: Chapter 1

I’ve been staring out at the night for hours, daring the dawn to keep its distance, but the first hint of purple appears along the crest of the mountain anyway. When I was a little girl, my mother used to say that if you could throw a stone high enough, it would fly over the mountaintops and land in Emberfall.

She also used to say that if you were lucky, it would land on the head of one of their soldiers and crush their skull, but that was back when Emberfall was an enemy of Syhl Shallow.

I tried and tried when I was a child, but I never threw a rock over the mountain. Not even when rage over my mother’s death propelled the rocks high into the sky.

I rub my hand over her pendant. I don’t know why I’m thinking of my mother. She’s been dead for years.

Any latent rage should be directed at my father, anyway. He’s the one who left us with this mess. It’s been six months, and there’s no coming back from the dead. From what I hear, not even the king’s awful magic can make that happen.

The moon hangs high over the trees, making the frozen branches glisten, turning the ground between the house and the barn into a wide swath of crystalline white. A few inches of snow fell at dusk last night, keeping away any customers Nora and I might have had for the bakery.

The weather didn’t keep the tax collector away.

I glance at the half-crumpled paper with what we owe printed neatly at the bottom. I want to toss it into the hearth. The woman came by carriage, stepping fastidiously through the late-winter slush to enter the bakery—which is really just the main level of our home. Her lip curled when the door stuck, but I haven’t been able to replace the hinges yet. She said we have a week to pay the first quarter of what we owe, or our holdings will be seized by the queen. As if Queen Lia Mara needs a run-down farm on the outskirts of Syhl Shallow. I’d be surprised if she knows the town of Briarlock exists.

A week to pay twenty-five silvers. Three months to pay the full amount due: one hundred silvers.

During the bakery’s best weeks, my sister and I are lucky if we make ten.

If the tax collector sneered at the bakery door, I can only imagine her reaction to the rest of the property. It’s likely a good turn of luck that she didn’t want to see the barn. I can see the wood panel hanging crooked from here, snow swirling through the gap. The metalwork is rusted and bent. Jax said he’d try to fix it when he had time, but he’s got paying customers, and he never likes to leave the forge for long.

Jax is a good friend, but he’s got his own problems.

As usual, I wish Da had made a different choice. He could have kept on hating the king without risking everything we have. He could have participated in the protest without giving the rebels every coin we had. Now, the small barn and bakery are nearly impossible to handle on my own. Nora helps in any way she can, but at twelve, she’s barely more than a girl. I can understand my father’s desire for vengeance—but it sure didn’t put food on the table.

But if Da were here, would he help? Or would he be like Jax’s father, drowning his sorrows in ale every night?

Sometimes I don’t know if I should envy Jax or if I should pity him. At least he and his father have coins.

I could sell the cow. She’d fetch at least ten silvers. The hens are good layers, and they would go for a silver apiece.

But if I lose my access to eggs and milk, I’ll have to close the bakery.

Mother would tell me to sell the whole property and enlist. That’s what she would have done. That’s what she always envisioned for me. It was Da who wanted to keep the bakery, Da who taught me how to measure and knead and stir. Mother loved soldiering, but Da loved the art of feeding people. They fought about it before the battles with Emberfall. She was going off to war, demanding to know why he wasn’t enlisting as well. Didn’t he care about his country?

Da would counter that he didn’t want to leave his children in an orphanage just so he could die on a battlefield.

Mother said he was being dramatic, but of course that’s what she ended up doing.

And it’s not like he did any better in the end.

Even still, I can imagine Mother staring down at this tax notice, looking around the bakery and the needed repairs to the house and the barn. “You should have enlisted six months ago,” she’d be saying sternly.

And if I did, Nora would … go where exactly? She’s too young to be a soldier. She’d hate it anyway. She blanches at the sight of blood, and she’s afraid of the dark. She still climbs into bed with me half the time, after she’s had another nightmare about the Uprising.

“Cally-cal,” she’ll whisper sleepily, my childhood nickname soft on her lips as she winds her fingers in my long hair. She’s the only one who can make a name like Callyn sound whimsical.

She’d be put in an orphanage—if she were lucky.

She will be put in an orphanage if I can’t pay these taxes. Or we’ll be begging on the streets.

My eyes burn, and I blink the sensation away. I didn’t cry when Mother died in the war with Emberfall. I didn’t cry when Da died and we had to beg for passage back to Briarlock.

I won’t cry now.

Out in the barn, the hens start to cluck, and Muddy May, the old cow, moos. The door rattles against the wood siding. That faint hint of purple over the mountains begins to streak with pink. In a few hours, the glistening snow will be slush and mud again, and Nora and I will be bundled up, thrusting a hand under the hens to find eggs, bickering over who has to sit in the cold to milk May.

