The Crimson Crown, page 1
By Heather Walter
Malice
Misrule
The Crimson Crown
The Crimson Crown is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2024 by Heather Walter
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Del Rey and the Circle colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Walter, Heather, author.
Title: The crimson crown / Heather Walter.
Description: First edition. | New York: Del Rey, 2024.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024021758 (print) | LCCN 2024021759 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593598368 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593598375 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Witches—Fiction. | Fairy tales—Adaptations—Fiction. | LCGFT: Fantasy fiction. | Queer fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PS3623.A44683 C75 2024 (print) | LCC PS3623.A44683 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20240531
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024021758
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024021759
Ebook ISBN 9780593598375
randomhousebooks.com
Interior art by Design Box © Adobe Stock Photos
Book design by Sara Bereta, adapted for ebook
Cover design and illustration: David Curtis
ep_prh_7.0_147942430_c0_r0
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Part I
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part II
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Part III
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Part IV
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Part V
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Acknowledgments
About the Author
_147942430_
For Laura Crockett and Tricia Narwani, Wayward witches both, who believed in the magic of this book even when I did not.
And for Lindsey, who believes in the magic in me.
Age of the Light 36
On the night before my sister will bind herself to the coven fire, the moon is the color of blood.
“It’s turned early,” the Diviner witches murmured as they watched the blood moon rise like a welling puncture wound behind the scudding clouds. “A good omen—the Spirits must be eager to call her forth.”
If they were speaking of any other witch, I might have agreed. An Ascension is a celebration—the night every young witch waits for. When she makes her offering to the Spirits, my sister, Rhea, will receive her gift and take her place in the coven. She’ll be transformed.
But as I sneak down the deserted halls of the Sanctum in the dark, apprehension knotting my insides like a patch of fireroot, I can’t help but worry—what will Rhea be transformed into? What if the flames of the coven fire consume her, leaving nothing behind of the witch I love?
A crow calls in the night.
I pick up my pace, bare feet whispering against the stone floor. The door to Rhea’s room is slightly ajar. She should be in bed—so should I—but she’s sitting at the window. Moonlight glows red against her nightdress, as if she’s already wearing her crimson cloak. Already another person. What is she thinking about? Is she afraid? Probably not. Rhea is only ten years older than me, but she might as well be a hundred years wiser. She’s not afraid of anything.
My sister turns and spots me. We share the same white skin, black hair, and brown eyes, but that’s where the similarity ends. Where I’m all awkward angles and skinny limbs, Rhea is soft and elegant. Beautiful.
“Ayleth. What are you doing here?”
I grin, sheepish, and thrust out the two slices of pie I stole from the kitchen. “I thought you might be hungry. You didn’t eat much at dinner.”
She’d been preoccupied with entertaining our guests, witches who had risked the journey to Stonehaven for Rhea’s Ascension. A dangerous undertaking, with the Covens’ War still waging. Personally, I never would have attempted it. But Rhea is about to be named a Second, next in line to lead the coven after Mother. Not only that, but she’s a descendant of Millicent, one of the Five Ancients. I am, too, I suppose, though it’s often difficult to believe that I share the same lineage as my sister. Rhea is immensely talented. A natural witch.
I’m just…me.
“Come on, then.” Rhea motions to the bed. “You must be freezing. Watch that you don’t get crumbs on the linens like last time.”
Before she can change her mind, I clamber onto her mattress and settle myself among the pillows, passing Rhea her slice of pie. “It’s apple. Your favorite.”
She smiles at me and I breathe in her faint, comforting scent of honeysuckle. I can’t count the number of times I’ve wound up in Rhea’s bed instead of my own, sleeping long past the sunrise after we’d stayed up trading secrets or gossiping about other witches. But if Rhea has secrets now, she’s not sharing them. She keeps glancing toward the window, her pie untouched.
“Are you nervous?” I venture.
Rhea shifts on the bed. “A little. But I shouldn’t be. Hundreds of witches have faced the flames before, Mother included. It will be fine. And soon enough, it will be your turn.”
