Chapter Five: Wren

Long after sunrise, Wren woke to the sound of knocking. She bolted upright in bed and wiped the drool from her chin. Usually, the dawn gulls would be wailing through her creaking walls by now, the children of Ortha knocking on her door, seeking her nose for adventure. But the skies above Anadawn were silent, and somehow she had overslept. Rotting carp!

Sunlight flooded the room with syrupy warmth as she leaped out of bed. Wren stole a glance at herself in the mirror to make sure her enchantment from last night had held, just as a round-faced woman with a frizz of grey hair swept inside rump first. She was cradling a large copper jug. ‘Morning, Princess Rose,’ she said, blue eyes twinkling. ‘Not like you to sleep so late. Must have been a pleasant dream?’

Showtime.

Wren tossed her hair back and cleared her throat. ‘Oh, the most pleasant,’ she crowed. ‘I dreamed I was galloping on a wild black horse across the Restless Sands!’

The old woman blinked at her, and Wren’s heartbeat slowed in her chest. An age seemed to pass, her fate balancing on the edge of a knife, and then the maidservant threw her head back and released a wheezy laugh.

‘Oh, mercy! Sounds like a nightmare to me. That sun would bake me alive!’ She chuckled to herself as she bustled across the bedroom and disappeared through a narrow archway, into an adjacent bathing chamber. ‘I’ll have your bath ready in two ticks, love.’

Triumph flooded Wren, and she giggled like a carefree princess. ‘How wonderful. Thank you—’ She froze mid-speak. Her name. What was her bloody name? She had it parcelled away, but her mind was still foggy from sleep. Think!She had learned all of them by heart before coming here – the names and descriptions of Rose’s inner circle, the people she would have to fool to get to her coronation – reciting them to her grandmother five times a night. Sometimes more. Celeste?No. Cam? That’s the cook. Oh! It’s … AGNES!’

Agnes ducked her head around the archway. ‘What’s happened, Princess? Is it another river spider?’ She scanned the floor, frantically. ‘A woodroach? I’ll call down to Emory.’

Wren cleared her throat. ‘I … oh, no. No, everything is fine. I was just saying thank you.’

And I hardly need a man to rescue me from a harmless critter.

Agnes’s face said differently. She sighed with relief, before returning to drawing Wren’s bath. Wren seized the moment to stash her dagger from where it was peeking out from beneath her pillow.

Her grandmother scowled at Wren in her head. A careless witch is a dead witch.

When Wren was a little girl in Ortha, she would swim every day with another young witch called Lia. She was an enchanter, too. Lia loved the sea so much, Wren had to drag her back to shore in time for lunch most days. But one morning, when Wren was still asleep, Lia used a spell to carve gills into her neck and turn herself into a merrow. She swam deep into the belly of the ocean and got so caught up in the thrill of swimming like a fish that she forgot to return to the surface and renew her spell. When her bloated body finally washed up on the shore, Banba left it there to bake for three days and three nights as a warning to the other young witches.

A careless witch is a dead witch.

Wren would never forget that.

‘Your bath’s a-bubbling, Princess!’ Agnes grinned at her around the door frame. ‘I’ll fetch your breakfast while you bathe. Any special requests this morning?’

‘Oh … just the usual!’

Wren waited for Agnes to leave before flinging her nightgown off and sinking into the tub. She groaned in pleasure. The water was soft and soapy and deliciously warm – a far cry from the salty bite of the ocean. If this was what it took to be Princess Rose every morning, then Wren could certainly get used to it. After she had popped every bubble and soaked until her fingers crinkled, she donned a silk robe and emerged to find a feast waiting for her in her bedroom. She chuckled to herself.

This was Rose’s usual?

Her sister certainly had taste.

Not to mention an appetite.

There were ornate bowls of blueberries and raspberries, grapes still on the vine, and pomegranates bursting with so much flavour Wren devoured them by the fistful. Next, a plate of thickly sliced rye bread, warmed and slathered with butter, and accompanied by fresh marmalade and honey to drizzle. There was freshly squeezed orange juice and a thimble of dark coffee so strong Wren could feel it racing through her bloodstream.

After breakfast, when she was feeling fit to burst, Wren flung the window open, welcoming the morning breeze. It was late spring and the flowers were in full bloom in the capital city of Eshlinn, where the white palace of Anadawn stood. The trees beyond the palace walls swaying lazily in the morning sun. Outside in the courtyard, upon an emerald-green flag, a golden hawk spread its wings in flight. The Eana crest was rippling, valiantly.

