Page 19 of The Court of Venus

Soon the Guildfords would be plotting. Listen close and the halls echo with Guildford prattle, Roland had said.

I slipped out from my sheets, the air crisp, my thin chemise a poor guard against the chill. I needed to be small, quick. I transformed into a mouse as Roland had suggested, despite the nickname I so despised, and scurried into the hall. The Saturn who spelled the doors hadn’t considered mice—or Moonborn magicians. On the west side of the palace, the queen’s apartments were quiet, though two guards now stood outside, toying with their swords. I slipped around their boots, through a gallery, and into the nave of the queen’s private chapel.

The Guildfords sat in the pews while the patriarch, Charles, stood at the stone altar. There was a fist-sized red marble resting beside the chalice of wine; they had been praying to their patron planet Mars.

One figure was hooded. I climbed up onto the ledge of a stained glass window and peered at her in the scattered light. When I finally saw the gleam of the stranger’s eyes, I shrank lower. Darted back into shadow.

This was worse than I ever could have imagined.

“—we’ll put another Guildford girl before him,” Charles was saying. His dark, neatly trimmed beard was perfectly triangular, his fingers stacked with rubies and garnets. His palm was sliced open shallowly for Mars prayer and etched with older scars. “A third chance.”

Tom raised his head from its perch on his fist. “You would usurp your own daughter?”

Charles shrugged. “I have nieces. My brother has other daughters.” He nodded to a grim-faced, stoic man across the room, the late queen Eleanor’s father. “Young ones.”

“Roland won’t have it,” Tom said. “He chose Cecily. His success hinges on her.”

How different he was now to the courtier composing sweet sonnets on the riverbank. He slapped a palm against the pew in frustration.

I scrambled higher onto another ledge. From this vantage, the men seemed less imposing. But the sweep of their entire lifetimes, and their father’s lifetimes, was to maneuver their daughters into this position.

“Father,” Tom spat. “Punish her. Cecily needs to be reminded she has a duty to us, to her family.”

“Hush, Tom,” his uncle said, raising a hand.

“Soon she’ll stop visiting the king’s bed altogether!”

“Where is she now? Wasn’t she summoned?”

Tom scoffed. “I told Joan Rockford to bring her here, but the girl has the brain of a squirrel. I should have spoken to Cecily myself.”

The cloaked figure coughed and flicked back her hood. She had shaved her head, bald to the scalp, but I still knew what she was. Her eyes were hellfire, globes of fury. She’d be a master of pain, a wielder of discord. A Marsborn.

I had only heard rumors of one or two living magicians ruled by Mars, both men, and neither were in Alvion. The Guildfords had successfully kept her a secret until now.

“The boy is right,” the Marsborn said. Her voice was a serrated rasp. “Cecily is besotted with the lord chancellor. I could set her back on the king. I could rip through whatever bond Roland has made with her. All will be lost if she is not with child soon, and he cannot help us with that matter.”

Because Roland, like every magician, was barren.

“Shut up,” said Tom. The woman flinched. “Do you know anything? The suggestion alone is enough to hang us. No one enters any bed in this court without Roland knowing. His magic informs him. Cecily must have the king’s child, and the king must not have any reason to doubt it.”

Charles rubbed his wiry chin. “What of the Moonborn girl? Is she Roland’s?”

The woman shifted in her seat, those crimson eyes flashing with distaste. “She was raised here, at court, and fostered alongside him and the prince. My spies tell me she was sent away before the prince’s death.”

“But does Roland trust her?” This question Charles directed to Tom, who shook his head.

My tail twitched.

Charles clasped his hands in front of himself, fingers a constellation of jewels. “Still, we must assume she’s Roland’s spy. Or perhaps, if we’re lucky, she will strike against him before we do.” His stare swept around the room. “There are more magicians here than ever before. Your minds are not your own.”

The woman’s smile was wry. “Indeed.”

“Roet was too impatient tonight,” said Tom. “Ambrose should not have died.”

“Ah, but did your father ever tell you stories of Sunborn sorcery?” said his uncle.

Tom shook his head.