Queen of the Unwanted Read online

  Queen of the Unwanted is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Jenna Glass

  Map copyright © 2019, 2020 by David Lindroth Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  The map by David Lindroth was originally published in slightly different form inThe Women’s War by Jenna Glass published by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, in 2019.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Glass, Jenna, author.

  Title: Queen of the unwanted / Jenna Glass.

  Description: New York: Del Rey, [2020] | Series: The women’s war; 2

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019038086 (print) | LCCN 2019038087 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525618379 (trade paperback; alk. paper) | ISBN 9780525618386 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3602.L288 Q44 2020 (print) | LCC PS3602.L288 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2019038086

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2019038087

  Ebook ISBN 9780525618386

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Elizabeth A. D. Eno, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: David G. Stevenson

  Cover illustration: © Jonathan Bartlett

  ep_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Map

  Part One: The Abbess

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Part Two: The Mission

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Part Three: The Fall

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By Jenna Glass

  About the Author

  Part One

  THE ABBESS

  CHAPTER ONE

  From the moment he’d seen the results of his aptitude testing at the age of thirteen, Jalzarnin Rah-Griffolm had set his sights on one day being named the Lord High Priest of Khalpar, and he had never for a moment doubted his destiny.

  He had been appointed to the office and joined the royal council at the respectable age of forty-five, and the king had favored him with several land grants and titles that he had not even thought to hope for. No life was without its setbacks and disappointments, but Jalzarnin knew he’d suffered far fewer than most. He could almost hear his late father railing at him, urging him to be satisfied with what he had. Lord Griffolm had even gone so far as to accuse his son of impiety for his outsize ambition.

  But though he suspected there had been at least a kernel of truth in his father’s accusation—Jalzarnin was admittedly not the most pious man to have held the office of lord high priest—he was not especially inclined to curb that ambition. Which was what brought him here to the anteroom of the king’s private study, when a more prudent man—some might even say a wiser man—would keep a safe distance from a monarch who had a distressing habit of replacing members of his royal council with little to no provocation.

  He paced anxiously, awaiting permission to enter as his father’s voice continued to whisper discouragement into his ear. Given that the king was so apt to dismiss members of his royal council, Jalzarnin could never rest secure, unlike the lord high priests who had come before him. If he sat back and enjoyed the privileges of being on the council, he might all too easily find that seat pulled out from under him. There were plenty of other ambitious priests eager for his position.

  The study door opened, and the king’s personal secretary stepped out. “His Majesty will see you now,” he said with a sweeping gesture.

  Jalzarnin took what he hoped was a quiet steadying breath, pushing any doubts deep inside, where the king could not glimpse them. Then he stepped into the study and bowed low, surreptitiously studying the king’s countenance for some hint of his current disposition.

  Jalzarnin wouldn’t be so crass as to describe King Khalvin as moody, but one could never tell which days he would be receptive to the opinions of his advisers. And as Jalzarnin had come with the specific intent of overstepping the bounds of his authority, he risked souring his relationship with his liege if he did not tread with extreme care.

  “I hear you wish to speak to me about the appointment of a new abbess,” the king said abruptly, the corners of his mouth tugging down to hint at his displeasure with the topic.

  Clearly he was not in one of his more receptive moods, and Jalzarnin fought to hide the flutter of apprehension in his belly. He reminded himself that even when he was irritable, King Khalvin was a wise and thoughtful king. Jalzarnin’s interference in a matter that should be none of his affair might annoy him, but that annoyance would pass if he realized his lord high priest’s suggestion would benefit the kingdom.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” Jalzarnin said.

  “Perhaps I am getting forgetful in my old age, but I was under the impression you were my lord high priest, not my trade minister.”

  The sarcasm was far from a good omen; any other of the king’s advisers—even his lord chancellor—would have taken the unsubtle hint and found an excuse to retreat. But Jalzarnin had not attained his position by being timid.

