Thorn Queen

Book 2: Dark Swan

by Richelle Mead

Genres: Contemporary Fantasy; Action & Adventure; Urban Fantasy

Synopsis

A magical mercenary is crowned a queen of the Otherworld—an honor could cost her life—in the New York Times bestselling author's paranormal thriller.



Eugenie Markham is a shaman for hire, paid to bind and banish creatures from the Otherworld. But after her last battle, she's also become queen of the Thorn Land. It may sound nice, but her kingdom is in tatters, her love life is in chaos, and Eugenie is eager to avoid a prophecy about her firstborn destroying mankind. Now young girls are disappearing from the Otherworld, and no one—except Eugenie—is willing to find out why.



Eugenie has spilled plenty of fey blood in her time, but this enemy is shrewd, subtle, and nursing a very personal grudge. And the men in her life aren't making things any easier. Her boyfriend Kiyo is preoccupied with his pregnant ex, and sexy fey king Dorian always poses a dangerous distraction. With or without their help, the reluctant queen has a sworn duty to uphold, even if it means facing the darkest and deadliest side of her nature.

Release date: July 16, 2009

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 382

Sample

Sad fact: lots of kids know how to use knives and guns.

I’d been one of them, but instead of pursuing a life of crime, I’d trained to be a shamanic mercenary. This meant that while my friends were at dances and football games, I’d been out banishing spirits and wrestling down monsters with my stepfather. On the upside, I grew up never fearing muggers or any other assailants. On the downside, an adolescence like that really screws with your social development.

It meant I’d never really been like other kids. I’d had some friends, but compared to their world, mine had been terribly stark and terribly deadly. Their dramas and concerns had seemed so petty next to mine, and I could never fully relate. As an adult now, I still couldn’t really connect to kids because I had no shared experiences to draw on.

Which made my job today that much more difficult.

“Go ahead, Polly,” crooned the girl’s mother, smiling with overplump lips. Too much collagen, I suspected. “Tell her about the ghost.”

Polly Hall was thirteen but wore enough makeup to rival a forty-year-old whore. She sat slouched against the back of a couch in her family’s perfectly decorated house, chewing gum loudly, looking everywhere but at us. The more I studied her, the more I decided she probably did have problems. I suspected they had less to do with supernatural influences and more with having a mother who had named her Polly and let her wear thongs. It was an unfortunate side effect of Polly’s low-cut jeans that I could see the aforementioned thong.

After a minute of silence, Mrs. Hall sighed loudly. “Polly, dear, we’ve been over this. If you aren’t going to help us, we can’t help you.”

Smiling, I knelt down in front of the couch so I could look the girl in the eyes. “It’s all right,” I told her, hoping I sounded sincere and not like an after-school special. “I’ll believe whatever you tell me. We’ll get it taken care of.”

Polly sighed just as loudly as her mother had a moment ago and still refused to look at me. She reminded me of my unstable teenage half sister who was currently MIA and wanted to conquer the world. “Mom,” she said, “can I go to my room now?”

“Not until you’ve talked to this nice lady.” Glancing back to me, Mrs. Hall explained. “We hear strange noises all night: bangs, cracks, bumps. Things fall over for no reason. I’ve even…” She hesitated. “I’ve even seen things fly around the room. But it’s always when Polly’s around. Whatever this ghost is, it seems to like her…or be obsessed with her.”

I turned my attention back to Polly, again taking in the sullen mood and thinly veiled frustration. “You got a lot on your mind, Polly?” I asked gently. “Problems at school or something? Problems around here?”

Her blue eyes flicked to me ever so briefly.

“What about any electrical issues?” This I directed to her mother. “Things shorting out? Stereos or appliances not working right?”

Mrs. Hall blinked. “How’d you know that?”

I stood up and stretched the kinks out of my body. I’d fought a wraith last night, and he hadn’t been gentle.

“You don’t have a ghost. You have a poltergeist.”

Both of them stared at me.

“Isn’t that a ghost?” asked Mrs. Hall.

“Not really. It’s a manifestation of telekinetic powers, often brought on by rage and other strong emotions during teenage years.” I’d evaded after-school special mode, only to slip into infomercial mode.

“I…wait. Are you saying Polly’s causing this?”

“Not consciously, but yeah. In cases like this, the subject—Polly—lashes out without realizing it, venting her emotions in physical ways. She probably won’t stay telekinetic. It’ll fade as she gets older and settles down a bit.”

Her mother still looked skeptical. “It sure seems like a ghost.”