But those hens keep clucking, and a faint orange glow suddenly pokes from below the creaking barn door.

I sit up straight, my heart pounding. It’s been half a year, but the events at the Crystal Palace are still fresh in my memories. The clap of thunder, the flash of light.

But of course there’s no magic here. Could it be a fire?

Underneath my flare of panic, I have the thought that I should just let it all burn to the ground.

But no. The animals don’t deserve that. I grab for my boots, jerking them onto my feet without waiting to lace them. I sneak down the hallway past Nora’s room, stepping lightly so I don’t make the floor creak. If I didn’t want her to see the note from the tax collector, I definitely don’t need her to see the barn burning down.

I make it to the steps down into the bakery, but I trip over my loose laces and nearly go face-first into the brick floor at the bottom. I overturn the stool where I sit to take orders, and it clatters to the ground, rolling haphazardly into the shelves. A metal bowl rattles onto the bricks, followed by a porcelain dish I use for large loaves. That shatters, bits going everywhere.

Amazing.

I wait, frozen in place. My leg is at an awkward angle, but I hold my breath.

No sound comes from upstairs.

Good.

The cold hits me in the face when I slip out the door, but I hear the cow again, so I hurry through the frozen mud. I have a few weeks’ worth of hay and straw in the loft, but I’m always good about stacking them away from the walls. Some must have gone moldy anyway, and moldy hay is always likely to start a fire. That stupid door needs fixing.

Like a working door will matter if the barn is a pile of ashes.

Halfway across the frigid yard, I realize the tiny glow hasn’t spread.

And I don’t smell smoke.

Muddy May moos again, and I hear the low murmur of a man’s voice.

I freeze for an entirely new reason. My heart rate triples, the world snapping into focus.

Not a fire. A thief.

I grit my teeth and change course, striding across the yard to the small shed where we keep tools. Mother’s old weapons are wrapped up under my bed, but I don’t have much practice with a sword. The ax hangs ready, slipping into my hand like an old friend. I can split firewood without breaking a sweat, so I have no doubt I can make a thief regret his choices. I swing the ax in a figure eight, warming up my shoulder. When I get to the broken door, I grab hold and yank.

The door creaks and moans as it moves faster than the hinges are ready for. The shadow of a man shifts behind the cow. A blazing lantern sits not far off—the source of the orange glow.

I swing the ax around, letting the flat side slam into a wooden post. The hens go wild with clucking, and May spooks, jerking the rope where she’s tied and overturning the bucket.

“Get out of my barn,” I yell.

May spooks again, her hooves scrambling in the dirt as she shifts away from me, and she must slam into the man, because he grunts and then falls, tangling in the length of his cloak. Wood clatters to the ground beside him, and I hear a crack as it gives way.

“Clouds above, Cal!” he snaps, jerking the hood of his cloak back. “It’s just me!”

Too late, I recognize the light hazel eyes glaring at me from under a spill of dark hair. “Oh.” I lower the ax and frown. “It is you.”

Jax swears under his breath and reaches for his crutches, dragging them through the straw. His breath clouds in the frosty air. “A good morning to you, too.”

I’d offer to help him, but he doesn’t like help unless he asks for it. He rarely needs it anyway. He rolls to his foot smoothly, if not agilely. He gets one crutch under his left arm, but the other snapped at the end, and it’s too short now.

He looks at the jagged end, sighs, and tosses it to the side, then switches the good crutch to his right side to compensate for his missing right foot. “I thought you’d be asleep. I didn’t realize I’d be taking my life into my hands by coming here.”

I’m trying to figure out if I’m at fault here or if he is. “Do you want me to run back to the forge for some tools?” I offer. He used to make his crutches out of steel, but his father always said it was a waste of good iron. Now he’s well practiced in making them out of wood.

“No.” He tugs his cloak straight, then balances on one foot while he uses the good crutch to right the milking stool. “You can grab the bucket, though.” He drops onto the stool, then blows on his fingertips to warm them. He puts a hand against the cow’s flank. His voice gentles in a way that only happens when he talks to animals, never people. “Easy there, May.”

The cow flippantly seizes a mouthful of hay and whips her tail, but she sighs.

I seize the frigid bucket and hand it to him. “You … you came over in the middle of the night to milk the cow?”

“It’s not the middle of the night. It’s almost dawn.” He grabs hold of a teat with practiced ease, and a spray of milk rattles into the tin bucket. “I didn’t want to wake you by firing up the forge.” He hesitates, and the air is heavy with the weight of unspoken words.

Ultimately, he says nothing, and the breath eases out of him in a long stream of clouded air.

He studies the bucket. I study him.

