In the city of Valora, where mages are feared and closely governed by the law, Pandora Small spends her life pretending to be someone she is not. Raised in seclusion by a shrouded guardian, Pandora learned to wield her magic in a way the world has never seen, making her more weapon than girl.
Pandora may have escaped her guardian, but powerful forces keep them bound together and she’ll do anything to find them again to break their bond for good. Posing as an Ingenue, a well-off young woman with limited magic, Pandora hopes to gain access to the royal court’s social season and the wealthy elite who make it their playing ground. Pandora’s arrival at court becomes more complicated when Ellis Beacon, a promising young member of the royal guard, discovers the true scope of Pandora’s deadly magic. Secretly sympathetic towards mages and convinced that Pandora is no harm to the public, Beacon agrees to keep her secret.
But when someone or something with powers terribly like Pandora’s own begins killing her fellow Ingenues, Beacon must decide whether Pandora is truly innocent or if there’s ruthless killer lying under her masterfully crafted facade. And Pandora will have to open up to gain Beacon’s trust because joining forces may be the only way for Pandora to find her freedom and catch the real killer plaguing the city.
In the city of Valora, where mages are feared and closely governed by the law, Pandora Small spends her life pretending to be someone she is not. Raised in seclusion by a shrouded guardian, Pandora learned to wield her magic in a way the world has never seen, making her more weapon than girl.
Pandora may have escaped her guardian, but powerful forces keep them bound together and she’ll do anything to find them again to break their bond for good. Posing as an Ingenue, a well-off young woman with limited magic, Pandora hopes to gain access to the royal court’s social season and the wealthy elite who make it their playing ground. Pandora’s arrival at court becomes more complicated when Ellis Beacon, a promising young member of the royal guard, discovers the true scope of Pandora’s deadly magic. Secretly sympathetic towards mages and convinced that Pandora is no harm to the public, Beacon agrees to keep her secret.
But when someone or something with powers terribly like Pandora’s own begins killing her fellow Ingenues, Beacon must decide whether Pandora is truly innocent or if there’s ruthless killer lying under her masterfully crafted facade. And Pandora will have to open up to gain Beacon’s trust because joining forces may be the only way for Pandora to find her freedom and catch the real killer plaguing the city.
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Overview
In the city of Valora, where mages are feared and closely governed by the law, Pandora Small spends her life pretending to be someone she is not. Raised in seclusion by a shrouded guardian, Pandora learned to wield her magic in a way the world has never seen, making her more weapon than girl.
Pandora may have escaped her guardian, but powerful forces keep them bound together and she’ll do anything to find them again to break their bond for good. Posing as an Ingenue, a well-off young woman with limited magic, Pandora hopes to gain access to the royal court’s social season and the wealthy elite who make it their playing ground. Pandora’s arrival at court becomes more complicated when Ellis Beacon, a promising young member of the royal guard, discovers the true scope of Pandora’s deadly magic. Secretly sympathetic towards mages and convinced that Pandora is no harm to the public, Beacon agrees to keep her secret.
But when someone or something with powers terribly like Pandora’s own begins killing her fellow Ingenues, Beacon must decide whether Pandora is truly innocent or if there’s ruthless killer lying under her masterfully crafted facade. And Pandora will have to open up to gain Beacon’s trust because joining forces may be the only way for Pandora to find her freedom and catch the real killer plaguing the city.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781665959759 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Margaret K. McElderry Books |
| Publication date: | 07/22/2025 |
| Pages: | 368 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d) |
| Age Range: | 14 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1: Literally Not Like Other Girls 1 LITERALLY NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS
At the Bellwether School for Young Ladies, the air smelled of white jasmine and roses, no sound louder than a mild laugh was ever heard, and all aspects of life proceeded according to plan. It was a place of restraint and beauty, of potential and expectation, built on old money and designed to nurture sweetly talented blossoms until they were ready to open into the full flower of love.
“Shit,” Winifred Harper swore softly and devoutly at Pandora’s side in the quiet ground-floor hallway of the school. “Sheesen. Shestra. Shinghaijao.”
They stood together, waiting for the last of the year’s Ingenue examinations to wrap up. Eight girls had completed their course of study with the Bellwether sisters this year, and there were only six places for Bellwether Ingenues at court. Everyone was on tenterhooks. Winnie had already torn her handkerchief to pieces in an attempt to vent her nerves, so now Pandora’s ears must pay the price. Admittedly, it was at least a testament to Winnie’s facility with languages that she could curse fluently in not only her native Hesperidian, but in Oberin, Hochvelt, and Coven as well.
“Stop it,” Pan hissed, though she shot Winnie a sympathetic look. Winifred jerked upright at once, shoving the ruined kerchief into her pocket as her eyes went wide with panic.
“Did Miss Alice see me tearing up my things? Or worse, did she hear me?” Winnie cast a surreptitious glance down the hallway to where the younger of the Bellwether sisters stood watch, reserved and resplendent in a matron’s black silk gown. “Oh, Pan, what if she did? What if I was going to get a place as an Ingenue but she’s just changed her mind? I can’t go around behaving like this at court—she’s sure to fail me now, and you know I need this, my family’s counting on me.”
