•1•
Anne Boleyn
May 18, 1536
Her execution was set for dawn.
Anne stared out the window into the night, her chambers in the Tower of London offering a bird's-eye view of the sprawling city below. Smoke and fog blurred the buildings and muffled the sounds of the Thames rushing by, but the heavens were clear. Anne glared at the golden stars, jealous of their freedom, furious that they would shine again tomorrow night and she wouldn't be there to see it. The audacity of the world to go on without her was more than she could bear.
Death was unwelcome, but it was no surprise. Once Henry had set his sights on Jane Seymour, Anne had known only two fates awaited her: exile or death. She had forced the same choice on the queen who came before her, though Anne didn't dare acknowledge the irony of her situation.
Exile would have been a far more comfortable fate, but then again, anything would have been more comfortable than the heap of rock masquerading as the Tower of London. It was no wonder the royal family had virtually abandoned it and turned it into a prison-the White Tower, the castle's main keep, was grim and crumbling and positively infested with rats. Not even the fire she kept burning at all hours of the day and night could keep them away.
On cue, one skittered across the floor at Anne's feet, stopping just a handsbreadth from her stockinged toes.
"Ah, Tudor. Good to see you again." Anne had named all the rats who visited her cell Tudor, in honor of her husband. Truly, it was more an insult to the rats than it was to Henry. "Don't even think about trying to take a bite out of me tonight. I will happily curse you to be reborn a human king, the vilest of all creatures."
The rat showed no fear, chittering at her with something akin to laughter.
Anne laughed along with it, the sound eerie and echoing in the confines of her chambers. It felt good to let the dark thing in her chest loose, to let the sharp edge of hysteria slice deeper when she was this close to the end. She leaned back in the moldering velvet chair of her cell and howled at the ceiling until she was breathless. Outside her door, a guard shifted uneasily, his armor creaking.
"You see, Tudor, kings are weak," she confided in the rat. Her voice was hoarse from hours of disuse-she had hardly spoken in days. "They hide behind their crowns and their swords, their Bibles and their lies, until they appear strong."
Henry, who often found the truth more of a hindrance than a help, had gotten creative with his own lies, accusing her of adultery, incest, and treason, charges no one had dared defy during the sham they called a trial. He'd had five men killed to support his claims, including George-dear God, George-Anne's younger brother who'd been given a traitor's death just the day before. Anne could still hear the dull thud of axe on flesh, and her laughter shattered into a sob. She heard the guard startle before clanking away down the hall, closing the door at the other end as though wood and iron could block out her madness.
"I will kill them all," she promised the rat, or perhaps just herself. "I will claw my way back from hell if I have to, but I swear I will kill them."
She had a list, of course. The king. His scheming lackey, Thomas Cromwell. Her bastard of an uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, who had presided over her trial and found her guilty.
Maybe even Jane Seymour for getting her into this mess in the first place.
Anne had known Henry was drifting, but after enduring three years of his mistresses-and worse, three years of his attention-she'd welcomed the space. Jane hadn't seemed like a threat; Anne would never have expected the pale, meek lady-in-waiting to lure another woman's husband into her bed. But she should have realized Jane wasn't just a dalliance like the others, that Henry was plotting an end for her the same way he had for Catherine of Aragón before her. If Anne had been paying attention, she would have studied the old spells, kept her bloodletting knife close, and laid her cursework before Henry ever had a chance to destroy her.
It was too late for all that now. Her beautiful, fiery Elizabeth had been wrenched from her arms, screaming as Anne was dragged away to the Tower. It was some consolation that her spell books were hidden where no one could ever find them, though it wasn't like she could have done much with them anyway-she hadn't been brought so much as a bread knife with her meals. Anne knew the soldier outside wasn't clenching his spear closer because he was guarding a disgraced queen but because he suspected he was guarding a witch.