Centuries ago, long before Wren was born and the kingdom had been stolen from the witches, there had been a woman riding that hawk. But the crest, like so much else in Eana, had been changed by the Protector. It was a place that still worshipped him, the first in a long line of mortal Valhart rulers, whose mission to rid the land of witches had recently been reinvigorated by the scheming Kingsbreath, Willem Rathborne, Rose’s guardian and mentor. A man whose days were numbered.

But first, Wren had bigger things to worry about.

She sat at the vanity to renew her enchantment. Another pinch of Ortha sand and some carefully chosen words would assure Rose’s appearance for the rest of the day. Of the five branches of witchcraft, enchanters alone needed earth to trade for their spells. It was a tricky craft, so Wren used rhymes to guide her enchantments. But she knew with enough practise, one day she wouldn’t need words any more. Just her thoughts.

Healers, like Thea, used their own energy for their craft. Warriors, like Shen, were born light-footed and charged by the sun. Tempests, like Banba, weaved their storms from a strand of wind, and cast infernos from a single spark of lightning, and Seers turned to the night sky for their visions – an open space to watch the starcrest birds cast patterns of the future among the stars – though that craft was so rare, Wren had never even met a seer in person.

Wren was a gifted enchanter, but she had spent much of her childhood longing to be a tempest like Banba. Over time, she had learned to do the best she could with her craft. To accept it, not just as who she was, but where she had come from.

After all, Wren’s mother had been an enchanter. Wren had grown up hearing stories of Lillith Greenrock, a lowly palace gardener, who had wandered into the king’s rose garden one day, and soon after that, his heart. And though her mother had died for who she was in this cold and hostile place, Wren was glad to have the same gift inside her. To have any magic at all.

Princess Rose, on the other hand, was no witch. She had inherited nothing from Lillith but her green eyes and her meek temperament. Or at least that was how Wren had always imagined her sister to be. How could she be anything other when she had grown up coddled in her precious tower? With servants to bathe her and footmen to dispose of her spiders! There was certainly nothing meek about Wren. She was a storm brewed by Banba, and when the crown of Eana sat upon her head, she would cast out the memory of the wretched Protector and all those who worshipped him.

Mindful of the time, Wren crossed the room and flung open her sister’s wardrobe. Living along the Whisperwind Cliffs made dresses an impracticality at best and a death trap at worst, but now … rifling through some of the finest gowns in all of Eana, she was seized by the giddy exhilaration of a child playing dress-up.

She chose a dress of cornflower-blue silk, the bodice delicately embroidered with white flowers – just in time for Agnes’s return. The old woman nattered away as she helped Wren get dressed, and though Wren was surprised to find her sister had fostered such friendliness with her maidservant, she couldn’t concentrate on a single word of their conversation. Just the desperate wheeze of her breath as the laces cinched her waist tighter and tighter. Did her sister put herself through this fresh hell every single day? When she was Queen, Wren would have to introduce the long-suffering noblewomen of Eana to the simple wonder of trousers.

The second Agnes left, Wren tucked her dagger into her corset – just in case – and then set about draping herself in jewellery. Rose had enough bracelets to launch a fleet of ships to the southern continent, and purchase another orchard with the leftovers. It was absurd! If Wren ever dared wear any of it in Ortha, a magpie would come and carry her away.

When she spied a majestic gold crown, Wren let out a gasp of delight. It sat on its own plinth in a glass case at the very top of Rose’s armoire and took her four attempts and a stool to lift it down from its perch. It was a beast of a thing, heavy and shining and inlaid, with an intricate row of emeralds. Green and gold – the colours of Eana.

Wren tried the crown on, grinning at herself in the mirror. Every part of her was sparkling, as though she were lit from within by a star. ‘I truly am the jewel of my kingdom,’ she crooned.

She swished her skirts back and forth.

Swish, swish.

‘The beating heart of Eana.’

Swish, swish.

‘And I may wear whatever I please.’

Swish, swish.

‘For that is what pretty little princesses do.’

‘Good grief, Princess Rose! What in the name of the great and noble Protector are you doing?’

