THE CATACOMBS TAPERED INTO a small square room, then a long corridor, and Mia’s father led the way, no map required. His beard was salted white, but he was still light on his feet. No matter how fervently she trained in the practical skills of hunting—tracking, mapping, survival—her father was still the master. Griffin Rose was the greatest Hunter the river kingdom had ever known.
“Lightly, now,” he said. “This path is unforgiving.”
They were walking underneath the grove of snow plum trees. Through a fissure in the stone, Mia saw them bending to the wind. There were one thousand trees, a personal gift to King Ronan from the queen of the snow kingdom. They blossomed only after the first frost, when their silver branches grew thick and heavy with succulent purple snow plums.
Mia stumbled into her father’s back as the tunnel dumped them out onto a narrow ledge outside the castle. The icy night wind bit into her skin.
“You’re cold.” He dropped his thick cloak over her shoulders before she could object. “Funny, isn’t it? For all our study of human physiology, we cannot master the simple act of insulating our own bodies against the cold.”
He gestured for her to sit on the edge of the cliff. He wasn’t the kind of parent to yank his children back from a precipice—she’d always appreciated that about him. Though at the moment she was firmly committed to her outrage.
“The Gwyrach can warm anyone they want,” she said pertly. “They can set fire to human flesh if they’re so inclined.”
She sat roughly and he sat beside her. In the yellow moonlight, she could see Killian Village, the cottages, taverns, shops, and brothels flanking the Natha River. In the old language, Natha meant “snake,” and the name fit; the river coiled through the kingdom like a nest of vipers, slippery and black. The tributaries of the Natha stitched a hundred isolated villages together. Glas Ddir meant “land of rivers.”
If Mia squinted, she could just make out the snow-dusted peaks and verdant groves of Ilwysion to the east, the alpine woods where she’d grown up. Beyond it, the river curved to the southeast and climbed into Foraois Swyn, the Twisted Forest.
Her father followed her gaze. “I should have taken you to see it. The Twisted Forest is a marvel to behold.”
She almost laughed. Girls were not permitted to wander in Foraois Swyn, where both water and wood broke the natural laws. The Natha forked into a thousand smaller serpents coursing up the mountain instead of down, and the misshapen swyn trees bowed uniformly to the north, then braided themselves together under a canopy of blue needles. No one knew why the trees bent or why the water flowed upward, but girls were strictly forbidden to enter the forest, for fear they would be tainted by this most unnatural magic.
Mia’s father pointed to the craggy peak a short way above them. To her surprise, a dusty bronze carriage hung from a parapet, bobbing slightly in the breeze. “That’s the old laghdú. When I was a child, they used it for royal weddings. See the cable?” He pointed to a streak of black stretched across the sky. “They would drape the bride in heavy silks, saddle her with jewels, and lower her down the cable over the village, inch by inch. A glittering tableau of wealth and power.”
In which the bride played the part of sparkly ornament, Mia thought.
“They called it the Bridalaghdú,” he said. “In the old language it means ‘flight of the bride.’”
“Fall of the bride, actually.” She couldn’t help but feel a swell of pride. For once, she knew more than her father.
He smiled. “Your mind is dazzling, little rose.”
“Why did they stop doing the ceremony?” She hadn’t meant to engage, but she was too curious not to. Her father was good at dangling the right bait.
“A bride fell. She was shrouded in so many pounds of cloth and precious stones, she tipped right out of the carriage in a puff of velvet and splintered bones. The next day, instead of a royal wedding, the Chapel held a royal funeral.”
Mia shivered. In Glas Ddir, girls were expendable. She wondered how long the royal family had waited before scrounging up another bride.
“The Bridalaghdú was one of the first rituals Bronwynis revoked when she became queen.” Her father sounded wistful. “She found it archaic and demeaning.”
Mia had heard plenty about Queen Bronwynis. Nearly twenty years before, when Glas Ddir was poised on the shimmering cusp of progress, Mia’s father and mother had stood shoulder to shoulder in a crush of people outside Kaer Killian, some laughing, some weeping, on the day Bronwynis was crowned queen. Not in all of recorded history had a woman ever sat on the river throne.
Her reign was brief. The Gwyrach killed Bronwynis shortly before Mia was born, and her younger brother inherited the throne. Her brother was, of course, Ronan. The first thing he’d done as king was reinstate the old laws to ensure only men had the right of succession.
Mia’s father sighed. “I’ve taught you a great many things, have I not?”
“Let’s see.” Mia ticked them off on her fingers. “Hunting Gwyrach. Catching Gwyrach. Never letting my body be controlled by anyone. Oh, and surrendering my body to a boy I don’t even know, all because my father told me to.”
He was silent a moment. “I know you’ve been mapping the tunnels. Always my little explorer. But I also know you would never leave your sister behind.”
Her face burned hot. So he’d known all along. The gentle affection with which he said “my little explorer” stung—as if she were a curious child with a spyglass and a weathered pocket map. She’d been that girl long ago, back when the world was still a rosy plum waiting to be plucked. Her mother and father had told her she could craft whatever future she wanted, but that she’d have to leave Glas Ddir to do it. Mia remembered the ripe sense of longing, how she ached to sail the other three kingdoms, drinking in the colors, scents, and flavors her father brought back in glass vials and crisp brown packages.
That dream had died with her mother. Almost overnight, Mia traded in her geographical maps for another kind of map: an atlas of the human body. She spent every waking hour poring over her anatomy books and plates, examining the vulnerability of heart valves, tracing blue tributaries of veins, studying her Wound Man diagram for a better grasp of wound theory. If she could reduce the body to a system of cohesive parts, she could master it—and fortify hers against the Gwyrach.
But there was another reason. Mia couldn’t shake the feeling that, if she’d known more about the body—if she had understood the way blood flowed through the vena arteriosa to the heart’s left chamber, or known how to invoke the subtle rhythm of the cardiac systole—she might have saved her mother’s life.
“You said you had something for me,” she said to her father, struggling to keep her voice even.
He pulled a thin parcel from his cloak and handed it to her. The paper crinkled as she untied the waxy twine, lifting a small leather book from its trappings.
It was no larger than her hand, full to bursting with ivory pages and bound together by a scarlet stone clasp. The brown leather had gone soft with age, worn clean through in spots like the knees of a well-loved pair of trousers.
She ran her fingers down the book’s cracked veins. Slashed into the cover were the initials W.M., two bundles of white scars. Wynna Merth. Her mother’s name before she married Griffin and joined Clan Rose.
Mia’s heart pounded against her rib cage. “Mother’s journal.”