I shrugged. “Trust me. I’ve seen this lots of times.”

“So…isn’t there anything you can do? Anything we can do?”

“Therapy,” I suggested. “Maybe get a psychic to come out.”

I gave Mrs. Hall the contact information for a psychic I trusted. Waiving my banishing fee, I simply charged her for the house call. Once I’d double-checked the cash she gave me—I never took checks—I stashed it away and made moves toward the living-room door.

“Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

“No, I mean, I guess this helps. It’s just so strange.” She eyed her daughter with perplexity. “Are you sure it’s not a ghost?”

“Positive. These are classic symp—”

An invisible force slammed into me, pushing me into the wall. I yelped, threw out a hand to keep my balance, and shot daggers at that little bitch Polly. Eyes wide, she looked just as astonished as I felt.

“Polly!” exclaimed Mrs. Hall. “You are grounded, young lady. No phone, no IM, no…” Her mouth dropped open as she stared at something across the room. “What’s that?”

I followed her gaze to the large, pale blue shape materializing before us.

“Um, well,” I said, “that’s a ghost.”

It swooped toward me, mouth open in a terrible screech. I yelled for the others to get down and jerked a silver-bladed athame out of my belt. A knife might seem useless against spirits, but they needed to take on a substantial form to inflict any real damage. Once solid, they were susceptible to silver.

This spirit bore a female shape—a very young female shape, actually. Long pale hair trailed in her wake like a cloak, and her eyes were large and empty. Whether it was a lack of experience or simply some inherent trait of hers, her attack proved floundering and uncoordinated. Even as she screamed at the first bites of the athame, I had my crystal-studded wand out in my other hand.

Now that I’d regained my bearings, I could do a banishing like this in my sleep. Speaking the usual words, I drew from my internal strength and sent my own spirit beyond the boundaries of this world. Touching the gates of the Underworld, I ensnared the female spirit and sent her over. Monsters and gentry I tended to send back to the Otherworld, the limbo they lived in. A ghost like this needed to move on to the land of death. She disappeared.

Mrs. Hall and Polly stared at me. Suddenly, in her first show of emotion, the girl leapt up and glared at me.

“You just killed my best friend!”

I opened my mouth to respond and decided nothing I had to say would be adequate.

“Good heavens, what are you talking about?” exclaimed her mother.

Polly’s face twisted with anger, her eyes bright with tears. “Trixie. She was my best friend. We told each other everything.”

“Trixie?” Mrs. Hall and I asked in unison.

“I can’t believe you did that. She was so cool.” Polly’s voice turned a little wistful. “I just wish we could have gone shopping together, but she couldn’t leave the house. So I just had to bring her Vogue and Glamour.”

I turned to Mrs. Hall. “My original advice still stands. Therapy. Lots of it.”

I headed home after that, wondering for the hundredth time why I’d chosen this mercenary shaman profession. Surely there were other jobs that were a lot less trouble than interacting with evil supernatural beings. Accounting. Advertising. Law. Well, maybe not that last one.

About an hour later, I arrived back home and was immediately assaulted by two medium-sized dogs when I cleared the door. They were mutts, one solid black and one solid white. Their names were Yin and Yang, but I could never remember who was who.

“Back off,” I warned as they sniffed me, tails wagging frantically. The white one tried to lick my hand. Pushing past them, I entered my kitchen and nearly tripped over a tabby cat sprawled on the floor in a patch of sun. Grumbling, I tossed my bag onto the kitchen table. “Tim? Are you here?”

My housemate, Tim Warkoski, stuck his head into the kitchen. He wore a T-shirt with silhouettes of Native Americans that said Homeland Security: Fighting Terrorism since 1492. I appreciated the cleverness, but it lost something since Tim wasn’t actually an American Indian. He merely played one on TV, or rather, he played one in local bars and tourist circles, using his tanned skin and black hair to elude his Polish heritage. It had gotten him into trouble with a lot of the local tribes.

With a garbage bag in one hand and a cat scoop in the other, he gave me a dark look. “Do you know how many fucking boxes of litter I’ve had to change today?”

I poured a glass of milk and sat down at the table. “Kiyo says we need one box for every cat and then an extra one.”

“Yeah, I can count, Eugenie. That’s six boxes. Six boxes in a house with fifteen hundred square feet. You think your deadbeat boyfriend’s ever going to show back up and help out with this?”

