Chapter One
I'm shattering, shattering, shattering. My fingers are icicles smashing to fragments. Every breath is shards of glass slicing through my lungs.
He's in the room outside my closet door looking under the bed and opening drawers. And I still haven't opened the box. I've been working on this lock with a letter opener and a bit of twisted metal for a day and a half. My fingers are nicked and bloody and they hurt all the time.
I almost had it a few hours ago, but then my hand shook, and the last tumbler fell back, and I lost every bit of progress. An itch is forming between my shoulder blades from nervous sweat, and my bottom lip is trembling so hard, and I can't make it stop because this time, if I don't get the box open, I'm definitely going to die instead of just maybe.
Because he is right outside my door.
And he's hunting me.
Just a few days ago he was the cook's boy. He brought in firewood and turned spits and joked with the guards when they came in the back to tease cook into giving them hot buns and tea. One day he gave me a daisy with my morning breakfast, his brown eyes shy in a face still soft with youth.
"Because it's smiling like you," had been his stumbling explanation and now he's outside my door smashing the wardrobe to splinters because I'm not inside it.
And oh skies, I'm not going to get this lock open. I'm going to fail again. And then all I'll have to fight him will be my grandfather's letter opener. He used it to hold off a pack of goblins intent on eating his flesh - or at least that's the story he told me when I was small. But this is no pack of goblins, and I am not grandfather.
I am Isaletta.
I drank clover tea on my eighteenth birthday, five days ago. I want to be a famous cartographer someday. I am the daughter of Admiral Redtide.
I will be dead if I don't get this lock open.
That's the fourth tumbler turning. I've been this far now at least a dozen times but there's a fifth tumbler and maybe more - oh sweet depths, I hope there isn't more! I ease my pick into the little dip between them and try for what feels like the hundred thousandth time to find the leverage I need to shift that last tumbler. The vibrations in the little pick tell me that I've caught the edge of something.
Crash.
Something new has broken on the other side of the door. The closet handle jiggles. It's always been loose and the metal jingles when you try to open it while it's locked.
Blood fills my mouth. I've bitten my tongue.
Please. If there is a divine sovereign out there, hear my prayer and let this last tumbler turn.
The handle jingles again and his harsh breathing gusts so loudly that I can hear it through two inches of oak door.
My cheeks are hot with streaming tears, but I must not make a sound. I haven't made a sound in four days. Except for the tiny scratching sound of trying to pick this lock.
I know what is coming and I know I can't afford to flinch. He'll try to bash the door down. He won't be the first.
It was the footman the first day. But he was already weak, and he had no weapon. His fists were not enough to shatter oak. I don't think that the cook's boy is only using his fists. But I know that whatever he does, I must not jump or flinch and lose my place in the tumblers.
The closet shudders, but I hold my breath and keep my hands still. The air in my lungs saws through my chest painfully, but silently. I have become practiced at silence just like I am practiced at listening to the constant drip of the rain and schooled in remaining still in the ever-present darkness of the closet.
Another bang from the room suggests that the cook's boy is putting his shoulder into his work. The dust on the floor bounces when he flings himself at the door again. My bits of metal are getting slippery. I'm sweating in ways I can't stop and can't allow.
I need this box open. I need what is in it. And oh, divine sovereign, don't let my father have lied to me about this box.
I feel the tumbler ease just a little and I can't quite hold back my excited gasp.
"You're in there, poppet. I know you are."
That's not Herralt's voice. I know his voice. It's unsteady as he eases into manhood. But it does not wheedle like that.
I can't afford to move too fast and lose my pressure on the tumbler. I try to think of anything except the boy breaking down the door.
Out there, far to the south, my father sails with his fleet bearing Lord and Lady Harrowcross to the Poco Pera Islands where they will drink vanilla rum and bathe their feet in the warm turquoise seas and dream as the susurrating songs of the Poco people and even if I fail here, he will never know how I lived my last days.
I cling to that. And I take a deep breath and twist.
Light pours into the closet through a narrow sliver as the wood of the door splinters with a crack. He found an axe.
But my hands have not shaken too badly. I have not lost my purchase. I squeeze my eyes shut and channel all my focus into my fingers and seeing the tumblers in my head and I twist.
The axe is buried deep. He's wrenching it back and forth to free it. Oak does not break easily and neither do I.
The last tumbler shifts, and the lock opens with a snick at the same moment that all his efforts break the lock of my door. He wrenches it open as I pry up the lid.
Breath gusts from my lungs but this is not shock, it's relief. My father didn't lie. My salvation gleams in the bright light pouring into the closet.
My hands fit around the grip of the sword as if it was made for them. It's balanced and easy to lift - which is good because I have only a heartbeat to draw it from the velvet bed it lies on and lift it in front of me like a horn before he crashes through the door, arms raised, axe over his head.
Not like that. Hold it higher. Slide your bottom hand lower. Have you never held a sword before?
The thoughts aren't mine but they're useful. I adjust as Herrault roars toward me.
He doesn't look surprised as the sharp blade slides through his belly.
I can't stop the shake in my hands, though. I can't stop the way my breath gulps.
Steady now! This is no tea ceremony. It's killing. The steadier you are, the faster it's done.
He stumbles back and comes off my blade, one hand clutching his belly, the other raising his axe. His mouth opens and I'm braced for his roar, but it doesn't come. Instead, something that looks like pink smoke rolls out of his mouth and coalesces into a creature with holes for eyes and a screaming mouth. Its talons rip through the air as it claws toward me.
I bite back my scream.
Out of the closet! Out! No room to maneuver in here!
I stumble out, but more room isn't going to help me. I'm no swordswoman. I should flee while I can.
You can't. He'll hack that axe into your soft back. Keep the blade up. Higher. Hold this stance.
Herrault's mouth twists and he lunges toward me, axe raised as the strange smoke creature screeches, darting forward just inches from my face.
I don't scream. I just freeze like a rabbit faced with a slathering dog. The light pouring through the window behind me casts my shadow over his face and I can't see his expression anymore.
And then darkness grips the pink smoke, and it rips into a thousand tiny scraps and dissipates.
Now I scream. It starts as a squeak and builds into a thready wail.
And something shifts.
I don't know what I'm seeing. I'm probably hallucinating. The first few days that I was locked in the closet, I hallucinated all kinds of things. I thought I heard friends. Saviors. Thought I could smell bread baking.
Now, I'm seeing a dark shadow coalesce and then lunge. It lifts Herrault up and before he can scream, it throws him, and I brace myself as he falls with his neck directly on my blade. It's so sharp that it slices through flesh without knocking me over from the force. I'm left gasping, shocked and horrified as I try to keep my balance.
I'm going to be sick.
