A sweeping fantasy about a witch who must navigate a ruthless marriage competition--and try not to fall in love along the way. Part twisting mystery, part thrilling romance, The gorgeous first edition of Lovett Tamerlane is a silkwitch. Like all girls of her kind, she holds a rare magic--a magic that can be harnessed only through marriage to a Weaver. But finding a Weaver husband requires status, refinement, and money, all of which Lovett sadly lacks. Her one secret ability, to open any door, is her saving grace. Hidden in plain sight, Lovett spends her days using her gift to steal from wealthy families and her nights avoiding the fate imposed on all unwed silkwitches: a life confined to the cloisters. But opening doors can be dangerous, and when Lovett steals from the wrong person, she finds herself face to face with Eliot Lear, the notorious son of a prominent Weaver. It turns out Eliot’s been watching Lovett. He knows she’s a silkwitch, and he offers her a life-altering opportunity: entrance to the Vainglory, a competition with the ultimate prize--marriage to Noé Alaire, heir to generations of Weaver wealth. The catch? Last year, the Vainglory ended in tragedy. The winner died. And the winner was Eliot’s sister. The arrangement is simple: If Lovett solves the mystery of Ophelia Lear’s death and unmasks her killer, Eliot will ensure she has her pick of Weaver suitors, regardless of who wins the competition. Yet unraveling Ophelia’s murder proves far more complicated than either of them anticipated. And Lovett should know better than to take a Weaver at his word. After all . . . what is love without betrayal?

Autorentext

Lydia Gregovic

Leseprobe
Chapter One

It was his watch fob that drew me to him initially. There were plenty of good-­looking men in Balmoore, even more clustered around our nation’s capital, the sea-­battered Isle d’Eylau. But I made my living off picking out the rich.

The chain was discreet: thin, with links of a delicate rosy gold, the watch-­bearing end disappearing into his waistcoat pocket. It wasn’t the only such accessory in the teatime crowd that packed the gilded lobby of the Diplomat, the cosmopolitan seaside hotel in which I currently found myself seated; it wasn’t even the only one at the bar. From where I sat, sipping from my porcelain coffee cup while the afternoon rain beat a litany outside, I could spot two more fobs of similar function. One, silver and as thick as my index finger, glinting on the torso of a bow-­tied man who was staring at the woman a few barstools down with hungry eyes; the other, slipping between the fingers of the younger gentleman she was conversing with. Both accessories, I could tell, were expensive.

And yet, my gaze lingered on each of them for only a moment before drifting back to their less ostentatious sibling—­the first chain I had noticed. Its owner, too, was hunched over the bar, the brim of his bowler hat pulled low over his eyes despite the interior setting, so that the majority of his features were lost to shadow. He was dressed for the day in a slim-­cut morning coat and trousers, both in a slippery ebony shade, and the loose way he was sitting—­slouched as if his muscles were nothing but liquid—­told me that he was likely young, too. Judging by the fact that nearly every lady who passed him by would inexplicably pause as they crossed the lobby, hovering for a half second near him as if their hems had become stuck on an invisible nail, I also assumed he was handsome.

None of this—­his implied attractiveness, the fact that he was clad in the latest fashions—­was unordinary, necessarily. The Diplomat was the kind of place where posh and moneyed people gathered, in a city overrun with the posh and moneyed; even at this relatively early hour, the occupants of its lobby were there to see and be seen. No, what caught my attention about this particular guest was that when the other men shifted in their seats, their watch fobs glittered dully, reflecting the wan stormlight that spilled like pale ale across the entire grand room. But when the owner of the rosy gold watch fob moved, his chain . . . It burned.

It was Woven—­there was no other explanation for the way the metal links screamed with a starfire glow when the light hit them, as if beneath their polished surface lay a molten white core. Though I couldn’t make out the source of the blaze, I was almost positive that, were I to crack open the watch’s fat belly, I would find a single luminescent strand of magesilk encased like a fossil within.

In truth, the moniker was slightly misleading. Contrary to what I’d assumed back when I’d first learned of them, Woven items were not named for their material—­they could be made of metal or cloth or anything in between—­but rather the mage­silk which powered them, spun from the hair of one of Balmoore’s revered silkwitches and containing a fraction of the magic that overflowed in the bodies of girls like me. Had I not been careful to wash my own tresses in my standard, noxious mixture of boiled walnut bark, fig leaves, and wine earlier that very morning, my waves would have shone in the same manner—­though considerably less brightly—­a beacon signaling the sister goddesses’, the Envies’, blessing.

Most likely, the strand of magesilk within this fob had enchanted it so that the hands of the minuscule watch it carried never ticked too loud, or turned out of time, or went still. To be candid, I didn’t care so much about the details of the thing.

I cared about the man who wore it.

As every citizen of Balmoore knew, there were only a couple of ways one could come by a Woven object. If a person had the means, they could purchase or even commission such an item—­but, though as a source of magic, magesilk was incredibly potent, requiring only a single strand to power an enchantment for life, crafting it was a labor-­ and resource-­intensive process. Few had the ability to produce it; fewer still, to afford it.

More likely, the possessor of such an object was a Weaver themself—­a descendant of one of the male sorcerer lines whose roots stretched back further than the founding of our nation, and whose family artisans worked their spinning wheels day and night, turning silkwitches’ shed hair into bespoke trinkets like enchanted watch chains. If that were case, the knickknack I was eyeing was unlikely to be the only such treasure in my target’s collection; somewhere on his person he would be carrying a seal, a magical relic typically shaped into a ring and formed with the first hair given by whichever silkwitch he’d bonded in marriage. But I’d been watching the young fob owner carefully since he sat down, and I had yet to see the flash of the usual ostentatious band around his finger. Neither did his suit bear the trademark spinning wheel insignia, which all Weavers wore proudly to distinguish themselves.

Which left only the other option: If this boy was not wed to a silkwitch—­not a Weaver himself—­it must mean he was another, equally elusive and rare, creature.

An incredibly single, incredibly rich man.

The perfect quarry.

I glanced at the clock hanging over the bar. It was currently a quarter to four, which meant I had precisely fifteen minutes before I needed to ascend the Diplomat’s floors to room twenty-­three, where Mrs. Catherine Pierce’s valet—­a stern-­faced man named Guillaume—­was awaiting me. Not much time, but if I was efficient, plenty to do the work that I needed.

Pushing my coffee cup aside, I slipped the loop of my embroidered reticule around my wrist …