Kira Pelmont's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Kira Pelmont pinned the butterfly to her writing desk before she read the letter again. The insect had come that morning inside a folded page, its emerald wings still twitching, a single gold spot on each side like a coin pressed into leaf. In her duchy, the sending of a live starwing meant one thing: a claim on the seat. Someone at her court was telling the other houses that her blood was thinned, that a cousin held the older line, that Eucalypt would be better served by a quieter hand. She had heard the whisper three times in a week. She still did not know the mouth it came from. She smoothed the letter flat. It named no sender. It named no rival. It only asked, in a clerk's careful hand, whether the duchess intended to answer the question of her legitimacy before the winter council or after. Kira called for her steward and gave two orders. Arrest the messenger who brought the butterfly. Hold every letter leaving the keep until she had read it. The steward went pale and obeyed. An hour later he returned. The messenger was a stable boy who could not read. The butterfly had been left on a windowsill by a hand no one saw. And word of the arrest had already reached the great hall, where three lesser lords were now asking, loudly, why the duchess was seizing servants and stopping the post over a bug in a box. Kira stood at the window and watched a groom lead her horses across the yard. She had moved before she had a name, and the court had seen her move. She unpinned the butterfly and dropped it into the fire. The gold spots blackened first. She would need a different hunt now, one that did not look like a hunt at all, and she would need it before the winter council sat.