A Sparrow Stole My Place as Heir novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Gift on the Wrong Table
At his coming-of-age feast Daelan watches his eldest sister hand his mother's gift to a sparrow, takes it back, calls the Crown of the First Sun, and forces the Mirror of True Forms into the open, only for his father to order it covered.
At my coming-of-age feast, my eldest sister handed my mother's gift to a sparrow.
The whole hall watched her do it.
She stood on the dais with the gift open across her palms, and gold light poured off its pages.
Beside her stood the sparrow, in the human shape he had worn for a year.
His grey coat was stitched with sun-thread that was never made for him.
"Mother would have wanted it to go to someone who sings for us," my sister said.
Behind her, my eight other sisters nodded.
I stood at the foot of the dais with a full cup of feast wine in my hand.
I knew this moment.
The first time, I had bowed my head and thanked them for the honor.
By the end of that week I was dead, locked in my mother's tomb under this hall, listening for a footstep that never came.
I set the cup down on the nearest table.
"That's mine," I said.
Nobody heard me over the bells.
I walked up the steps.
The sparrow saw me coming and smiled, small and sorry, with his head tilted.
"Daelan, please, I never asked for anything," said Perrin Wick.
"Then you won't mind giving it back."
My eldest sister, Thessaly, lifted the Atlas of Dominion toward him anyway, and his fingers closed on the gold cover.
He cried out and let go.
The Atlas did not fall.
It rose out of the air and settled into my hands, warm, as it had been the day my mother wrapped it.
The burn on Perrin's palms showed red in front of everyone.
The hall went quiet.
"You hurt him," Thessaly said.
"It answers to my mother's blood. He put his hands on it."
"He's a guest at your feast."
"He's a guest at my mother's table, and he was about to leave with her gift."
A heavy hand closed around my arm.
The God of Horses had come down from his bench.
He was a broad, red-bearded god who kept my mother's sun-team, and he had never once looked me in the eye.
"Sit down, little sun," he said. "You've frightened the boy. Sit, or I'll sit you."
I looked at his hand on my sleeve.
I knew that hand.
The first time, it had held both my arms behind me while my sisters carried the key to the Vault.
"Let go," I said.
"Or what?"
I had waited a whole life to answer that.
I closed my fist on the Atlas and called what my mother had left me beyond it.
Light came up from the floor of the hall and gathered over my head.
A circle of white fire settled on my brow, the Crown of the First Sun.
Every god in the room turned a shoulder or threw up a sleeve against it.
The God of Horses let go and stumbled back against the bench.
"The Crown doesn't ask who's seated," I said. "It asks who's heir."
I looked at the guards along the wall.
"Take the reins of my mother's team from this god, and chain him at the Sky Gate until I decide his sentence."
Two guards hesitated, and then they came.
Nobody in that hall had ever heard me raise my voice.
"Daelan, stop," said Thessaly.
Her cold amber eyes had gone hard.
"You will apologise to Perrin. And to me. Now, in front of everyone."
"Apologise," said the sister of Noon.
"Apologise," said the sister of Dusk.
Seven more voices took it up behind them, one after another, until it filled the roof.
Only Wynne, the youngest, stayed silent, her bitten fingers knotted in her braid.
In the front row, Maelis Fairwater rose from beside Perrin's chair.
She was my betrothed, in a pale blue gown, with her long black hair down her back.
She turned a thin gold thread around her left wrist, over and over.
I realized I had never seen it on her before.
"Daelan," she said gently, "he's only a guest. Please, not in front of the whole court."
It was the voice she used on children.
It had been just as smooth the first time, too.
"I don't owe him an apology," I said. "I'll show you what he is."
"You can't show us anything," Thessaly said. "You're only jealous."
"Then let the Mirror of True Forms say it."
Thessaly's mouth tightened, but she had picked the fight and the whole court was listening.
"Maelis," she said. "Bring it."
Two servants carried the tall Mirror down the hall under its black cloth.
The Fairwaters had kept it for ten thousand years, and it never left their house uncovered.
They stood it in front of Perrin.
"Pull the cloth," I said.
A servant pulled.
The glass was clear and bright, and it showed the whole hall, every god and every candle.
Where Perrin stood, it showed a small brown sparrow in a pile of grey cloth, its beak open, one wing hanging.
A woman near the front made a sound and covered her mouth.
Perrin looked at the glass, and then at me, and his face did not change.
It was Thessaly who broke the silence.
"Put the cloth back," she said.
At the head of the hall, my father the High King set down his goblet.
"Cover it," said Osric Sunward. "Daelan. Apologise to your sister."
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