Wren froze mid swish. Her stomach lurched as Rathborne’s face flashed through her mind. But … no. It wasn’t him. In the mirror, she could see a short, scowling man standing behind her. He wore a burgundy frock coat that dwarfed his slight frame, his generous swoop of dark hair perfectly matching his finely groomed moustache. He was clutching a parchment scroll to his chest and staring at her with an expression of such abject horror, he looked like an oil painting.

She knew him at once – Chapman. Willem Rathborne’s scurrying assistant; his eyes and ears in the palace.

Wren turned on the heel of her shoe, ignoring the violent flush crawling up her neck. ‘Good morning, Chapman,’ she said, brightly. ‘I was just … taking inventory of my many, many jewels.’

Chapman waved his hands in a panic. ‘Put that away! The royal coronation crown of Eana is not a dress-up toy.’

Wren froze. Oh no. She was wearing the hissing coronation crown! In front of Rathborne’s favourite spy! If Banba could see her now, she’d blast her out to sea in a hurricane.

She ripped the crown off so fast she took a clump of hair with it. ‘I was just making sure it fits,’ she said, as she set it on the dresser. ‘Happily, it does!’

Chapman’s moustache twitched in disapproval. ‘That’s what you said last time.’

Wren was careful not to look surprised. Her stomach twisted at the thought of her sister standing in this very spot doing the very same thing. Somehow, it made Rose feel much more real, and Wren didn’t like to think of her sister that way – as a person, rather than an obstacle on her way to the throne.

She pushed the image away before it gave rise to stirrings of guilt, and fixed her hair in the mirror. ‘Yes, well, it’s just best to be sure, isn’t it, Chapman?’

‘It’s far better to have your priorities in order,’ he huffed. ‘You’re late for your afternoon date!’

Wren blinked. ‘My … what?’

‘By the Protector, don’t tell me you forgot!’ cried Chapman. ‘You know very well how important good timekeeping is to the Kingsbreath. It’s already past noon!’

‘I ‘m late,’ said Wren, slowly. ‘For a date. My date. Yes. Of course.’ She turned from the mirror, keeping her face the perfect picture of calm. A date was an unexpected development, certainly, but it was nothing she couldn’t handle. ‘Goodness. Where has the time gone?’

‘Perhaps you offended it in another life,’ sighed Chapman. ‘You do always seem to be two steps behind it. I might add that it was you who insisted on courting the prince in the first place.’ Chapman removed a feather quill from behind his ear and jabbed it at the piece of parchment. ‘It’s all here in the schedule!’

Wren could just about read the entry he was pointing at.

Twelve’ noon – one o clock: Princess Rose and Prince Ansel have afternoon tea in the lower gardens.

Who on earth is Prince Ansel?

Chapman clucked his tongue. ‘I do wonder whether you have a sieve in that head of yours sometimes. We just went over your schedule yesterday.’ He ushered her from the room. ‘Come along. The Kingsbreath will have my head if you tarry another moment.’

Wren bit her tongue and followed Chapman down one winding stone staircase and then another, past probably the same stern-faced palace guards she and Shen had sneaked around last night.

Wren rifled through all the princes she knew of from surrounding countries, but she couldn’t seem to place Prince Ansel.

‘Now why are you frowning like that?’ said Chapman, anxiously. ‘Prince Ansel will want to see you smiling on your date.’

‘I’m just nervous,’ said Wren, quickly. ‘What if Prince Ansel doesn’t like me? What if he finds me bland? Or spoilt? Or overdressed? Or underdressed?’

Or, I don’t know, A DIFFERENT PERSON ENTIRELY?

Chapman waved his hand in dismissal. ‘Nonsense. You are the famed beauty of Eana, with no small fortune to your name. And by all accounts, your first date went rather well, didn’t it? Though I do maintain you should have let him win that game of chess. Nobody likes a show-off.’

Wren felt a smattering of respect for her sister. ‘Perhaps my brain is not such a sieve after all.’

Before them, the hallway vaulted into a marble archway that overlooked the sprawling courtyard. Chapman turned from her, murmuring something as he went, but Wren was too dumbstruck to share in his babble. She was adrift now, floating across the pale stones in a cascade of golden sunlight.

And there he was, waiting for her at the edge of the rose garden.

Prince Ansel.

Wren’s eyes widened. Hissing seaweed.

Ansel was handsome.

Being Rose was becoming more enjoyable by the minute.

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