No matter how many cases she solves, Marlow Briggs is still haunted by the mystery of her mother’s disappearance…
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Garden of the Cursed by Katy Rose Pool, out from Henry Holt and Co. on June 20.
Since fleeing the gilded halls of Evergarden for the muck-filled canals of the Marshes, Marlow Briggs has made a name for herself as the best cursebreaker in Caraza City. But no matter how many cases she solves, she is still haunted by the mystery of her mother’s disappearance.
When Adrius Falcrest, Marlow’s old friend and scion of one of Caraza’s most affluent spell-making families, asks her to help break a life-threatening curse, Marlow wants nothing to do with the boy who spurned her a year ago. But a new lead in her mother’s case makes Marlow realize that the only way to get the answers she desperately seeks is to help Adrius and return to Evergarden society—even if it means suffering through a fake love affair with him to avoid drawing suspicion from the conniving Five Families.
As the investigation draws Marlow into a web of deadly secrets and powerful enemies, a shocking truth emerges: Adrius’s curse and her mother’s disappearance may just be clues to an even larger mystery, one that could unravel the very foundations of Caraza and magic itself.
Marlow wondered, as her pulse thundered in her head, which god in the Pantheon of the Ever-Drowning Mangrove she’d pissed off this time. Because clearly, someone was out to ruin her life.
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Garden of the Cursed
“What, no hello?” Adrius asked, swinging his legs off the desk. Today’s rich carmine jacket and open-collared cream shirt were much more casual than the outfit he’d worn at the theater the night before, but he still looked perfectly polished. “Do they not have hospitality in the Marshes?”
It took Marlow several calming breaths to find her voice. “How did you get in here?”
He drummed his fingers on the desk. “Pretty simple lock-picking spell. You should really update your wards.”
Marlow wanted to laugh. “If I’d known I was in danger of surprise visits from you, I would have.”
Not that it would have mattered. As a scion of one of the Five Families, Adrius had access to spells she couldn’t even dream of. No ward would be strong enough to keep him out.
The corner of Adrius’s mouth quirked up. “You never complained about my surprise visits before.”
Back in Evergarden, it had not been unusual for Marlow to find Adrius much like this, lounging in the apartment she shared with her mother in Vale Tower. He usually appeared whenever there was some function at Vale Tower—inevitably Adrius would slip away and show up in Marlow’s living room complaining that the party was so dull, or that Silvan was being particularly irritating that day. He’d then inform Marlow it was her responsibility to entertain him. Sometimes, Marlow indulged him, teaching Adrius to play Casters or roping him into silly pranks. Other times, she would insist she had schoolwork or chores, and inevitably Adrius would end up coaxing her away from her obligations anyway.
From the beginning, their friendship had existed on Adrius’s terms.
She drew her spine straight. “Are you planning on telling me what in the mucking brack you’re doing in my house?”
“Do you call this a house?” he wondered, his gaze sweeping from the boxy kitchen huddled in the corner, over the slouching table propped up by old boxes from the Bowery, to the tattered sheet that hung across the far wall. “I didn’t know they made flats this small. It’s… cozy.”
It was cluttered and cramped and felt somehow even smaller with Adrius inside it. As if his presence spilled out into every nook and cranny like incendiary light.
She needed him gone.
“You haven’t answered my question.” She eyed Toad, who was cheerfully licking at the dropped fish fry.
“What am I doing here?” He circled around the desk to perch on the edge, arranging the lean, elegant lines of his body to greatest advantage. Marlow wondered if he even realized he was doing it, or if posing and posturing just came second-nature to him. “I thought I might hire a good cursebreaker. Know any?”
He was looking at her in that arch way of his, honey-gold eyes framed by thick, dark lashes, full lips pressing down a smile, like maybe all this was a joke and he hadn’t yet decided if he was going to let her in on it.
“Why would the Falcrest heir need a cursebreaker?”
“I imagine for the same reason anyone needs a cursebreaker.”
It had to be a joke. “Let me see if I have this right. Someone cast a curse on the son of the man responsible for producing half the spells in this city, and you want my help to break it?”
“No, I want your help to plan the Falcrest Midnight Masquerade,” Adrius replied.
Marlow knew well enough to expect the flippant reply, but beneath the careless, charismatic Falcrest veneer, she detected something troubled. It showed itself in the way his long fingers gripped the edge of her desk just a little too tight. Whatever had happened to him, he was worried enough not only to have crossed the city to the Marshes—somewhere he’d probably never before set foot in his entire charmed life—but had come to Marlow. To ask for her help.
It must have rankled him to have to admit that he needed anything from someone as insignificant as her.
“Last night, at the ballet, I overheard you talking to that woman,” he explained. “She told me the whole story of how you single-handedly rescued the star of the Monarch Ballet and saved the entire theater from utter financial ruin.”
Of course. Teak, the stage manager who was apparently easily dazzled by the glamour of the noblesse nouveau. So much for discretion.