“You have to stop worrying,” Pan said, slipping an arm around Winnie’s shoulders. Snub-nosed, red-haired, and perpetually eager to please, Winifred Harper was by far the friendliest and most charming of the girls in Pandora’s year. And it was true that her family depended on her—the Harpers were insignificant in the grand scheme of things, with just enough minor titles in the family tree and just enough money in the bank to render them respectable. They needed Winnie at court and well matched if they were to rise and had paid dearly to send her to the Bellwether School in pursuit of that aim.
“See?” Pandora said, giving Winnie a squeeze as the door to Miss Elvira’s office opened and one of their classmates emerged, ashen-faced and stricken. A faint smell of sick wafted out along with her, and Miss Elvira’s voice cracked through the air, sharp as a whip.
“Alice! Send one of the maids in at once.”
“Bad luck, Edith,” Pan offered, tightening her protective arm around Winifred as the other girl passed them by. “Sorry you didn’t do better, but maybe others will be worse.”
In response, Edith gave Pan a truly vicious stare and stalked away.
“Ugh,” Winnie said, shivering beside Pandora. “I wouldn’t want to be on Edith’s bad side, not for anything. You didn’t... you didn’t do something to help her fail, did you, Pan?”
Pandora widened her eyes, the picture of wounded innocence. “Winifred, how dare you imply such a thing? What have I ever done to make you believe I could be so ruthless?”
A memory of the previous evening flashed across Pandora’s mind. She’d gone to Edith’s room just before midnight, knowing the other girl would be up studying the history of their small but powerful homeland of Hesperid and practicing her parlor magic. Why Edith wanted a place as an Ingenue so badly was anyone’s guess—her family was fabulously wealthy, but perhaps they thought gaining a title would be a feather in their collective cap. At any rate, Edith certainly didn’t need access to court like some of the other girls did, and so Pan had paid her a visit with a smuggled bottle of summer wine under each arm. It wasn’t Pandora’s fault if Edith didn’t know her limits and couldn’t hold her wine, and if every other girl at the Bellwether School knew that weakness.
Winifred looked unconvinced by Pandora’s protestations of guiltlessness. “You know, sometimes I think you might be the most frightening person here. More than Miss Elvira, even.”
You don’t know the half of it, Pan thought grimly as a twist of pain knotted up inside her. She pointed down the hallway to where two other girls were speaking with their heads together.
“You think I’m frightening? Cecily hasn’t gone in yet, and Imogen’s cornered her. That won’t end well.”
If Pandora was honest, it was Imogen Hollen she’d have loved to cut out of the Ingenue runnings. But Imogen was unassailable. Willowy and exquisitely fashionable, with a wealth of golden hair, sea-green eyes, and the faintest possible scattering of freckles which kept her from untouchable perfection, she stood an enviable six inches taller than Pan and never faltered in her poise or her determination to secure a place at court. Now, as Imogen spoke to Cecily in low tones, the other girl’s face slowly grew paler and more anxious. At last, Imogen pressed something into Cecily’s hand the moment before a maid emerged from Miss Elvira’s study. This time, a smell of lemon polish wafted out, along with a palpable air of annoyance.
“Cecily Sharpe!” Miss Elvira snapped, and Cecily hurried through the door, gathering up her skirts and looking on the verge of tears.
Though each examination was meant to last an hour—Pandora had volunteered for the first slot, and Winnie had gamely taken the second—Cecily was ensconced within Miss Elvira’s study for no more than ten minutes before a gale of sobs rang out, and she was escorted away in hysterics by the long-suffering Miss Alice.
“I only wish it had been Imogen who fell to pieces, not Cecily, but Gin’s a fortress,” Pandora said with a stifled sigh as she watched the beautiful girl down the hallway toss her head and leave the corridor, headed for the front parlor, where the rest of the hopeful Ingenues were waiting. It was certainly the more mannerly thing to do, sitting and taking tea or amusing themselves with parlor magic as everyone else completed their examinations and fate was decided. Pandora was surprised that Imogen had hung back in the corridor—normally she was the picture of propriety, while Pan and Winnie were considered the least genteel contingent of their year.
“Come on,” Pandora said, taking Winnie’s hand. “Time to go give the impression that we don’t care what comes next, or whether we’ve wasted the last five years on a pointless exercise.”
Though Pan would never own it to Winnie, her heart was in her throat. Whatever the rest of the girls’ reasons for wanting to secure a place at court, her need was greatest. She couldn’t afford to fail. Not after the effort she’d put in and the strain five years at the Bellwether School had been.
“Hello, darlings,” Imogen said coolly from her place at the tea table as Pandora and Winnie entered the room. “Refreshments while we wait?”
She poured out two cups with perfect grace, serene and lovely in fine lace and lavender watered silk. Imogen looked like a painting. She looked like everyone’s image of an ideal Ingenue. She certainly did not look like the sort of person who’d just terrorized one of her classmates into a breakdown.