I shifted uncomfortably. It was a good question. After three months of dating between Tucson and Phoenix, my boyfriend Kiyo had decided to take a job here to save the hour and a half commute. We’d had a long discussion and decided we were ready to have him simply move in with me. Unfortunately, with Kiyo came his menagerie: five cats and two dogs. It was one of the woes of dating a veterinarian. He couldn’t help but adopt every animal he found. I couldn’t remember the cats’ names any better than the dogs’. Four of them were named after the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and all I could really recall was that Famine ironically weighed about thirty pounds.

Another problem was that Kiyo was a fox—both literally and figuratively. His mother was a kitsune, a sort of Japanese fox spirit. He’d inherited all of her traits, including amazing strength and speed, as well as the ability to transform into an actual fox. As a result, he frequently got “the call of the wild,” making him yearn to run around in his animal form. Since he had downtime between jobs now, he’d left me to take a kind of wild vacation. I accepted this, but after a week of not seeing him, I was starting to get restless.

“He’ll be back soon,” I said vaguely, not meeting Tim’s eyes. “Besides, you can get out of chores if you want to start paying rent.” That was our deal. Free lodging in exchange for food and housework.

He wasn’t deterred. “Your choice in men is questionable. You know that, right?”

I didn’t really want to ponder that too much. I abandoned him for my room, seeking the comfort of a jigsaw puzzle depicting a photograph of Zurich. It sat on my desk, as did one of the cats. I think he was Mr. Whiskers, the non-Apocalyptic one. I shooed him off the puzzle. He took about half the pieces with him.

“Fucking cat,” I muttered.

Love, I decided, was a hard thing. Well aware of my grumpy mood, I knew part of my anxiety over Kiyo stemmed from the fact that he was also passing part of his sabbatical in the Otherworld, spending time with his ex-girlfriend who just happened to be a devastatingly beautiful fairy queen. Fairies, sidhe, shining ones…whatever you wanted to call them, they were the tall, long-lived rulers of the Otherworld. Most shamans and I referred to them as gentry, an antique term. Maiwenn, Kiyo’s ex, was almost nine months pregnant, and although they’d broken up, he was still a part of her life.

I sighed. Tim might have been right about my questionable taste in men.

Night wore on. I finished the puzzle while blasting Def Leppard, making me feel better. I was just shutting off the music when I heard Tim yell, “Yo, Eug. Kujo’s here.”

Breathless, I ran to my bedroom door and flung it open. A red fox the size of a wolf trotted down the hall toward me. Relief burned through me, and I felt my heart soar as I let him in and watched him pace around in restless circles.

“About time,” I said.

He had a sleek orange-red coat and a fluffy tail tipped in white. His eyes were golden and sometimes bore a very human glint. I saw nothing like that tonight. A purely animal wariness peered out at me, and I realized it’d be awhile before he changed back. He had the ability to transform to a wide range of foxes, everything from a small, normal-sized red fox to the powerful shape before me. When he spent awhile in this bigger form, turning human again took more effort and time.

Still, hoping he’d transform soon, I dumped another puzzle on my desk and worked it as I waited. Two hours later, nothing had changed. He curled up in a corner, wrapping his body in a tight ball. His eyes continued to watch me. Exhausted, I gave up on him and put on a red nightgown. Turning off the lights, I finally slipped into my bed, falling asleep instantly for a change.

As I slept, I dreamed about the Otherworld, particularly a piece of it that bore a striking resemblance to Tucson and the Sonora Desert surrounding us. Only, the Otherworldly version was better. An almost heavenly Tucson, warmed by bright sunshine and ablaze with flowering cacti. This was a common dream for me, one that often left me yearning for that land in the morning. I always tried my best to ignore the impulse.

A couple hours later, I woke up. A warm, muscled body had slid into bed with me, pressing against my back. Strong arms wrapped around my waist, and Kiyo’s scent, dark and musky, washed over me. A liquid feeling burned inside of me at his touch. Roughly, he turned me toward him. His lips consumed me in a crushing kiss, blazing with intensity and need.

“Eugenie,” he growled, once he’d paused long enough to remove his lips—just barely—from mine. “I’ve missed you. Oh God, I’ve missed you. I’ve needed you.”

He kissed me again, conveying that need as his hands ravaged my body. My own hands slid along the smooth perfection of his bare skin, awakening my desire. There was no gentleness between us tonight, only a feral passion as he moved on top of me, his body pushing into mine with a need fueled as much by animal instinct as by love. He had not, I realized, completely regained his human senses, no matter his shape.

