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Also by Stacey Jay
Juliet Immortal
Romeo Redeemed
Of Beast and Beauty
This is an uncorrected eBook file. Please do not quote for publication until you check your copy against the finished book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2014 by Stacey Jay
Jacket art copyright © 2014 by Nick Chao
Map art copyright © 2014 by Je
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
For M,
my partner in all adventures
Contents
Cover
eBook Information
By Stacey Jay
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Map
Once upon a time …
The Past …
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Once upon a time there lived a
prince and a princess
with no happy ever after. …
The past …
In my youth, longing for immortality gave me many sons. Now, it sows the seeds of their destruction.
—Eldorio III, Immortal King of Kanvasola
Having discovered the secret to eternal life, and jealous of his throne, the immortal king summoned a witch to the castle and ordered her to curse his eleven sons, ensuring none would live past their eighteenth birthday, the age at which a Kanvasol prince may become a king.
But the witch was a gentle woman and so tempered her curse with kindness. The princes still in line to inherit on their eighteenth birthdays would not die, but would be transformed into a lamentation of swans.
Years passed and ten sons were transformed, but the eleventh, the prince Niklaas, raged against his fate and vowed to break the spell.
The past, sadly, is immortal. No child is born i
—Rose Ronces, “The Sleeping Beauty”
After years of marriage, the Sleeping Beauty longed to travel beyond the fairy briars surrounding her castle, but Prince Stephen’s stepmother was an ogre, who the prince feared would imprison their two children if she were to learn of their existence. And so Rose remained hidden, until the day her new maid let slip that the prince’s other wife was not nearly as lovely as the beauty.
Doubting her husband, Rose rode to the capital, where she met the prince’s barren first wife and his stepmother, Queen Ekeeta. As Stephen had feared, Ekeeta ordered his children locked away. The prince begged for mercy, and Rose was given a home at the edge of the city, where she and the children were guarded at all times.
Years passed, and Stephen came to believe it was safe to leave his family for several months at a time. The night after his departure to the wars in the east, Ekeeta’s soldiers came for Rose and the children. They were imprisoned, and Rose sentenced to death.
Knowing the end was near, the Sleeping Beauty embraced her eldest, Princess Aurora, and wished for the girl to be granted fairy blessings. But it was not for grace, or beauty, or the gift of song that the beauty wished. …
Chapter One
Aurora
Prophecy foretells that in the last days of the Long Summer, the Age of Reaping will dawn with the rise of the living darkness. The four kingdoms will dwell in shadow, and the souls of man feed the First One’s hunger for a hundred years.
And when the land lies barren, and not a single man remains upon it, the gates of the underworld shall open and all souls—human and ogre—descend to dwell in peace with the Lost Mother for all eternity.
Only a human child, briar-born, can usher in the Final Age. And so such children must be collected and held captive until the coming of the Long Summer.
Any citizen found to be sheltering or aiding in the escape of such a child will be sentenced to death.
—Royal Proclamation, 20th of Sunswane, 1458
“It’s time, button,” Mama whispers. Her voice is like lines of music—delicate bars that trap and hold me prisoner on the floor before her.
I am so terrified that I can’t move, but I love her too much to run, even if I could. Even if there were somewhere to run to, some way out of this cell where Mama and Jor and I have been brought to await our moment to die. The queen said Jor and I would be spared and allowed to live out our lives in the dungeon, but Mama doesn’t believe her.
Neither do I.
Queen Ekeeta will finish with the nobles and judges and merchants loyal to my father, and then her guards will come for us. Before nightfall, she and the ogres who came in the black ships from across the Winter Ocean will magic the light from our eyes, drink our spirits down, and throw our soulless bodies into the sea.