The Kingless Crown

Chapter 1

1

The Lot is Cast

Ravenna Ravenwood stormed through the moonlit halls of The Rookery, her rage echoing in every strike of her jeweled heels against the sodden stone.

Brilliant white light flashed beyond the open arches of the upper gallery. Thunder dutifully followed moments later, splitting the sky. It had been storming all day, and now night, but this was midwinter, the tempest season, and if it wasn’t crackling skies and ice storms, it was snowbolts. High in the Northerland Range, at Midnight Crest, they almost always received the worst of whatever the gods sent down.

She loved and hated these storms. They brought her peace, soothing her own natural tempestuousness, but they also meant no escape from the castle. Being so high in the mountains, there was only one way to swoop down into safer territory, and there was nothing safe about flying through the wrath raining down upon their world that night.

“Ravenna!”

The voice calling her name, only a pace away, was the very one she now fled. If he thought she’d change her mind, or soften her heart, he was destined for disappointment. If he thought there was ever any going back to the way things were, he was—

“Come on, Ravenna! You know the way of things!”

The shock of lightning pulsing the sky as Ravenna rounded a corner caused her heel to miss a step. That brief change of stride was enough for her brother to reach a hand out and snag her arm in his palm.

“Let me go, Alasyr,” she hissed. She wrenched her arm so hard his fingers bruised her, but he didn’t relent. She didn’t turn. Looking at him again, now or ever, would be unwise. If she did, her hatred would burn through them both. Turn him, or her, to stone.

“You knew this day would come.” He didn’t let go, but he lessened his death grip. Alasyr, her truest of friends, until today. Her confidante, playmate; pillow for tears, or rage, or sometimes both. Ryandyr, Ashara, and the twins were too young as she’d come screaming from childhood and forward, dwindling over the precipice that would change her designation from enfant to woman. But Alasyr had understood. He protected her on bad days and laughed with her on good ones.

Now, all of that was past. It was snow on the wind of yesterday. It was beyond meaning or consequence.

“This day,” she said, staring defiantly into the murky sky beyond the balustrades. “Not your part in it.”

“How could you not know I would put in my lot?” Alasyr reached forward with his other hand, and this touch was more tender. “That I wouldn’t at least try to protect what we have, forever?”

“What we have?” Ravenna laughed. The sound found sharp edges as it bounced off damp stone. The howl of the accompanying wind was animalistic. Rain pummeled hard enough to sweep in sideways, stippling the ground near their feet, while the thunder clapped almost in tandem with the light now. The storm roared heavy upon them, yawning in from the darkness. “You believe what we have would be the same, then, do you? That it would not be spoilt by such an act? Even if you did emerge victorious from the night?”

Alasyr stepped closer. His breath was a humid rush against the cool, charged air. “What would you have had me do?”

“Not that!”

“Then what, Ravenna? Let it fall to one of the cousins? Uncles? Men, boys, none of whom know a whit about you, who you are? The things you love? What makes you smile?”

Love was a peculiar word to a Ravenwood, and an even more twisted sentiment. Love wasn’t meant for the priests and priestesses of Midnight Crest, because love could only amount to disappointment. What was the opposite of love? That was what a Ravenwood should expect from life. There were other rewards designed for their ilk.

Except, Ravenna Ravenwood did know love, and the source of that love, and what it meant, or could not mean, was the true font of her rage as the moon entered its fullest form.

The skies tore open. Rain formed a wall in the night, hitting the castle so hard it drove both of them farther in. Alasyr pivoted in the retreat and covered her with his body protectively. “Ravenna. This is who we are. This was always your fate, but it doesn’t have to be so beyond your control. It doesn’t have to be Aryc, or Sandyr.” He reached inside his violet cloak and withdrew a vial. “I had this made. It’s for virility. It could improve my chances.”

Ravenna turned her face away. She winced as her cheek connected with the icy stone wall. “You’re lifetimes away from the point, brother. Even if you win, Aryc and Sandyr and the others, they already cast their lot, and they’ll get their chance. What’s the difference between once and forever? Once is enough to change everything. As for you… for us… if you lose, everything dies, because of a single act. If you win, everything dies, because of many acts. At least if you stayed away, you’d still be my Alasyr. Now, no matter the outcome of Langenacht, you’ll be no better than the rest.”

Alasyr stepped back. He slipped in the growing puddle, but steadied himself. He looked wounded. “I treasure you, Ravenna. You above any. Above all.”

