Girls of Fate and Fury Read online

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2021 by Natasha Ngan

  Ikhara map copyright © 2018 by Tim Paul

  Hidden Palace map by Maxime Plasse

  Cover art by Craig White and Shutterstock. Cover design by Liam Donnelly and Tracy Shaw.

  Cover copyright © 2021 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

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  JIMMY Patterson Books / Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  JimmyPatterson.org

  Simultaneously published in 2021 by Hodder and Stoughton in the UK

  First US Edition: November 2021

  JIMMY Patterson Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The JIMMY Patterson Books® name and logo are trademarks of JBP Business, LLC.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ngan, Natasha, author.

  Title: Girls of fate and fury / Natasha Ngan.

  Description: First US edition. | New York : Jimmy Patterson Books, Little, Brown and Company, 2021. | Series: Girls of paper and fire ; [3] | Audience: Ages 14 & up. | Summary: Told from their alternating viewpoints, as battle lines are drawn between the powerful Hanno clan and the Demon King of Ikhara, the warrior Wren fights to find Lei, who is trying to assist the rebellion even though she is the King’s prisoner.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021038034 | ISBN 9780316528788 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316528771 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Kings, queens, rulers, etc.—Fiction. | Revolutions—Fiction. | War—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction. | Imaginary creatures—Fiction. | Fantasy.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.N48845 Gg 2021 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021038034

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-52878-8 (hardcover), 978-0-316-52877-1 (ebook)

  E3-20211008-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Castes

  One: Wren

  Two: Wren

  Three: Lei

  Four: Lei

  Five: Lei

  Six: Wren

  Seven: Wren

  Eight: Lei

  Nine: Lei

  Ten: Wren

  Eleven: Lei

  Twelve: Lei

  Thirteen: Wren

  Fourteen: Wren

  Fifteen: Lei

  Sixteen: Lei

  Seventeen: Lei

  Eighteen: Wren

  Nineteen: Wren

  Twenty: Wren

  Twenty-One: Lei

  Twenty-Two: Wren

  Twenty-Three: Lei

  Twenty-Four: Lei

  Twenty-Five: Lei

  Twenty-Six: Lei

  Twenty-Seven: Wren

  Twenty-Eight: Lei

  Twenty-Nine: Wren

  Thirty: Lei

  Thirty-One: Wren

  Thirty-Two: Lei

  Thirty-Three: Lei

  Thirty-Four: Lei

  Thirty-Five: Wren

  Thirty-Six: Lei

  Thirty-Seven: Wren

  Thirty-Eight: Lei

  Thirty-Nine: Lei

  Forty: Wren

  Forty-One: Lei

  Three Months Later Forty-Two: Lei

  Forty-Three: Wren

  Forty-Four: Lei

  Forty-Five: Lei

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  About the Author

  Jimmy Patterson Books for Young Adult Readers

  To all of you who’ve taken this journey with Lei, Wren, and me. May you make your own choices and fight your fears with fire forevermore.

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  Please be aware that this book contains scenes of violence and self-harm, and references to sexual abuse and trauma recovery.

  CASTES

  At night, the heavenly rulers dreamed of colors, and into the day those colors bled onto the earth, raining down onto the paper people and blessing them with the gifts of the gods. But in their fear, some of the paper people hid from the rain and so were left untouched. And some basked in the storm, and so were blessed above all others with the strength and wisdom of the heavens.

  —The Ikharan Mae Scripts

  Paper caste—Fully human, unadorned with any animal-demon features, and incapable of demon abilities such as flight.

  Steel caste—Humans endowed with partial animal-demon qualities, both in physicality and abilities.

  Moon caste—Fully demon, with whole animal-demon features such as horns, wings, or fur on a humanoid form, and complete demon capabilities.

  —the Demon King’s postwar Treaty on the Castes

  ONE

  WREN

  THWACK!

  The smack of a hundred oak staffs colliding at the same time reverberated through the training pavilion. It was earsplittingly loud, echoing off the round walls, as though the pavilion were a giant drum and the warriors within it living batons, all beating to the same fierce rhythm.

  Wren’s muscles were on fire. Sand from the pit’s floor whipped her cheeks as she danced and spun her bo with split-second precision, locked in formation with one of the Hanno warriors. Wren’s father had ordered her to monitor the drill, not participate in it, but Wren craved distraction. She needed to move, to fight, to feel the reassuring, body-shocking crack of a weapon meeting another.

  This she could do.

  This she could control.

  “Hyah! Kyah!”

  Her sparring partner yelled with each movement while Wren parried in silence.

  Sweat dripped from Wren’s face. She didn’t usually perspire so much when she fought, but she wasn’t in her Xia state, her magic keeping her cool the same way normal shaman magic was warming. And it was hot in the pavilion. The circular wall was made of woven bamboo, and it trapped the midday heat. Light lanced in through the gaps, flickering over one hundred focused faces.

