Princess of Souls, page 1
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For Mum & Dad,
who have always brought magic into my life
1
SELESTRA
I can tell someone when they’re going to die. All I need is a lock of hair and their soul.
Just in case.
That’s the job of a Somniatis witch, tied to the king with magic steeped in death. It’s all I was ever raised to be: a servant to the kingdom, an heir to my family’s power.
A witch bound to the Six Isles.
And because of it, I’ve never glimpsed the world beyond the Floating Mountain this castle stands on.
Not that I’m a prisoner.
I’m King Seryth’s ward and one day I’ll be his most trusted adviser. The right hand to royalty, free to go wherever I want and do whatever I want, without having to ask for permission first.
Just as soon as my mother dies.
I stride through the stone halls, ivory gloves snaking to my shoulders where the shimmer of my dress begins. They’re meant to be a safeguard for my visions, but sometimes they feel more like a leash to stop me from going wild.
To keep my magic at bay until the time is right.
But I’m not a prisoner, I tell myself.
I’m just not supposed to touch anyone.
Outside the Grand Hall, a line of people gathers in a stretch of soon-to-be corpses. Most are dressed in rags and dirt that cakes them like a second skin, but a few are smothered in jewels. A mix of the poor, the wealthy, and those who fall in between.
All of them are desperate to cheat death.
The Festival of Predictions happens once a year, during the month of the Red Moon, where anyone from across the Six Isles can wait for a prediction from the king’s witch.
The line rounds the corner opposite me, so I can’t see how far it stretches, but I know how many people there are. It’s the same each year: two hundred souls ready to be bargained.
I try to move past them as quickly as I can, like a shadow sweeping across the corner of their eyes. But they always see me.
Once they do, they look quickly away.
They can’t stand the sight of my green hair and snake eyes. All the things that make me different from them. They stare at the floor, like the tiles are suddenly too interesting to miss.
Like I’m nothing but a witch to be feared.
I’m not sure why. It’s not like I have that much magic in me yet. At sixteen, I’m still just an heir to my true power, waiting for the day I inherit my family’s magic.
“Would you hang on for a second?” Irenya says.
The apprentice dressmaker—and the only friend I have in this castle—heaves in a series of quick breaths, running to catch up with me as I finally come to a stop outside the Grand Hall.
She smooths down my dress, making sure there are no wrinkles in sight. Irenya is a perfectionist when it comes to her gowns.
“Quit squirming, Selestra,” she scolds.
“I’m not squirming,” I say. “I’m breathing.”
“Well, stop that too, then.”
I poke out my tongue and start to fiddle with my gloves. Pulling the fingertips up and then pushing them back down so the fabric rubs against my skin.
The repetition is soothing.
It stops me from overthinking everything that’s about to happen.
I should be used to all of this by now. Grateful that I’ve been allowed to stand by King Seryth’s side for two years, gathering hair and watching as people from across the islands filter in to seal their fates.
I should be excited for the Festival and all the souls we’ll reap. To watch my mother tell death’s secrets, as though it’s an old friend.
I should not be thinking about all the people who are going to die.
“We don’t want you coming loose during the first prediction,” Irenya says. She pulls the strings tighter on my dress and I just know that she’s smiling. “Imagine, you bend down to take a lock of hair and your chest falls out.”
“Trust me.” I gasp out a breath. “I’m not bending anywhere in this thing.”
Irenya rolls her eyes. “Oh, be quiet,” she says. “You look like a princess.”
I almost laugh at that.
When I was young—before my mother became a stranger—she’d read me stories of princesses. Fairy tales of demure women, powerless, locked up in towers and waiting to be rescued by a handsome prince, who would whisk them away for love and adventure.
“I’m not a princess,” I say to Irenya.
I’m something far more deadly than that. And nobody is rescuing me from my tower.
I push open the heavy iron doors of the Grand Hall. The room has been emptied.
Gone are the wooden tables that cluttered the center, rich with wine and merciless laughter. The band has been dismissed and the room is drained to a hollow cavity.
To an outsider, it’s impossible to tell that just a few hours ago, the wealthiest people in the kingdom celebrated the start of the Festival. I could hear the swells of music from my tower. Smell the brandy cakes and honey drifting in through the cracks of my window.
It still smells now. Cake and candle fire, charred wicks and sweet, smoky air.
I spy the king at the far end of the room on a large black throne carved from bones. A gift of love from my great-great-grandmother.
His gaze quickly meets mine, like he can sense me, and he beckons me over with a single finger.
I take in a breath and head toward him.
The cloak of my dress billows behind me.
