Keeper of Enchanted Rooms

Prologue

May 17, 1818, London, England

Silas took up the brush and started smoothing Marybelle’s coat, even though the stable hands had already tended her. It was late, the sun long since set, and most of the servants had already turned in. But Silas liked being out in the stables. He’d gotten used to the smell. There was something peaceful about the animals, who stood and endured their confined spaces with little complaint. Just as he did.

The horse in the next stall over nosed the back of his head, blowing warm air over his neck. Smiling, Silas reached back and stroked the velvet between the animal’s nostrils. “I’ll get you next.” He ran the short-bristled brush over Marybelle’s flank. Inhaled the scents of horseflesh and hay. Relaxed as much as his sixteen-year-old frame would let him. A few lights still shined through the house windows; he imagined his mother was having her hair wound into curling papers right about now. He should turn in, too. His new arithmetic tutor would be arriving early tomorrow to train him for Oxford, or maybe Cambridge.

He heard the sound of another horse walking before he picked up the stuttering gait of the man leading it. His stomach tightened. He glanced to the back of Marybelle’s stall. Enough room to squat down and hide, but if he was seen, there’d be no opportunity to escape. Instead, Silas set the brush aside and carefully unlatched the stall door, hoping to sneak around back and enter the house through the servants’ door.

He’d almost made it into the shadows when his father’s voice called, “Who goes there?”

Silas cringed at the slurred words. His father was drunk. But if he kept walking, his father might think him one of the staff—

“Silas!” he barked.

Dread filled Silas’s gut as he turned. “Want me to help you with the horse?” He had a sliver of luck in his blood, inherited from his grandmother. He prayed it would cooperate with him now.

His father had a lead on the animal, but the mare seemed to be all that held him up. He had a bottle in his hand, and his cheeks slouched like he’d aged himself into jowls. He was never this drunk. Silas couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad one.

Not taking his eyes from Silas, his father crooked a finger. The bolt on the nearest empty stall clicked, and the door swung open. Silas couldn’t blame his father for using magic; in his condition, it was probably easier than stabling the horse physically.

But his father didn’t put the horse away. An invisible hand shoved against Silas’s back, drawing him close enough to smell the whiskey wafting off his father like mist off the sea. And when the hand shoved him into the stall, Silas’s nerves lit up, every last one of them, until his blood raced and his skin burned.

“L-Let me get you to bed,” he said.

His father stepped into the stall and closed the door, leaning heavily on it for the stiffness the magic had left in his legs. “Excused me,” he rumbled. “They excused me. For”—he laughed—“drunken behavior.”

Silas peered beyond the stable, praying a servant, his mother, his brother, anyone would come by. “Who excused you?”

“King’s League.”

His stomach plummeted. “You were dismissed?” No wonder he was so drunk. Both of Silas’s parents were members of the King’s League of Magicians. They’d practically been groomed for it from birth.

Oh no. This wasn’t going to be good for him. Silas held his hands up, palms out, as though calming a rabid dog. “Let’s get food in your stomach—”

His father threw the bottle. It collided with Silas’s shoulder. A spell—the same one his father had used to pull him in here—burned in Silas’s blood, begging to be released, but he didn’t use it. It always made his father angrier when he used magic. His father hated that Silas had more magic than he did, thanks to the added pedigree of his mother.

Silas didn’t defend himself when the first fist struck, nor the second. This was habitual, for them. It passed quicker when he took it. Another blow, another. Any moment now, his father would be done, and he’d sneak back inside, find something to nurse the bruises—

The kick to his ribs cracked bone and ripped air from his lungs.

His weakest spell, luck, was not with him today.

Silas slammed into the back wall. This is wrong. His father had never broken a bone before, and—

Dizziness engulfed him. A blow to the head. Silas didn’t remember falling to his knees. His skull radiated pain. Had he been hit with the bottle, or a kinetic pulse?

“Father—” he tried, but a fist hit the side of his mouth, cutting his cheek on his teeth. Silas couldn’t help it; he covered his head. He had to.

“You think you’re better than me?” his father raged, slamming the toe of his shoe into Silas’s hip. “You think you . . . can take my place?”

“No!” Silas cried, fire radiating up his spine. His father stumbled back but shot out a kinetic blast that attempted to crush Silas’s entire body. Blood spilled from his lips. Stars danced across his eyelids. Something snapped and ached.

His father had never hurt him this badly before. Never.

“Please!” Silas begged.

A second magical blast had bile coursing up Silas’s throat. Acid splattered over his shirt.

I’m going to die. I’m going to die.

“I’ll show you—”

Silas’s blood lit white hot.

Kinesis blasted from his body and slammed his father into the stall door. Broke it off its hinges. Sent man and door skidding across the manicured lawn. The horses whinnied and reared in their stalls as Silas’s bloody fingers clambered for a grip. His joints seized with the use of power, but he worked his hands, knuckles popping, and strained to stand. Wheezing, he lifted his head and peered through the sweaty locks covering his eyes.

His father didn’t move.

Limping, holding his middle, Silas crossed the distance between them, the stiffness gradually easing. His father’s chest still rose. His breathing was loud in the quiet night. Had no one heard them? Or did the staff merely not want to hear, knowing they could do nothing to stop the master of the house? They’d never once stepped in to save Silas or his brother.

His father’s hand gripped grass as he lifted his head, eyes finding Silas. “I’ll . . . kill . . . you . . .”

The invisible hand wrapped around Silas’s throat.

Silas didn’t even think. Had he thought, maybe he could have coaxed the spell from his neck. Maybe he could have lulled his father into sleep and passed another day in his shadow. But he didn’t.

His necromancy came from his mother’s side. It seemed eager to serve, to penetrate his drunken father’s skin and mix with his soul. To drain him until the kinetic spell broke and his head thumped back against the ground. But the other spells grew jealous, and they rode along the path, merging with the first, stretching unseen lines between father and son—

Silas woke with his face pressed into the lawn. When had he . . . ? His ribs stung with every breath. The left side of his body, where he’d taken the kinetic blows, burned and pulsed with new bruises. Iron slicked his teeth. Scabs matted his hair.

Beside him, his father still breathed as though drawn into the deepest of slumbers.

But despite the injuries, despite the misery entangling his body and screaming in his bones, Silas felt . . . different. He felt . . . strong, somehow. Not in a physical sense but a metaphysical one. His magic . . . His magic felt like a thousand brilliant candles within him. Like it had . . . grown?

He stared at his father’s face. His slow breaths still reeked of alcohol.

Using a hand unattached to himself, Silas let the fingers pinch over his father’s windpipe. No more.

The breaths stopped.

And the surge of strength snuffed out. So suddenly that Silas found himself gasping for its loss. He gaped at his father’s corpse. Had he taken . . . but he couldn’t have . . . could he?

One thing was certain, as Silas carefully, joint by joint, pulled himself upright once more.

No one would ever have power over him again.