Ascensions normally occur on the first blood moon during a witch’s twenty-third year. I still have a decade to go, but even that feels too soon. “Will it hurt?”
“Mother warned me that it might,” Rhea admits. “After that, though, I’ve heard it feels like coming alive. That the gift of the Spirits makes everything…more visceral. Nyssandra said it’s like color seeping into the world after living in darkness.”
Nyssandra also claims her rabbit stew is edible, which it most certainly isn’t. In any case, I don’t care about color. And I don’t care about the Spirits either—not the way I should. All I care about is Rhea. What is this Spirits-given gift going to do to my sister? Will her new, colorful world be better without me in it?
“What’s wrong?” Rhea asks, guessing my thoughts.
“Nothing.”
She nudges her elbow against mine. “You can tell me.”
“It’s just…” I pluck at the coverlet. “After tomorrow, everything will be different. I don’t want anything to change between us.”
Rhea tucks a piece of my hair behind my ear, her long fingers cool against my skin. “Nothing could ever be different between us. You know that.”
I used to. “But with the Ascension and you becoming Second, I’ll just be…”
Nothing, a voice inside me whispers. My shoulders hunch against it.
“You’ll be Mother’s favorite,” Rhea says. “Like always.”
She pinches me, teasing, and I fend her off. “I’m not her favorite!”
“Oh, please.” Rhea laughs, gesturing at my pie. “How else do you continually get away with clandestine excursions to the kitchen? And how many les sons have you skipped?”
A guilty smirk tugs at my lips. I can’t deny it. Rhea is my Heir, but you are my heart, Mother whispers to me when she thinks I’m asleep. But I’m not next in line. And if I’m being honest, I’m glad I’ll never be a Second.
My attention returns to the glaring red eye of the moon. “I just…I’m worried. I can’t explain it, but I feel like something’s coming.”
Rhea cups my chin with her hand. “Being worried means you’re smart.”
“Not as smart as you are.”
“Stop skipping lessons and you’ll catch up.”
I smack her with a pillow. “I wouldn’t skip them if they weren’t boring.”
Rhea laughs. “Fine, then. Here—I have another idea.”
She climbs out of bed and pulls something from a drawer on the other side of the room. Silver glints in the moonlight—a knife.
“What’s that for?”
“I’m going to carve you up and bake you into a pie.” She winks and I scowl back at her. “Here. Give me your hand.”
I’m still suspicious of the knife, but I do as Rhea says. She turns my palm up, her graceful fingers traveling briefly over the creases of my skin—my Life and Fate lines, as some of the Diviners taught me. Rhea touches the tip of the knife to an area below my ring finger.
“Don’t!” I jerk back, but she holds my wrist.
“Do you trust me?”
It’s the knife I don’t trust. But Rhea’s dark eyes are serious in a way that makes my stomach flutter. I relax my hand and let her drag the blade over my skin, wincing as blood wells up in three lines, each crossing the others. A triangle.
“Is that a rune?”
In the lessons I do attend, I’ve memorized a fair amount of such magical symbols, but I’ve never encountered one so simple. And I’ve never heard of witches drawing runes on themselves. Then again, Rhea knows more than I would. She’s to be a Caster, after all. Just like Mother and even Millicent herself.
“Sort of.” Rhea cleans the knife on a cloth. “Think of it as our rune.”
“Ours?” My brow furrows. “You can’t just make them up.”
“So, you have been paying attention.” She arches an eyebrow. I flush. “You’re right. We can’t. But this one is special. It works because of the shared power in our line. Because we’re sisters. Here—we’ll connect them.”
She passes me the knife and extends her own palm.
But I hesitate, unwilling to hurt her. “Are you sure?”
Rhea nods and gestures for me to continue. As gently as possible, I carve the same triangle into the flesh just below her ring finger. Rhea doesn’t even flinch.
