Deep Is the Fen - Hardcover

Wilkinson, Lili

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593562704 ISBN 13: 9780593562703

Verlag: Delacorte Press, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

Get lost in the newest fantasy from the author of A Hunger of Thorns, on a beguiling journey behind the closed doors of a sinister secret society. Featuring a steamy enemies-to-lovers romance and a fight for the witching world that will get your heart racing.

Merry doesn’t need a happily-ever-after. Her life in the charming, idyllic town of Candlecott is fine just as it is. Simple, happy, and with absolutely no magic. Magic only ever leads to trouble.

But Merry’s best friend, Teddy, is joining the Toadmen—a secret society who specialize in backward thinking and suspiciously supernatural traditions—and Merry is determined to stop him. Even if it means teaming up with the person she hates most: her academic archnemesis, Caraway Boswell, an ice-cold snob who hides his true face under a glamour.

An ancient Toad ritual is being held in the sinister Deeping Fen, and if Merry doesn’t rescue Teddy before it’s finished, she’ll lose him forever. But the Toadmen have been keeping dangerous secrets, and so has Caraway. The farther Merry travels into Deeping Fen’s foul waters, the more she wonders if she’s truly come to save her friend . . . or if she’s walking straight into a trap.

There’s nothing the Toadmen love more than a damsel  in distress.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lili Wilkinson is the author of nineteen novels published in Australia, including Green Valentine, The Boundless Sublime, and After the Lights Go Out. She established the Inky Awards at the Centre for Youth Literature, State Library of Victoria. Lili has a PhD in creative writing from the University of Melbourne and spends most of her time reading and writing books for teenagers. Her fantasy novels include A Hunger of Thorns and Deep Is the Fen.

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1.


Teddy has filched a bottle of wassail from his da’s cellar. He pours it out like it’s liquid gold, and we each take a thimble-sized glass.

“To us,” he says, smiling at Sol and me. “The three best friends that ever were. To unshakable loyalty and unbreakable bonds. Happy Whitsuntide.”

Sol drums the floorboards with his heels, his cheeks glowing.

I love them both so much. I want to stay in this moment forever. The three of us, together and young and happy.

I look threadwise, refocusing my eyes slightly to see the mettle floating around us, silvery strands of life-force. I’m no witch, but I can see mettle, and recognize who or where it came from, in the same way I can track a rabbit or a fox in the woods. The mettle between the three of us is connected--intricately braided together over the years of our friendship. We’re inseparable, and that’s the way I want it to stay.

They’re waiting for me. I clink my glass against each of theirs, careful to make eye contact as I do so.

The wassail is as strong as it always is, all cloves and hyssop, and we each wince and gag, swallowing it like medicine.

Teddy holds out the bottle. “More?”

Sol makes a face. “Ugh, no.”

“Merry?”

I shake my head. Even that one thimble-sized glass is enough to make me feel warm and a bit blurry around the edges. But Teddy refills his own glass and downs it in one gulp.

We are ensconced in the sitting room in the house where Sol lives with his aunt, surrounded by open chip packets and cans of fizzy drink. We’ve been playing twlbwrdd--an enchanted Ilium set where the king piece crumbles to dust when he is captured and the maidens stain red if they get captured by a liegeman. We’ve been here since midafternoon, and Teddy and Sol have filled the air with the musky scent of teenage boy. I get up and open a window, breathing in the sweetness of the night. In the distance, I hear the faint jingling of bells, and the tramping of feet.

Whitsun Eve is our night. Our families are always off celebrating, either at the Rose and Crown, or in Da’s case at the Frater House with the other Toadmen. It’s a night steeped in ancient tradition, and we have our own traditions too. Battered haddock, scampi and scallops with chips and mushy peas from Branwyn’s fish shop. Cans of redcurrant fizz and packets of cheese puffs. We play games and just generally flop around and enjoy knowing that school is over and we have the whole glorious summer stretching before us.

“We should go camping,” I say. “Up to Dryad’s Saddle or farther, to Fish Creek. We could leave the day after tomorrow.”

“Watch your king,” Sol murmurs to Teddy.

“I can’t go until after next Thursday,” Teddy says, moving his king piece behind the shield wall.

