The future of the Cynewulf dynasty sits on a knife-edge.
With no child of his own, King Nerian names his half-sister heir to the throne. A respected admiral, and princess in her own right, Mira seems the logical choice - but a treasonous faction of nobles disagrees.
After a failed assassination attempt, Nerian seeks aid from the Nithelm, an ancient organisation of professional thieves. Rynn, their best infiltrator, is charged with protecting the princess and rooting out the conspirators. Success will earn her lasting acclaim and royal favour. Failure will plunge the realm into civil war - and, quite possibly, cost Rynn her own life.
In the face of dark magic and a foe who strikes from the shadows, Rynn must use her peculiar talents to navigate the ever-shifting landscape of the royal court and unravel the conspiracy before time runs out.
The future of the Cynewulf dynasty sits on a knife-edge.
With no child of his own, King Nerian names his half-sister heir to the throne. A respected admiral, and princess in her own right, Mira seems the logical choice - but a treasonous faction of nobles disagrees.
After a failed assassination attempt, Nerian seeks aid from the Nithelm, an ancient organisation of professional thieves. Rynn, their best infiltrator, is charged with protecting the princess and rooting out the conspirators. Success will earn her lasting acclaim and royal favour. Failure will plunge the realm into civil war - and, quite possibly, cost Rynn her own life.
In the face of dark magic and a foe who strikes from the shadows, Rynn must use her peculiar talents to navigate the ever-shifting landscape of the royal court and unravel the conspiracy before time runs out.
Sunsperch, The Royal Palace
Summer 48 C.E.
The crown had never been Mira’s destiny, and that suited her well enough. Monarchs - at least, those who hoped to die peacefully in their sleep - needed to possess certain qualities. Patience, diplomacy, and a tolerance for prattling courtiers were foremost among them.
As a string of fraught tutors had discovered during her youth, Mira was sorely lacking in these areas.
For the first few years of her life, she did just as she pleased, which chiefly involved raiding the kitchen stores for honey or flinging mud at unwary servants crossing the courtyard. Her first taste of discipline came when King Nerian, beseeched by his staff, at last took an interest in his long-ignored half-sister.
There followed lessons in history and politics, which might as well have been taught in a different language, as far as Mira was concerned. She went through nine teachers in six months, the last one fleeing the palace in tears after she’d tried to bite through his little finger. A bread and water diet subdued her enough to suffer the lessons in grudging silence, but she could never keep her attention on the thick tomes she was expected to absorb.
With hindsight, she could appreciate the consternation she had caused among the privy council. A girl of her position, wisely used, could be valuable. The Cynewulf dynasty was still in its infancy. Marriage to a foreign prince or a powerful noble within their own borders stood to bolster their hold on the throne. The general consensus was that arranging such a match for Mira might provoke a war.
The question of what to do with her remained until her tenth birthday, when she received her first practice sword. After nearly two decades and countless battles, she still remembered how it felt holding that first weapon, the rightness of it. At last, here was something she excelled at.
With the king’s blessing, she left the palace to train under the realm’s finest admiral, the only noble brave-or stupid-enough to take her. Life as a page was more demanding than anything she had experienced in the classroom, but having chosen it, she relished the challenge.
By the time she was twenty, she had command of her own ship. Three years after that, when her lord retired from his position, she rose to the admiralcy.
Nerian was pleased to see his sister happy and usefully occupied. The privy council was relieved to have settled the question of her future. As for Mira, she was content as long as a deck was beneath her feet and a sword was secured at her hip.
The arrangement had worked perfectly, until now.
Mira took a deep breath that did nothing to steady her nerves. It had taken half an hour to talk herself into entering the vault and, once inside, even longer to approach the crown at its centre. Picking up the gods-forsaken thing was beyond her. Every time she tried to raise her hands, they would cooperate no further than a limp twitching in her fingers.
She glowered at the wolf wrought into the crown’s metalwork. The snarling beast had two rubies for eyes, and in the flickering torch light, they seemed to take on a life of their own. They tracked her movements, watching in silent appraisal as one failure followed another.
“You’re nothing,” she muttered, swiping her sweaty palms over her breeches before reaching for the crown once more. “Worth less than the muck on my boots.”
“Have I offended you, Your Highness?”
She jumped, striking the pedestal with her outstretched hand. The crown slid on its velvet cushion, threatening to topple to the floor. Guided by long-trained reflexes, she lunged forward to catch it. Goose pimples erupted up her arms the moment her fingers met the cool metal, and she all but slammed it back into place.