  “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t think to interfere with the trade minister’s
decision,” Jalzarnin said. The trade minister was the lowest-ranking member of the royal council, and it was his job to oversee the Abbey of the Unwanted and appoint a replacement when an abbess died. Overseeing the Abbey of the Unwanted was hardly a glamorous responsibility—despite the substantial income the Abbey provided to the Crown’s coffers—and it should have been beneath Jalzarnin’s notice.

  “But these are not ordinary times,” he continued, “and we men of conscience must do whatever needs to be done.”

  The king’s frown deepened into a scowl of displeasure. It had been nearly a year since the Abbess of Aaltah had cast the devastating spell that had cursed the Wellspring and changed the very nature of Rho, the element of life. Everything in the king’s neatly ordered world had been turned on its head, all the carefully sculpted rules of society disordered in ways it was still difficult to conceive. There were those who were already beginning to view the current situation as normal. Fixed and unchangeable—and maybe even right. But King Khalvin was not among them.

  “I don’t see what that has to do with which whore is in charge of the Abbey,” the king said with a curl of his lip. He was a genuinely devout man, who believed wholeheartedly in the sanctity of marriage vows. The whores of the Abbey were technically supposed to service only unmarried men, but it was an open secret that they would service anyone who had the means to pay. If the Abbey weren’t such an integral part of life for the nobility of Khalpar—and if it did not provide such a ready source of income for the Crown’s coffers—the king would likely have abolished it altogether.

  Jalzarnin shifted uncomfortably. The king was in a worse humor than he’d thought. Impatience nearly crackled in his every small gesture, and his index finger was tapping softly on the edge of his desk. Jalzarnin wished he could have presented his proposal at a time of his own choosing, when the king was in a more suggestible frame of mind. But not even members of the royal council could approach the king willy-nilly.

  Jalzarnin steadied his nerves by picturing Mairahsol gazing up at him, her eyes full of the calm confidence and strength that had first drawn him to her. She’d been confined to the Abbey since she was nineteen. Her face had been disfigured by an especially violent case of pox—one she claimed was brought on by poison, which Jalzarnin was inclined to believe—and yet she was one of the shrewdest, most intelligent women he’d ever met. He couldn’t honestly say he believed she could undo the Curse, but it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.

  “All my research has led me to believe that we will need women’s magic if we are ever to undo the Curse that Aaltah bitch cast,” Jalzarnin said. “And our best hope of finding a cure is to put the most magically gifted woman in the Abbey in charge of the effort. Even if she is not someone who would traditionally be considered for the position.”

  The king was singularly unmoved by this assertion. “I still fail to grasp why we are having this conversation. Surely if you feel honor-bound to stick your nose into the trade minister’s business, you should take up the subject with him.”

  Jalzarnin wondered just what had put the king in such a sour mood. He was rarely this unpleasant, even when annoyed. “Of course, Your Majesty,” he said with a bow of his head. “I did raise the issue with Lord Prindar, but he was…concerned that you would not approve of a break with tradition.” To say the trade minister was “concerned” was putting it mildly. Prindar had flatly refused Jalzarnin’s suggestion, despite the obvious practical advantages. And Prindar would likely have an apoplexy when he discovered Jalzarnin had gone over his head and brought the matter to the king.

  “I am a great believer in tradition,” the king said, an unmistakable warning in his voice.

  “And if we can but undo the Curse, our longstanding traditions can be restored and life returned to normal.” Jalzarnin was pinning all his hopes on the king’s oft-stated yearning for the old ways.

  To his delight, there was a thawing of the peevishness in the king’s expression as he studied the face of his lord high priest. The crease between his brows eased, and there was a spark of calculation and interest in his eyes. Catching the king’s interest was not always desirable, but it was at least preferable to the annoyance he’d radiated previously.

  “You have someone in mind.”

  It was not phrased as a question, but Jalzarnin answered anyway, fully aware that he was stepping into a trap. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Because you are so well acquainted with all the abigails that you know which is the most…How did you put it? ‘Magically gifted’?”