“Why not?” I slide another maiden into position.

He hesitates for just a moment before answering. “I’m needed at the forge.”

Something in his tone is off. Teddy’s a terrible liar. I look over at Sol, who is busy studying the board, and I get a sudden, awful feeling that they’re hiding something from me.

“I thought Wayland was giving you the whole summer off?”

Teddy shrugs. “It’s just a few extra days.”

“We can go next Friday,” Sol says. “Forecast says it’ll rain this weekend anyway. I vote for Dryad’s Saddle--we’ll see if the damson plum is fruiting this year, and we can explore more of the cave we found behind the falls.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Teddy turns another of my maidens red, and Sol slips his black raven around the edge of the board where there’s a gap in Teddy’s shield wall.

The tension leaves my shoulders as I remember last summer, our lips and fingers stained purple from damson, lazing by the banks of the Mira and falling asleep under the stars.

“You’ll never get through,” Teddy informs me, capturing another maiden. “Admit it, I win.”

I glance at Sol, whose mouth twitches in a suppressed smile.

“Never,” I tell Teddy. “A shield maiden fights to the end.”

He laughs. “Oh, Merry,” he says. “Always so competitive. Is being joint dux of our school not enough for you?”

He leans on the word joint, because he knows it rankles. Never before in the history of Candlecott School have there been two duxes. I’m certain that I’m the rightful one, and that Caraway Boswell’s father increased his endowment because he couldn’t stand the idea of his precious son coming second.

Teddy takes advantage of my brief moment of seething resentment and turns my last maiden red. He lets out a shout of triumph. “Bow before your king!”

I curtsy theatrically. “A mighty show of strength, my lord. Just not quite mighty enough.”

Teddy looks back down at the board as Sol moves his raven into the castle. Teddy swears good-naturedly as his king crumbles into glittering black dust.

“Again?” Sol asks, sweeping the pieces back into the box to reset them.

Teddy leans back and stretches lazily. He’s effortlessly handsome in jeans and a slouchy pullover, square-jawed and hazel-eyed, his golden hair swept over his brow. Something catches in my chest when I look at him. We were seven years old when I made the rule. We swore a blood oath, the three of us, to be best friends forever. And I made Teddy and Sol swear that they would never fall in love with me. I knew that any romance would upset the balance between us--the perfect harmony of three friends. And I was seven, then. Romance was the furthest thing from my mind.

But now I’m seventeen, and Teddy is the leading man in all my nighttime fantasies.

One of the twlbwrdd maidens slips from Sol’s fingers and tumbles to the floor.

“Curses,” he says, picking up the broken pieces. “Why do they make them so fragile?”

“I can fix it,” Teddy says.

He takes the pieces from Sol and frowns at them, concentrating. I look at him threadwise to see ghostly hands manipulating the mettle of the little stone fragments, pulling them back together, drawing on energy from other things in the room--daffodils in a vase, the rising bubbles from his can of redcurrant fizz, the fingerprints in the clay statue on the mantelpiece. He whispers to himself as he works, muttering song lyrics or a nursery rhyme--there is mettle in oft-repeated words.

The stone maiden clicks together, good as new. Teddy hands it back to Sol and then turns to me, already defensive.

“What?” he says.

I shake my head. “You know what. You should be more careful.”

“I’m not the one who dropped it.”

“Was that a covenant spell?” I ask.

Teddy shrugs.

“Teddy .”

There are one hundred legal spells in Anglyon. Covenant magic. All other magic is illegal, unless it’s being done by one of the big magic corporations. But Teddy knows it’s not the legality of magic that upsets me. It’s been four years since Ma died, but it still hurts. Some days the grief is as sharp as if it were yesterday.

Sol puts the piece back in the box. “Probably enough twlbwrdd for one night,” he says brightly. “Shall we play cards?”

Sol is always trying to make peace between Teddy and me. But I’m just so angry at Teddy. At how carelessly he flaunts his...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Delacorte Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593562704
• ISBN 13: 9780593562703
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 416
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchpark GmbH; gpsr@buchpark.de; ; Krügerweg 1; Trebbin; Brandenburg; 14959; Deutschland