Forging Silver into Stars Read online

  For Rhonda Barth,

  whose light shined so brightly

  and who so dearly loved these characters.

  You are very missed.

  ALSO BY BRIGID KEMMERER

  Letters to the Lost

  More Than We Can Tell

  Call It What You Want

  A Curse So Dark and Lonely

  A Heart So Fierce and Broken

  A Vow So Bold and Deadly

  Defy the Night

  Storm

  Spark

  Spirit

  Secret

  Sacrifice

  Thicker Than Water

  CONTENTS

  Map

  The Royal Courts of the Allied Nations Syhl Shallow and Emberfall

  Prologue: Callyn

  Six Months Later

  Chapter 1: Callyn

  Chapter 2: Jax

  Chapter 3: Tycho

  Chapter 4: Callyn

  Chapter 5: Jax

  Chapter 6: Tycho

  Chapter 7: Tycho

  Chapter 8: Jax

  Chapter 9: Callyn

  Chapter 10: Tycho

  Chapter 11: Jax

  Chapter 12: Tycho

  Chapter 13: Tycho

  Chapter 14: Callyn

  Chapter 15: Jax

  Chapter 16: Jax

  Chapter 17: Tycho

  Chapter 18: Callyn

  Chapter 19: Jax

  Chapter 20: Tycho

  Chapter 21: Callyn

  Chapter 22: Tycho

  Chapter 23: Callyn

  Chapter 24: Tycho

  Chapter 25: Jax

  Chapter 26: Jax

  Chapter 27: Callyn

  Chapter 28: Tycho

  Chapter 29: Callyn

  Chapter 30: Tycho

  Chapter 31: Jax

  Chapter 32: Tycho

  Chapter 33: Callyn

  Chapter 34: Tycho

  Chapter 35: Tycho

  Chapter 36: Jax

  Chapter 37: Callyn

  Chapter 38: Tycho

  Chapter 39: Callyn

  Chapter 40: Jax

  Chapter 41: Tycho

  Chapter 42: Tycho

  Chapter 43: Jax

  Chapter 44: Callyn

  Chapter 45: Tycho

  Chapter 46: Tycho

  Chapter 47: Callyn

  Chapter 48: Tycho

  Chapter 49: Tycho

  Chapter 50: Jax

  Chapter 51: Tycho

  Chapter 52: Callyn

  Chapter 53: Jax

  Chapter 54: Callyn

  Chapter 55: Jax

  Chapter 56: Callyn

  Chapter 57: Tycho

  Chapter 58: Jax

  Chapter 59: Callyn

  Chapter 60: Tycho

  Chapter 61: Jax

  Chapter 62: Callyn

  Chapter 63: Tycho

  Chapter 64: Jax

  Chapter 65: Callyn

  Chapter 66: Tycho

  Epilogue: Alek

  Acknowledgments

  THE ROYAL COURTS OF THE ALLIED NATIONS SYHL SHALLOW AND EMBERFALL

  TITLE

  NAME

  RESIDING IN

  Queen of Syhl Shallow

  Lia Mara

  Syhl Shallow

  King of Emberfall

  Grey

  Syhl Shallow

  Their Daughter

  Princess Sinna Cataleha

  Syhl Shallow

  Queen’s Chief Adviser and Sister

  Nolla Verin

  Syhl Shallow

  Royal Physician

  Noah of Disi*

  Syhl Shallow

  Counsel to the King

  Jacob of Disi*

  Syhl Shallow

  Brother to the King

  Prince Rhen, Acting Regent

  Emberfall

  Princess of Disi, Rhen’s Beloved

  Princess Harper of Disi*

  Emberfall

  King’s Courier/Queen’s Envoy

  Lord Tycho of Rillisk

  Both

  *“Disi” is not a real country, though the people of Emberfall and Syhl Shallow both believe it to be the birthplace of Princess Harper. In truth, “Disi” refers to Washington, DC. When a curse tormented Prince Rhen years ago, Harper, Noah, and Jacob were magically trapped on the grounds of Ironrose Castle in Emberfall, with no way home aside from breaking the curse … but that’s a different story.

