THE DAY’S AFTERNOON was bright and brilliant and all the more beautiful for my having spent its morning kissing Mael in the Forgotten Vale. But inside my house in Durovernum—the house that I once shared with Sorcha—it was dark. I let the heavy leather door curtain fall closed behind me and moved through the room lighting the lamps.
Over the years, Sorcha had collected more than a dozen of the things—shining, delicately wrought metal or carved alabaster or clay painted with jewel-bright glazes—and hung them from the ceiling poles in our cozy little house on chains of different lengths. My favorite was the one shaped like a bird, with bits of blue and green glass set into the wings that made it glow with a fey light. The lamps had mostly come from far away, as had most of my sister’s precious things, brought over in ships by traders from places across the sea. Places like Gaul and Greece and Aegypt. And Rome.
As much as Sorcha had taken delight in professing her hatred for Caesar at any opportunity, that hate hadn’t influenced her fondness for fine and decorative things from the lands his legions had conquered. Just another one of my sister’s many contradictions, I suppose. I once saw a mosaic in a trader’s stall, and that was what imagining Sorcha was like—a multitude of sharp, shining pieces that, taken together, made up a whole image. Told a whole story.
As I lit the last of the lamps, I thought about the day they’d told me my sister was dead, killed by the Romans. The women of the tribes of Prydain—Cantii and Catuvellauni, Trinovantes and Iceni—could choose to fight alongside the men or not. Many did and with such skill that they were feared as much as the men—more so, even. The legions thought that the women warriors of the Island of the Mighty were demons, aberrations whose corpses they burned in heaps after battles so that their black souls could never escape to inhabit another body. Of course, I knew just how ridiculous that was. A primitive superstition. The fighting women of the tribes of Prydain were as good as they were because they worked at it. I worked at it—hard.
It was as simple—and as complicated—as that.
Cast in the ethereal glow of flickering lamplight, I stood staring at the wavering apparition reflected back at me from the polished bronze mirror hanging on the wall—another of Sorcha’s exotic treasures. I raised an eyebrow at the ragged creature. Even in that uncertain light, I saw a smudge of dirt on my left cheek, partially obscuring the smattering of freckles there. The long tunic I wore over my shift of thin wool had once been a bright red-and-purple check but was now worn to faded shades of rust, stained from climbing hills and fording brooks and fighting Mael day after day in the vale. A tangled, unruly crown of fox-brown strands had escaped from the plait to which I’d hastily consigned my hair in the dark hours before dawn. At the age of seventeen, I might have the lean muscles and the long, strong legs that a warrior ought to have, but I would have to make myself presentable for when my father honored me with my full warrior status.
Just like he had my sister before me.
Sorcha was older by nine full years, and she’d never let me forget it. There were two baby brothers born between us, but they had both been lost to marsh fever before the age of three, and our mother had followed them to the Otherworld herself only days after I was born, leaving Sorcha to raise me—and keep me out of trouble—when our father the king was too busy ruling a sprawling tribe of brawling Celts to pay me much heed. The fact that she probably got me into more trouble than she ever kept me out of never bothered me a bit. She was everything I wanted to be when I grew up. Strong and sharp and dangerous as the sword she carried on her hip, Sorcha was my goddess even more than the Morrigan we both worshipped. I followed her everywhere, stumbling along on baby legs behind her as she ran, deer-swift, through the forests of our home, always looking for an adventure—or, better yet, a fight to pick.
And then, one day it all changed.
Caesar and his legions landed on our shores—not once but twice. And the second time, they took my father, King Virico, prisoner in a hard-fought battle. When the gathered tribes rode out in their chariots to free him, Virico’s royal war band led the charge. Three days later, Father came home. Sorcha didn’t. My fierce, bright, beautiful sister was gone. Dead.
Just like that.
It had been almost seven years since the legions left our shores, having declared the Island of the Mighty sufficiently conquered. In all that time, the Romans had not returned to Prydain, the island they called Britannia in their strident native tongue. Of course, the traders had never left—they’d been here before Caesar had set foot on our shore, and they’d stayed when he’d departed, “triumphant.” Since that time, we’d been left in peace.
But one day, the legions would return to finish what they’d started. Prydain was too rich a resource for gold and tin and timber—and “barbarian” slaves. Caesar and his kind wouldn’t be able to resist. The armies of Rome would return and we would be ready to fight them when they did. I would be ready to fight, just as my sister had.