Knowing full well that Pandora only ever took her tea black, Imogen smiled while stirring four lumps of sugar and a generous helping of cream into each cup. Pan couldn’t help but hold a grudging respect for the varied and creative ways in which she’d been snubbed over the years, even while she chafed under the constant goad that was Imogen Hollen’s attention. For all their time at the Bellwethers’, Pan and Imogen had been sworn rivals. By far the most adept with parlor magic of the girls in their year, they’d sparred with magic and words and deportment, each determined to come out as the superior Ingenue. So as Miss Alice and Miss Elvira swept into the room, Pan sipped her tea with what she hoped passed for elegant unconcern, while struggling not to pull a face over the sickly sweetness on her tongue. She would not give Imogen the satisfaction. Beside her, Winnie stiffened visibly, a bundle of nerves, and her teacup clattered against its saucer.
Never one to miss an opportunity for display, Imogen rested a hand on the tabletop as a small magic-wrought butterfly appeared on her palm. It fluttered upward and alighted on Miss Elvira’s shoulder. The eldest and sternest of the Bellwether sisters smiled indulgently, only ever a soft touch where Imogen was concerned. The sisters had ambitions for Imogen, Pandora knew. She’d overheard them talking once—Pan discovered during her first year that the broom closet adjoining the Misses’ office was an excellent place for eavesdropping. Imogen’s parents, it seemed, were close with the royal family, and she’d been in and out of royal estates since leaving the nursery. The Bellwether sisters cherished hopes of a match to Prince Theo, despite rampant rumors that the heir to the throne was little better than a feckless libertine. His character was of no import, however. Were Imogen to be bound into the royal family, it would give the Bellwether sisters that much more opportunity to foster ties between Hesperid’s sovereigns and their school. Just as Imogen and Pan were sworn rivals, the Bellwethers were in constant competition with a larger institution called Grace College. While many facilities for the training of Ingenues existed across Hesperid, and private tutors could even be hired for outrageous fees, Grace and the Bellwethers stood head and shoulders above the rest when it came to turning out successful mages who would serve as an ornament to the highest ranked and most privileged families.
What Imogen thought about being used as a pawn in this game, Pandora had no idea. She was a perpetually closed book. Pan, quite frankly, found it all appalling. Unlike the other girls, Pandora was not breathlessly awaiting binding and marriage to a patron and spouse all rolled into one perfect package. She did not relish the idea of surrendering even a spark of her highly restrained power. Her schoolfellows might look over the society columns and compare notes on eligible patrons while giddy and giggling, but Pan did not view patronage as a laughing matter. She knew all too well how a binding could be used against a mage, subjugating both them and their magic until they were little better than a puppet in their patron’s hands.
Pandora had already been bound. Was still bound, though she’d escaped her patron’s influence and never breathed a word about her binding to anyone. So, no. When it came to patronage, she was nothing like the other girls. They were going to seek out bindings and new lives. Pandora, meanwhile, was hoping to force a reckoning. To track down the person who’d claimed her in childhood and somehow shatter the tie between them.
If she meant to accomplish that, she’d have to win access to society’s glittering first set, which lived in a whirl of gaiety and wealth and power on Palace Hill.
Imogen’s scarlet butterfly fluttered its wings on Miss Elvira’s shoulder and vanished when its maker’s magic ran its limited course. Not to be outdone, Pandora thought of flowers, and a rain of golden petals drifted gently from the ceiling. They filled the room and, where they lit upon tables or settees or lace-draped shoulders, evaporated in little puffs of silver sparkles, leaving a heady floral scent lingering on the air. Pandora did not need to set her hand on the tabletop to focus her attention as Imogen had done or to subtly demonstrate that it was her magic at work. Everyone in the room knew her magecraft and envied it. For perhaps Pandora Small was stubby and plain and in many ways common, but her parlor magic was a thing of beauty. Even Imogen, her nearest rival, could not hold a candle to it.
Pain lanced through Pandora, burning its way from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet, but she tamped it down ruthlessly, her face an emotionless mask. Miss Elvira frowned a little at Pan’s display—the eldest of the Bellwether sisters had no magic herself, instead instructing the girls in deportment, Hesperidian history and economics, and delicate arts such as drawing, needlepoint, dance, and genteel conversation. Miss Elvira did have the magesense, however, and her capacity to hear magic kept the girls in line, forever afraid of being caught using their power for mischief.
Miss Alice, by contrast, smiled and nodded to Pandora. She taught the girls how to hone and shape their magecraft, readying them for their roles as display pieces and objects of conversation in elevated households, as well as for an Ingenue’s more useful undertakings on behalf of her patron—divination of truth, the harmonious unifying of two parties who were at odds, the amplification of pleasure, and a dozen more feminine and magical skills. Miss Alice’s own magecraft was understated and exquisite, her tutelage indispensable.
“All right, enough,” Miss Elvira ordered as several of the other hopeful Ingenues set off bits of parlor magic, vying for attention. A spellfire songbird’s rill of music died away, and a flickering aurora vanished from overhead. But the glint of silver left by Pan’s magecraft still shone on every surface, and the scent of flowers lingered on the air.
I’m coming for you, Pandora thought, sending the warning out through the streets of the capital city of Valora, toward the bright hill where the wealthy and ennobled resided. I will find you, and I will win back my freedom, even if I kill us both in doing so.