Henry's lies hadn't come nearly as close to the truth as the rumors that had trailed Anne all her life. Men-and some women-saw an educated, willful female and whispered witch to weaken Anne's influence and appease their fragile egos. None of them realized the word was a compliment, the result of decades of study and the countless pale scars that decorated Anne's fingers, which she kept gloved or glamoured to avoid detection. They didn't know that none of their words or whispers could ever frighten her, not when she had the power to bend the world to her will with the right words and a few drops of blood.
Anne regarded the rat, who had taken to cleaning its whiskers in the firelight. "He should have tried me for heresy," she confided in the rodent. "At least then he would have been right."
"Looking to give them another reason to swing the sword tomorrow?"
Anne jumped at the sound of a woman's voice on the other side of her cell door-she had heard no footsteps approach. A key turned in the lock and the door swung open, revealing a hooded figure silhouetted against the torchlight. The guard was still gone, shirking his duty.
Warily, Anne got to her feet, and even the rat sensed that now would be a good time to scurry back into the shadows. "Who are you?" she demanded.
The woman drew back her hood, and Anne's breath caught in her throat. She knew that face, though it had more lines and hardness than when she'd last seen it three years before.
"You." Anne blinked, sure she was hallucinating. "You're supposed to be dead."
The woman snorted. "Soon you will be too."
Anne was familiar with illusions so real they'd fool the sharpest mind. But never once had she imagined she would see a woman brought back from the grave. Queen Catherine, originally Catalina de Aragón, was Henry's first wife . . . and had reportedly died four months earlier.
"No." Anne shook her head in disbelief. "The coroner told me your heart-your heart was blackened and hard as stone. There was a funeral. You were buried."
"My heart may be stone, but as you can see, I'm far from dead." Her voice was colder than Anne remembered. Maybe she was a ghost after all. "But I have no intention of resurrecting myself, so stop your prattling and take these. The pages have been marked for you."
She thrust a linen-wrapped packet into Anne's trembling hands. Anne's fingers traced the outline of a book, the hilt of a knife. She knew exactly what she held, and despite the crushing darkness of her cell, her heart soared.
"How did you-" she began, but the other woman shook her head.
"Later. After it's done, I'll explain everything. For now, this will have to do." She pulled a chain from the bodice of her dress and held a pendant up to catch the fire's glow. An untrained eye would have seen a rose, but Anne knew the meaning of those five petals: the symbol of the Hellebore Sisterhood. Any doubts she had about the woman before her evaporated, replaced by hope and no small amount of curiosity.
The visitor raised her hood and turned to walk away, but Anne reached out, grabbing the edge of her cloak.
"Queen Catherine-"
The banished queen-the dead queen-wheeled on her. "Never say that name," she whispered harshly. "That woman is gone."
"Then what shall I call you?"
She sighed, her eyes skating away from Anne's. There was a moment of hesitation, and then: "You may call me Lina. It was a nickname my mother gave me, short for Catalina. I never liked how you English butchered my name."
"Lina," Anne repeated solemnly. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. If you do manage to survive, come find me on London Bridge tomorrow. I'll be waiting at the Chapel of St. Thomas."
Anne's stomach dropped. "You're not here to rescue me?"
"If they think you escaped, they'll hunt you forever. So die well, witch."
The former queen shut the door without another word, locking Anne in behind her. But Anne couldn't worry about her prison or marvel at the fact that a ghost-a ghost who, by rights, should want her dead-had just delivered her salvation. She tore away the wrapping on the package, nearly crying with relief when she saw the silver curve of a bloodletting knife and the leather cover of a spell book. The words were a mixture of Latin and Gaelic and something older, something harsh and powerful that always burned on Anne's tongue. There was no name for the language of witches, or if there was, it had long since been lost.
For a moment, Anne was transported a hundred miles away and thirty years back in time to the early days of learning witchcraft from her grandmother. "Your intent matters as much as your words," Grandmam was fond of saying when Anne struggled with the unwieldy syllables of an unfamiliar curse. Then she would give her young pupil a rap on the hand with the hilt of her bloodletting knife for the failure. Anne could almost feel the sharp reminder on her knuckles, even now.
