Page 1 of Legacy of Glass
Chapter1
Olivia
Olivia dipped her head toward the colorful, fragrant pile in her arms and breathed deeply. Nothing made her quite as happy as a bright sun in a blue sky and the smell of wildflowers. She loved summer.
Squelch. Her left foot landed in something soft, and she froze. She couldn’t see what it was through the bundle of flowers in her arms, but she couldn’t imagine it was anything pleasant.
Drawing a deep breath, she twisted her arms to the side and peered downward. Mouse droppings.
Her eyes widened. The mice in Sovar were larger than those in other kingdoms, but she had never seen such a large pile of droppings. And placed just there, as if waiting for her. With the flowers obscuring her vision, she had stepped fully into it, her shoe almost totally subsumed.
She let out a wail. The Legacy might have forced her into becoming a servant for her relatives, but this was going too far. Was it really too much for her to be both clean and fragrant forfive minutes?
She stared at her ruined slipper and groaned. She had overreached. She shouldn’t have gathered flowers the same day she was wearing new slippers. It was just inviting trouble.
“Olivia!” A girl in the distance called her name, waving wildly.
Olivia looked up, but with her arms full, she couldn’t wave back. And with her foot stuck in mouse droppings, she couldn’t go to her friend either. With a grimace, she pulled her foot free. The slipper stayed behind.
Olivia laughed. She couldn’t help it. It was such a ridiculous situation. And it was just like Marigold to arrive at precisely that moment.
She took several steps away from her abandoned shoe, wondering uneasily if she should rescue it. It was a new slipper, after all. But would any amount of scrubbing actually make it clean? She shuddered.
“Olivia!” Marigold reached her friend and threw her arms around her neck in greeting. “There you are.”
“Were you looking for me?” Olivia’s mind was still on her slipper.
“I’malwayslooking for you,” Marigold declared in her usual dramatic way.
“I’m not that hard to find,” Olivia said mildly. “I’m not sure I can even remember the last time I left my aunt and uncle’s manor.”
“That would be today.” Marigold gave her a cheeky smile. “If you look around, you will see blue skies and green hills. You’re currently located on the hill behind both our family manors. If your aunt and uncle are trying to claim this territory, I will fight them to the death.” She assumed a dramatic pose, one arm raised in the air as if she was brandishing a sword.
“Ha!” Olivia shook her head. “I heard one of Uncle Walt’s business partners claiming your father has more influence than the king. I’m pretty sure my aunt would gift you this entire hill in exchange for one dinner invitation.”
Marigold collapsed on herself, letting out a disappointed sigh. Taking Olivia’s elbow, she dragged her toward the nearest tree.
When they reached it, Marigold threw herself on the ground, her back against the trunk. Only then did she properly look at Olivia, still with her arms full of flowers.
“Why are you only wearing one shoe?” she asked.
Olivia glanced over her shoulder back toward the enormous pile of mouse droppings. “The other one had an unfortunate accident.”
“An accident?” Marigold straightened and followed Olivia’s line of sight. When she spotted the abandoned slipper nestling among the droppings, she threw her head back in laughter.
Olivia reluctantly smiled as she carefully deposited her load on the grass and took a more cautious seat facing her friend. Somehow it was impossible not to smile when Marigold laughed. Marigold had that effect on everyone—her presence was magnetic, if a bit chaotic.
“It’s not my fault,” Olivia protested halfheartedly. “Unless you count the foolishness of wearing the slippers at all. I should have foreseen trouble. The Legacy doesn’t like me being too clean and well-dressed—and even you suffer from the issue of losing shoes. One at a time, of course.”
For some reason this speech only set Marigold off into another round of laughter. Olivia eyed her. Marigold had never been the focus of the Legacy’s power—not in the way Olivia had been since leaving her home town and moving to the capital to live with her father’s relatives.
Marigold finally subsided, wiping at the moisture gathered in her eyes. “Thank you for that,” she said on a sigh. “I needed a laugh.”
Olivia winced sympathetically. “Your mother?”
“Actually it was Father this time.” Marigold straightened. “But I don’t want to talk about that. Let’s talk about something else.” She eyed the pile of flowers beside Olivia. “Where in the kingdoms did you find those? I was sure the hot spell had dried out every flower within miles of the city.”
Olivia shrugged. “I was skeptical as well, but I wasn’t going to argue when Aunt Helen sent me out to gather flowers. I think it’s her way of giving me an afternoon off.” She rested her hands on the ground behind her and leaned back, tipping her face up to the sky and breathing deeply. “And it turns out there were more surviving pockets of flowers than I expected. Although I nearly toppled over the cliff retrieving one of them.” She shuddered at the memory. She was usually more careful of the small cliff that lurked at the back of the beautiful, grass-covered hill.
