The Night Country (The Hazel Wood #2)(55)

Though not a princess, she was the daughter of a powerful man, a magician, and a dead mother, so perhaps this is a fairy tale, just a bit.

With no mother to raise her, the magician supposed she could raise herself. He gave her freedom, and trust, and a library to roam in. Though not a whimsical child, she was drawn to his books of fairy tales. Such tales exist in all worlds. She loved them not for their enchantments but for their shapes, their ruthless black-and-white symmetry. She was often left alone, but she always had her books, and she was never lonely.

Her father was a very bad person, but very good at hiding it, and had become powerful by his importance to the rulers of their world. One after another, these rulers died, and always he was there, invaluable and discreet, to guide their successors, until at last none was left to rule but him, with his strange and lovely daughter.

Because she was very lovely. And wise enough to know it was dangerous to be so, in a world where she prized knowledge and the freedom to seek it above all. As her father, who was proud in his way of his brilliant daughter, and allowed her access to the tools of his arts, turned his mind to affairs of state, she was left to her own devices.

There was no wolf to mislead her in the woods, no stepmother or enchantress. There were only her books, her curiosity, and the iron of her will.

The first magic she learned was the art of wearing different faces. This was a world where small magic was common, and those who could used it to smooth their way. But transformation was not a small magic: once done, a magician could not return to the face of their birth. The girl peeled herself away from the face she’d been born with, trading it for a plain one that would allow her to do as she pleased without notice. Her eyes, only, she couldn’t change—silver-blue eyes, their color as unlikely as summer ice—and her father knew her by them when he saw her again. He said no words of damnation or praise, but pressed a hand to her unfamiliar cheek. He was not a tender man, and it was not a tender gesture, but acknowledgment of what she’d done: one magician honoring another.

From that day he left her to her work. He never spoke of marrying her off, but waited greedily for what knowledge her studies might uncover that he could profit by.

And he did. Her abilities became greater, deeper, more insidious. She was born the beautiful daughter of a commoner, and had become the plain daughter of a self-made king, and it seemed that nothing could stop their rise.

Until something derailed it. This girl was uncommon: intelligent, without sentiment, cold. But she was not entirely heartless. And love, unexpected and unlooked for, came her way.

It happened like this: on occasion her father would prevail upon her to give some demonstration of her magic, an impressive public display to shore up support and quiet the discontented. He took credit for this magic, which was as she wished it. She liked being nearly invisible, working in her library and her laboratory, learning to separate matter from reason, and to convince the physical world that it needn’t continue to do the things it had always done, just because it was habit.

On the third anniversary of her father’s rise to power, he requested that she put on a display in his hall. She made hypnotized spectators dance ten feet above the ground, twirling in elegant pairs. She coaxed static sparks from their clothing and rolled them into a lightning bolt that crackled across the ceiling and back, before unraveling and returning to the places from whence it came.

For her final act, she lifted all the jewels from the gathered attendees’ ears and wrists and throats and fingers, gathering them into a spangled cloud that clustered and hummed. She meant for the jewels to whirl up into the shape of her father’s sigil.

But something was working against her magic. It bent the will of the jeweled cloud. Instead of forming her father’s sigil, it picked itself out into the shape of an abelia: a bell-like flower. Then it shivered out like blown pollen, each piece returning to its master.

The audience thundered their approval, not understanding the error. The girl’s cheeks reddened as her father looked at her, ferocious and brief, before turning a benevolent face to the crowd.

But her heart was a shivering cloud, too: only another magician could’ve disordered her display, one even greater than she. And by doing so, they’d both shamed and honored her: the flower was her namesake. Like her dead mother’s, her name was Abelia.

The second time it happened she was alone.

She could not, to her frustration, change the paths of celestial bodies. That was a magic even her father’s grimmest grimoires could not condone. But she was learning to alter the appearance of the skies. On a moonless night she stood by the edge of the lake behind her father’s palace, her sleeves rolled up and her hair tied back. Borrowing the light of the stars, she made a counterfeit moon and ran it through its phases.

But as it waxed it deepened in color, from champagne to wine. Her arms ached and her eyes streamed, and still she could not make it pale. In its fullest form, it sprung five arms, and a star spun out of orbit to serve as its pistil.

“Abelia,” said a voice from behind her, as deep in color as the altered moon.

She turned, and her life was changed.



* * *



What drew the girl to the mage was his magic. What drew the mage to the girl was her ambition. To him, ambition smelled like a drug, like opium and amber, and hers was bottomless. He, too, wore an altered face, but while hers was built to go unnoticed, his was made to please, because it costs less for a man to be pleasing.