Someone had indeed marked pages in the spell book the ghost of Catherine of Aragón had given her, and as Anne read them beside the fire, her courage flickered. These were dark, complicated curses, ones she would never have attempted if her life hadn't been hanging in the balance.
But it was, and so Anne began to practice the ancient words, her knife gleaming red in the firelight.
•2•
Catalina (Lina) de Aragón
May 18, 1536
No one saw the woman in the hooded cloak leave the Tower of London, just as no one had seen her arrive.
Lina couldn't chalk her stealth up to magick-the extent of what she knew about the dark arts had just been delivered to the witch upstairs. No, she had just become very good at staying out of sight, at blending in with shadows and faces until no one could have described her as anything but the phantom she'd become.
It was a skill, like many others, she'd picked up thanks to the betrayal of Anne Boleyn.
Lina crossed the grounds of the Tower, grimacing at the silhouette of the gallows awaiting fresh blood, though it hadn't been long since she had hungered for Anne's blood herself. In fact, if she'd been asked a year ago, Lina would have rather died than extend a hand to that woman. Even now, a little voice in the back of Lina's mind was shouting at her, telling her to let the usurper suffer her well-deserved fate. Lina hushed that voice, turning her face up toward the sky and seeking the dim light of the stars to guide her home.
She'd secured lodging near Westminster, and by the time Lina left the shadows of the old castle behind, her knees were aching, and she was dreading the remaining walk. This is why grown women don't go capering about in the dark, she scolded herself when she stubbed her toe on a stone on the packed dirt road, her feet weary and nearly dragging. She was glad Anne hadn't seen her like this-it was better that Anne believe Lina was a ghost, or at the very least invincible. It was why she had waited in the stairwell for five minutes to catch her breath after climbing up the White Tower steps and why she hadn't given the younger queen any sign of warmth or welcome other than to show the Sisterhood's symbol.
Despite the late hour, London was teeming with energy and people. Lina had forgotten how much she hated the city, having been away for the better part of five years. The smell alone was overwhelming-human and animal waste, spoiled food, and spring mud mixed together on even the cleanest of streets. More houses and shops had been built since she'd last visited, and Lina had the distinct impression of the buildings looming over her, ready to tilt and crumble at the slightest breeze. Like pearls on a broken string they would fall, one by one by one, burying her in the rubble of wood and stone.
Lina shook off the image, breathing shallowly through her mouth and keeping her eyes fixed straight ahead.
Even for a lady of her distinctly fallen station, midnight was not a respectable hour to be out alone in London. Lina averted her gaze from a couple having sex against an alley wall and crossed the street when she reached a lively pub with drunken occupants spilling out into the road. Her hood offered some camouflage, and she kept to the shadows as best she could. Certain men, no matter how many Sundays they spent at church, saw women as nothing more than objects for the taking. It wasn't for decoration that Lina carried a dagger at her waist.
It was then that a man bumped her shoulder, brushed a hand over her breast, and tipsily tried to get a look at her face. Lina's wariness sharpened into fear, and the man had an elbow in his gut and a knee in his groin before he saw a flash of Lina's blue eyes.
Not so old after all, Lina thought proudly, leaving the man bent double and wheezing in her wake. It was a move she had practiced a hundred times in the last few months-the Sisterhood was particular about the importance of self-defense-though she'd never had a chance to use her new skills in the field. The adrenaline rush of success lightened her steps for the rest of the walk.
The streets were dark, with only the lights from candles in windows, but Lina found her lodging at last. It was a boardinghouse called the Winter Rose, a two-story wattle-and-daub affair painted white with limewash. The only thing that made it stand out from the rest of the homes of the London merchants was the flower carved into the wooden sign above the door: five-petaled with a spray of nectaries at the center. Few people would recognize the flower as a hellebore, and fewer still would know it as a symbol of the Sisterhood.
Copyright © 2026 by Jillian Laine. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
