New Excerpt from A Blossom at Midnight

Enjoy this new excerpt from A Blossom at Midnight, The Scented Court book 1, from the desk of A.L. Knorr. (Subject to change.)

Çifta hauled the heavy wooden door of the manor closed behind her and slid the latch closed. The metallic clink echoed through the empty halls. The sounds of Kirkik became muffled; the cries of seagulls, the rattle of wheels on cobbles, the distant shouts of sailors and stevedores, the laughter and haggling of the crowded market a few streets away, it all softened into the background.

She stood with her back to the door, holding a basket full of fresh fruit and vegetables in front of her hips. She looked down. She’d bought too much again. When would she remember that the Unya household had dwindled from thirteen to four? She didn’t need to buy so much produce anymore. She didn’t need to buy produce at all, their cook would happily do it, but Çifta liked the busy market and it got her out of the house. She sighed and made her way toward the kitchen. Cook would just have to preserve the surplus… again.

Çifta stopped in the large empty dining room with its long wooden table and chairs to gaze at the Unya family’s most recent portrait. Her heart gave an ache of loneliness and loss. Her three older sisters looked down at her from the canvas, so similar to one another yet so different from her. Their father towered over all of them, his bushy black beard an entity of its own.

Kazery’s wife, Alana, had given him Una, Fetre, and Gemma before succumbing to the illness which had plagued her lungs for years. Kazery had visibly mourned, wearing the black for five months, even while he worked, but on a trading excursion which kept him abroad for eighteen months, he returned to Kirkik with another child, this one half-fae, though you couldn’t tell from looking at her. Çifta’s ears were no more pointed than many human’s ears and she had no magic to speak of. Çifta’s sisters had their father’s dark brown eyes but their mother’s strawberry curls. While Çifta’s hair was the deep blue-black of Kazery’s, her eyes were glacier-blue. Where her sisters were freckled and pink, Çifta was porcelain. Sometimes she thought she looked more like a ghost than flesh-and-blood. People had commented since she was small that she was both striking and strikingly different from her sisters. Kazery would only smile and say she was the love child of his widowerhood. Later, she learned to blush at this comment, but her father was never ashamed. Who could shame him? No one would dare reproach Kazery Unya, not even the king.

Çifta left the produce in the kitchens for Cook and made her way through the eerily silent halls to her suite. She was pouring water to wash her hands and her face when she heard the front door of the manor open.

“Çifta?”

She was surprised to hear her father’s bellow. He wasn’t due home until lunchtime.

“Here,” she called, splashing water into her face and soaping her hands. His footsteps thumped down the hall. She picked up a towel and patted her cheeks dry as she turned to the door. Kazery poked his head into his daughter’s room, an oak of a man with a chest as large as a barrel. He smiled through his thick, black beard.

“Forget something?” She hung the towel on the dowel below the ewer and basin.

He grinned. “I have news that can’t wait.” He put a small package wrapped in thin fabric in her hand. It was closed with a shiny black bow.

“What’s this?” She felt something small and solid inside, no larger than the palm of her hand.

“An image of your betrothed. It arrived this morning. That’s why I rushed home.”

She gaped. “My…”

Kazery chuckled. “Don’t look so surprised. You knew it was my priority.”

A tremor fluttered through her as she untied the ribbon. “Who is he?”

“Prince Faraçek, eldest son of King Osvitan and Queen Daryli.”

Çifta stared at the small portrait, her mouth unfetchingly agape. She remembered herself and closed her lips, looking up at her father, wide eyed. “But, he’s a prince?”

His dark eyes sparkled. “Are you pleased?”

Çifta dropped her gaze to the likeness of Prince Faraçek. He was very fae. This was made most apparent by the sweep of his pointed ears. They winged up and back from the sides of his head like the sails of the more exotic vessels in her father’s fleet. Prince Faraçek was unsmiling as he looked out from the painting no larger than the bowl of a soup spoon, but neither was he frowning. He looked…serious but content. He had a beard as dark as her father’s, only Faraçek’s was short and jagged around the mouth. Çifta had always had a fondness for beards since she’d never seen Kazery without one, but Prince Faraçek’s facial hair reminded her of a clawed hand grasping at the prince’s sharp chin. His brows were thick and angled. His skin had the slight grey tinge of some fae, but his cheeks were rosy. He was not unattractive but he looked nothing like the kind of man Çifta had always dreamed of marrying, and everything about him looked like it was carved from stone.

Çifta realized her father was studying her face intently.

The match had not likely been easy to make. Çifta was not a princess, she was not even noble. What she was, was extremely wealthy. Some said Kazery Unya, the famous merchant and owner of Unya Trading, was richer than the King of Boskaya himself. Çifta knew it to be true because Kazery sometimes boasted in private.

