Prologue

"W hat are you doing in here?"

Aislinn threw open the door of her study to find her younger brother, Jerrod, toying with one of her new devices. Jerrod looked up guiltily, sticking out his bottom lip in a pout.

"I just wanted to see," he said by way of apology.

Aislinn scowled, looking from Jerrod to her new instrument. It was a delicate thing and had taken her days to assemble. The glass lenses set in tiers of metal rods were meant to help magnify old texts and anything else too small to see well.

She'd barely gotten to use it herself, and she certainly didn't want her eleven-year-old brother getting his sweaty fingers all over it. She didn't like him in her space, either.

Their father, Lord Merrick Darrow, had let Aislinn have the room for her study barely a year ago. Aislinn had spent that time filling it with her favorite things—books. She collected books and tomes and treatises on math, astronomy, architecture, and more. Anything she could, she gathered and read. The study had quickly become a haven of paper and ink, a little refuge from the busyness of Dundúran Castle.

And…since their mother had passed in childbirth, and their infant brother along with her, two years prior, Aislinn had found much comfort in the company of books and learning.

She didn't appreciate the intrusion, and Jerrod knew it. When she didn't immediately demand he leave, though, he dropped his guilty look and turned back to the device.

"Fine," she grumbled, "just don't touch anything."

Aislinn rounded her desk and sat down, keeping an eye on her brother. He was often careless, and many cups and plates and crystal had broken under his sloppy hand.

Taking up her quill, Aislinn got started sketching a new idea. She'd been talking with one of the senior gardeners, Morwen, about the castle gardens and orchard, and it got her thinking about irrigation. Morwen told her the last time the irrigation system had been worked on was under Aislinn's great-grandmother nearly ninety years ago.

She'd left her study for less than an hour to find a book on irrigation in her father's large library—and apparently hadn't locked the door behind her.

Aislinn glanced at the interloper. He had his hands folded behind his back as he inspected the device, at least.

She chewed her cheek, wishing she could tell him to leave, but the voice of Dundúran's chatelain, Brenna, echoed in her mind. "Be kind to your brother, he's suffered so much."

Nothing more than I have; she was my mother, too, she often grumbled, but only to herself, as such thoughts were selfish.

It was also selfish of Aislinn to resent that Brenna, who had come with their mother Lady Róisín when she married their father, favored Jerrod over her. Always Jerrod got away with his antics, while Aislinn was scolded, reminded that Lady Róisín wouldn't have done such a thing or acted in such a way.

"Ladies don't have tantrums," Brenna was fond of telling her.

Aislinn wasn't a lady, though. Not really. Not like her mother.

She didn't like the things her elegant mother had and didn't think like her, either. Aislinn disliked attending court functions. She didn't like wearing fancy, stiff gowns and sitting for hours through speeches. She dreaded the word play and games of politics. She loathed greeting guests and having people kiss her hand and holding her tongue when she'd rather just tell the truth about being bored.

While Róisín had lived, she'd helped Aislinn learn enough about courtly etiquette to survive. Her mother had understood Aislinn's difficulties and taught her as best she could, all to combat the roiling emotions that sometimes overwhelmed Aislinn.

Brenna called them tantrums or fits. Róisín had called it feeling too much.

Whatever it was, Aislinn hated her outbursts of emotions.

Without her mother to help her, she'd taken to avoiding things she disliked or that easily overwhelmed her. Aislinn spent her time reading and studying on her own, as tutors had little to teach her anymore, even if she was only fourteen.

Her father needed her, though. He'd made it his mission to root out the awful slave trade that took root in southern Eirea during the brutal wars of succession fifteen years past. Someone had to oversee Dundúran, and although Jerrod, as the son, was heir, Aislinn was older—and smarter.

Brenna as chatelain handled much of it, but Aislinn was growing up and more than capable, as her father put it. She wanted to make him proud. Anything to relieve the devastation in his eyes after losing Róisín.

Aislinn sighed, wishing for the hundred-thousandth time that her mother hadn't fallen pregnant, that she was still—

Is that smoke?

Looking up, Aislinn saw Jerrod angling the biggest lens of the device into a beam of sunlight from the window. A concentrated cone of light radiated down on an open book, a thin plume of smoke rising from the darkening paper.

"What are you doing?" Aislinn screeched.

Jerrod jerked up to stare at her wide-eyed, the lens left to bore into the paper. Within a moment, flames erupted from the pages.