Most of his hair is tied into a knot at the back of his head, but enough has spilled loose to frame his face, throwing his eyes in shadow. He’s lean and a bit wiry, but years of forge work and using his arms to bear his weight have granted him a lot of strength. We’ve known each other forever, from the time when we were children, when everything in our lives seemed certain and sure, until now, when nothing does. He remembers my mother, and he sat with me and Nora when she didn’t return from the war. He sat with me again when Da died.

He doesn’t know his own mother, but that’s because she died when he was born. When his father is drunk, I’ve heard him say that was the first mark of misfortune Jax brought on the family.

The second mark came five years ago, when Jax was thirteen. He was trying to help his father fix a wagon axle. It collapsed on his leg and crushed his foot.

I guess the third mark almost came courtesy of my ax. “I’m sorry I almost cut your head off,” I say.

“I wouldn’t have complained.”

Jax is one for brooding, but he’s not usually so sullen. “What does that mean?”

He lets go of a teat to thrust a hand under his cloak, then tosses a piece of parchment in my direction. I drop the ax in the straw to fetch it.

When I unfold the paper, I see the exact same writing that was on the parchment from the tax collector, the note that’s still sitting in my bedroom.

The number on his is twice as large.

“Jax,” I whisper.

“The tax collector came to the forge,” he says. “She claimed we haven’t paid in two years.”

“But—but the forge has so many customers. I’ve seen them. You—you make a decent living …” I see his expression, and my voice trails off.

“Apparently when my father leaves to pay the taxes every quarter, he’s not actually paying them.” Jax is dodging my gaze now.

I wonder if that means his father gambled the money away—or if he drank it away.

Not like it matters. Both options are terrible.

May’s milk keeps spraying into the bucket rhythmically. I grab the other milking stool from the corner and plop it down beside him. Jax doesn’t look at me, but he ducks his face to toss the hair out of his eyes.

I watch his hands move with practiced efficiency. His fingers are red from the cold, scarred here and there from forge burns.

I wish I knew how to help him. I barely know how to help myself.

My midnight worries feel so selfish suddenly, when I have options. They’re not options I want, but they’re options I have. I can sell the farm. I can enlist. I’d probably never make it past the rank of cadet, not with Father’s stain on our family, but I could do it. Nora can go to an orphanage—or I could possibly use part of a soldier’s pension to pay for her to have a guardian somewhere.

Jax can’t do any of those things. His father barely stays sober long enough to work now. Jax is the one keeping the forge in business. He can’t be a soldier. With a missing foot, few people would take a chance on Jax as a laborer—or anything else.

If they lose the forge, they’d lose everything.

I put a hand on his wrist, and he goes still. “You don’t have to milk the cow,” I say quietly.

He turns to look at me. There’s a shadow on his jaw, and I wonder if he got the bruise when May knocked him down—or if his father did it. They live all the way down the lane, but when they fight, I can often hear it from here.

He must notice me looking, because he turns away—which says enough.

I let go of his wrist.

He keeps milking.

“We owe a hundred,” I whisper so softly that I don’t think he’ll hear it.

But he does, of course he does, because he turns to look at me again. Our breath clouds in the air between us. He always smells faintly of smoke from the forge, and the scent is sharp in the cold air.

When we were younger, after he lost his foot, I would bring him sugared twists of dough from the bakery every day, along with books from my mother’s library. We loved tales of romance or history, but our favorite books were the stories of wind and sky and magic from the winged creatures in the ice forests to the west of Syhl Shallow.

I remember the day my mother stopped me. I’d been twirling around the kitchen, eager to go visit my friend.

He won’t make a good husband, she said, and the feel of her disapproval was so thick in the air that I felt like she’d slapped me.

She didn’t let me go. I didn’t see him for weeks, until he found some crutches and hobbled his way down the lane to our bakery.

I never told him what she said.

It didn’t matter, because he’s never said or done anything to indicate he even saw me that way.

But there are moments like this, when it’s cold and dark and the entire world feels like it’s caving in, and I wonder, just for a heartbeat, what it would be like if Jax and I were more than friends. If we were in this together.

“Callyn?” Nora’s worried voice calls from out in the courtyard, high and frightened. “Callyn?”

I jerk back and inhale sharply. “In the barn!” I call. “I’m here!” I look at Jax. “She doesn’t know,” I whisper fiercely.

He nods.

The door rattles and creaks as she tries to push it to the side. She’s in a sleeping shift, her feet bare. Her hair is a wild mess of tangles that reaches to her waist, and she’s shivering wildly. Tears seem almost frozen on her cheeks.

“Nora!” I exclaim. I pull my own cloak free. “You’ll freeze to death. You need to get back in the house!”

“I—I was worried—”

“I know. Come on.”

At the barn door, I pause and look back at Jax. To my surprise, he’s watching me go.

I wish I knew what to say.

He must not either, because he gives me a nod, blows on his fingers one more time, and turns back to the bucket.