“As you know,” Miss Elvira said sternly, “this year we’ve had eight girls complete their course of study with Alice and me. You’re all to be commended for your diligence, discipline, and hard work. In the past—before the wellspring, when mages were rarer and less in power—we had fewer girls ready to become Ingenues than spaces allotted to us at court, which made our students’ lives easier. Now we must choose between eminently qualified young ladies. Regardless of the decision Alice and I have reached, every one of you should be proud of what you’ve accomplished. Whether you join us at court or not, you’ll undoubtedly find yourselves sought out by patrons of fortune and quality.”
Lambs to the slaughter, Pandora thought, while smiling prettily at her peers. Beside her, Winifred had gone dead pale. Squeezing her friend’s hand beneath the table, Pan offered reassurance under her breath. “Steady on, Winnie. Whatever you do, just don’t fall apart now. You’re so close.”
Worry bit at Pan. She knew what waited for Winifred if she failed to gain an Ingenue’s position. Families always had an alternate match arranged for their darling would-be Ingenues, should the worst come to pass. They strove for the greatest advantage that could be gained without access to Palace Hill. In Winifred’s case, this would mean marriage and patronage from a man three times her age, who’d wed and been made widower by two other mages. He’d driven his wives into early graves, most people said, by pushing them to the limits of their small magic in order to satisfy his own lusts and impress his peers. Even if Winifred survived the man’s hard usage, it would do her no good—a mage with a single binding died within hours of their patron’s passing. It was a death sentence that only ran one way, for patrons suffered no such fate upon the death of their mages. And while boys born with a gift for magic were bound first to an apprentice master and then to a wife, thereby circumventing premature death brought about by a single binding, girls were not. Those of them lowborn were bound to an employer. Those of them highborn became would-be Ingenues and were bound to husbands. In some households, when the master died, both the mistress and half the household staff were killed by his passing.
“Pandora,” Miss Elvira snapped, catching Pan murmuring reassurances to Winnie. “Would you care to address your comments to all of us?”
“Certainly.” Pandora smiled more charmingly still, sweet as the tea Imogen had given her. “I was only telling Winifred that whatever comes next, it’s been a pleasure and an honor to spend the past five years with her, and I’m sure I feel the same way about everyone else.”
From her place on a settee beside the window, Edith scowled and muttered something inaudible. Imogen’s green eyes flashed from Edith to Pandora, and what might have been the ghost of a smile played at the corners of her perfect mouth. Both Pan and Imogen were well aware of their status as the fiercest contenders in the room—tigers biding their time in a pride of housecats.
“What a lovely sentiment,” Imogen said, smooth as silk. “Perhaps applause are in order, for all of us. A celebration of who we’ve become.”
As one, the eight girls began their applause, but in the way of Ingenues—rather than clapping vulgarly with their hands, they created a rain shower of magic, which filled the room with its exultant sound and never dampened a single surface. Gray clouds billowed just beneath the ceiling, and an earthy scent of petrichor rose on the air.
“Oh can we just get this over with?” Winnie moaned under cover of the noise.
With a sympathetic look at Winifred’s wan face, Miss Alice moved to her sister’s side. “Tonight, we’ll be saying goodbye to two of you as you return to your families. And tomorrow, the following girls will join us for the summer on Palace Hill... Imogen Hollen.”
No surprises there. Neither Pandora nor anyone else ever doubted that Imogen would secure her place.
“Eleanor Wellesley.”
Eleanor glanced up in shock. She was a silent, proud girl who kept mostly to herself. Not out of choice, Pandora often suspected, but out of necessity. Eleanor came from a long line of gifted mages, once celebrated servants of the court, now entirely out of favor. Six years back, when the wellspring—a catastrophic fount of magic located somewhere beneath the great city of Valora— broke open, a Wellesley had been executed for tearing apart the earth and unleashing that flood of wild magic. The stain of high treason did not wash out easily, and the Wellesley name had been tainted ever since. Pan had made occasional overtures to Eleanor over the years, but the girl was difficult to draw out of her shell.
“Mamie Hawthorne.”
A good-hearted girl with a family who’d made their fortune in trade, Mamie reached out and impulsively took Eleanor’s hands in congratulations. Were her family’s status what it had once been, Eleanor might not even have acknowledged Mamie on the street. Now a relieved and happy look passed between them.
“Winifred Harper.”
“Oh thank the gods,” Winnie blurted out fervently, and the assembled girls couldn’t help the wave of laughter that rose from them. Even Miss Elvira, staid and strict as she was, showed a flicker of amusement.
“Leslie Moran.”
Leslie sank back against her armchair, transparently overcome by relief. Pandora remained straight-backed and motionless, refusing to look at Edith or Cecily. It was down to the three of them now, and it was conceivable, just conceivable, that Miss Elvira’s pointed dislike might win out over all Pandora’s accomplishments. Pain bit cruelly at Pan from the inside, but that was nothing out of the ordinary—she was accustomed to its constant presence. It was only anxiety heightening the sensation, dragging her perpetual discomfort to the forefront as worry lowered her defenses.
“Pandora Small,” Miss Elvira said, unable to hide a slight note of distaste in her voice.
Once again, applause fell like rain. And for the briefest moment, Pan felt a stab of pity for the girls she’d beaten out, and for the newly minted Ingenues she’d spend the summer with as well. At her heart she was nothing like them, with their luxurious childhoods and ambitions of romance and social achievement. Whatever they’d won in seizing hold of this distinction and gaining access to court, Pandora knew she’d far outstripped them all, through the simple act of convincing the world that she was biddable and bindable, and could ever be delicate and decorative and desired.