Heart still hammering, she rounded on the intruder. Bryce, her brother’s squire, dropped into a hasty bow as she faced him.
“No more so than usual,” she said between gritted teeth. If the lad’s face had shown a hint of mockery, she would have had him mucking out stables for the rest of the summer, but finding only confusion there, she decided to practice restraint. “I told the guards I wasn’t to be interrupted.”
He bobbed his head. “I’m sorry to intrude, my lady, but the king requests your immediate presence.”
She sucked in a breath. “The privy council have finished their meeting, then?” At his nod, she gave the crown a final glance. “Very well. Lead on.”
As they strode through the palace’s corridors, her stomach churned. It was akin to the frenzy of nerves she felt on the eve of battle, only worse somehow. At least in combat, she had a hand in guiding her fate. Now there was nothing to do but wait for it to be decided for her.
Desperate to seize some control, she questioned Bryce.
“You were at this meeting, yes?” She shot him a sidelong glance. “What was the outcome?”
“I'm sure I'm not important enough to be included in such discussions, Your Highness.”
“Nonsense. I know very well that you would have been there to pour the wine.“
He gave a minute shake of his head, his jaw tensing. “A man in the king's service should close his ears to that which he should not hear.”
“What’s soured your milk?” She snorted, but Bryce said nothing; instead, he fiddled with the dagger sheathed at his hip. The jewelled pommel told her it was too fine a blade for a lad his age. She guessed it was a gift from his parents, much like the sword Nerian had given her when she’d graduated from page to squire. With an internal sigh, she decided to leave him be. Though her fingers itched to cuff him and see whether that shook his tongue loose, she knew well the weight of new expectations. When they reached the king’s study, they found he was not alone. Nerian was deep in conversation with Lord Aldred Ranulph, who was studying a sheaf of parchment so intently that his nose was all but pressed against it. At her knock on the half-opened door, both men looked up.
“Ah, the woman of the hour.” Nerian enfolded her in a brief hug before guiding her to an armchair by the unlit fireplace, then faced Bryce. “Fetch us a tray from the kitchen, then the rest of the afternoon is your own.” He paused, squinting at the lad. “Though if you’ll suffer a suggestion from your king, you’ll get some rest; you’re looking a mite peaky.”
“You’re one to talk,” Mira said after Bryce had bowed his way out of the room. “You look dreadful.”
He grimaced but did not argue with her assertion. The strain of the past few weeks was evident in his face. New lines on his forehead had appeared that were not present at the start of the year, and a few grey strands had sprouted amongst his otherwise honey-coloured hair. “Undoing Father’s laws has been more difficult than I anticipated.” He set out three goblets and filled them from a decanter.
Mira accepted the drink.
“But you’ve succeeded in undoing them?”
“Not quite, but we might have a way around them. Aldred?”
“Hmm?” The old man glanced up from his papers. “Oh, yes.” He turned his watery gaze on Mira. “The problem lies with the Belterran titles you inherited from your mother. When your parents married, there was concern about the crown one day passing to someone with ties to a foreign power. Some of our peers have an unfortunate history of—“
Nerian cleared his throat, giving him a pointed look.
“Right,” Aldred said, his voice high with irritation. “To appease them, your father wrote into law that no one holding a title in another realm may inherit the throne.”
“Well, that takes me out of the running, right?” Although Mira had managed to keep her tone even, her head went light with relief.
“Only if you retain your titles.” Nerian took a sheaf of parchment from the top of Aldred’s stack, along with a quill, and handed them both to Mira. “If you relinquish them, there will be no legal reason why I can’t name you my heir.”
She studied the parchment. The writing was as dense as the language itself, but she discerned enough to realise that, by signing the document, she would renounce any claim to her titles in Belterr. In doing so, she would also sign away her life. The crown princess could not risk her life on the open sea; her future would unfold within the confines of the palace walls.
Her eyes fell to the bottom of the page, where the royal seal was affixed. There was the wolf again, staring up at her from the red wax. She felt the weight of not just its gaze, but Nerian’s too. He had already signed his name as witness, a token of his faith in her - or an obstacle to make it that much more difficult for her to refuse.
In her mind’s eye, Mira saw herself fleeing the palace and boarding the first ship she came across. In reality, she seized the quill and scribbled her name on the document.
“Good woman.” Nerian clapped her on the shoulder. He scooped up the parchment, careful not to smudge the fresh ink, and delivered it to Aldred.