“Of course, I’m pleased.” Çifta stopped staring at the portrait long enough to throw her arms around her father’s neck. It was a stretch, Kazery was six and a half feet tall.

He picked her up and hugged her, then set her on her feet again, his eyes bright. “Think of it, my minnow. A Prince of Rahamlar!”

None of her three older sisters had such advantageous marriages. Una and Fetre would be happy for her, but Çifta expected Gemma would be jealous. Gemma wed into a wealthy family across the Saltless Sea, the family that controlled the majority of the ports on the northern coast. It had been an advantageous match for the Unya family, expanding their business considerably, but Gemma’s husband was almost thirty years her senior.

The Unya girls were raised with the motto ‘duty above all’, so Gemma never complained to Kazery or to any of her friends in Kirkik. But behind closed doors she cried to her sisters that she was doomed to become a nursemaid. Since then, and after bearing two sons, Gemma had exploited the freedom her aging husband gave her to take a lover. She was happy she did not have to hide it from her partner. Her husband knew he could not satisfy her and seemed willing to leave the task to someone else, but she still had to be careful. Her husband’s one stipulation was that she never allow herself to be discovered having an affair. If she was caught, he would vehemently deny ever having given her such liberty. She would be set aside and disgraced, possibly even sent back home, though Çifta doubted Gemma’s husband had the guts to do such a thing. It would anger Kazery, and his wrath was legendary.

“What did you agree to give them as a bride price?” Çifta asked her father. To catch a prince, Kazery must have offered an immense dowry.

“Gold of course. Access to part of my fleet, aid if they need it, and a treasure trove of rare valuables from across the great wet.” Kazery touched his youngest daughter’s cheek. “It is fair, and in return your new family will allow Unya Trading access to the twin rivers.”

Çifta better understood now why her father had made the match. She would be a member of the family which controlled the fastest and most direct trading access to the north, something Kazery had always wanted. The north-flowing Tamyrat and the south-flowing Tadylat were deep, fast-flowing and smooth for something like a thousand miles. Rahamlar controlled both the gates and the tolls. They could charge what they wished for the use of these convenient byways.

For his part, Kazery Unya had made himself into a kind of king. Many sailors and soldiers swore fealty to him. Unusual and greatly prized items from foreign lands could be got by Kazery and no other. He had conquered the life-threatening challenge of crossing the Ivryndian Sea, a body of water supposedly riddled with sea-monsters and so vast that it took months to cross. He’d been rewarded one-hundred-fold by what he’d found there and brought the foreign goods back to sell. When she thought of all he had done, maybe it did make sense that his daughter should wed a prince.

“What do you know of him? What is he like?”

Kazery’s bushy brows pinched. “People say he is quiet and serious, but respected. He is nothing like his brother, Ander. Faraçek is the oldest of four but he’ll never wear the crown. That’s part of why they agreed to a match with us.” He scratched his chin, his fingers disappearing into his beard.

Çifta closed the locket, moving to the next task. “When do I leave?”

“When can you be ready? They are eager to meet you.” Kazery moved toward the door, resting a hand the size of a dinner plate on the handle.

“A week should be plenty of time, but I’d like to stop and see Gemma on the way.” Çifta went to her writing desk to retrieve paper, ink, and a quill. She was a lover of list making and this list would be a long one. She had recently dismissed her personal maid after catching her gossiping and bragging about the Unya family wealth in the marketplace, and hadn’t yet hired a new one. Kazery could say what he liked in public, but the Unya family expected discretion from their employees. No point in hiring new help now. Çifta would pack her own things and acquire a maid after she arrived in Rahamlar. They might even have one for her by the time she arrived.

Kazery pinched her cheek between his forefinger and thumb, the way he’d done since she was little. “Excellent. I shall send a letter. Congratulations, my dear.”

She smiled. “Congratulations to you as well, Papa.”

Kazery left Çifta to her plans.

But Çifta could hardly keep her thinking organized enough to write the list. She kept returning to the portrait of the prince. Her thoughts went to the place that all young minds tread: the halls of hope.

Could she dare to dream of love?

She dug up old letters from her sisters. She kept them in the wooden chest at the end of her four-poster bed, wrapped in colored ribbons. Peach satin for Una, who was the luckiest in her match. She fell deeply in love with her lord almost immediately, and he with her. Soft lilac for Fetre, who married a courteous man with a stable full of racing horses whom she doted on. And lemon yellow for Gemma, who had not found happiness in her marriage, but whose extramarital lover kept her occupied in haylofts, deep closets, and quiet stairwells.

Çifta chose Una’s letters and rifled through them, plucking out her favorites. She’d read them so often that she knew at a glance which ones would lift her spirits with stories of new love. Reading of another’s good luck would help drum up strength for the adventure ahead.