I’m coming for you, she thought at her patron once more. And I will see you suffer.
That night, Pandora was tormented by pain and the whispers of a half-forgotten voice. Already aggravated as she was by worry and uncertainty, relief and anticipation had riled her internal complaint further yet, so that she was hard-pressed to sit and smile through the celebratory dinner the Bellwether sisters hosted for their eldest and most-talented students. Edith and Cecily had taken leave of the school at once, unable to endure an evening of fêting those who’d gained what they’d lost. Pandora wished she’d been able to bow out as well but sat sandwiched between Winifred and Leslie, daintily consuming clear soup, roast partridge, and raspberry blancmange, while setting off an occasional strained piece of parlor magic.
“Have you got a headache, Pan?” Winnie asked sympathetically as the dessert plates were cleared and tea was brought out. Pandora, who’d discovered in her first year that headaches made a convenient excuse for becoming pale or slow when her secret agony grew unbearable, nodded. It was a mark of distinction in an Ingenue to be a little fragile—as if their magic burned too brightly, leaving them scorched by its presence. There were hard limits to their power, after all, with dire consequences for those who held more of it than was considered right or natural.
“Go on upstairs,” Winnie said, giving Pandora’s hand a kind pat. “I’ll tell everyone the excitement today was too much for you.”
Once again, Pan nodded mutely. Truthfully, she could hardly speak past the hurt beneath her skin or hear past the wordless whispers filling her mind. It was an effort just to keep herself from breaking out in an unladylike sweat. Winnie, by contrast, was sparkling-eyed and bright, triumphant over having won the place as an Ingenue she’d striven so hard for.
Slipping away from the table while the Bellwether sisters’ attention was elsewhere, Pan drifted upstairs and carefully locked the door to her room behind her. In a moment, she was at the bureau, rifling through drawers with trembling hands, tearing off her gown, her stays and petticoats and filmy underthings, and pulling on a set of rough trousers and a homespun shirt that felt like a second skin. The window was open, letting in a breath of balmy, late-spring air and an earthy scent of filigree ivy, which climbed the school’s mellow stone walls. At the last moment, Pandora remembered her hair—it was pinned up in one of the arrangements prospective Ingenues were taught that gave an impression of ease and carelessness despite taking the better part of an hour to create. Sending rhinestone-studded pins scattering in every direction, Pandora pulled a face at herself in the mirror. Good. Back to looking like the monstrous thing she truly was.
It wasn’t fully dark yet. Dusk was falling slowly over the city, but Pan was willing to risk the leftover remnants of light. Trusting her weight to the thick stalks of ivy as she’d done a thousand times before, down Pandora went, putting four blocks between herself and the Bellwether School before hailing a hansom. A terrible heaviness lodged in her chest. There’d be no time for this sort of escapade once she was on Palace Hill—Ingenues were kept busy with endless rounds of teas and luncheons and balls and theatrics, on their feet and swept along in a fever dream of levity from sundown until the small hours of the morning. Pan would have to manage without her occasional escapes, her forays into the less desirable parts of the great city of Valora, her pilgrimages back to the seedy sort of places she’d once looked to for freedom.
Scrambling out of the hansom at the edge of a busy, unkempt market square, Pandora stopped, taking stock of her surroundings. The daylight stalls had been shuttered an hour ago, but night vendors with peddling carts had taken their places. Gas lamps flared around the square’s perimeter, flooding the space with wan, uneven light as the moon rode overhead, a sickly waning thing that did little to penetrate the fetid lowland mists that descended on Valora’s seedier districts each evening. Immediately Pandora felt wariness wash over her. Though the square itself was bright enough, and full of nocturnal activity and life, it was the outskirts and the shadows she was concerned with.
Refined girls and their parlor tricks were not the only form of magic in the nation of Hesperid. Not since the wellspring had been torn open six years back, flooding the capital and the countryside around it with unchecked power.
Systematically Pan began to prowl the edges of the square, feigning interest in cheap trinkets or treats as she kept her attention focused outward, on the dark alleyways and twisted lanes that joined up with the square like strands of a spider’s web. She’d traveled halfway around the perimeter when something at the square’s heart made her turn.
A commotion, at the head of one of the alleys that terminated in the square. Eagerly Pandora peered around a roughly dressed miner who’d come to browse the same cart she was standing at.
But Pan’s heart sank as four uniformed members of the Queen’s Guard materialized from the alley, a young girl with blank eyes walking in the midst of them. The Guard members were immaculate, the picture of self-assured justice in their crimson and silver jackets, while the girl by contrast was ragged and filthy. A small gaggle of people trailed in their wake—a man and a woman and three young children. The woman was wailing, the man ashen-faced and stricken, while the children looked only confused. Last of all came a priest in midnight-blue robes, his eyes flashing with righteous fury as he herded the stricken family ahead of him.
Inside Pandora, the constant pain she carried twisted and magnified itself, becoming agony. The whispers at the edges of her hearing escalated, until perversely, she yearned to listen, to reply, to reach back through memory to touch their source.