Aislinn sprung up and raced across the study.

Jerrod yelped, smacking into the device. It went clattering to the floor, glass shattering.

Aislinn threw a spare blanket over the burning book, beating at it with her hands until the small flame was snuffed. Her hands smarted from the heat, and smoke filled her study.

Tears streaming down her flushed face, Aislinn turned on Jerrod. He gaped at her with his blue-gray eyes. Their mother's eyes.

They'd always looked wrong in his face. Too gentle, too warm, when Jerrod was neither.

"Sorry," he said.

He didn't mean it.

He never meant it.

Frustration boiled inside her, overwhelming and consuming. She burned hotter than the fire he'd almost set, her temper snapping.

Aislinn shoved him.

He stumbled backward, tears springing to his eyes, and yelped.

She filled her fists with his tunic and shook him, her rage poured out of her in tears and screams. She didn't know what she said—it didn't really matter.

How dare he come into her space, her refuge? How dare he ruin her device?

He always ruined everything.

I hate him! I hate him I hate him Ihatehimhatehimhate—

"Aislinn!"

She was yanked away from Jerrod, who was left sniveling in the corner. Aislinn clawed at the body trying to restrain her, kicking and yelping like a caught animal.

The air fled her lungs, and Aislinn screamed silently, thrashing to be free.

The someone holding her boxed her ears, stunning her.

Panting, Aislinn looked up into Brenna's horrified face.

"Stop this at once!" The chatelain delivered another smack to Aislinn's face, not hard enough to hurt but enough to snap Aislinn's attention back into the study, away from her anger.

She held very still, not wanting to be slapped again.

Brenna waited a long moment before hurrying over to help Jerrod. She cooed and clucked over him, helping him stand.

Aislinn drew her arms around herself as she began to shake.

What have I done? What have I done?

Her stomach roiled with every pulsing ache in her palms from hitting Jerrod, and she balled her trembling hands into fists.

Aislinn detested violence. She never watched the knights at tourneys or in the practice field. She always hurried away when Jerrod tried to brawl with his friends, and she never laughed when jesters struck each other for cheap comedy.

How could I do this?

"What have you done?" Brenna demanded, cradling Jerrod to her.

"He broke my new device and set a fire. He could have burned the castle down," Aislinn argued, but without any true heat.

Brenna tutted. "I'm sure he didn't mean to."

"I said I was sorry," Jerrod sulked from the safety of Brenna's skirts.

The chatelain pinned Aislinn with a look of deep disapproval. "Ladies don't hit. If your fits become violent, I'm going to have to tell your father you need confining."

"No!" Aislinn dreaded that above all. While she didn't exactly enjoy most other people, she couldn't bear to be locked away.

She loved her home. Dundúran was beautiful, built of local blonde limestone and crowned in blue-gray slate roofs. Blue Darrow banners flapped on poles atop conical turret towers. Her mother's rose garden still bloomed, and the wisteria hung thick in the spring. The Shanago River meandered to the south, perfect for punting and shoreline strolls. She loved the castle and its staff. They were her friends.

"Then you mustn't behave like a wild animal," Brenna chided.

Aislinn's gaze skittered away. She couldn't look at Jerrod when she said, "I'm sorry."

A long moment passed in silence, finally drawing back Aislinn's reluctant gaze.

From his place at Brenna's side, Jerrod considered her shrewdly with those eyes that were and were not her mother's, a little smirk on his mouth.

"All right," he finally said.

"Good man," Brenna praised, rubbing his arm. "Now, clean this up, young lady. Then it's time to wash up for dinner."

Ushering Jerrod in front of her, Brenna walked them toward the study door.

"Oh, and I don't think there's any reason to tell your father about this," said Brenna. "Accidents happen."

Finally left alone in her study, Aislinn hugged herself tighter.

She couldn't bear to look at the broken device, all of its lenses shattered and its metal parts twisted. The room smelled of smoke and probably would for weeks.

Heavy tears splattered her chest. Another wave of emotion rose up her throat, and she quickly closed and locked the study door.

In the privacy of her refuge, she had another fit, screaming and crying. She pulled at her hair and beat her own chest, her rage overflowing. What she'd done, the threat of being confined, her broken device, all of it poured out of her in a maelstrom.

Thankfully, it was a smaller fit, most of her energy expended already, and Aislinn slumped to the ground when it was done, exhausted.

Surrounded by her books, Aislinn eventually dried her tears as best she could and then began to pick up the pieces.