“See how the lines of the triangle drift apart but come back together?” she asks when I’ve finished, holding her palm next to mine, the blood shining like a line of liquid rubies on her skin. “That’s like us. No matter how distant we may become, we’ll always find our way back to each other. We’re sisters. Nothing will change that.”
Rhea interlocks our fingers, our hearts beating together through our shared runes.
“Sisters,” I echo, like the word itself is a spell.
And even though I believe what Rhea says, trust her more than anyone else, a deep part of me still whispers that my sister is wrong.
Something is coming. And no amount of magic will be able to hold it back.
Witchcraft is hereby abolished in the Kingdom of Riven. All Sanctums and property are forfeit to the Crown. Any persons found practicing witchcraft, or abetting witches, shall be burned, their souls returned to the forces of Malum.
—Edict of King Reginald,
Age of the Light 1
Ten Years Later
A shadow skims across the courtyard.
I glance up just in time to watch a crow land on the statue in front of the Sanctum.
“Portent,” I hear someone murmur nearby, probably one of the Diviners. “Ill luck.”
“Malum.”
The word carries a bite colder than the autumn wind. Mother heard it too. I can tell from the way she pretends she hasn’t, her jaw set as she watches the portcullis. The crow ruffles its inky feathers. If I didn’t know better, I’d say its beady, obsidian eyes were fixed on me.
One crow for sorrow.
An old rhyme dredges up from my memory. As if in reply, the crow calls, short and staccato. Like laughter.
“They’re coming!” a witch in the sentry tower calls, startling the bird so that it squawks and flaps away.
Excitement catches like dry kindling amongst the rest of the witches.
“At last!” someone exclaims.
“I was worried they wouldn’t make it.”
And I was hoping that they wouldn’t, today—or ever. On instinct, I touch the place below my left ring finger, where three crossed lines form a triangle on my skin. Rhea’s mark. Our mark. Three faintly pink scars drifting apart and then coming back together. I press down on the triangle so hard that I feel the thrum of my pulse beneath my skin.
There’s no need to worry, I imagine my sister saying to me. Hundreds of witches have done this before.
Maybe. But I was never supposed to be one of them—not like this.
A familiar meow interrupts my thoughts, coupled with the pressure of a lithe body rubbing against my ankles.
“Hello, you.” I bend to scratch between Nettle’s ears, grateful to have at least one friend this morning. Autumn sunlight shines against her dark calico fur.
“I told you to keep that cat away today.” Mother throws Nettle a sharp glance. “I won’t have her causing any trouble. And fix your cloak.”
I’m not a witchling anymore, I almost snap back. But an argument will only worsen my headache. Nettle grumbles as I shoo her away, her tail twitching as she trots back toward the Sanctum. Maybe she’ll hunt down a mouse and leave the carcass in Mother’s rooms, a habit of hers that I’ve been encouraging of late.
“I shouldn’t even be wearing this.” I pull on the clasp of my cloak, which keeps riding up next to my throat like it’s trying to strangle me. It probably is. Everything about this garment is uncomfortable, especially its crimson color, one reserved for witches only after they Ascend.
“I want them to see you in it,” Mother replies smoothly. “You’re my Second.”
“Not yet,” I mutter under my breath. Not for three more days anyway. I can feel the time slipping away from me, only hours now. Would that it could be years—forever.
The portcullis jolts, my nerves clattering along with the rising of the huge metal gate. The other witches press closer, nudging one another. The last time Stonehaven received visitors as important as these—the other Heirs and their Seconds—was at Rhea’s Ascension. The mood was different then, though. Even with the war waging around us, it had been a joyous occasion, like one of the large coven gatherings that the older witches describe. Now there is only the rustle of dry leaves and an air of desperation. Because it’s not Rhea this time. Rhea is gone.
I clench my left hand again, my sister’s words floating on the breeze.
No matter how distant we may become, we’ll always find our way back to each other.
But there are some places, I’ve learned, that no one can come back from. The clasp of my cloak digs into my throat.
“After this, I’ll expect you to see to the Seconds,” Mother says. “You remember where they’ll be housed?”