When I woke up in the morning, my bed was empty. Across the room, Kiyo pulled on jeans, meeting my eyes as though he had some sixth sense that I was awake. I rolled over on my side, the sheets gliding against my naked skin. Watching him with a lazy, satisfied languor, I admired his body and the sexy features gifted to him by Japanese and Hispanic heritage. His tanned body and black hair stood in stark contrast to the light skin and reddish hair my northern European ancestors had given me.

“Are you leaving?” I asked. My heart, having leapt at his presence last night, suddenly sank.

“I have to go back,” he said, straightening out a dark green T-shirt. He ran an absentminded hand through his chin-length hair. “You know I do.”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice sharper than I’d intended. “Of course you do.”

His eyes narrowed. “Please don’t start that,” he said quietly. “I have to do this.”

“Sorry. Somehow I just can’t get all that excited about another woman having your baby.”

There it was. The issue that always hung over us.

He sat down beside me on the bed, dark eyes serious and level. “Well, I’m excited. I’d like to think you could support me in that and be happy for me.”

Troubled, I looked away. “I am happy for you. I want you to be happy…it’s just, you know, it’s hard.”

“I know.” He leaned over me, sliding his hand up the back of my neck, twining his fingers in my hair.

“You’ve spent more time with her in the last week than with me.”

“It’s a necessity. It’s almost time.”

“I know,” I repeated. I knew my jealousy was unwarranted. Petty, even. I wanted to share his happiness at having a child, but something in me prevented it.

“Eugenie, I love you. It’s that simple. That’s all there is to it.”

“You love her too.”

“Yes, but not in the way I love you.”

He kissed me with a gentleness very different from the roughness of last night. I melted against him. The kiss grew stronger, filling with ardor. With great reluctance, he finally pulled away. I could see the longing in his eyes. He wanted to have sex again. That said something for my charms, I guessed.

His responsible inclinations winning out, he straightened and stood up. I stayed where I was.

“Will I see you there?” he asked, voice even and neutral.

I sighed. “Yeah. I’ll be there.”

He smiled. “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”

I nodded.

He went to the door and looked back at me. “I love you.” The heat in his voice told me he truly meant it. I smiled back.

“I love you too.”

He left, and I pulled the sheets more tightly against me and made no motions to get up. I couldn’t stay in bed all day, unfortunately. Other things—like my promise to Kiyo—demanded my attention today. There was a trip to the Otherworld ahead of me, one that would take me to a kingdom I’d reluctantly inherited. You see, Maiwenn wasn’t the only Otherworldly queen in Kiyo’s life.

Yet, astonishingly, that wasn’t the problem for me today. That was easy compared to what else lay in store for me.

I had to go to a gentry baby shower.

Crossing over to the Otherworld is easier for me than most people but still requires a bit of work. Once I’d packed up what I needed, I had to drive to Saguaro National Park and hike out to a remote corner of it. Here, two very faint trails intersected in a crossroads—a common marker for gates to the Otherworld. It and the human world lie very close to each other, and certain spots between the two are thinner. Of course, even a thin spot like this wouldn’t always be enough for some people to make the journey in their own bodies. They might end up going in spirit or an elemental form. But me? I bore the blood of humans and of the gentry. I could therefore travel both worlds with ease, though my gentry heritage still unnerved me. It was only a recent discovery, one I had trouble coming to terms with.

Standing at the crossroads, I closed my eyes, slipping into a trance very similar to the one I used to banish the spirit yesterday. A tattoo of a greenish snake coiled around one of my arms in tribute to Hecate, the goddess who guarded transitions and chthonic magic. Invoking her, drawing on her power, I stretched my body beyond this world. A moment later, I stood in the Otherworld. In a castle. A castle that belonged to me.

I recovered myself quickly since crossover side effects almost never bothered me anymore. The room I stood in was a small sitting room, sparsely furnished. In the center of it was a rabbit paperweight, white resin with little blue flowers. It was silly, but that rabbit was imbued with my essence, meaning when I crossed over from Saguaro National Park—or any other crossroads of my choice—my body would travel to this spot rather than to some remote place.

Footsteps sounded on the outside hallway’s stone floor. A moment later, a bright-eyed young woman with long blond hair peered inside. Her face split into a wide grin when she saw me.

“Your majesty,” she breathed, delighted. Turning back around, she yelled down the hall. “The queen! The queen is here!”

I winced. Man, I wished I could come here without all the hype. Bad enough I had to come here at all.

Her proclamation made, Nia ran up to me, squeezing my hand. She was one of my servants. I guess you’d call her my lady-in-waiting since she was responsible for my appearance most of the time. “Everything’s ready to go to the Willow Land,” she told me. “I’ve picked out an amazing gown for you.”

