Chapter 1: A Prologue, Of Sorts

When she was a young child, perhaps five or six years old, Regina discovered the kitchens that were tucked away underground in a back corner of the manor house.

She'd never really thought about it before: where the food came from. It appeared on a tray in the corner of the nursery, the same every morning, not a tea spoon or crumb of bread out of place. She would eat alone, or under the hawk eyes of the nursemaid, and then the tray would disappear and come back again at regular hours with toast or tea or supper.

But one autumn afternoon she'd lost a marble down the steps of the forbidden staircase—the one hidden behind the walls, with the rest of the dirty things—and there they were: a whole world of people scurrying like mice through narrow, darkened hallways, carrying trays and buckets of cloudy water and shouting at each other in accented voices.

At first, nobody seemed to notice Regina standing halfway up the stairs, marble all but forgotten. Then an old woman in a stained brown dress came briskly through a doorway, wiping her hands on a rag. Catching Regina's eye, she froze, her wrinkled face pulling into a frown.

"Girl, what are you doing down here?"

Regina, unused to speaking to anyone apart from the nursemaid, found her voice had deserted her.

"I—I lost my marble," she managed after a moment.

"Well, did you find it?" the woman asked, tucking the rag into a belt at her waist.

"No."

The woman seemed to consider her. "If your mother catches you down here, little lady, we'll both face her wrath."

Regina shivered at the dark look in the woman's warm eyes, remembering the steel-cold touch of her mother's magic on her skin. But she felt a bit bold, standing on the forbidden staircase.

"My mother never comes to dirty places," she said knowingly. "She won't look for me here."

The woman stared at her. Then her face crinkled up and she let out a sudden bark of laughter.

"Alright then," the woman said, holding out a hand for Regina to take. "Let's find your marble."

The next afternoon, Regina dropped a rabbit figurine down the stairs. The next, she couldn't find one of her slippers. And the next, the woman beckoned her into the kitchens without waiting to hear what Regina had lost.

The woman, Regina learned, was called Nadine. She had two grown up sons—a farmer and a soldier—and she'd come from Regina's father's land to cook in Prince Henry and Lady Cora's kitchen when they had been first married.

Nadine taught Regina how to roll her tongue through words like arroz and carne; how to peel potatoes so the skin came off in a single spiral ribbon; how to build a broth from water and roots and spices. And while everything was bubbling away in a pot, she would take Regina's hand and show her how to hold her skirt and hop-step, hop-step like she had as a girl in her village hall on summer nights.

Regina loved the kitchen. She loved the crackling fire and the perfume of the herbs hanging overhead and the way it felt to make things come together into something more than they were before. She loved the long curtains of yellow sun streaming down from the high window and the way it warmed the worn stone floor under her feet. She loved the smoke-and-honey sound of Nadine's voice when she sang, and the way it drifted up like the steam from the pots and wrapped them into their own little world.

At night, when the shadows of the too-dark nursery seemed to press in around her, Regina would pull the blankets tightly across her chest and pretend they were Nadine's arms holding her, pretend that she was Nadine's little girl and that her life in the manor house was a mistake. She would dream of herself in simple brown dresses, running through the wheat fields of her father's homeland, eating asopao from wooden bowls at a rough kitchen table, hearing the richness of smiles in people's voices as they spoke around her, feeling their kindness like a warmth in her hands.

And then one day she came down the stairs and the kitchen was quiet. Empty. She called for Nadine, but no one answered. She walked up and down the halls, hoping for a flash of brown skirts or white hair. Sooty-faced chambermaids and footmen with polishing rags hurried around her, not noticing the tears stinging Regina's eyes.

She came back to the foot of the stairs and saw her mother standing there in a blue silk gown.

"My dear," Cora said, her voice curled like a sleeping tiger. "You know this is no place for a lady."

Regina twisted her hands together, avoiding her mother's eyes. "I was—I was just—"

"Looking for your friend the cook." Cora swept down the stairs and gathered Regina into her arms. "I know, dear."

Regina stiffened, her mother's perfume sickly sweet in her nose.

Cora pulled back and smiled at Regina. Her eyes were gentle and loud and hard. "But she's not here. She's gone and she's not coming back. And neither are you."

Regina gasped, understanding tightening her chest before the thought of Nadine gone could really settle in her mind.

"It's for the best, my dear," Cora said breezily. "Come along."

Her mother's hand was cold around Regina's wrist as she pulled her up the stairs.

Regina never asked where Nadine went. For a while she supposed that, like most people, Nadine had found somewhere better to be. Regina imagined her at home with one of her sons, dancing under the stars with flowers in her white hair, chopping herbs in the kitchen with a little rosy-cheeked child.

It wasn't until she watched her mother pull the heart from Daniel's chest that she realized—stupidly, belatedly—what had truly happened.

Now the little girl with the marble is as dead as the rest of them, suffocated under the years of hate and blood and magic. And magic is at the root of it all.