“It was quite a tale,” Adrius went on. “So I figured, if you’re really that good at breaking curses, you’ll be able to help me with my… problem.”
Marlow folded her arms over her chest. “What would give you the idea that I’m at all interested in helping you?”
“You wound me, Minnow,” Adrius said, clutching his chest dramatically. “It’s been over a year since we’ve seen each other, and this is the treatment I get? Come, you can tell me the truth. I know you’ve missed me.”
She held up her hands in surrender. “You got me. I stare out my bedroom window every morning, pining and praying that today will be the day Adrius Falcrest appears in my living room.”
His golden eyes darkened for a moment so brief she wondered if she’d imagined it. “See, that wasn’t so hard.”
Having grown bored of the fish fry, Toad slinked over to Adrius, winding around his ankles and meowing plaintively. She stared up at Marlow, her pupils going huge and glowing like a pair of iridescent moonstones.
“Gods,” Marlow said, looking from Toad’s glowing pupils back to Adrius. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
Adrius leaned away from Toad. “Did your cat just…?”
“Toad can detect curses,” Marlow said. “Don’t ask me how or why. I found her like that. But she’s never wrong, which means you really are cursed.”
“Why else would I be here?”
“To ruin my evening?” Marlow suggested.
Adrius looked at her, smug. “You’re considering helping me, aren’t you?”
She didn’t deny it. Her curiosity was more than piqued, and it was almost enough to overwhelm the part of her that warned to stay away from Adrius Falcrest at all costs.
There was another reason to accept the offer, one that beat like a drum in her chest. Agreeing to help Adrius meant returning to Evergarden— the place that held the ghosts of her past and, quite possibly, the key to finally putting them to rest. If there was an answer to what had happened to her mother, it was in Evergarden.
“There’s hundreds of cursebreakers in this city,” she said, stalling. “I’m sure with all those piles of pearls you’d have no trouble finding one.”
“I don’t know any of those cursebreakers,” Adrius replied easily. “I know you.”
No, you don’t, Marlow wanted to say. He knew the girl she’d been a year ago, and he imagined that somehow despite all the upheaval Marlow had endured in that time, she hadn’t changed. That she was still that guileless little girl, easy to charm and even easier to manipulate.
“Come on,” he pressed. “For old times’ sake?”
Marlow clenched down on a seething smile. She’d avoided approaching him the entire time he’d been in her flat, afraid somehow that coming closer would mean getting pulled into his orbit like a wayward moon. But now her anger overrode any sense of self-preservation and she found herself crossing the distance without thought.
“Time to go,” she bit out, dragging him to the door by a fistful of his jacket as if he were anyone else.
“Hold on,” he protested. “I only meant that—you must at least be curious what the curse is. You don’t want to—?”
Of course she was curious. There was a huge part of her that burned to know, if only because she found the mere idea of an unsolved mystery unbearable. And she wasn’t so deep in denial that she couldn’t admit the thought of knowing one of Adrius Falcrest’s secrets still held undeniable allure.
“Get out of my house,” she hissed.
He must have recognized how grave his error had been and how dangerously pissed off Marlow was, because he relented with surprising ease. Marlow barely even had to steer him out. On the landing, he turned back to her as she gripped the door, more than ready to slam it shut.
But the look on his face stopped her.
It was an expression she wasn’t used to seeing, even back when—when she hadn’t known his true character. Brow drawn tight, mouth soft, eyes troubled. He looked young. He looked vulnerable. He looked… lost.
Marlow hesitated. Because they’d been friends once, and maybe she still remembered how it had felt to bask in the golden glow of Adrius’s attention, to imagine she could see past the blinding light of his charm to the boy beneath the facade.
But it didn’t matter. It wasn’t real. He wasn’t real, not then, and not now, and maybe if Marlow told herself that enough times, she’d finally start believing it.
But she still didn’t close the door. Even when Adrius looked away, turned in a slow half-circle, and started to descend the creaking wooden stairs.
She was still so godsdamn soft. With a steadying breath, she stomped back to her desk, past an alarmed Toad, and threw open the top drawer to pluck out one of the cards before rushing down the stairs after him.
“Adrius.”
She caught him just below the second landing. He whipped around, eyes bright. He stood a step below her, and it felt strange to look at him from that angle, like a portrait that was just ever-so-slightly off.
She thrust the card at him. “Here. The address of another cursebreaker I trust. I’ve worked with her, she knows her stuff, I promise. And she values discretion.”
“Oh.” His eyes dropped to her hand as he took the card carefully, pinching it between his fingers without so much as grazing Marlow’s thumb. Then he met her gaze again, lips curling into a smile. “I don’t suppose I’ll run into you at the ballet again, will I?”
She snorted. “That’s not really my kind of place.”
“It was, once.”
“No, it really wasn’t.” She cleared her throat. “Good luck, Adrius.”
She spun on her heel, scrambling back up the stairs before she let herself say anything more.
Excerpted from Garden of the Cursed, copyright © 2023 by Katy Rose Pool.