I shook my head, reaching into the backpack I almost always lugged around. The gentry favored heavy brocades and other elaborateness in their fashion. I wasn’t up for any of that today. “I brought my own.”

She stared at the dress I produced, then looked back up at me with raised eyebrows. “You’re jesting, your majesty, right?” Those blue eyes pleaded. “Right?”

I was saved from an argument when others entered the room. Still staring mournfully at the dress, Nia retreated so my senior staff could talk to me. Yeah. Senior fairy staff. Three months still wasn’t enough time to get used to this.

A tall, very lovely woman with glossy black braids strode in, her movements both athletic and graceful. Her name was Shaya, and I depended on her more than anyone else around here. She was my regent, handling all the dirty work I didn’t want to deal with, and I was grateful and lucky to have her.

With her was Rurik, the captain of my guard. Having guards was also something that took a lot of getting used to—particularly since they always wanted to follow me around. Rurik and I had gotten off to a bad start, probably because he’d tried to rape me the first time we met. Sporting a large build and pale blond hair, he’d proven himself a capable servant, though I’d often found him fooling around with other women who worked here. I had let him know in a very pleasant voice that I’d rip him apart if I ever found out those women hadn’t consented to his advances.

A few others trailed in, officials that I’d inherited with the castle when I killed its former king. I couldn’t remember half their names.

“Welcome back,” said Shaya, smiling. She didn’t possess Nia’s rapture but still seemed genuinely pleased to see me.

“Your majesty,” the others intoned, bowing.

They waited for me to sit in one of the chairs, joining me a moment afterward.

“Nia says we’re ready to go?” I asked, unable to hide my dismay at the upcoming trip.

“Yes,” Shaya told me. “We simply await your command. At an easy pace, we should be able to do it in three hours.”

I groaned. “Three hours. Do you know how crazy that is? I could do it in half that time by driving to a gateway in my own world and crossing over closer.”

She regarded me indulgently, having heard this argument before. “You can’t show up at Queen Maiwenn’s court without your retinue.”

Rurik, sprawled lazily in a chair, flashed me a grin. “It’s part of your image, your majesty.”

I rubbed my eyes. “Alright. Whatever. Any word on Jasmine?”

His smile faded. “No. We’ve still got scouting parties roaming the kingdoms, but they’ve found nothing.”

“Incredible. You guys can make trees come to life and raise stones from the earth, but you can’t find one pouty teenage girl.”

“We’ll find your sister,” Rurik said grimly. I think he’d taken this mission as a matter of personal pride. “It may take awhile, but we’ll find her.”

I nodded because there was nothing else to do. The waiting infuriated me. Every moment that passed meant Jasmine, a mere fifteen years old, had another chance to get pregnant and give birth to a prophesied heir that would allegedly conquer the human world. I was subject to the same prophecy but was smart enough to use birth control.

“Anything else? How are things going otherwise?”

Shaya schooled her face to neutrality. “We manage, your majesty.”

She kept her voice as blank as her expression, but I could see badly feigned disapproval on the others’ faces. They didn’t like the way I neglected my duties here. I suspected Shaya disapproved as well, but it didn’t stop her from sparing me the details of the Thorn Land’s day-to-day affairs. She knew I didn’t really want to hear them, no matter my asking, so she didn’t tell me.

I noticed then just how truly oppressive the heat was in here. Everyone was sweating.

“My God, it’s hot,” I said.

They all stared at me, and I immediately felt stupid. What had I expected? When I’d conquered the kingdom, it had shaped itself to my will, transforming itself into my idea of perfection: the Sonora Desert. The castle had not changed, and remained in its constant state: thick blocks of stone. Black stone. Stone that absorbed heat like crazy and had little ventilation. It was the kind of place more suited to cold, misty moors.

The land had been greener and more temperate under its last ruler, Aeson. Aeson and I had had a fair amount of friction because he’d been trying to get Jasmine pregnant and had wanted to give me a shot too, in hopes that he would be the father of that world-conquering prince. Plus, Aeson was just a total asshole. I’d killed him in battle, and when a ruler dies, the land seeks out someone else powerful. That someone else had been me. I’d claimed the land without realizing what I was doing, and that’s when it had transformed to this mirror of Tucson.

It occurred to me how horrible it must be to live here. The gentry lacked most of the technology of my own world. No central air-conditioning. No electric fans. This place had to be roasting these people alive, particularly after what they’d been used to before I came along.

