Mercurial Naomi Hughes (suggested reading txt) 📖

girl, perhaps six years old, lay in a luxurious bed. Silken scarlet sheets and a puffy chenille blanket seemed to swallow her whole. Only her eyes, brown and mouse-quiet, looked out of place amidst the extravagance.

There were footsteps in the hall, and she was afraid.

Two men came in. The door didn’t creak; it was too well-oiled. The girl quickly shut her eyes and feigned sleep, but her little rabbit heart tripped in her chest.

The men stood over her bed. If she opened her eyes, she knew who she would see: her father and the royal physician, Albinus, who was also one of her cousins. She knew why they had come. She did not want to hear what they would say. She wished she was well and truly asleep.

“Has there been any change?” asked the oil-slick voice of Albinus.

“No,” answered her father—the Emperor—gruffly. “Her blood runs red as the day she was born. I can cut her, and you can see for yourself.”

The girl quaked, quaked. Already she had a line of scars and scabs marching up her forearm like army ants. She didn’t want him to hurt her any more.

Albinus sighed heavily. “I have researched your questions until my eyes bleed, uncle. A few metallurgists have historically been born with common blood, but even in those cases they usually quicken by toddlerhood, and always before seven years old. I’m afraid it’s confirmed: she’s a misfire. My condolences. At least you have the other one.”

The emperor was a bear of a man. The girl could feel the weight of his shadow on her chest, making it hard for her to breathe. Or perhaps that was simply his magic. He was an iron Smith, after all, like her sister and their late mother. Like all of the members of her family going back for generations—except her.

“How well this has worked out for you, Albinus,” her father said softly. “With my youngest daughter a misfire, you take her place as second in line for the throne.”

Albinus was wise enough to stay silent.

The emperor’s shadow seemed to lighten, shifting like a phase of the moon as his voice changed tone and became more businesslike. “Not to worry—my eldest is surely able enough to keep you in line. As for this one, there are already too many rumors that the Iron Crown’s magic is weakening. I cannot let it be known that its power has allowed a misfire even in the royal family.”

“Shall I fetch a poison? I have some that are quite quick and untraceable.”

“No,” said the Iron Emperor. “I will do it myself. It is a father’s duty. Come, have a drink with me first.”

Their footsteps receded. The girl lay in her bed, rabbit-heart thrumming, mouse-eyes welling up, and wondered what she might do to convince her father not to kill her.

On the other side of the room, a shadow shifted. Another bed was there, one as well-appointed as hers. A figure sat up in it: her sister, twelve years old and ferally beautiful with eyes that burned in the darkness. “Elodie,” she said, not bothering to whisper, her voice a low and certain alto that Elodie had always envied, “I will not let him kill you.”

“How will you stop him?” Elodie whispered.

“You could stop him. You don’t have to be helpless. You shouldn’t be helpless.”

“My blood won’t quicken. They’ve tried everything.” The misery of it, the terrible vulnerability, welled up in her like water through the cracks of the earth.

“You don’t turn seven for a few hours,” her sister insisted. “It is not yet midnight.”

“Sarai,” Elodie whispered, almost soundlessly. “I am a misfire.”

Sarai threw her covers off. “Then I will save you myself,” she hissed, and crossed the room to tug Elodie out of bed.

Sarai flung the window open and threw herself out of it as if she were a thing with wings, a thing that had never known fear. Elodie crept out behind her. They fled through the gardens, blanketed in the heady scent of jasmine. When they slipped through the secret side gate, petals from the wisteria vines rained down and cloaked Elodie’s shoulders in shades of mauve and amethyst. Heather grass brushed at her ankles, making her itch, a welcome distraction.

It wasn’t until they entered the scorch-tree woodland that they heard the sounds of pursuit.

Sarai wound her fingers tightly through Elodie’s. They ran. Leaves crunched beneath them, moss draping the trees with crimson as bright as commoner’s blood—as bright as Elodie’s blood.

And then: a root, twisting from the ground at just the wrong angle. A sharp pain in her ankle. Hitting earth that was padded with dead things, leaves and rotted mushrooms and fallen moss.

The twang of an arrow being released. A pain like fire in her back. She screamed and tried to turn her head. Her cry turned to a gurgle as her mouth fill with blood. A shadow slid over her, a man standing at her back with his greatbow slung over his shoulder. Her father. He sneered in disgust. “You will die as you lived, I suppose: a mess.”

“Don’t touch her!” came Sarai’s furious cry. She was kneeling over Elodie, hands wet with red.

The Emperor pursed his lips and lifted his palms. “I don’t need to touch her, small one.”

All the air in Elodie’s lungs vanished. She gasped like a stranded fish but no matter how her lungs worked, no air would come. Her father was killing her not with a quick and merciful poison, but with his own magic.

She looked at her sister. Sarai was strong, the iron in her blood giving her the same powers as their father. Even so, she was not yet skilled enough to best him.

But Sarai had never needed magic to prove herself strong.

The older girl tore the arrow from Elodie’s back and, while their father was distracted with working his magic, drove it into his throat.

Air flooded into Elodie again. She gasped it in, watching