glittering halls, while Isobel had been Irving’s little moneymaker?
Isobel instantly hated her.
Onal, the spindly old spinster Queen Genevieve called an adviser, appeared at the other end of the hall, rushing to replace the fallen portrait while scolding the devil who’d toppled it. Her words to the little girl were sharp, but in Isobel’s opinion, a whip would have been sharper and far more effective.
Toris had had to tug her away. He’d been observing Isobel with the acuity of a hawk, and when they were out of earshot, he said, “I think it’s time we have a talk, Warden Arceneaux.”
She told him everything. About her curious origins, the denigrator who’d passed himself off as her father, and even—with reluctance—about her inability to properly age. Toris had listened with interest, and when she finished, she raised up her hands for him to arrest her.
He did not bind her wrists. Rather, he put both his hands over hers.
“You bear a burden, yes. Your condition is most certainly caused by magic . . . Some might even go so far as to call you a witch. But I’ve seen the vigor with which you work, the deep devotion you carry to our cause . . . and I believe there is a great change coming soon. The Empyrea has charged me with preparing this world for the reckoning that must come before her return, in human form, to our world. It is now my belief that she has sent you—?saved you—to be my partner in this divine purpose. Will you join me, Isobel?”
She had already agreed in her heart long before she was able to release the words from her mouth.
And after eight years of effort, they’d come so close to the fulfillment of their mission. The night of the black moon, she’d felt the change happening. It had been right there in her hands.
And then, just as quickly, it had been taken away.
Because of that girl.
At first, she’d just wanted revenge. She wanted to make Aurelia suffer the same way she had. She thought finding Valentin alive, so close to the infant king’s coronation, was a gift from the Empyrea herself. She would kill Aurelia’s lover in front of her, provoke her int
o demonstrating magic, and then arrest her for witchcraft.
It was the best way to punish her without damaging her body. No matter how much Arceneaux hated the girl, she was still too shrewd to waste such a valuable resource. If the magic inside her blood was strong enough to kill Toris, imagine what it could be used for when given to someone more deserving?
Arceneaux could think of at least four or five loyal vassals to whom she could entrust such a powerful vehicle. Aurelia’s body, occupied by one of Arceneaux’s entourage, would become the greatest tool the Tribunal ever had.
She’d gotten too careless, though. Let herself feed too much on the thrill of triumph. Until, once again, Aurelia had slipped from her grasp. And now she was here, in a damp and dirty old mill, out on the starsforsaken edge of civilization, trying to figure out her next steps.
There was a knock at the door of her cramped sleeping space. “Come in,” she said curtly.
“Pardon me, Magistrate,” Lyall said. “The priest is here for you.”
Arceneaux stood and straightened her white dress. “Good.”
She followed Lyall through the lab he’d set up on the second story of the mill, past the unsettling contents of his worktables, trying to ignore the sour stench that always accompanied his experiments. The purpling body of the murdered acolyte Golightly was laid out at the end of the room surrounded by a half-empty vial of blood and Lyall’s iron implements: a pair of tongs, shears, and an awl with a wicked point, still hot from the fire. Golightly was one of the first of the Tribunal to support her claim to power within their ranks. He’d embraced her leadership and served her with devotion, always doggedly loyal; he would be the first of her followers to earn the honor of becoming a Celestine at his death. But if anyone deserved to be reborn on the day of the Empyrea’s descent to earth, he did.
