Kingdom of Scourge and Shadow (The Sightstone Series #1)

Chapter Three: Alina

"Once known as the Order of Magiiy and using Old Saroviyan nomenclature for its sub-sects and divisions, in common times, it has come to be known as the Order of Mages as modern linguistic naming conventions have taken over. But, in all other things, the Order of Mages remains the same as it was when it was founded nearly four centuries ago. Change, to Saroviyan mages, may as well be a dirty word."

-Vasiliy Obolensky, historian, A Brief Military History of Saroviya

***

The Royal Palace, Kirovburg, Saroviya,

20th of Blood Moon

The window was cold beneath Alina's palm. It grounded her, centered her, the cold. And, today, she needed it. Today, the king was returning from his royal progress, and Alina's services would be needed. They were always needed.

She had never known, before, how lonely a palace could be. As a child, she'd thought that a palace, as a place that housed hundreds of people and saw even more come and go every day, must be the most exciting place to live. She thought of ladies, dining with queens and princesses, and gentlemen to bring those fine ladies flowers and sweets.

But the reality was different.

Everyone at the Royal Palace had agendas, and they changed every day. If a gentleman brought a lady a gift, it was because he wanted something–from her, from her family, from the people who liked, or even disliked, her. And, just when you thought you'd figured out everyone's agendas, they changed. That was the nature of power in a palace, and Alina, like everyone else, was just another pawn for the powerful to manipulate.

She'd never really been welcome at court, she knew.

Even the way she looked, even the blood in her veins, was unwelcome. She heard the whispers, when her back was turned. "Northern savage," they called her. "The Skellan bastards didn't want her, so they dumped her with us," they said, and worse.

Because she had the blood of the enemy in her veins. The war with Skelland, in the north, had raged for time out of mind, and Saroviyans had long been conditioned to see the Skellan people as other, as outsiders, as dangerous. And Alina looked enough like them to arouse people's suspicions. To them, she would always be half-Skellan, and that would never be a good thing.

Behind her, she could hear the rise and fall of the courtiers' voices, annoyingly shrill and incessant, rather, Alina reflected, like parrots. They were gossiping; they were always gossiping.

Today's topic of choice was whether Lord-So-And-So and Lady-What's-Her-Name were really having an affair, or whether Countess-Whatever-Who-Cares was wrong, and, if she was wrong, did that mean that she was the one having an affair with Lord-So-And-So, and was she trying to cover it up? Or was Lord-So-And-So having an affair with Baroness Doesn't-Matter, and Countess Whatever-Who-Cares got her and Lady What's-Her-Name mixed up?

Already, it was giving Alina a headache. She marvelled that the lot of them could be so shallow. Of course, what could she expect from the self-same people who paid a fortune for mages like her to use their work to wipe away all their imperfections. Yesterday, she'd spent over an hour smoothing away the queen's wrinkles, and then, no sooner had she finally finished, the queen's Chief Lady-in-Waiting had wanted her wrinkles done, too, and the queen had insisted that Alina take care of it, and now Alina thought she might scream if she ever saw another wrinkle.

She sighed and let her hand fall back down to her side, brushing against her white uniform. She'd been brought to Kirovburg to serve in the military, as all mages were bound by law to do. But, when she'd arrived, instead of training with the other mages and deploying to one of the fronts, she had, as soon as she'd shown a flash of talent beyond the usual, instead been trained to replace the king's personal physician, and she'd been alone since then.