It’s a hideously sparkling thing that glitters under the candlelight like a river of plucked stars. It’s a deep black blue, dark as the Endless Sea, that curls around my neck and drips down my pale skin like water. The back, tied by intricate ribbons, is covered in a long cape that flows to the floor.
It might be Irenya’s creation, but it’s the king’s color.
When I wear it, I’m his trophy.
“My king,” I say once I reach him.
“Selestra,” he all but purrs. “Good of you to finally join us.”
He leans back into his throne.
King Seryth is a warrior as much as a ruler, with long black hair and earrings of snake fangs. The tattooed serpents of his crest hiss across his face, and he’s dressed in animal furs that break apart to reveal the ridged muscles of his chest.
All of it is meant to make him look menacing, but I’ve always thought his eternally youthful face was far more beautiful than frightening.
The real danger is in his eyes, darker than night, which hold only death.
“You look glorious,” he says.
“Thank you.”
I tuck a lock of dark green hair behind my ears.
I’ve never been allowed to cut it, so like my mother’s it hangs well past my waist. Only unlike my mother’s it curls up at the ends, where hers is as straight as a cliff edge.
Everything about her is edges and points, designed to wound.
“Good evening, Mother,” I say, turning to bow to her.
Theola Somniatis, ever beautiful, sits beside the king on a throne that glitters with painted Chrim coins. A black lace gown clings to her body in a mix of swirls and skin.
She looks sharp and foreboding.
A knife the king keeps by his side.
And unlike me, she doesn’t need gloves to keep her in check.
She purses her lips. “You were nearly late.”
I frown. “I walked as fast as I could in these shoes,” I say, lifting the hem of my dress to show the perilous heels hidden under its length.
They’re already rubbing against my feet.
The king smirks at this. “Now you are here we can get started.”
He raises his hand, a signal to the guards by the door.
“Let the first one in.”
I take an unsteady breath.
And so it begins.
I wonder what curses death will show us today.
2
SELESTRA
The guards open the doors to the Grand Hall and I see the first woman emerge.
She approaches the throne hesitantly, two guards flanking her closely on either side as she takes slow, shuffled footsteps toward us. She’s dressed in a dark red skirt that’s damp with mud at the ankles.
My skin pricks on the back of my neck the closer she gets.
There’s death in the air.
I can practically taste it.
Smell it on the woman’s bones.
As she steps forward, skirt the color of dried blood and decaying rose petals, I know somehow that she won’t last the week.
I can feel it.
Then my mother will snatch up her soul and King Seryth will g
“Your Highnesses,” the woman says, once she reaches the steps that elevate the thrones.
She curtsies, low enough that her knees touch the floor and her ankles shake with the weight.
She glances at my mother and I see the flicker of panic in her eyes before she bows her head.
They fear us. They hate us.
And they’re right to.
I lift my chin up, reminding myself that I should be pleased.
This is the one time a year when I’m surrounded by magic. When I can feel the thrum of it coating the castle, as the power of my ancestors drifts through the air like sweet wine.
When I don’t have to stay locked in my tower.
I grab the scissors from the table and descend the stairs.
“With these scissors, I’ll take a lock of your hair and seal your place in the Festival of Predictions,” I tell the woman. “Death will mark you on its list for this month of the Red Moon. It will come for you once this first week, then twice the second, and the prediction we give you today will be your only help to survive.”
I recite the lines easily, as I’ve done since I was fourteen.
“If you die, your soul becomes forfeit to the king. But if you live through the first half of this month, you’ll be rewarded with a wish of your choice and be released from your bargain.”
The woman nods eagerly.
The promise of a wish makes the Festival a celebration in the realm. I’ve heard that the townsfolk even make bets, gambling Chrim on who might make it, throwing parties and drinking into the early hours.
People only ever enter into this bargain for the wish.
For the poor and the desperate, it’s a chance to ask for gold Chrim or healing elixirs. For the rich and the arrogant, it’s a chance to curse their enemies and amass more fortune.
And all of them think it’s worth risking their souls for.
It’s only three deaths, they probably tell themselves. I can live through that. And some do. Each year a handful of people get to resume their lives with a wish granted, inspiring others to try it for themselves next year.
But each year at least one hundred people don’t.
It’s funny how they’re less remembered.
“If you choose to continue beyond this halfway point, be warned,” I say, voice foreboding. “As in place of death, the king himself will have earned the right to hunt you until the month’s end. For if you survive past the Red Moon, his immortality will be yours.”
I feel Seryth’s smile on the back of my neck.
He’s not afraid.