  PROLOGUE

  CALLYN

  This was supposed to be a peaceful protest.

  It’s the only reason we came. Da kept insisting, “You owe it to your mother, Callyn. The queen should know the will of her people.”

  Maybe I do owe it to her. Maybe Mother would want me and Nora to be here. I reach up and rub the pendant that hangs over my heart the way I do anytime I think of her.

  This was only supposed to be a gathering of like-minded people who opposed the king’s magic. Safe. Small. Da wanted Nora and me to come because he said it was important to make a good showing so the queen would listen. He even tried to convince Master Ellis to come, along with his son Jax, my best friend. Their blacksmith forge was too busy to leave, though—and travel is difficult for Jax on his crutches. But now that we’re all packed along the cobblestone roadway leading to the Crystal Palace, I don’t know if any of us needed to come at all. There are hundreds of people here. Maybe thousands.

  Most are armed.

  All are shouting.

  Nora squeezes my hand. “Those people have swords,” she says, and her voice is nearly lost under the cacophony.

  I follow her gaze. A lot of people have swords. And axes, and arrows, and hammers. I see bricks in a few hands. Anything you could reasonably consider a weapon. Guards stand in front of the gate, trying to talk people down, but there are only a dozen of them and a huge press of people straining at the steel bars. Behind the guards is a short stretch of shining cobblestones that end at the base of the steps leading up to the palace. The summer sun fills the air with heat, and the smell of so many sweating bodies pressed together is oppressive. It’s doing nothing good for anyone’s temper.

  A shouting man tries to push through the crowd, and Nora stumbles into me, squealing when he stomps on her foot. He’s got a dagger in his hand, and it comes dangerously close to my sister’s eye. I jerk her out of the way.

  “She’s just a child!” I snap at him.

  He gives me a rude gesture over his shoulder.

  So peaceful. I scowl. Nora is only twelve. She shouldn’t be here. I’m not entirely sure that I should be. I set my shoulders. “Da.”

  He’s not even paying attention. He’s chanting with the crowd. Bring us the queen! Bring us the queen!

  “Da!” I shout over the noise. “Da, we need to get Nora out of here.”

  He doesn’t look at me. “Queen Lia Mara will have to listen, Callyn. There are so many of us here. The queen must know: we’re doing this for her.”

  Nora clutches my arm. This is her first time seeing the Crystal Palace, and on any other day she’d be staring up at the massive glistening structure with her mouth hanging open. She’d be asking if I thought we had a chance to see the queen, or if the street vendors in the Crystal City make better meat pies than what we sell in the bakery.

  Right now she’s burrowing into my side, edging away from a man who has a hand on the trigger of a crossbow.

  “Da,” I say again. “Da, please—”

  My voice is swallowed by sudden noise. A massive cheer goes up among the people, and at first, I’m not sure what’s happened. I think perhaps the shouting really has made a difference, and I stare up at that gleaming staircase, wondering if the queen will appear at the top.

  No. The crowd has bro
ken through the gates. I see a guard lift a sword—and just as quickly, he disappears under the sudden crush of the crowd. Without warning, we’re jostled forward, and Nora and I have no choice but to move or be trampled ourselves.

  I keep hold of my sister’s hand, and she clings to mine. I lose sight of Da almost immediately, and I cry out. “Da! Da!”

  “Move, girl!” shouts a man to my left, and I take an elbow to the ribs. I stumble into Nora and we nearly fall. Luckily the crowd is so dense that we all but bounce off another woman. We’re carried forward with the mob. Weapons glint in the sunlight. I hear a few screams in the crowd as others must be pulled under, but it’s a quick burst of sound, and then it’s gone.

  My heart is pounding so hard that I can’t breathe. My hand has gone slick, but I keep a tight grip on Nora’s hand. I can’t lose my sister. I can’t.