“Caught another one, have they?” the bearded and dust-spackled miner at Pan’s side said gruffly. “That’s the third this month. You’d think they’d know better by now.”
Pandora wanted to leave. She wanted to return to the stifling, lovely confines of the Bellwether School, which even the wellspring had done little to alter, and bury her head under silk-covered pillows. She wanted to flee, losing herself in the labyrinth of Valora’s lower streets and squalid districts, vanishing into the tawdry slums that had once been her home. Anywhere would do, so long as she was not here.
Above all, she wanted to give in to the pain at her core and the beckoning voice that haunted her.
But Pandora owed it to the girl to stay, and so she stood just where she was, rooted to the spot. She watched as the guards led their prisoner to a raised platform at the square’s center, atop which stood a gleaming steel box. It was a perfect cube, with dimensions of four feet to every side. There were no windows, only a single small grate of the finest possible steel mesh. One side was hinged, so that it could swing open and shut, with a hasp opposite the hinges, ready for a heavy padlock.
Over the last half dozen years, such things had become commonplace in Valora, though beyond the capital, in the remainder of Hesperid, they were more a rarity.
The guards muscled the girl up onto the platform, and she began to sob, not desperately but wearily. She was a few years younger than Pan, and sick guilt churned in Pan’s stomach. It was only Pandora’s status as a protected and privileged soon-to-be Ingenue that stood between her and this child’s fate. Only they were granted a temporary exemption from the requirement that all mages be bound to a patron by thirteen, to check the further development of their power.
Pandora did not require an Ingenue’s reprieve in regards to the binding law. She’d been bound as far back as memory served her. What she needed was an Ingenue’s access to Palace Hill.
“Your attention, please.” It was not the guards who spoke, but rather the priest, who stepped forward and stood at the base of the raised platform, a zealot’s holy flush coloring his face. “It is my privilege to represent the joint interests of church and state, and to inform you that this girl has been found guilty of breaking not one but both of Hesperid’s mage laws. Not only is she fourteen and still unbound to a patron as the law requires, but she recently made use of her power upon another person. The exercise of hellfire in such a way, regardless of the outcome, is strictly prohibited by both the queen and the Higher Gods. It is an offense against your sovereign, against your deities, and against nature.”
“I heard about this one,” the vendor behind the peddling cart whispered. She was a thin, haggard-looking woman, with dark shadows beneath her eyes and a tight set to her mouth. “An awful thing. The girl’s father’s a miner. He had the lung sickness they get down in the pits sometimes, but the whole family depends on him to earn. So the girl held off on her binding, hoping that if she waited, she’d grow far enough in her power to be his cure. And she did it—she mended him, but she’ll pay for it now with her life.”
“Doesn’t matter why she did it,” the rough-dressed miner said with a scowl, showing no compassion for his comrade’s family and fate. “The mage laws are for the protection of us all. It only takes one mistake, one slip of control, and a mage like her could kill herself and anyone within a stone’s throw. Everyone knows spellfire’s that tricky.”
As he spoke, Pandora felt her pain grow acute. Spellfire was everywhere in Hesperid and always had been—in the water, in the soil, some said even in the air. A little of it was needed for life. A little more, and you became a mage, someone who could bend their excess of spellfire into magic. Magecraft had been limited in the world before Valora’s recent flood of power and hadn’t required governance. But along with the wellspring came not only a stark increase in the sheer number of mages, but in their capabilities. For two years after the wellspring tore open and released its flood of spellfire, those with a knack for magic had struggled to cope. They’d lost control, causing their own deaths and many others. Only Queen Maud’s enactment of the mage laws, to bind magic workers and prevent the full growth of their power, had restored order. Worse still, the glut of spellfire bred monsters, pooling in places where it went unchanneled and shaping its raw essence into inhuman creatures of malevolence and insatiable hunger, which stalked the edges of Valora and preyed upon her citizenry.
Hellions, the church called such beasts, as they insisted on referring to the element that fueled magic as hellfire. Hellions were considered demonic and clearly tied to the wicked Lower Gods, rendering spellfire wicked too in the eyes of the church. Though no one asked to grow into a mage’s gift, those who did were viewed as suspect and dangerous, requiring careful handling to prevent damage to the well-being and faith of the general populace.
Watching the priest and the guards and the girl about to receive their discipline, Pandora thought she would take an encounter with a hellion over confinement in a steel box any day.
A metallic clang resounded in the market square as one of the guards swung the door to the box open. The mage girl was forced onto her knees and made to shuffle forward, into its steel interior. One last charged look passed between her and her family, and the door was shut, a padlock fitted into place.
Pandora had seen mages being executed before. It was a cruel and inhumane punishment—though no one was certain why, steel and spellfire existed in opposition to each other. Spellfire could not seep through steel and enter a mage’s body, as it could through stone or brick or wood. And steel could not be damaged by spellfire, proving impervious to magic.
“Do you think she’ll linger?” the miner asked, half curiously. Some mages lasted a day or two after confinement to a steel box, spending their magic bit by bit trying to escape. Sooner or later, every one of them died of caster’s fatigue when the steel kept their spellfire from being replaced.
