Chapter 1

Seven men walk out of my mother's chamber that night, tightening their belts as they go.

My father stands at the end of the hall with his new whore draped on his arm, watching Mother fall apart and enjoying every second of it.

"You used to walk around like a true Wynne lady," he says. "Too pure to share a roof with my Sera."

"Now half the town's hands have been on you. Surely you can let me take Sera as my second wife."

Mother doesn't scream. She doesn't weep.

She just walks to the hearth and drops his betrothal locket into the fire.

The next morning, Father throws a wedding bigger than the one he gave Mother.

Banners. Trumpets. Every lord and lady in the town is packed into our great hall.

Seraphina glides down the aisle in white silk, smiling like she's already won.

I sit beside Mother, holding her cold hand under the table.

Then it happens.

A bundle of parchment comes raining down from the gallery above. Drawings. Dozens of them.

My mother. Naked. On her knees. Strangers' hands all over her.

I lunge for them. I tear what I can reach. I throw my body over the ones I can't.

"Don't look at her! Stop looking at her!" I scream until my throat tears.

But everyone has already seen.

The laughter starts low, then spreads like fire in dry hay.

Father stands up. His face is purple.

"If you love showing yourself off so much — then by God, I'll let you show yourself off."

"Guards! Put her on the Wooden Horse!"

I scream. I claw at the old nurse's hands as she drags me from the hall.

The Wooden Horse.

I've heard the old nurse whisper about it before, "The cruelest thing they can do to a woman, my lady. That's all you need to know."

Now, I see it: it's a wooden beast, they make a woman ride, torn open between her legs — bleeding, ruined, no good for any man or any child, ever again.

Their laughter follows me down the corridor.

"A woman who's ridden the Wooden Horse pisses herself the rest of her life. Might as well be dead."

"Generous of the Earl, sharing his own wife with us."

"Sweeter than any tavern girl, I'll swear."

I go cold all over. The old nurse drags me back to my chamber. I'm not in my body anymore.

I sit by the window all night. Mother doesn't come.

She doesn't come at dawn either.

It's nearly noon when I'm finally allowed into her room.

The smell hits me first. Blood and worse.

She's lying on the bed, eyes open, staring at nothing. Her nightgown is white, but under it she is every color a body shouldn't be. Black. Purple. Yellow at the edges.

"Mama —"

My hand shakes too hard to touch her. I turn for the door, ready to scream for a physician —

The curtain whips open.

Father walks in with Seraphina painted up on his arm. He smells the room and recoils, pressing his sleeve over his nose.

He looks down at Mother like she's a stain on the floor.

"Elinor. Stop performing."

"I told every man not to actually touch you. Must you put on this dying act?"

I open my mouth to fight him. To tell him she's broken in pieces.

Mother grabs my wrist first. From under her pillow she pulls out a folded parchment.

"Cedric." Her voice is paper. "I want an annulment. I'll take it to the bishop myself."

"I want nothing of this Keep. No gold. No land. No title."

"Only Pearl."

Father's brow knots. Then he laughs, short and ugly.

"Don't be stupid, Elinor. Your father is dead. Your brother is dead. Your mother's been dead since you were a girl. Where would you even go?"

I freeze.

So he remembers.

He remembers that my uncle drew the heathen arrows off his back and died with a thousand of them in his chest, his body still lying somewhere in the wastelands without so much as a stone.

He remembers my grandfather striking his own head against the throne room steps until the King granted him the seal that saved Father's army.

He remembers kneeling before the Wynne crest, sword in both hands, swearing on the blade:

I, Cedric Thorne, will keep Elinor Wynne safe all my days. One wife. One love. No other.

But "all my days" turned out to be three years.

Three years before he came back from the northern wars with a woman on his saddle.

Because she was an orphan, he said, Mother should be kind. Give Seraphina the best chambers.

Because Seraphina sneezed at white roses, Mother's garden — five years of her own hands in the soil — was ripped out by morning.

And when Mother carried my baby brother, and Seraphina whispered the child's stars would cross hers and shorten her life —

Father held Mother down himself and forced a full cup of pennyroyal down her throat.

She bled all night. I heard her scream through three walls.

Father was in the great hall. Music. Wine. Seraphina on his lap.

The drums drowned everything.

That was the night the father who used to lift me onto his shoulders to watch the festival fires — died.