  There’d always been drills and battle practice. Ketai Hanno, Wren’s father and leader of the Hannos, Ikhara’s most powerful Paper clan, liked to keep his army prepared. But since war had been declared, there was an extra sense of urgency.

  An attack was imminent. What wasn’t sure was who would strike the first blow. Ketai, or the King?

  Locked in rhythm with the soldier, Wren was fully absorbed in each swing of her staff despite the pain of her month-old injury—or perhaps because of it. It roared in her lower back and hips, her own silent battle cry. The sensation was deep, more a weight than anything, as though her sacrum were made of steel instead of bone.

  Pain wasn’t new to Wren. She’d been forged with it through her father’s and Shifu Caen’s training sessions from as early as she could remember. And though she was healed each time afterward quickly enough, magic didn’t era
se memories, and the memories associated with this pain were infinitely worse than the pain itself.

  They were memories of demon roars and blood on desert sands.

  Of what was left once the screams and sword-clash faded to nothing.

  Of a carpet of bodies—yet one even more terrible in its absence.

  Lei.

  Her name was the echo to Wren’s every heartbeat. It was both bright and dark, both wonderful and unbearable, both Wren’s strength and her deepest agony.

  It was why she couldn’t stand by watching this afternoon’s drill and not do something. Watching only reminded her how useless she’d been that night in the Janese deserts a month ago, and she couldn’t stand it. Her father and their doctors and shamans had ordered Wren to rest due to her injury. But rest and sleep were the last things Wren wanted. She knew who she’d find the moment she closed her eyes. And she knew the pain she’d feel once she woke to find the girl she was dreaming of not there.

  Crammed in with one hundred moving bodies, Wren licked the sweat from her lips and pushed her partner on, losing herself in the rush of her staff.

  As the warriors turned, switching into a new formation, Wren caught sight of a figure watching from the viewing gallery—where she herself should currently be. She had just enough time to register her father’s disapproval before his shout rang out.

  “Halt!”

  At once, the pit fell still. The soldiers dipped their heads respectfully, weapons lowered, panting hard. Only Wren kept her neck tall, locked onto her father’s inimitable stare.

  “Lady Wren,” he called in a good-natured tone, leaning forward to grip the railing. “How is drill monitoring going? Well, I hope?”

  A few tentative laughs rippled through the hall.

  Wren swiped a rolled sleeve across her brow. She forced her expression to remain impassive, though now she’d stopped moving her injury was screaming more fiercely than ever, exhaustion rattling her bones. “Your warriors are so well trained my guidance is hardly needed, Father,” she replied. “I thought I may as well get a little practice in myself.”

  Ketai gave a generous laugh. “A good idea, daughter. Might I join?”

  He launched himself over the balcony without waiting for a reply. Then, tucking the hem of his long changpao shirt into the waistband of his trousers, he strode forward through the sea of parting soldiers.

  Wren’s sparring partner waited until Ketai reached them near the center of the pit before offering her training bo to him with a bow.

  “Thank you, Amrati,” he demurred, turning a twinkling smile upon her.

  Wren had to hand it to him. No one could fault the way her father made his clan members feel seen. While the Demon King ruled with fear and intimidation, Ketai Hanno commanded with grace, charisma, and a warm, true affection that sometimes felt just like love.

  Wren held her father’s gaze as they moved into position. His smile, moments ago so easy, now had a twist to its edges. Ever since her broken group arrived back, he’d been tenser, anger and disappointment running under his calm, friendly surface.

  It hadn’t been the triumphant return any of them had wished for. In fact, the outcome of the journey with Lei, Caen, Merrin, Nitta, Bo, and Hiro to gather the allegiance of three of the most important demon clans in Ikhara had been worse than any of them could have ever predicted. Not only had they lost one of their most important alliances—the White Wing—after their clan leader Lady Dunya was usurped in a coup by her own daughter Qanna, but Qanna had then convinced Merrin to betray their group by giving the King their location.

  None of them had expected it. Wren, who’d grown up with Merrin right here in the fort, wouldn’t have believed it herself if she hadn’t seen with her own eyes how his grief over Bo’s death had twisted his heart, coupled with his repulsion at Wren’s drive to win the war at any cost. All of which had led to that awful battle in Jana.

  A bloodied desert.

  Moonlight upon a sea of bodies.

  Merrin, Nitta, Lei—vanished.

  The White Wing had been integral to Ketai’s war plans. Since the coup, its remaining clan members still loyal to Qanna’s mother, Lady Dunya, were imprisoned in their own palace. Ketai was determined to free them. Yet no matter how many different ways they approached a rescue during their war councils, it always came down to one thing: they couldn’t reach them without bird demons of their own. The Cloud Palace was almost impossible to access on foot, and with Merrin still missing, they had no means to reach it by air.

  The White Wing’s support in the war wasn’t the worst of what they’d lost on that journey. Not by far. But at least alliances could be repaired—unlike hearts stopped by an arrow, or a young shaman’s bloody sacrifice, or a girl disappeared into the night.