“You can’t be my protector, my brother, and my husband. Not all three.”

“Why not three, when I’ve always been two?”

Ravenna sighed. She pulled the velvet hood tighter around her dark hair. Violet eyes glowed from within. If she transformed now, she’d be knocked about by the storm, and there was no magic she’d yet learned to protect her from a perilous fall into the jagged, snowy mountains. But if she stayed…

“You say you treasure me, but you haven’t listened to me. You haven’t heard anything I’ve told you about this day, about what the Langenacht means to me.”

Alasyr twisted his mouth into a frown. “That’s not true. You’ve never wanted it. Not like Mother did, or Grandmother. I know that, Ravenna, that’s—”

Ravenna pressed a finger to his lips. “You talk, talk, talk, Alasyr, but you don’t listen. I never wanted it, no, but I know who I am, and I know the inevitability of taking my own blood as a bridegroom. But that does not mean I have to like it, or to treat it as some great honor as the High Priestesses who’ve come before me have done. Until today, I looked at you and saw my escape. I saw my brother, my confidante, the one who knew me. Now, I see only another Ravenwood casting his lot to lay with the future High Priestess, in hopes of securing his own power and legacy.”

“That isn’t why I did it!”

“I know that,” Ravenna said. The chill biting the air came with sharp sprays of icy rain now, and if they didn’t seek greater shelter, farther inside The Rookery, they’d be inundated. “But your motivations mean nothing to me. Only the inevitability of laying with my own brother, my only friend, and tarnishing the very last pure thing I still had.”

It wasn’t the last. That was a lie. But this was a truth she kept even from Alasyr, because she couldn’t bear the idea of him one day choosing between his loyalty to the Ravenwoods and his loyalty to her. Either choice would destroy her, and them.

Ah, but it no longer mattered, because Alasyr, her beloved brother and only true friend, had cast his lot in with the other eligible male sorcerers of the Ravenwood clan, and he, along with the others, would get their chance to lay with her by the greenlight fires on the Langenacht. If Alasyr’s seed proved strongest, she would take her brother as her husband, and they would rule Midnight Crest together, as High Priest and High Priestess. If he failed to ignite a child within her, her hand would go to the male who didn’t fail to fill her womb. The magic blessing the cold cliffs would go to the man most worthy, and only the gods knew the outcome.

The Langenacht was the one and only means of deciding the divine rulers of the Ravenwoods, and as the eldest daughter of the reigning High Priestess, she had but two choices on the anniversary of her coming of age: surrender to the blessed tradition of her ancient forebears, or be thrown from the mountain to a disgraceful death. So it had been for thousands of years, and so it would be for thousands still. No one questioned. No one changed.

Whichever way the wind of fate blew, the innocence of her bond with Alasyr would be no more.

“I didn’t know.” Alasyr’s face collapsed, and she couldn’t discern the rain from tears. “I only saw a chance for things to be as they always had. To keep protecting you, as I always have.” He ran a finger over the edge of her velvet hood. “I’ll withdraw. I’ll tell Mother I’ve changed my mind.”

“The lot is cast. It cannot be changed.”

“But I’m her son! If I tell her I didn’t mean it, that I was sleep-deprived, or drunk on brandywine, or—”

Ravenna pressed two hands to her brother’s chest and gently pushed him back. “You cannot. What’s done is done. You offered your own blood, and it’s written in the stars. Only death can undo a cast lot, as you well know.”

Alasyr stepped once, twice, thrice. He held open his arms. “Then I’ll fling myself from the ramparts, Ravenna, if that’ll end your pain and quench your hatred of me.”

“Don’t be a fool.”

“Would it make you look at me as you used to? If instead of calling down all your curses on me, you were crying over my broken body?”

Ravenna shook her head. She needed to be free of this moment. Peril or no, she couldn’t remain here. There was no use in prolonging the torment, or debating a solution that didn’t exist. “You can’t die, Alasyr. Not that way. I bound you in safety years ago. No fall would harm you, no sword could sever you. You’ll die old, in your bed.”

Alasyr regarded her with bleary, sad eyes. “Alone?”

“Only the gods know,” Ravenna said, but the last of her words were lost to the current of wings as she soared over him and into the peril of the storm. She didn’t turn her raven’s head to see if he watched, but instead navigated south, bracing against the driving rain, toward Wulfsgate.