The Queen’s Resistance

My father had never revealed that my mother had come from the Lannon House. I had never learned her lineage. She was beautiful, he had said. She was lovely; she was good; her laughter had filled the rooms with light. The Morgane people had loved her. He had loved her.

I refolded her letter, hiding it in my pocket, but her words lingered, echoed through me.

My mother had been a Lannon. And I could not stop the thought from rising …

I am half Lannon.

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Lord MacQuinn’s Territory, Castle Fionn

Brienna

I woke to the sound of banging below in the hall. I lurched out of bed, momentarily dazed. I didn’t know where I was—Magnalia? Jourdain’s town house? It was the windows, of all things, that reminded me; they were mullioned and narrow, and beyond them was the fog Maevana was notorious for.

I fumbled for the clothes I had worn yesterday and brushed my hair with my fingers on the way down the stairs, servants noticeably quieting as they passed me, their eyes wide as they took me in. I must look wretched, I thought, until I heard their whispers follow me.

“Brendan Allenach’s daughter.”

Those words sunk into my heart like a blade.

Brendan Allenach would have killed me on the battlefield had Jourdain not stopped him. I could still hear Allenach’s voice—I will take back the life I gave her—as if he was walking in my footsteps, haunting me.

I hurried along, following the noise, realizing the clamor was inspired by Luc’s music. My brother was standing on a table playing his violin, rousing hearty claps and cup banging from the MacQuinns.

I watched for a moment before sitting alone at the empty lord’s table to eat a bowl of porridge. I could see the love and admiration in the MacQuinns’ faces as they looked upon Luc, cheering him onward even as he knocked over a pint of ale. My brother’s music spread over them like a healing balm.

Beyond the revelry, on the other side of the hall, I noticed Jourdain standing with his chamberlain, a grouchy old man named Thorn, no doubt discussing the plans for the upcoming day. And I began to think about what my own plans should be now, in this strange time of in-betweens—in between resuming normal life and the trial, in between an empty throne and Isolde’s coronation, and perhaps more than anything, my place in between arden and mistress. I had been a student for the past seven years; now it was time for me to decide what to do with my passion.

I felt a wave of homesickness for Valenia.

I thought about the possibility of a passion House in Maevana. There were none here that I knew of, as impassionment was a Valenian sentiment. Most Maevans were familiar with the idea; however, I worried their attitudes toward it fell as cynical or skeptical, and I honestly could not fault them for it. Fathers and mothers had been more concerned about keeping their daughters and sons alive and protected. No one had time to spend years of their life studying music, or art, or even the depth of knowledge.

But all of that would soon change beneath a queen like Isolde. She had a vast appreciation of the study. I knew she desired to reform and enlighten Maevana, to see her people flourish.

And I had my own desires to sow here, one in particular being to start a House of Knowledge and maybe, hopefully, convince my best friend Merei to join me, uniting her passion of music with mine. I could see us filling these castle chambers with music and books, just as we had done at Magnalia as ardens.

I pushed my porridge bowl aside and rose from the table, walking back to my room, still struck with homesickness.

I had chosen an eastern chamber in the castle, and the morning light was just beginning to break through the fog, warming my windows with rosy hues. I walked to my desk, staring down at my writing utensils, which Jourdain had ensured I had an ample supply of.

Write to me whenever you miss me, Merei had said to me days ago, just before she departed Maevana to return to Valenia, to rejoin her patron and her musical consort.

Then I shall write to you every hour of every day, I had replied, and yes, I had been a touch dramatic to make her laugh, because we both had tears in our eyes.

I decided to take Merei’s advice.

I sat at my desk and began to write to her. I was halfway through the letter when Jourdain knocked on my door.

“Who are you writing to?” he asked after I had invited him in.

“Merei. Did you need something?”

“Yes. Walk with me?” And he offered me his arm.

I set my quill down and let him guide me downstairs and out into the courtyard. Castle Fionn was built of white stone in the heart of a meadow, with the mountains looming to the north. The morning light glistened on the castle walls as if they were built of bone, nearly iridescent in the melting frost, and I took a moment to look over my shoulder to admire it before Jourdain led me along one of the meadow paths.

My wolfhound, Nessie, found us not long after that, trotting ahead with her tongue lolling to the side. The fog was finally receding, and I could see the men working in an adjacent field; the wind carried snatches of their hums and the whisk of their sickles as the grain fell.

“I trust my people have been welcoming to you,” Jourdain said after a while, as if he had been waiting until we were liberated from the castle before he voiced such a thing.

I smiled and said, “Of course, Father.” I remembered the whispers that had chased me to the hall, about whose daughter I truly was. And yet I could not bear to tell Jourdain.

“Good,” he replied. We walked farther in silence, until we reached a river beneath the trees. This seemed to be our talking ground. The day before, he had found me here among the moss and currents, revealing that he had secretly married his wife in this lush place, long ago.

“Have you had any more memory shifts, Brienna?” he asked.

I should have expected this question, yet I still felt surprised by it.

“No, I have not,” I responded, looking to the river. I thought about the six memories I had inherited from Tristan Allenach.

The first had been brought on by an old book of Cartier’s, which happened to have belonged to Tristan over a century ago. I had read the same passage as Tristan had, which had created a bond between us that not even time could break.

I had been so bewildered by the experience, I had not fully understood what was happening to me, and as a result, I told no one about it.

But it had happened again when Merei had played a Maevan-inspired song, the ancient sounds of her music vaguely linking me to Tristan as he had been searching for a place to hide the stone.

His six memories had come to me so randomly, it had taken me a while to finally theorize how and why this was happening to me. Ancestral memory was not too rare of a phenomenon; Cartier himself had once told me about it, this idea that all of us hold memories from our ancestors but only a select few of us actually experience them manifesting. So once I had acknowledged that I was one of those few people to have the manifestations, I began to understand them better.

There had to be a bond made between me and Tristan through one of the senses. I had to see or feel, hear or taste or smell something he had once experienced.

The bond was the doorway between us. The how of it all.

As far as the why … I came to surmise that all the memories he had passed down to me were centered on the Stone of Eventide, or else I would have most likely inherited more memories from him. Tristan had been the one to steal the stone, to hide it, to begin the decline of the Maevan queens, to be the author of magic’s dormancy. And so I was the one destined to find and reclaim the stone, to give it back to the Kavanaghs, to let magic flourish again.

“Do you think you will inherit any more memories from him?” Jourdain asked.

“No,” I replied after a moment, looking up from the water to meet his concerned gaze. “All of his memories pertained to the Stone of Eventide. Which has been found and given back to the queen.”

But Jourdain did not appear convinced, and to be honest, neither was I.

“Well, let us hope that the memories have come to an end,” Jourdain said, clearing his throat. His hand went to his pocket, which I thought was a nervous habit for him until he withdrew a sheathed dirk. “I want you to wear this again,” he said, holding the blade out to me.

I recognized it. This was the same small dagger he had given me before I crossed the channel to set our revolution into action.

“You think it necessary?” I asked, accepting it, my thumb touching the buckle that would hold it fast to my thigh.

He sighed. “It would ease my mind if you wore it, Brienna.”