Prologue
Rose’s hand moved without her consent towards the prince’s face, but stopped just short of actually touching him. The prince’s face was so beautiful that it almost hurt to look at him. He lay in the center of a large four poster bed draped in deep blue. Rose was trying to remember why she was there, or at least how she had gotten into the castle, but her mind was blank. All she could think about was the beautiful young man lying in front of her.
Was he dead? Tears silently slipped down her cheeks at the thought. He looked dead, but then again the dead weren’t this beautiful. Corpses were cold and stiff, but the prince looked more like he was simply asleep. Except he wasn’t breathing.
The witch had said something important about all of this, Rose thought. The sorceress from the woods. She pulled at the memory until it became clearer. She remembered walking in the woods. She had came upon an old woman. Or had she been young? Everything was so hazy. Rose shook her head, trying to clear out the fog. The sorceress had said something that Rose needed to remember. She closed her eyes to focus, trying to find the rest of the memory.
The sorceress’ voice floated in her mind, saying, “If you want to save the prince, all you need to do is watch over his corpse from dusk until dawn. If you can keep his body safe, he’ll come back to life. Be careful not to touch him, dear. You must not touch any part of his skin, otherwise you’ll become like him. When he wakes up, tell him about your sister Eris. He must find her. The sooner, the better.”
Looking at him now, she wanted nothing more than to see his eyes when he woke up on the morrow. She wondered what color his eyes would be. Green? Or maybe brown? If only that piece of his hair wasn’t out of place, she could look on him more and think about what color his eyes might be.
Rose’s hand reached out again, this time sweeping a lock of golden hair off the prince’s forehead. Her middle finger brushed against his cold skin. She had expected his skin to be warmer. She wondered again if he was actually dead. Maybe she was dead too, and that was how she had gotten there. A pain shot through her chest.
She reached up to grab the spot that hurt, but her hand stopped halfway as her heart stopped beating altogether and Rose fell to the hard, stone floor.
Chapter 1
Eris
Eris let out a loud sigh as she watched her only sister, Soraya, stuff another shirt into her pack. Eris had tried talking her out of going to Jara City at least a dozen times already. So had their parents, but Soraya wouldn’t listen to any of them.
Soraya reached up and brushed a wall of black hair out of her face before placing her hands on her hips. She looked at the overstuffed pack. “I can’t think of anything else I need to take. Can you?”
“Do you think there’s room in that pack for me?” Eris asked, looking at her own hands resting in her lap. “I could shrink myself to fit in a pocket. Or maybe you could shrink me. We both know you’re the better magic student.” She knew what the answer would be, but asked anyway.
“It’s not like I’m doing anything exciting, you know. I’ll be buying fabric with Darren. Plus we both know that if you skip your magic lessons, Papa will give us enough extra readings to bury us for months. No, thanks. Perhaps you should study more while I’m gone, then maybe you can come with me next time.” Soraya hefted the pack and sat it down by the bedroom door. “I’ll be gone a week to ten days, depending on how much the merchants want to barter. Since I’ll be a newer face, I expect they’ll try to drive a harder bargain. Maybe Darren can teach me how to talk to them on our way there.”
Darren, their long-time family friend, had agreed to go with Soraya to smooth over any residual concerns their parents had about their oldest daughter making her first real trek into the capital of Erila. Somehow Darren being older than Soraya by three years meant that he was more versed in the ways of the world in their parents’ eyes. It was no secret that their parents were hoping that their eldest daughter and their favorite boy from the village would decide they liked each other.
Eris knew that appealing further to her parents was pointless. There was no way they would let her tag along, possibly killing any chances at romance.
Usually it was their mother who went to the spring market to buy the fabric they would use throughout the year to make custom dresses for all the local girls and women. But as Soraya had just turned nineteen, and was their mother’s right hand in the dress shop, it was time for her to begin making her own mark in the dressmaking world.
Eris was hopeless with a needle and thread, and was rarely asked to help out. Instead, Eris was encouraged to practice more magic. As if that would make her any better. Magic wasn’t something that came naturally to Eris, the way it had Soraya.
“At least you get to do something. I’ll just be--”
“You’ll just be learning how to use magic properly. Trust me, it’s hard work. If you finally cast a successful water spell by the time I return, I’ll bring you back a present.” Soraya winked.
“What kind of present?” Eris asked, hoping for something exotic and not another magic book. She’d been working on controlling water for weeks now, but not once had she been successful. In fact, the last time she’d attempted a water spell, she had dropped an entire bucket-sized water sphere on Master Garren’s head. As punishment, she had had to copy two dozen pages on the properties of water from her magic books.
“Learn how to do that properly, and you’ll find out.”
Soraya might as well have told her to sail to the moon and bring back a basket of cheese. Soraya snapped her fingers and the pack buckled itself closed.
The next morning just after sunrise, Eris rubbed sleep from her eyes as her mother gave Soraya a traveler’s blessing. Her mother brought her palms together until they glowed with a dim green light, then she placed a hand on each of Soraya’s shoulders. “May the gods watch over you and keep you from harm.”
Soraya hugged each of their parents once more, before hugging Eris. “Stay out of trouble, E.,” she said with a wink.
Eris nodded back.
“And don’t let Mama cry for too long. She has to finish the dress for Mrs. Galim.”
The three of them waved goodbye to Soraya and Darren as they rode off in the horse and cart. Father stroked his beard, looking somewhat lost in thought, while her mother continued to swipe tears off her cheeks.
“It’s so hard watching my oldest child wander so far from her home.”
“She’s not wandering, Mama. She’s going to buy fabric. She’ll be home before we’ve even had a chance to miss her,” Eris said, knowing that the next ten days were going to pass by far too slowly for her liking.
Her days would be full of Master Garren’s lectures on proper magic usage to avoid a burnout, while her nights would be full of her father’s incessant questions about the social consequences of an ever-lacking magical and ethical public education system. Soraya would get to eat street foods that Eris had only ever read about, and see all kinds of magical items that came from faraway cities.
The three of them turned to walk back inside, to tidy up the breakfast dishes before their day began. Eris walked up to the doorway and turned for one last look at the fading outline of her sister. She said a silent prayer that Soraya and Darren would be safe on their journey.