Spindle (Two Monarchies Sequence Book 1) Read Free

jealousy, not to mention a nasty way with magic, had made Poly’s life a short, interesting, and bitter one as the princess’ lady-in-waiting.
    She was still gazing at her books when the wizard’s voice said in her ear: “What did you do to my spell?”
    Poly hunched her shoulders against the tickle of his breath on her ear. “I didn’t do anything to it.”
    When she turned around the wizard was looking at her with glassy, distant eyes. “Yes, you did. You’re a very bothersome young woman.”
    Poly would have liked to tell him that if his spells didn’t work it was his own fault, but she had learned from bitter experience that it was unwise for a person without magical abilities to antagonise those who did . The princess had made the lives of her ladies-in-waiting unpleasant enough, but that two of those ladies-in-waiting also had magic while Poly didn’t, had made her the odd man out. She had learned very quickly that there are a hundred ways in which someone with magic can make someone without very uncomfortable.
    Poly yawned and swayed slightly. The thrumming had become a steady hum in her head, lulling her to sleep even as she delved through her memories. An insistent prodding in one shoulder woke her slightly: the wizard was poking her experimentally with his forefinger.
    “Oh, you are awake,” he said, tilting his head back to gaze at her as though he were inspecting an insect. Poly blinked sleepily and frowned, her hair rising and curling in the air. She distantly felt the wizard slide between tendrils of her hair to curl one arm around her waist, then there was a swift, disorienting Shift, and they were outside the castle.
    Poly, jolted forcibly back into the present by the sudden change, watched in shaken silence as the castle collapsed in a mushrooming cloud of dust and rubble. Her hair blew up and away in a rush of dusty air that made her sneeze, then gradually wafted back around her. She thought it was still moving slightly even when the breeze petered out.
    The wizard was picking about in the rubble when it came to Poly’s attention that something sharply uncomfortable was digging into her ribs. She shook herself, eyes heavy, and blinked down at the three books that were clasped in her arms. They were the same size and neatly stacked, corners safely pointing outwards, but as she pulled them away from herself, something rolled woodenly across the cover boards. Poly caught it before it fell into the rubble and found herself holding a small wooden spindle. It had delicate curls carved into the whorl and a design of leaves etched along the barrel: a spindle for decoration, not real use.
    The wizard looked up from his rubble-trawling. “What’s that?”
    “Nothing,” Poly said automatically, curling her fingers back around it.
    He shrugged and turned his back, gazing away from the castle. Poly looked up, conscious of a feeling of stifling closeness, and discovered that an impossibly tall, thorny hedge had grown up where the moat used to be. So tall and curving was it that it blocked both light and sight of the first two suns in the triad. The weakest, third sun was still in sight, but it was setting and its light was more drear than bright.
    Poly clutched her books closer in cold disbelief, following the line of the hedge until she could see that it stretched around the entire castle, pile of rubble that it now was. The stillness in the air suggested that it was miles thick. Poly swallowed, her throat dry. What in the world had happened to the castle, and why did it feel like it was her fault?
    “How did you get through that?” she asked the wizard, finding a more comfortable question to ask.
    “The incantation they used had a mistake in it,” the wizard murmured, looking at her with unfocused eyes and then away again without recognition. “Shut up. I need to find it again.”
    Poly frowned, pushing up her glasses. If there had been a mistake in the incantation, it had righted