Feeling bad for them, I reached out to the air around me with my mind. For a moment, there was nothing, and then I sensed the moisture particles hanging in the air. There weren’t many, but they were there. Spreading beyond the room, I pulled in more moisture, undoubtedly turning nearby halls and rooms into ovens. In here, however, the temperature dropped and grew moist. A slight thrill ran through me, as often happened when I tapped my inherited gentry magic.

Tentatively, I then attempted to move the air itself in some sort of breeze. Nothing. I had managed that feat only once and couldn’t repeat it.

Realizing what I’d done, Shaya crooked me a grin. “Thank you, your majesty.”

I smiled back and stood. They all hastily followed suit, and I waved them down. “Hang out here if you want. It should stay cool for a little longer. I’m going to go do my…thing. Then we’ll go.”

I left the castle for one of its courtyards, a wide, terraced area that I loved. Saguaros and blooming prickly pears lined it. Purple-flowered smokethorns, the tree that had given this land its name, stood sentry, as did mesquite, filling the air with sweetness. A few hummingbirds darted here and there like bright, flying gemstones.

I sat on one of the steps that led to the upper gardens and closed my eyes. This was why I had to come back. If left to me, I would have never returned. But once the Thorn Land had bound itself to me, it was mine. It depended on me for its survival. I didn’t entirely understand my connection to it, but it was unbreakable. It was the reason I dreamed about this place. There was no escaping it.

The sun beat down on me, forever reminding us we answered to nature in the end. My body relaxed, and soon, the life of the land spread into me. It always startled me at first, and then I quickly adapted, like it was the most natural thing in the world. The land was me, and I was the land. We were one, neither of us complete without the other.

When I came to, I think almost an hour had passed. I stood up, shaking off my trance. I had extracted myself from that joining with the land but knew it was still with me. It was stronger for having just made the connection. I had fulfilled my duty.

My party set out shortly thereafter. Horse riding was a skill I’d had to perfect pretty quickly since hanging out around here. There were no cars or planes.

Shaya, Rurik, and Nia were with me, as were about a dozen guards. The guards rode stoically, eyes alert and watchful as they surrounded us. Rurik occasionally barked out an order to them, but mostly he bantered with Shaya and flirted with Nia. I wasn’t too good at casual conversation and mostly just listened, more entertained by them than I wanted to admit.

It was late morning, and the sun showed us no mercy as we traveled. I fared better than the rest, wearing shorts and sunglasses. The other women at least had lightweight dresses, but the men wore full leather armor and had to suffer considerably. None of them complained, not even Rurik, but sweat poured down their faces.

So, it was something of a relief when we hit our first shift in the land. It’s an oddity of the Otherworld that it folds in upon itself. Traveling is disorienting. In going in a straight line out of my kingdom, it was entirely possible to cross other kingdoms and then my own again without deviating from our course.

We crossed into the Oak Land, and suddenly it was as though the Thorn Land had never existed. You couldn’t even see it behind us. One of the guards broke his rigid demeanor to emit a small cheer that made everyone laugh. A cool, almost chill breeze rushed over us. Late autumn had settled on the Oak Land, setting the trees on fire with brilliant colors. It was gorgeous—and much more comfortable—but I secretly hoped we’d pass out of it soon. I had too many disturbing memories of this place.

Sure enough, we soon crossed into the Thorn Land again, slamming into that unforgiving heat. It felt like traveling in circles, but the others assured me we stayed on course. That stint was brief, and our next shift took us to the Rowan Land. Late summer ruled here, but it was a more temperate summer than my own kingdom’s. Cherry trees filled the landscape. Last I’d seen them, pink blossoms had covered almost every square inch of the branches. Now, as I looked closer, I could see bright red fruit weighing them down.

And it was then that the wights attacked.

Wights were denizens of the Otherworld, and while they weren’t spirits exactly, they had the ability to turn invisible. So, my guards’ vigilance had done no good. I counted seven as they swooped out of the orchards. They wore gray clothing and had long, pale faces. For the most part, they looked very much like humans and gentry. Light flared around them as they rained down bolts of power upon us. Wights were even more strongly tied to magic than the gentry, and conventional weapons had little effect on them. You had to take them down with magic. Unfortunately, the storm magic I’d inherited from my father still wasn’t quite up to hardcore attacks. Neither was my guards’ magic. Special magic-wielding soldiers aside, I’d learned most warriors here were weak in magic; it was why they’d chosen a more physical profession.

I still suspected the silver bullets in my Glock might hu. . .