Keeper of Enchanted Rooms
Charlie N. Holmberg
Prologue
May 17, 1818, London, England
Silas took up the brush and started smoothing Marybelle’s coat, even though the stable hands had already tended her. It was late, the sun long since set, and most of the servants had already turned in. But Silas liked being out in the stables. He’d gotten used to the smell. There was something peaceful about the animals, who stood and endured their confined spaces with little complaint. Just as he did.
The horse in the next stall over nosed the back of his head, blowing warm air over his neck. Smiling, Silas reached back and stroked the velvet between the animal’s nostrils. “I’ll get you next.” He ran the short-bristled brush over Marybelle’s flank. Inhaled the scents of horseflesh and hay. Relaxed as much as his sixteen-year-old frame would let him. A few lights still shined through the house windows; he imagined his mother was having her hair wound into curling papers right about now. He should turn in, too. His new arithmetic tutor would be arriving early tomorrow to train him for Oxford, or maybe Cambridge.
He heard the sound of another horse walking before he picked up the stuttering gait of the man leading it. His stomach tightened. He glanced to the back of Marybelle’s stall. Enough room to squat down and hide, but if he was seen, there’d be no opportunity to escape. Instead, Silas set the brush aside and carefully unlatched the stall door, hoping to sneak around back and enter the house through the servants’ door.
He’d almost made it into the shadows when his father’s voice called, “Who goes there?”
Silas cringed at the slurred words. His father was drunk. But if he kept walking, his father might think him one of the staff—
“Silas!” he barked.
Dread filled Silas’s gut as he turned. “Want me to help you with the horse?” He had a sliver of luck in his blood, inherited from his grandmother. He prayed it would cooperate with him now.
His father had a lead on the animal, but the mare seemed to be all that held him up. He had a bottle in his hand, and his cheeks slouched like he’d aged himself into jowls. He was never this drunk. Silas couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad one.
Not taking his eyes from Silas, his father crooked a finger. The bolt on the nearest empty stall clicked, and the door swung open. Silas couldn’t blame his father for using magic; in his condition, it was probably easier than stabling the horse physically.
But his father didn’t put the horse away. An invisible hand shoved against Silas’s back, drawing him close enough to smell the whiskey wafting off his father like mist off the sea. And when the hand shoved him into the stall, Silas’s nerves lit up, every last one of them, until his blood raced and his skin burned.
“L-Let me get you to bed,” he said.
His father stepped into the stall and closed the door, leaning heavily on it for the stiffness the magic had left in his legs. “Excused me,” he rumbled. “They excused me. For”—he laughed—“drunken behavior.”
Silas peered beyond the stable, praying a servant, his mother, his brother, anyone would come by. “Who excused you?”
“King’s League.”
His stomach plummeted. “You were dismissed?” No wonder he was so drunk. Both of Silas’s parents were members of the King’s League of Magicians. They’d practically been groomed for it from birth.
Oh no. This wasn’t going to be good for him. Silas held his hands up, palms out, as though calming a rabid dog. “Let’s get food in your stomach—”
His father threw the bottle. It collided with Silas’s shoulder. A spell—the same one his father had used to pull him in here—burned in Silas’s blood, begging to be released, but he didn’t use it. It always made his father angrier when he used magic. His father hated that Silas had more magic than he did, thanks to the added pedigree of his mother.
Silas didn’t defend himself when the first fist struck, nor the second. This was habitual, for them. It passed quicker when he took it. Another blow, another. Any moment now, his father would be done, and he’d sneak back inside, find something to nurse the bruises—
The kick to his ribs cracked bone and ripped air from his lungs.
His weakest spell, luck, was not with him today.
Silas slammed into the back wall. This is wrong. His father had never broken a bone before, and—
Dizziness engulfed him. A blow to the head. Silas didn’t remember falling to his knees. His skull radiated pain. Had he been hit with the bottle, or a kinetic pulse?