NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this poignant, heartfelt novella from the New York Times bestselling author of Spinning Silver and the Scholomance trilogy, a young witch who has inadvertently cursed her brother to live a life without love must find a way to undo her spell. A CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Celia discovered her talent for magic on the day her beloved oldest brother, Argent, left home. Furious at him for abandoning her in a war-torn land, she lashed out, not realizing her childish, angry words would become imbued with the power of prophecy, dooming him to a life without love. While Argent wanders the world, forced to seek only fame and glory instead of the love and belonging he truly desires, Celia attempts to undo the curse she placed on him. Yet even as she grows from a girl to a woman, she cannot find the solution—until she learns the truth about the centuries-old war between her own people and the summerlings, immortal beings who hold a relentless grudge against their mortal neighbors. Now, with the aid of her unwanted middle brother, Celia may be able to both undo her eldest brother’s curse and heal the lands so long torn apart by the Summer War. Naomi Novik has written the Scholomance trilogy, the novels Uprooted and Spinning Silver , and the Temeraire series. She is a founder of the Archive of Our Own. Celia was twelve years old on the day she cursed her brother. She had two brothers, but she didn’t count Roric, the middle child, because no one did. He was a thin sour weasel who glared at her whenever he saw her, and almost not a real son of the house. His mother—there had been three wives in a row, one to get each child—had just been a temporary mistress, common-born; Father hadn’t meant to marry her at all. Everyone knew that her son didn’t really matter. But Celia’s oldest brother Argent, whose mother had been the daughter of an earl, mattered in every way there was. He was Father’s heir and the best knight in the world, so everyone said. Argent was very handsome, too, with black hair that curled and blue-grey eyes, and he’d played with Celia ever since she’d been born. He’d been trained at home, instead of being sent to the king’s circle, and she’d run after him as soon as she could run. The summer war had been over since before Celia had been born—Father had won it for Prosper, which was how he had become Grand Duke Veris—and now only the summer games took place instead, but Argent trained just as hard as if his life depended on it. Each day Celia hurried through her work so she could go sit in the hall that faced the training yard, even though it was cold in winter and hot in summer, and watch him at his endless sword and javelin drills and riding exercises. Sometimes he would toss her shrieking in delight up into the air, and run around the yard carrying her on his back, and he dressed her up and braided her hair like a doll, and when she was older, he taught her how to dance and ride and shoot a bow. She never got very good with the bow, but he was patient, and even when all her arrows ended up scattered flat over the ground, at least ten feet away from the target, he only laughed and said, “Don’t worry, Celie; if anyone ever tries to hurt you, I’ll be there to stop them.” And she said, “Do you promise?” and he said, “On my honor, my lady,” and bowed to her deeply, just like a knight out of a summer story. When he turned nineteen, Father armed him in fine steel and let him go to the summer games, and almost at once every song-spinner who came to Castle Todholme—and many of them came, because they all hoped to get a bit of story from Father, or at least to be able to say, “Grand Duke Veris, who lately hosted me at Todholme,” the next time they told one of the stories about the end of the summer war—began to say that he was the best knight in the world. He had won three challenges against summer knights on his first day, and they’d started quarreling amongst themselves for the right to face him. Celia would rather have had him back home, but it was a consolation to have such stories about him. And they pleased her father, who was very hard to please. She could only please him herself with courtesy, if guests came and she hosted for him like a great lady, so their cups were always filled and the conversation never flagged, and they told her father that she would grace the tables of a king. Then when they left he would tell her, “You behaved well,” and give her some money to buy a new dress, and she would use half the money for the dress, and the rest to buy a book full of summer stories. But her father was even more pleased when people told him that Argent was the best knight in the world. Summer in Prosper lasted almost five months, longer than in the rest of the mortal world, because they shared a border with the Summer Lands. They could grow an extra crop each year, and make wine and silk and sugar, so it had made them much richer than all their other