Page 3 of To Wake a Kingdom

None of them were supposed to be asleep.

No matter how loud I yelled, my father remained silent. I laid a hand on his dark hair and thought of the deep brown eyes concealed by shuttered lids. I would give anything to feel the warmth of his gaze. To feel his trust and his confidence. He would have known what to do.

It was then I snapped—the tether binding me to the earth, loosing me like an errant cannon. I ran from person to person, trying to wake someone. Rattling them, shouting at them. “Wake up, wake up, wake up. Someone, wake up!”

Tears blurred my vision, and I wiped them away with my sweaty palms. The air in my chest was as thick as tree sap. The guards, the courtiers, and the servants all slept on, oblivious to me. Oblivious to the blood coating the floor and my hands. Oblivious to the twelve Fae lying upstairs, murdered as they slept.

Thirteen bodies.

I had thirteen bodies to deal with and not a soul to help. But this was my home, and that man could not remain as a reminder of his sins in what had always been the sunny yellow center of this castle.

Beyond the throne room lay a wide stone hallway ending in a massive set of doors that stood several feet over my head. One stood slightly ajar where the man had entered my sanctuary.

Shielding my eyes from the bright light, I stepped outside, my slippers crunching on a pile of thick brambles littering the path. Brittle and black, they were covered in sharp, deadly spines.Growing up around the walls and over the top of the battlements, spreading with a thousand extendable limbs, they covered the entire castle. Was this part of the curse? They were too dense and ominous to have grown by nature’s will.

My breath caught as I saw a man—or rather what was left of one—trapped in the brambles as if he’d tried to climb his way to the top, only to be rendered fleshless into bleached bone.

How long had I been asleep?

I picked up a bramble, its end severed cleanly with a blade.Others had tried to transgress my resting place.

I thought of the way the man’s weapon had glittered with a preternatural glow. Like I could have pressed two fingers to the hardened steel and counted the beats of its heart. Why had he succeeded where others had failed?

Further down the wall, more skeletons sat trapped in the brush, and I swallowed the burning lump of coal in my throat.

A neigh caught my attention. I spun to find a white horse in a polished leather saddle, tied to a tree. It could only have belonged tohim. With trembling hands, I fumbled with the rope, untying the beast and leading it toward the stables. My mind spun with calamitous thoughts, but these mundane, insignificant tasks calmed my galloping heart and gave me something else to focus on.

I killed a man.

The stable’s massive sliding door sat closed, and I hauled it open. Rusted tracks shrieked in protest to reveal a dozen stalls. My slippers crunching on a layer of hay, I found a stall to store the horse. The air was thick and damp, clinging like a second layer of skin. I walked to the third stall on the left, where my mare, Blizzard, lived. My throat knotted as I peered over the partition. Bones. Nothing but a dry husk left of my old friend.

A boy no older than twelve, wearing dark breeches and a thin shirt, lay asleep against the back wall. He sighed, his narrow chest rising and falling. A spattering of freckles bridged across his nose, his shaggy blond hair falling in his eyes. Propped up against the wall next to him was a shovel.

Thirteen bodies.

With the shovel slung over my shoulder, I walked deeper into the forest. Royal birch grew in dense formations, their trunks wide with the confidence of age. Bright green leaves fluttered in the breeze, their edges coated in creeping borders of white. Winter was around the corner and soon they would turn silver, forming a glittering canopy.

Under normal circumstances, it was one of my favorite sights.

My long skirts tangled around my ankles, stiffening with dried blood. Heart beating in my throat, I walked through the forest until the castle disappeared behind a curtain of foliage. The air was cool, a nip biting against my fevered skin.

Continuing deeper, I found a clearing surrounded by royal birch and apple trees. Rotten fruit littered the ground, their cloying scent filling the air. How many years had these trees provided for a harvest that never came?

Slowly pushing the breath from my lungs, I walked to the center of the clearing. Closing my eyes for a moment, I listened to the stillness of the forest, trying to coax a sliver of relief from my splintering nerves. Shovel gripped so tight my hands ached, I swung it off my shoulder and plunged it into the earth.

Then, I began to dig.

Chapter Two

Beforemelaythirteenjagged holes. They weren’t deep, but they would have to do.With winter’s brittle kiss brushing the edges of fall, the ground had hardened, making it impossible to dig more than a few feet.

Drenched in sweat and covered in a strange man’s blood, I made my way back to the castle. Shock coursed through me in needle-sharp bolts. My limbs were hollow and weightless from exhaustion, the fatigue muffling my fraying nerves.

Back in the chamber where the twelve Fae lay dead, tears blurred my vision. Today, rivers had flowed from me, snaking in endless currents. My throat constricted, the pressure so heavy it almost severed my breath.

The scene before me had been plucked from the worst pages of every fairy tale ever written—that moment when all seemed lost, only to culminate in a tearful, happy ending. But I already knew there would be no happy ending for me.

Thathad never been my destiny.

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