  Jalzarnin felt the heat in his face and cursed his body for the betrayal. He had known before he’d set foot in this room that he was opening himself up to criticism by speaking of his familiarity with the Abbey. His patronage was a blatant violation of his marriage vows, though he and his wife were both content that he should take his pleasure elsewhere. He told himself he was not ashamed of the arrangement, but his obvious blush said otherwise.

  Jalzarnin bit down on his reflexive need to defend himself. Nothing he could say would reduce the king’s censure, but it wasn’t as if the king did not already know of his frequent visits to the Abbey. The discreet “married man’s” entrance was supposed to be a secret, but the king’s spy network was more than capable of seeing past such pedestrian attempts at subterfuge. It was in the king’s best interests to know of any scandals his royal council might spark, and Jalzarnin doubted there was a single member of the council about whom the king did not know at least one embarrassing secret.

  Deciding his best course of action was to ignore the censure completely, Jalzarnin spoke as though he had not heard it. “There is one abigail whose gift clearly exceeds that of any of her sisters.”

  The king’s nose wrinkled in distaste at this discussion of women’s magic. “I cannot see how the ability to create love potions and fertility aids is of any significant advantage to the effort to undo the Curse.”

  Jalzarnin acknowledged this opinion with a nod. “And a year ago, I would have been similarly skeptical.” Women’s magic paled in comparison to men’s, its power so paltry that magically inclined women were not tested and assigned magical ranks as men were. And, of course, it was forbidden in polite society for women to practice magic at all. Women’s magic was the sole purview of whores, practiced only in the Abbey where polite society could ignore it—an open secret not much different from the “married man’s” entrance. “But it has become clear that women’s magic has more strength than we had originally realized, and the Curse has increased the power of that magic exponentially. And as the Curse was created using some bastardization of women’s magic, I have begun to believe that only women’s magic can reverse it.

  “The woman I have in mind—Mairahsol Rah-Creesha—would rank as Prime or maybe even Master based on the number of elements she can see. As far as I can tell, no other woman at the Abbey would test at better than Gifted. It would behoove us to have a woman such as Mairahsol leading the effort to undo the Curse.”

  “And yet Lord Prindar is reluctant to appoint her?”

  “She is young,” Jalzarnin admitted. “Not yet thirty.” Tradition held that the abbess should be selected from among the most senior of the abigails who were still of sound mind and body.

  The king started slightly, finally recognizing Mairahsol’s name now that he was no longer imagining a crone. Her fall from grace had been very public, despite her family’s best efforts to keep it as quiet as possible. Most people looked upon her with horror and disdain for how she’d ruined both her own family and the family of the man she’d once thought to marry, but Jalzarnin couldn’t help but admire the courage and iron will that she’d shown.

  The king shook his head, his lip curling once more as he thought back on the scandal that had rocked the kingdom a decade before. “You would put that woman in a position of authority?”

  “There are no innocent maidens in the
Abbey,” Jalzarnin argued.

  “But there are few as notorious as Mairahsol Rah-Creesha! I can certainly understand why our trade minister would object to bestowing such an honor upon her.”

  “Is being named abbess really such an honor?” Jalzarnin asked. “She would have authority and rank within the walls of the Abbey, but to the rest of the world, she will still be an Unwanted Woman.

  “Because she is so young and untried,” Jalzarnin continued, “her fellow abigails do not listen to her and will not accept her suggestions when it comes to researching a cure for the Curse. If she was appointed abbess, they would have no choice but to listen and to do as they are told. It is our best chance.”

  The king was agitated enough by the unconventional suggestion that he rose from his chair and crossed the room to the hearth, gazing into the fire as his brow furrowed in thought. Jalzarnin swallowed his impulse to advance further arguments, confident he had presented a convincing case. There was very little King Khalvin wouldn’t do if it meant undoing the Curse.

  “Can you assure me,” the king asked, still staring into the flames, “that you are thinking about what’s best for the kingdom and not about what’s best for your cock?”

  Jalzarnin’s face heated again, but he was not surprised to find the king knew about his…dalliance with Mairahsol. The king knew he was a frequent visitor to the Abbey, so of course he also knew which of the abigails Jalzarnin favored.