Chapter One: The Cinder Girl and the Fire

Lia Voss had worked in the palace kitchens since she was sixteen, her hands forever webbed with calluses, her fingernails embedded with coal dust that no amount of scrubbing could remove.

Her day began before the first light of dawn: building the fires, boiling the water, hauling wood, greasing the iron pots, counting every spice pod for the cooks. She slept in a storeroom under the palace, a room so small it held nothing but a straw pallet and her mother's old wooden chest. The chest held little: a grey dress washed white with age, a dark pendant that had long lost its shine, and a ledger sealed with wax that she had never opened.

Lia never dared to use magic where anyone could see.

Not only because of the kingdom's iron law, but because she remembered it all too clearly—one winter, when she was eight, her mother Maris knelt before a pyre at the place of execution, chained by the Flame Guard, watched by thousands upon thousands in the capital. The executioner read out her crimes: shadow-caster, in league with the Dusk Order, plotting the overthrow of the Ashfall dynasty.

"I did nothing," Maris said. Her voice was soft, yet it hushed the whole street. "I only wanted my daughter to live."

When the flame fell, someone covered Lia's eyes. She never forgot the scorching wind, her mother's last sentence left unfinished, or the weight of the dark pendant pressed into her palm. Maris had slipped it to her from beneath her chains, just before the execution.

From that day, Lia learned to keep silent, to smile, to walk with her head bowed, to hide the shadows that would glow somewhere even she could not see. Sometimes her shadow moved—at midnight, in corners no one watched, in the moments when she felt she could not go on, the dark shape would press itself against her, like a silent, shivering animal.

She called it Darkness. It was her only friend.

"Lia! Lia! Slacking off again!" Fat Cook Elsa's voice could carry through three walls. "There's a feast at the palace tonight—the Flame Prince, Kaelric Ashfall, is riding home victorious from the North, and the whole city is celebrating him! If you dawdle any longer, I'll throw you to the Flame Guard for target practice!"

Lia answered and shoved the last armful of kindling into the stove. The fire roared up, painting her smoke-stung face.

Kaelric Ashfall.

Heir to the Ashfall dynasty. Wolf of the North. The Flame Prince who had burned the Dusk Order to the ground. At seventeen he had led the Flame Guard to the Order's last stronghold in the North and turned eight hundred years of its foundations into scorched earth in a single conflagration. Since then, shadow-casters had all but vanished from Maeris. Everyone said the fire of the Ashfall dynasty had finally, in this prince's hands, burned at its brightest.

"He's back," Lia whispered to herself—and, in a way, to the shadow at her feet. "The man who burned my mother."

The shadow said nothing. It only stretched a little longer against the wall, in the light of the stove.

That night, the palace's great hall blazed with light. Lia moved among the perfumed, silken crowd with a silver tray, her eyes fixed on the floor the way the old servants had taught her. She could hear, in the nobles' lowered voices, what the whispers carried—Prince Kaelric had not returned to the capital only to celebrate.

"The king means to betroth him," a lady-in-waiting murmured. "Isolde Wain, only daughter of Marquess Wain of the North. A marriage, to hold the North steady."

"The Wains? Aren't they one of the old houses that helped the First Ashfall King found the realm a hundred years ago? I hear they still keep something of the Shadow Queen's..."

"Hush! Are you mad? You mustn't say such things—"

Lia's hand trembled. The cup on her tray swayed, and a drop of amber wine spilled, landing square on the gown of a noblewoman before her.

"Watch what you're doing, you worthless thing!" The woman shrieked, raising her hand to strike.

Lia flinched, ready to drop to her knees and beg pardon. Just then, the great doors of the hall were thrown open, and the wind rushed in carrying the smell of scorched things—of iron and fire.

Every gaze in the room turned to the doorway.

Kaelric Ashfall stood there.

He was taller than Lia had imagined—and colder. A black-and-gold uniform, an unclasped cloak still on his shoulders, a faint scar across his brow, and eyes of deep amber that seemed almost to burn, like stones roasted too long in a hearth. He was not smiling. His gaze swept the assembled guests with hardly any warmth at all, and then, for no reason Lia could name, it settled on the small maid in the corner, hunching her shoulders, her hands black with coal dust.

Only a moment.

Lia felt the shadow at her feet lurch, as if startled by something. She dropped her eyes at once and buried them in the floor.

"Welcome home, my son." The old king rose from the throne—King Ashfall the Third—his voice brimming with unconcealed pleasure. "The war in the North—you fought it beautifully. The Dusk Order, reduced to ash."

"Thank you, Father." Kaelric's voice was flat, so flat it was hard to hear any joy in it at all.

He walked toward the throne, and as he passed Lia, his steps slowed.

She could feel him look down at her. She could smell the fire rolling off him—dry, scorching, like the lingering heat of an entire forest burned to nothing.

"What's your name?" he asked, abruptly.

The hall fell silent. A prince, asking a serving girl who carried wine what her name was?

"Y—Your Highness," Lia's voice shook. "This servant... this servant is called Lia Voss."

"Voss." Kaelric repeated the name, his brow moving almost imperceptibly. "Rise."

Then he walked on, and never looked back.

No one noticed that in that moment, Lia's obedient shadow, there in the firelight, slowly straightened itself. Like a snake held down too long, it raised its head for the first time in sixteen years—and for the first time, recognized its true master.

Lia clenched her skirts so hard her nails bit into her palms.

Her shadow had recognized the fire.