Mira took a deep swig of her drink and spluttered. Squinting into the goblet, she saw a dark red liquid: fyrbrim. Prepared now, she drained the rest, this time relishing the burn as it slid down her throat. By the time Aldred took his leave to enter the document into the archives, a pleasant cloudiness had settled over her thoughts.
“That’s the first barrier removed.” Nerian plopped into the chair opposite Mira’s.
“You mean to say there’s more?”
“We still have to contend with the nobles; sidestepping the law doesn’t change their attitudes.” His gaze slid away. “Leofa’s family might be a problem. They only agreed to our marriage in the hope that it would one day put an heir of their blood on the throne.” He smiled, but the misery in his eyes made Mira’s stomach clench.
“How is she?” she asked softly.
“The healers say she’s improving. Physically, they might be right, but, as for her spirit…“ He trailed off as the door opened to admit Bryce.
If the squire noticed the heavy atmosphere in the room, he had enough discretion not to show it. Instead, he set down his tray, heavily laden with cuts of meat and cheese, and portioned its contents onto plates.
“Our best hope is to be swift,” Nerian resumed, his voice brisk now. “I’ve summoned the noble houses to swear loyalty to you, though, of course, they don’t know that’s why I’ve invited them here. At latest, they should arrive by month’s end.”
“So soon?” Mira rubbed her forehead where a ferocious headache was brewing. “That leaves me little time to learn how to be a queen – even a queen-in-waiting.”
He shot her a lopsided smile. “I've been ruling for near thirty years now, and I’m still not sure I’ve got the hang of it.”
“I don’t know whether you mean to comfort of terrify me,” she said, earning a bark of laughter from him.
Bryce appeared at her side, carrying one of the laden plates. The smell of food made her queasy, but, by now, the fyrbrim was burning a hole in her stomach. Deciding she had better eat something or risk spending the day curled around a chamber pot, she reached up to accept the plate, but Bryce would not relinquish it. He gripped it with enough force to turn his knuckles white, staring down at her with blank eyes.
“Bryce? What are you doing?”
He released the plate, and the sudden absence of force made Mira jerk it over her shoulder, scattering food across the floor. Distracted by the mess, she did not see Bryce's hand move toward the dagger at his hip, but Nerian did. The warning he bellowed saved her life. She rolled from her seat as Bryce plunged his dagger into the chair, where her heart had been a second before.
The shock lasted only a moment before years of training kicked in. As he wrenched the blade free and raised it again, she lunged and grabbed his wrist. The strength she felt beneath her fingers startled her, but the untried lad was still no match for her. She twisted sharply; he cried out in pain and dropped the dagger, which fell to the floor and bounced out of reach.
“Careful,“ Nerian said. “He might still be armed.”
Mira was beyond caution. She grabbed handfuls of Bryce's jerkin and yanked so hard that his feet left the floor. “What in the name of all the gods was that?” she snarled, shaking him.
Bryce was deathly pale, his eyes huge in his head. “I-I don't … I—”
Before he could say anything further, Mira heard the clatter of armoured feet sprinting along the corridor – the palace guard, never far from the king, no doubt alerted by the commotion. Bryce took advantage of the distraction to wrench himself free of her grip.
All three of them dove for the dagger, but Bryce was fastest. Instead of attacking, he only gripped it at his side, wearing the same blank expression he had worn before attacking Mira. He raised the dagger, and both Mira and Nerian realised what he intended to do.
“No!“ they cried in unison, rushing toward him.
They were too slow. Bryce brought the dagger up and, in one swift motion, slashed his throat open.
A king with no heir, a princess forced to abandon her love for the sea and an unlicensed mage trying to save the kingdom from war.
Rogues Folly was fresh, exciting and action packed featuring head strong females, a deceptive plot line and mystery at every turn. Think Game of Thrones minus the dragons with a splash of dark magic and mages.
Reading Rogues Folly feels like an adventure and each page is bursting at the seams with magic and a delicious unknown. This is a “who dunnit” paranormal fantasy style that will keep you on your toes,
Rynn is such a delight to read- resourceful, savvy and just this side of proper- her navigation of each complication is equal parts awe inspiring, comical and straight up entertaining.
The royal court is rife with schemes to overthrow the king and each step closer to the killer leaves more questions than answers.
Can this troop of “jack of all trades” unearth the deception, or will the murderer get their wish of destabilizing the kingdom by crippling the royalty?
This book ends in a cliffhanger prompting a book two that o eagerly anticipate to lay my numerous questions to bed.
Thank you to the author and Reedsy Discovery for providing me with an arc in exchange for a review.