Excerpt
Arcana Academy
Chapter 1Break or die. It’s one or the other in Halazar Prison. I refuse to do either.
Two guards approach my cell. The man in front is carrying an annoyingly efficient lantern. After nearly a year of not seeing the sun, I’m blinded by mere lamplight.
It’s too soon for them to be coming for me again. I expect them to pass, but they stop at my door. I don’t recognize either guard, but Warden Glavstone is always rotating them out—anyone who sticks around for too long might learn too much.
“Clara Graysword?” Graysword: the name given to all orphaned and unwanted children in Eclipse City. The name I gave when I was captured. The name that told the world I had no family to take down with me.
I lift my chin in answer.
“You’re requested for an audience.” The man raises his lantern higher as if trying to get a better look at me through the bars. Unfortunate for him, as I’ve been left to rot, and my visage reflects it.
“Sounds formal.” My voice cracks, my throat drier than yew ash. “With whom?” The guards don’t answer and instead slip a key into the heavy padlock on my door.
Usually, that lock is undone once per week, and they already came for me three days ago. I’m let out only to be taken to a hidden and cramped closet in Warden Glavstone’s office, where I ink tarot cards for him in exchange for what little comforts can be found in this tomb. But I would’ve done the work even without bartering. It has kept my mind sharp and hands skilled for when I get out of here.
Because, whether by my own skill or from my family coming for me, I am getting out. I refuse to die here.
The men step aside, and I slip into the space between them. Once my eyes adjust to the lamplight, I can see the place of my captivity with more clarity than ever before—more than I’d like, frankly.
By the Twenty Major Arcana, Halazar truly is horrendous.
The walls are thick with grime and blood and other substances I have willed myself not to think about. I can only imagine the stink that clouds the air—my nose has been so overwhelmed for so long that I can’t smell anything anymore.
My fellow prisoners hiss at us, then shrink away from the harsh glow of the lantern and back into the safety of their shadows. Reduced to animals, their clothes in tatters like mine, they crawl over the filth on hands and knees.
The minds and bodies of the incarcerated wither away in the darkness. This is the bleakest prison in the entirety of the Oricalis Kingdom, the place where the worst of the worst go. Murderers, rapists, abusers of innocents, and those like me . . . who would dare to use the arcana without being under the crown’s control.
I’m escorted down a passage I’m not familiar with and up a narrow flight of stairs. The guard behind me rests his hand on the pommel of his sword but doesn’t bother unsheathing it. There’s no need for overt threats. Where could you go? is the unasked question.
From a slit in the wall at the top of the stairs, a gust of icy wind batters my face. Through it I stare out at the churning river. It’s dusk, or perhaps dawn; it’s hard to tell, overcast as it is. Either way I can’t help but squint. All I see are mountains; we’re facing west, away from the city.
I inhale air so crisp that it burns my lungs. I’ve been reduced to a creature of squalor who doesn’t even know how to breathe clean air.
“Keep it moving.” The guard at my back shoves me. I stumble and grip the wall, snapping one of my brittle nails down to the bed. But my body has already suffered so many other abuses that the pain hardly registers.
We halt before an unfamiliar door. On it is carved a single sword emerging from a field of clouds. A crown caps its tip, and rose vines trellis down and around the blade.
The iconography is unmistakable—the Ace of Swords. First of the suit. Symbol of the royal family of Oricalis. Standing on either side of the door are two knights in silvered plate. Not city enforcers, or prison guards, but royal knights. Stellis, they’re called. An elite organization of the best of the best fighters in the kingdom, sworn to protect the crown and uphold its laws. The only thing that’s said to outmatch their skill and strength is their brutality. Dove-white and raven-black plumes extend from behind decorative fans of tiny swords carved into their helmets over their ears.
For a moment, I’m no longer in Halazar but back to my last hours in Eclipse City, when Stellis adorned in identical plate held me down before a judge from Clan Hanged Man. I remember the cold floor against my cheek. It contrasted with the searing heat of my shame—I’d been warned I was walking into a trap, and I did it anyway.