Pandora knew the answer to the miner’s question. She’d seen it in the final look that passed between the girl and her mother, before the box was shut. Now, as if in answer to Pandora’s knowing, a blinding flare of blue-white light flashed from the box’s small mesh grate, followed by a percussive sound.
A quick death, Pandora thought, as her heart ached and ached within her. That was the last gift the mage girl on the platform was giving to her family. First life for her father, then a quick death for herself.
The miner made a disparaging sound. “And that’s why her sort are a danger. Only a moment in the box and she went off like a bomb. A patron would’ve kept her honest, and under control.”
Pandora bit back the sharp words already on her tongue. Even the silliest and most pampered of girls at the Bellwether School could keep her magic in check for more than a moment and manage it in the throes of hysterics, too. The girl in the box had not died so quickly for want of control. She had chosen it, as a final mercy for those she loved.
“Better she’d been born with her power and snuffed as a babe in arms, than that her parents should live through this,” the vendor said sympathetically.
A barely suppressed shudder ran through Pandora. Snuffing, though not legally prescribed in the wake of the wellspring, was not forbidden, either. Most mages grew into their power slowly, beginning to develop it around five or six, once they were capable of controlling its first nascent embers. But sometimes—rarely—a child was born already imbued with enough spellfire to work magic. They were a danger to others and to themselves, for even the limited magic possessed by Pandora’s fellow Ingenues could be destructive if not channeled properly. The mage laws were mute on the subject of such children, dictating only that a mage must be bound to a patron before the age of thirteen or before their power grew beyond control. A babe in arms could not control its spellfire; neither could it undertake the act of power necessary for mages to bind and subjugate themselves to proper patrons.
So by law, such children’s fate was consignment to a lingering, lonely end in a steel box. In practice, numerous discreet doctors and midwives offered the service known as snuffing—a quick and painless death for newborn things Hesperid’s people did not know how to raise in safety.
The priest climbed the platform at the square’s center and loosed the padlock, then swung open the door to the steel box. Inside, there was nothing but gleaming blue ash—the usual sign of a life ended by spellfire. A keening sob rose from the girl’s mother as she crumpled to the ground, and the man who’d been cured by his daughter’s illicit magework gathered the remainder of his children close.
They were broken. Broken by magic, broken by spellfire, broken by the mage laws that had been meant for protection but nevertheless held part of Hesperid’s populace by the throat. And Pandora could not bear it. Turning her back on the scene, she strode down the nearest dark alley, hot tears blurring her vision as insidious whispers rang in her ears. There was so little to separate her from the girl who’d been reduced to ash. Only a few fragile twists of fate. But for them, she’d be—
Pan stopped, pressing her forehead to the cool stone of an abandoned tenement’s wall. A thick, toxic sense of despair weighed her down, joining with the pain that perpetually echoed through her bones. What was the use of all she’d done over the past five years, dedicating herself to a decorous world of frivolity and artifice in an attempt to right one wrong? Hesperid was a hotbed of injustice, and the city of Valora especially steeped in it. Even were Pandora to succeed in finding and confronting her shadowy patron, it would be no more than a drop in a vast sea of suffering. Why bother? Why carry on, when the upstanding and virtuous people of Hesperid would prefer girls like Pan did not exist at all, and the less scrupulous, more grasping souls among them sought to use her kind to their own advantage?
A sudden image flashed across Pandora’s mind, of the girl being forced into the box. Hard on its heels came a new vision, this time of herself on the roof of the four-story tenement she stood beside. It would be so easy to climb the stairs inside and get out under the night sky. So easy to stand at the edge of that roof, with blank space before her. The simplest thing in the world to lean forward and trust herself to the air. No more mage laws. No more life of constraint and falsehood. No more guilt and fear and pain.
Abruptly that very pain jolted within Pandora, sending a shock of clarity running through her like lightning. She was not prone to despair, not even in her darkest moments. If there was one thing that defined her existence, it was a dogged tenacity and refusal to give up once she’d fixed her mind on a goal.
A fog seemed to lift from her as she came to the realization, and dimly Pandora grew aware of an eerie, mournful song filling the air around her. It had all but drowned out the creeping and familiar whispers she battled every day—this new song sounded like wind over an open grave, like the crack of ice about to give way underfoot, like the sensation of a thousand sleepless nights made audible.
Lifting her head from the tenement stone, Pandora turned.
And found herself face-to-face with one of Valora’s monsters.
Such creatures haunted the impoverished lower city in great abundance, though they grew scarce on the lofty summit of Palace Hill and in the farther reaches of Hesperid. They took manifold shapes, with some more common than others. The demon that hovered a mere six inches away from Pandora was a Fell—a wraithlike, shadowy being limned with blue spellfire, the only thing of substance about it a bone-white face. Merciless black eyes stared back at Pandora, and she met the monster’s gaze without faltering, despite the numbing, disorienting song proceeding from a gaping mouth lined with fishhook teeth.
The better to feast on her flesh and blood after the Fell had sung her to death, breeding despair until she could not bear to live and did the creature’s dirty work herself.
“No thank you,” Pandora murmured with a shake of her head.
The Fell floated backward a foot, confusion written across its unnatural face. After a moment, it seemed to decide. If this little morsel of a mage could not be moved by the usual song, something unusual was required. Opening its wicked mouth wider, the creature sounded a wild, vicious cry.