  The soldiers packed to the walls to free up space in the pit. Directly across from Wren, Ketai adopted a defensive stance, lifting his oak staff. An invitation.

  Wren lifted her own in acceptance.

  Her father whirled into action so quickly she’d barely finished her breath before he was upon her. He struck with incredible strength. The impact jarred her teeth. She ground her heels into the dirt as he forced her back. But Wren had been trained by Ketai himself—she knew his fighting style inside out. She responded with a side-duck then a jump-kick, which he rebuffed with one arm before spinning low, aiming his bo at her feet.

  Wren jumped. Launched into a flurry of fast jabs that Ketai parried with ferocious grace.

  Caen once told Wren she fought like her father: elegant and unrelenting. A dangerous combination. But Wren had one key advantage.

  Her Xia blood.

  As they continued to dance across the pit, drawing gasps of awe from the watching soldiers, Wren felt her magic calling. It tingled in her fingertips. It whispered in her blood. She held it back, narrowing her focus to her body and movements; the dark flash of her father’s eyes and the grim line of his lips.

  Because of the state she’d been in after returning from the desert, Ketai had forbidden her to use magic, ordering her to rest to recoup her strength. So far, Wren had followed his orders. Yet as she fought now, pain and determination pulsed more keenly through her with each passing moment, as it had done every minute she spent without Lei, not knowing where she was, if she were even alive, and with it grew Wren’s craving for action, to be useful, to do something—

  Magic burst from her in an ice-cold roar.

  It tore through the pavilion, a powerful wave that threw the sand of the pit outward. There were cries from the watching warriors. They scrambled to take cover as sand dashed against the bamboo walls, showering them in grit and dust.

  The magic sapped from Wren as abruptly as it had arrived. Before the Sickness, accessing her power was as easy as dipping a toe to a vast lake. Now, the lake’s once-silky waters were thick as mud, and harnessing its might was a struggle. Yet another thing the King had stolen from her. Though they couldn’t be certain, almost everyone suspected the depletion of qi across Ikhara was his doing.

  Wren slumped to the floor. Shivers racked her body. Fighting to contain them, she lifted her head and saw her father being helped to his feet.

  He met her concerned expression, his jet-dark eyes for once unreadable. Then, he smiled, brushing down his dust-covered clothes. “My daughter,” he pronounced with a sweep of an arm. “What a warrior you have become.”

  He bowed, as was customary, congratulating her on her win. Wren returned it stiffly. When she straightened, her father was already striding forward. He clapped her on the shoulder as he passed, a little too hard.

  “Come,” he said. “I have as assignment for you.”

  The Jade Fort, the Hannos’ homestead in central Ang-Khen, sat on a high viewpoint amid swaths of forested valleys. It had gotten its name from the sparkling jade of the pines that spread in all directions, shifting in the wind so it gave the appearance of an island in the center of a deep, golden-green sea. The sounds of the training pavilion faded as Ketai led Wr
en across the grounds and into the fort through its grand entranceway, banners with the Hanno insignia fluttering overhead.

  Their clan members were quick to bow as they passed. This wasn’t new, but their attitude toward Wren was. It had shifted after New Year’s Eve, when she’d revealed herself as not the simple clan daughter they’d always thought her to be, but the sole descendent of the infamous warrior clan, the Xia.

  Wren held in her question for her father until they were in a quiet hallway on one of the higher levels. It was the same one she’d asked him almost every time they spoke, and she saw him stiffen in irritation as she repeated it now.

  “Wren, my answer has not and will not change. Our watchtowers are on high alert for an attack. We cannot spare any soldiers. Not to mention, you are still in recovery.”

  “I’m much better now,” Wren countered. “I’ve had plenty of rest since Jana. And I don’t need a big army. I could go alone, even—”

  “Enough.” Like all Ketai’s commands, it carried weight. He stopped, facing her. “I know she was your closest friend. I know she meant a lot to you.”

  Is, Wren corrected in her head. Means.

  “I can’t imagine how hard it must be for you to not know what has happened to her—or to Nitta, or Merrin. It’s been hard for all of us. But we need you, my daughter. I need you. Besides, Lei is the Moonchosen. If anyone is capable of surviving, it’s her. I have no doubt she will find her way back to us.”

  Unspoken words hung in the air between them.

  Survive what? Find her way back from where?

  In the aftermath of the desert battle, Wren had hunted through the bodies for any sign of Lei. She’d tried using magic to speed up the process, but she was emptied of power by then. She’d only stopped when Caen physically restrained her, telling her he’d seen Merrin flying off with Lei and Nitta in the midst of battle.

  “Where?” Wren had screamed. But none of them could answer her no matter how many times she shouted it.

  She’d eventually passed out from fatigue. When she woke, she was in the back of a carriage. They were traveling northward from the border of Ang-Khen and Jana toward the Jade Fort. Lova explained everything that had happened, yet Wren hadn’t been able to get her own voice out of her ears, that eternal scream: Where where where where?