It takes every scrap of strength I have to remain calm. To keep my hands from shaking. To stay present even as the judge’s words echo in my mind: By decree of the crown, you are sentenced to life in Halazar.
“Your highness, we have the prisoner,” the Stellis knight calls through the door.
Highness? No. No, no, no. The urge to run nearly overwhelms me.
“Bring her in,” demands a voice that is little more than a whisper of shadow, and no warmer than the darkest night of winter.
The door swings open, revealing a lavish room that should have no place in Halazar. On either side of the door are four cabinets made of yew—it’s a mark of luxury to use that wood for furniture rather than burn it for inking powder. Heavy velvet curtains ward against the chill, barely letting in slivers of light.
The sheer opulence is jarring. A man dressed entirely in comparable finery dyed as black as pitch reclines in one of the two wingback chairs, his feet propped on the back of Warden Glavstone himself.
The warden’s muscular arms tremble under the weight of the other man’s heels—and from a thousand cuts covering his body. The pallor of his skin is in striking contrast to the blood, highlighting the brutality.
I would smile with delight at seeing the warden reduced to such a state if my every hair weren’t now standing on end. Danger, the very air around the man in the wingback seems to whisper. Even the light seems to fear him.
Prince Kaelis, second of three sons of the Kingdom of Oricalis, reverse wielder, and headmaster of Arcana Academy. The prince who reduced an entire noble clan to rubble. A man whose name is synonymous in Oricalis with despair. Who I have every reason to believe killed my mother . . . And the man who put me in Halazar Prison.
“Clara Graysword.” He speaks slowly, as if it’s somehow painful to pronounce. If “Graysword” annoys him, I’d love to see him pronounce my birth name. But my true name is one of my most closely guarded secrets.
“Your royal highness.” I force my tone to be dull, bored, even. To pretend I haven’t spent every month of the past year cursing his name and plotting my revenge against him.
“Sit.” A smirk plays on his lips.
I want to spit in his face. But I do as I’m told, stepping into the room and around the puddle of blood under the warden. As I pass, I get a clearer picture of the warden’s wounds. Each of the hundreds of cuts results from a perfect slice—and each one is clean, penetrating even the warden’s thick leather jacket. I’ve heard about the destruction the Knight of Swords card can reap in the hands of a skilled Arcanist. But I’ve never seen its effects in person—and I’ve never hated anyone enough to want to use it against them.
That is, before I met Kaelis.
Seated opposite the prince, I assess him as openly as he does me.
Everything about Prince Kaelis is severe, as if an artist were challenged to render the most brutal interpretation of masculinity one could imagine. His black patent leather boots shine with a near-mirror finish. Fitted trousers skim his strong thighs. A collared black shirt is barely visible underneath an oversized coat that’s intricately embroidered with a thousand swords in silver threads. And from a chain around his neck, crafted out of a dark, flat gray steel hangs a sword with a crown on its pommel. Deep purple, nearly black hair falls around his face in messy waves, casting his eyes in perpetual shadow.
He exudes power and poise, a stark contrast to my own state: My bones protrude underneath my thin skin. My hair has never been particularly noteworthy in either texture or shade of dark brown, and now it’s been roughly chopped to my ears—it was impossible to keep untangled in the depths of Halazar. My prison uniform looks as if I’ve worn it since the day I arrived, which I have.
“If you know who I am, then you must suspect why I’m here.” Steepling his fingers, he presses them against his thin lips.
“I have my suspicions, your highness.” His title tastes bitter.
“Good. Even better that you’re still able to hold a conversation. Halazar has a way of making people . . . quiet,” he murmurs.
Quiet? He means broken. Shattered. Not that I have much sympathy for the majority of those in these accursed halls. But there are a good few, like me, who were punished for nothing more than daring to try to make a better life for themselves and those they loved.