  I don’t feel the steps, but we’re moving upward. I can’t see anything but the bright sunlight overhead, the mountains beyond the palace cutting a line through the sky. Glass shatters, and it seems to keep shattering. More screams ring out. The massive doors to the palace have been destroyed, leaving a gaping hole for everyone to stream through.

  Bring us the queen! Bring us the queen!

  The shouts are so loud, and they seem to come from every direction. My feet crunch on broken glass, and I realize we’re about to be swept inside the palace.

  No. My heart stutters and rebels. I don’t want this. I’m not here to be a part of an attack on the royal family.

  For an instant, I don’t know what to do. Nora is crying now. Something must have hit her in the face, because blood is streaming from her nose.

  There. To my right, a woman falls, leaving a gap in the surge of people. Bits of glass glint along the stone walkway leading to the doors. I give Nora’s arm a firm tug, and we stumble out of the crush of people just as another cheer goes up inside the palace.

  “They’ve found the king and queen!” a man yells. The cheering grows louder.

  “What’s happening?” Nora gasps between sobs. “What are they going to do?”

  People are still surging past us. I’ve completely lost track of my father. “I don’t know.” I touch a hand to my pendant, pressing the warm steel into my skin. I wish Mother were here now. I consider the steps, the rapid stream of people, and I’m glad Jax didn’t join us.

  Soldiers are rushing up the stairs now, swords drawn, and I drag my sister farther away. Some of the protestors have turned to fight, and the clash of steel against steel makes my ears ring. Mother would have been right at home in the midst of a battle, but I’m only at home in the bakery. I’ve never wanted to be a soldier.

  A man takes a sword right through his belly. He coughs blood onto the walkway.

  I slap a hand over Nora’s eyes, but she grabs at my hand and tries to see, her mouth wide with horror.

  A man speaks from the shadows by the doorway. “She’s a child! Get her out of here.”

  I can’t tell if he’s a soldier or a protestor. There’s too much noise, too much fighting. But he’s not in the melee, so he must not be a soldier.

  “I’m trying!” I shout back.

  “Go down the side stairs!” he yells, just as a soldier spots us.

  I suck in a breath, but I have no time to react. A blade is swinging in our direction. Nora screams, and I shift to cover her with my body. I brace for the impact.

  It never comes. Just a screech of steel as sword meets sword. I catch a glimpse of black armor, a flash of red hair.

  “Go!” the man shouts.

  I drag Nora. We run, half stumbling down the stone steps. The cheering in the castle has grown louder, carrying over the sounds of fighting. Screams sound from every direction. Suddenly, we’re not the only ones running down the stairs.

  “Magic!” a woman shouts. “The king’s going to use his—”

  Thunder cracks behind us, so loud that I nearly stumble again. I turn to see a blast of light flare through every window of the palace, brighter than the sun, like a million bolts of lightning all at once.

  All sounds of fighting cease. There’s a pulse of sudden, absolute silence—and then screaming. A man is on fire, stumbling out of the doorway of the palace. Then another. And a third. The soldiers at the top of the steps have stopped fighting, and they’re staring in horror.

  So am I.

  Nora tugs at my hand. “Where’s Da?” Her voice is high and panicked. “What happened to Da?”

  I don’t know. I don’t know.

  A woman shrieks from the top of the steps. “He killed them all,” she cries. “The king’s magic killed them all!”

  More guards are beginning to arrive. Panic still fills my chest, but I’m aware enough to know that things won’t go well for anyone left here.

  “Come on,” I say to Nora. I drag her toward the streets, and we slip into the city just as guards begin lining up to block the fallen gate.

  I want to run, but guards might be looking for protestors now, so I hold tight to Nora’s shaking hand and head toward a tavern, walking sedately. I keep my eyes locked ahead and focus on breathing. On moving forward. Everyone else is rushing toward the palace, so no one pays us any mind.

  The sun is so bright and warm, and it seems like a cruel joke, as if the sun has no right to shine. My chest feels hollow.

