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Their first child had been blessed with extraordinary magic; their second, with great wisdom and intellect. But the third child was sickly, hovering on the edge of death. His mother named him Briar Rose after the wildflowers that thrived in the forest hollows, which bloomed even in the darkest shadow.
The Spindle Witch spun her wicked golden threads and saved the child, but the magic exacted a heavy toll, trading the queen’s life for her son’s.
At last, only the castle remained, besieged by an impenetrable Forest of Thorns.
A drop of blood, a drop of hope. The sleep of death broken with a single kiss.
She pulled off her hat and set it on the bar. Her skin was tan, her cheeks dusted with freckles from hours in the sun. She ran her hand through her dark brown hair, which was just long enough to trap in a small ponytail at the nape of her neck. She wasn’t keeping a low profile because she was a fugitive, nor was she up to anything shady enough to take place in the back rooms of the Silver Baron. She was just avoiding her ex.
The Witch Hunters were a vicious cult who believed all magic was corrupt and vowed to stop Andar from ever being restored—probably the only ones left, after a hundred years, who still believed the great kingdom of magic could be saved. They operated mostly in the scorched, lawless wastes of Andar, looting magic relics and chasing Witches out of the fallen kingdom.
The door swung open with a bang, and a figure swaggered into the tavern. A short, stocky girl headed toward her, wearing a rust-red coat that fell to her knees over a gray tunic and a scuffed pair of dark pants. Her ash-brown hair was braided and wound into a knot, and a battle-ax was slung across her back, its dull head gleaming between her shoulder blades. But what really caught Fi’s attention were the heavy boots with thick soles and wedge heels. Those she would recognize anywhere. They were a custom design that gave a few extra inches of height to the young woman who went with them.
“These aren’t just vines. They’re words in one of the magic languages.”
among the roses.”
Slowly, Fi worked the fingerless glove off and set it aside. She held up her hand beside the guttering candle, looking for the thousandth time at the butterfly mark burned into her palm—a stylized swallowtail, dark as ink, with long tails that trailed over her wrist before curling in toward the sharp, angular wings. It was a curse mark, and it had been her old partner’s parting gift to her a year ago, before she fled Darfell.
Shane wasn’t just some warrior from the north, as she let people believe. She was the daughter of a War King, the lord of Rockrimmon, and the heir to his throne. Her birthright by three and a half minutes—one she had never wanted.
Pain grounded you like nothing else.
“I hate traps that are all about knowing your history,”
Real magic in ruins was exceedingly rare. Not many spells survived their caster’s death, which was why most of the traps in the Witches’ Jewelry Box were mechanisms, not magic.
Survival skills had been a basic, right alongside reading and writing.
“What is the greatest feat of magic ever performed?” he asked, not for the first time. Filore rolled her eyes, but answered as she’d been taught. “The invention of words.”
“She was clicking her tongue and flipping the pages back and forth. She only does that when she doesn’t like what she’s reading.”
Keep your heart out of it,
A warrior’s choice of weapon was considered to be deeply significant and, for an heir, a harbinger of what kind of ruler they would be.
It is the symbol of the wild wanderer, chaotic and headstrong, one who will carry the battle flag far from home.
“Magic corrupts—it’s a poison.
a piece of archaic jewelry: five onyx rings connected by tiny, glistening chains.
Mystery and danger—everything she loved about taking on a ruin, all wrapped up in a stunningly beautiful girl.
Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss.”
A girl under a curse meets a boy under a curse.
“Then I’ll have to convince you, won’t I? Of the existence of love and destiny.”
“What kind of a person walks away from someone in trouble?”
That was what the Butterfly Curse meant: She no longer had a home, and never would again.
The Curse of the Wandering Butterfly doomed her to bring misfortune on any home where she stayed too long—any more than three days.
Half of what historians do is look at old storybooks like this one.”
Every made-up story starts with a grain of truth.”
First came the Snake Witch, tall and stern, who carried a silver serpent wound over her tawny arm like a cuff. Then came the Dream Witch, with brown skin and lush curls, winking as she pressed one finger to her lips like she was about to share a fantastic secret. The Dream Witch was her mother’s favorite. Last came the Rose Witch, barely a teenager, with sunny features and a crown of rosebuds nestled in her golden hair.
“You are exactly who you are supposed to be, Filore.
love so powerful it could wipe out a hundred years of loneliness.
It was possibly the worst love confession of all time.
“Animals make sense to me. Even when they’re dangerous, even when they seem vicious, they always have a reason for it. People, on the other hand, can be quite senseless and cruel.”
She worshipped at the altar of never-telling-anyone-anything.
You brought your own ghost to this haunted house.”
You were that kid who spent her whole childhood locked in a library. I can just picture you walled off by stacks of books.
The kind of person who could walk away from a door without knowing what was behind it never became a treasure hunter in the first place.
Sparks danced through the air like enchanted fireflies.
Then she vanished, too, and the last of her glittering magic poured through the darkness like sand through an hourglass, the symbol of all dream magic.
she just hadn’t looked closely enough to see the rot under the gold plating.
The mask was more monster than wolf, with ragged chewed ears and a snarling jaw full of crooked teeth. In the unsteady light, Red’s brown eyes looked golden, gleaming fiercely out of the cavernous eyeholes.
“You know, there’s a saying where I come from, that if you meet someone three times by chance, you’re fated to be together.”
the twining snakes inked into her skin. The sealing tattoo, exactly as Fi had described it.
“But I know that sometimes, after you make one bad decision, it’s easier to make the next one.
Maybe falling in love wasn’t something you dreamed about, or something you left to destiny. Maybe it was something that happened when you were having too much fun to notice.
Maybe she didn’t have any real choices, and she was just being dragged around by curses and magic—like
“You think love is some beautiful dream, but love can make people do terrible things.”