Ghost lights flickered into being several derelict buildings down, in the empty and disused woolen mill at the terminus of the alley. Three more Fells floated in the mill’s shattered windows, framed by fangs of long-broken glass. They joined their singing to that of the creature before Pandora, and involuntarily she stumbled backward, coming up short against the tenement wall. The weight of the Fells’ combined magic was crushing her—it would lead her to the grave. No, she would seek the grave herself, she thought dully. Surely death would be a release. From struggle, from deceit, from pain—
And once again, that proved the Fells’ undoing. For Pandora’s pain blazed into an inferno, until she was gasping with it, doubled over with the effort of keeping it in check. The whispers grew loud, a sibilant hiss to counter the Fells’ song.
Come back to me, they called. Come back to me.
Curious again, the first and nearest of the Fells drifted closer, lowering itself until its haunting face swam before Pandora.
Are you mine? the creature asked in an icy voice, the words not audible, but manifesting in the troubled depths of Pandora’s mind.
“No,” Pandora said through waves of pain and a mist of scalding tears. “Not yours. Not ever. I am no one’s now.”
She voiced the declaration defiantly, aiming it not just at the Fell but at the whispers clouding her perception. At her core, something splintered, and Pan gave in. She let go of her iron grip on the agony writhing inside her. It tore from her as a javelin of blue spellfire, rendering the nearest Fell ash in an instant. Pandora’s power only grew in force as it traveled, tearing up a great swath of cobblestones while it arrowed toward the remaining Fells and their lair.
The creatures had no time to flee. Shrill calls of panic died on their lips, drowned out by the sudden roar of collapsing masonry and shattering timbers. Pandora was not one for explosions—she didn’t like debris flying outward, leaving a mess and causing unintentional damage. Instead, she pulled the mill inward, folding it in on itself like a collapsing house of cards. In the span of two breaths, all that remained of the deathtrap set by the Fells was a stretch of ruined cobblestones, a heap of settling rubble, and a shimmer of blue ash still hanging on the air.
At once Pandora’s pain lessened and grew quiescent, retreating back inside to nestle at her core. It was her constant companion and a perpetual reminder of Pandora’s deepest truth: that she burned with an impossible ocean of spellfire. She should never have been allowed to live. For Pandora had been born a mage like no other, and every year her power grew. She was near as much a monster as the Fells she’d destroyed—more so, perhaps, for while they could damage only one soul at a time, if Pandora was ever to lose control, she could make a crater of Valora, reducing the entire city to ash.
Come back, the whispers called mournfully one last time, before falling silent. Come back to me.
On instinct, Pandora stepped forward and picked through the rubble she’d created, searching for something. After a quarter of an hour of moving slowly and systematically through the ruins, at last she found what she’d been looking for.
A human hand stretching out from beneath the rocks, long dead already with the flesh gone cold and gray and the beds of the nails stained spellfire blue.
It was not only Fells that had used this place as a killing ground. They consumed their prey entirely, feasting on flesh and blood, but scorned anything already dead. This body, Pandora knew, had been hidden in the mill before the Fells polluted the place with their presence. She found such remains often—mages, drained of their spellfire and left where anyone other than Pan might assume they’d fallen victim to the vicious creatures that plagued Valora’s streets.
Pandora knew better. She knew what it looked like when a fellow magic worker’s spark had been fatally stripped from them, dragged out by a stronger and entirely human power. Not only did she know the look of it, Pan remembered the feel of it, like poison in her blood and slow rot in her bones.
Straightening, she let out a trembling breath. Her patron had been here. Not recently, but a week or two ago. And, like a moth to flame, Pandora was drawn unconsciously to places that bore signs of her patron’s presence. Hard as she tried to quench the seductive whispers within her, much as she fought against the subtle pull to sites that hid her patron’s victims, Pan could not fully escape. The binding she still bore was intact, only blocked, so that she could not be commanded or overpowered directly. But through indirect means, a mage greater than Pandora still played her like a fish on a line.
Time to make herself small once more, and delicate and harmless. Time to lie with her words, her actions, her very way of being. Because while tomorrow she would join the ranks of Hesperid’s highest court, Pandora Small was no true Ingenue. She was the thorn among roses and the serpent in the grass, neither monster nor girl but something in between. She was Hesperid’s greatest fear: a true mage, imbued with unchecked power and left to her own devices. Were it not for the fact that someone worse and stronger than her haunted the halls of Palace Hill, nothing would induce her to risk a sojourn there. The Queen’s Guard was everywhere on the Hill, and Her Royal Highness, Maud Hera, sovereign of Hesperid, was no friend to mages.
But Pandora had been toyed with and tormented and halfway to free long enough. She wanted to taste life untainted by her patron’s insidious influence, even when all she saw of it now was the aftermath. While the other Ingenues hunted for their patrons, Pandora would hunt for hers as well. And when she found them, she would not be bound and wed. One way or another, she would sever the tie between them, even if it meant doing the unthinkable and transgressing the second mage law to use her magic for murder.
Come back to me, the baleful influence within Pandora whispered again.
Soon, she thought grimly. We’ll meet again soon. And when we do, one of us will pay for this binding with their life.