  Eventually, Nora stops crying, and she looks up at me. “Was that true?” she whispers, and the horror in her voice echoes what I feel in my heart. “Did the king’s magic kill them all?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  But I press a hand over that pendant, because I do know. I saw that flash of light. I heard those screams. I saw the flames.

  The king’s magic once stole my mother.

  And now it’s stolen my father, too.

  SIX MONTHS LATER

  CHAPTER 1

  CALLYN

  I’ve been staring out at the night for hours, daring the dawn to keep its distance, but the first hint of purple appears along the crest of the mountain anyway. When I was a little girl, my mother used to say that if you could throw a stone high enough, it would fly over the mountaintops and land in Emberfall.

  She also used to say that if you were lucky, it would land on the head of one of their soldiers and crush their skull, but that was back when Emberfall was an enemy of Syhl Shallow.

  I tried and tried when I was a child, but I never threw a rock over the mountain. Not even when rage over my mother’s death propelled the rocks high into the sky.

  I rub my hand over her pendant. I don’t know why I’m thinking of my mother. She’s been dead for years.

  Any latent rage should be directed at my father, anyway. He’s the one who left us with this mess. It’s been six months, and there’s no coming back from the dead. From what I hear, not even the king’s awful magic can make that happen.

  The moon hangs high over the trees, making the frozen branches glisten, turning the ground between the house and the barn into a wide swath of crystalline white. A few inches of snow fell at dusk last night, keeping away any customers Nora and I might have had for the bakery.

  The weather didn’t keep the tax collector away.

  I glance at the half-crumpled paper with what we owe printed neatly at the bottom. I want to toss it into the hearth. The woman came by carriage, stepping fastidiously through the late-winter slush to enter the bakery—which is really just the main level of our home. Her lip curled when the door stuck, but I haven’t been able to replace the hinges yet. She said we have a week to pay the first quarter of what we owe, or our holdings will be seized by the queen. As if Queen Lia Mara needs a run-down farm on the outskirts of Syhl Shallow. I’d be surprised if she knows the town of Briarlock exists.

  A week to pay twenty-five silvers. Three months to pay the full amount due: one hundred silvers.

  During the bakery’s best weeks, my sister and I are lucky if we make ten.

  If the tax collector sneered at the bakery door, I can only ima
gine her reaction to the rest of the property. It’s likely a good turn of luck that she didn’t want to see the barn. I can see the wood panel hanging crooked from here, snow swirling through the gap. The metalwork is rusted and bent. Jax said he’d try to fix it when he had time, but he’s got paying customers, and he never likes to leave the forge for long.

  Jax is a good friend, but he’s got his own problems.

  As usual, I wish Da had made a different choice. He could have kept on hating the king without risking everything we have. He could have participated in the protest without giving the rebels every coin we had. Now, the small barn and bakery are nearly impossible to handle on my own. Nora helps in any way she can, but at twelve, she’s barely more than a girl. I can understand my father’s desire for vengeance—but it sure didn’t put food on the table.

  But if Da were here, would he help? Or would he be like Jax’s father, drowning his sorrows in ale every night?

  Sometimes I don’t know if I should envy Jax or if I should pity him. At least he and his father have coins.

  I could sell the cow. She’d fetch at least ten silvers. The hens are good layers, and they would go for a silver apiece.

  But if I lose my access to eggs and milk, I’ll have to close the bakery.

  Mother would tell me to sell the whole property and enlist. That’s what she would have done. That’s what she always envisioned for me. It was Da who wanted to keep the bakery, Da who taught me how to measure and knead and stir. Mother loved soldiering, but Da loved the art of feeding people. They fought about it before the battles with Emberfall. She was going off to war, demanding to know why he wasn’t enlisting as well. Didn’t he care about his country?

  Da would counter that he didn’t want to leave his children in an orphanage just so he could die on a battlefield.

  Mother said he was being dramatic, but of course that’s what she ended up doing.

  And it’s not like he did any better in the end.

  Even still, I can imagine Mother staring down at this tax notice, looking around the bakery and the needed repairs to the house and the barn. “You should have enlisted six months ago,” she’d be saying sternly.