He doesn’t worry that he could ever lose his throne to any of these people.
“This bargain may kill you or bring you unrivaled glory,” I say.
It will be the former. It always is.
Death has a funny habit of getting its way, and so does the king. I’ve seen that firsthand.
Besides, nobody who survives ever even tries to go past the halfway mark. Having death hunt you is one thing, but the king himself? Even before he amassed the deadliest army to ever live, the king was the most skilled warrior in all of the Six Isles. He has survived centuries, blessed by cursed magic.
It would be madness to even try to kill him.
Best to just take your wish and run home to safety.
“Do you accept this bargain?” I ask.
The woman gulps loudly.
“Yes,” she says, voice trembling. “Please just take it.”
With hands as unsteady as her voice, she gestures toward her hair.
I reach out with my scissors and cut a piece. The woman sucks in a breath, eyes sharpening.
I wonder if she feels something. A fragment of her taken to be stored away, so her soul is tethered to this world when she dies.
Ready for my mother to collect in her ritual.
Ready to be bound to the king.
“It’s done,” I say.
I turn away from her and place the hair into one of two hundred glass jars that line the steps to the thrones.
“Step forward,” Theola says. “And keep your arm out.”
I hear the woman’s breath stutter as she ascends the first two steps. She takes a knee.
Theola extends her hand and daintily strokes the woman’s palm.
She closes her eyes, smile slow and damning.
Somniatis witches are like siphons. We draw in energy and let it pass through us. Energy like death that we call into our veins and let wet our lips. It’s what gives us our visions and allows us to take the souls of the doomed and pour them into the king.
It’s cursed magic, but it’s the only magic left in the Six Isles.
My family saw to that.
Theola bites her lip as she looks into the woman’s future.
There’s a part of me that wants desperately to see what she sees. I want to feel the power that comes from knowing the future, from telling fate’s secrets and letting my magic free from its shackles.
From touching someone, for the first time in years.
But then I remember Asden, my old mentor. I remember what happened the last time I touched someone.
I remember how he screamed.
The mere thought of it knocks into me as hard as a fist. I quickly right myself, swallowing the memory before the king notices the slip in my smile.
My mother withdraws her hand and looks down at the kneeling woman, whose palm is newly branded by King Seryth’s crest: a blackened serpent eating its tail.
It appears on all death seekers, marking them and the deal they’ve made.
“In the next week, your youngest daughter will succumb to illness,” Theola says.
Her voice is like ice, cold and smooth, like she’s talking about the weather instead of death.
It wasn’t always like that.
Once it was warm.
“She will die,” Theola says. “And days later when you go to pick her favorite flowers, you will be attacked by a creature of the woods. Left to rot among the trees.”
The woman gasps and even her hands stop shaking, as though terror has frozen her in place.
“No, my daughter cannot die.” She shakes her head, no regard for her own life and the death my mother foresaw for her. “There must be a way. If I survive until the halfway point, then I can wish for a healing elixir and—”
“She will not last long enough for that.”
With a tight jaw, my mother closes her fist and then opens it to reveal a single gold coin of Chrim that wasn’t there seconds before.
She drops it into the sobbing woman’s hand.
“For your troubles,” she says. “Spend time with your child while you can. If you live, perhaps we’ll see you again for a new wish. If you die, remember what you owe us.”
The woman blinks and opens her mouth, as if to scream or cry or try to fight her future. But all that comes out is a whimper, before her eyes shift to mine.
I can see the accusation in them as the guards pull her up and drag her from the hall. The notion that I should be ashamed of my monstrous family and the evil we let seep into the world.
But she doesn’t know.
She doesn’t understand what it means to be a Somniatis witch, bound to the king by an ancient blood oath. Given the choice between prisoner or queen of magic, I doubt this woman would choose differently from me. She doesn’t understand what could happen if I tried.
Still, once she’s out of sight, I turn to my mother.
“Do you think she’ll avoid the forest and forgo her daughter’s flowers?” I ask.
It’s a stupid question, and the moment I speak it, I wish I could take it back.
“What does it matter?” Theola’s voice is scolding. “So long as we get the amount of souls we need, it’s irrelevant which ones they are.”
I know that she’s right.
What’s important is that we have at least one hundred souls by the end of the month. Enough so that the king can sustain his immortality and continue his rule forever.
“Don’t you agree, Selestra?” my mother asks when I fall silent.
She looks at me with warning, telling me to nod, quickly.
“Of course,” I say.
A practiced lie.
“My witches don’t concern themselves with such questions.”
The king stares at me tersely.
His eyes are black, black, black.
