Lady of Magick

PRAISE FOR

The Midnight Queen

“A fresh and inventive historical novel . . . I can't wait to see what Sylvia Izzo Hunter does next.”

—Marie Brennan, author of the Memoirs of Lady Trent

“Elegantly written, fast-paced, and highly original—a stunning story of magic, scholarship, and true love. Sylvia Izzo Hunter brings both rural Brittany and an alternative Regency England to vivid life. A remarkably assured debut.”

—Juliet Marillier, national bestselling author

“Sylvia Izzo Hunter has crafted an impressive debut novel and begun a provocative series.”

—
SFFWorld

“Great for readers of historical and fantasy lovers alike . . . I think you will enjoy the rich and detailed story and world that Sylvia Izzo Hunter has created.”

—
Book Briefs

“An imagination so inventive as to come up with [as] enchanting and riveting a novel as
The Midnight Queen
will be sure to produce untold wonders . . . Deliciously complex . . . An absolute page-turner . . .
The Midnight Queen
is a fresh new story unlike anything else in its genre.”

—
Black Dog Speaks

“A breath of fresh air, recalling books as they used to be—stories to be savoured . . .
The Midnight Queen
is a long journey through mistaken identities, conspiracies, and finding the limitations of magic capabilities, and a journey that was highly satisfying in the end.”

—
Nyx Book Reviews

“In
The Midnight Queen
, Izzo Hunter pulls from a multitude of mystical tales and myths to create her own magical version of Britain that is both innovative and intriguing. The plot is creative and suspenseful—and never predictable. Your affection for the dynamic heroes will only grow as Hunter's characters face challenge after unexpected challenge.
The Midnight Queen
is a novel that readers will be unable to put down.”

—
RT Book Reviews

“An interesting and exciting story, full of magical spells and skills, which easily kept me intrigued . . . The characters are well developed, and I enjoyed seeing Gray and Sophie, in particular, grow both personally and magically.”

—
Bitten by Books

Ace Books by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

THE MIDNIGHT QUEEN

LADY OF MAGICK

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

This book is an original publication of Penguin Random House LLC.

Copyright © 2015 by Sylvia Izzo Hunter.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

For more information, visit
penguin.com
.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-14466-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hunter, Sylvia Izzo.

Lady of magick / Sylvia Izzo Hunter.

pages ; cm

ISBN 978-0-425-27246-6 (trade)

I. Title.

PR9199.4.H8684L33 2015

813'.6—dc23

2015007896

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Ace trade paperback edition / September 2015

Cover illustrations: Owl © Dn Br / Shutterstock Images; Leaf © Aleks Melnik / Shutterstock Images; Grey tree drawing © SoftRobot/Shutterstock Images.

Cover design by Diana Kolsky.

Maps by Cortney Skinner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

I owe a general debt of gratitude to my family, my friends, and my colleagues of all sorts for the many hours (or possibly weeks) they have collectively spent listening to me complain about why on earth my characters behave the way they do and bewail my lack of progress in writing and/or revising, and for just generally being patient, lovely, and kind.

More particularly, I am indebted to my beta readers, Anne Marie Corrigan, Tawnie Olson, Antonia Pop, Jeannie Scarfe, and Kim Solga, for encouragement, critique, new angles of view, serious discussions of the psychology of fictional persons, and of course tea and milk shakes; to Latinista-in-chief Michael Appleby for saving me from incomprehensibility; to Alex Hunter for blocking help and chess strategy, and to Rhiannon Davies Shah for conversational Welsh (even though the chess game and that conversation ended up on the cutting-room floor); and to the nice people at the Butterfly Conservatory in Niagara Parks, Ontario, for answering my questions about
Lepidoptera
. Books consulted in the process of writing this one include Robert D. Anderson et al.,
The University of Edinburgh: An Illustrated History
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003); Thomas Hope,
Household Furniture and Interior Decoration: Classic Style Book of the Regency Period
(reprint, New York: Dover, 1971); and (on Google Books) R. A. Armstrong,
A Gaelic-English and English-Gaelic Dictionary
(London, 1825). All linguistic, geographical, biological, and other errors that remain are, of course, my own.

Thanks also to Carleton Wilson, my website guy, and Nicole Hilton, who kindly took my author photos. The beautiful maps are the work of Cortney Skinner.

And thanks once again to the fantastic team at JABberwocky Literary Agency; to my agent, Eddie Schneider, and my editor, Jessica Wade, who between them pushed and pulled me in the right directions to make this a
much
better book; to Isabel Farhi, able editorial assistant and fellow Wholockian; to copy editor Amy J. Schneider for saving me from many a continuity error; to Diana Kolsky for the stunning cover, and Tiffany Estreicher for the gorgeous interior design; and to Michelle Kasper, Julia Quinlan, Erica Martirano, and Nita Basu for shepherding the book the rest of the way into your hands.

Finally, ALL THE THANKS to Alex and Shaina Hunter for all the times they did extra household chores so I could write, brought me tea or ice cream, came to my choir concerts, and gave me helpful hugs, and also for all the times they said, “Shouldn't you be writing?”

*   *   *

The plot of this book plays fast and loose with the history, genealogy, and mythology of Scotland, and to some extent even its geography, and personal names and some place-names have been Anglicized for ease of reading in English. The songs sung by the characters in the course of the story, however, are real ones. They are, in order of appearance, the student hymn “Gaudeamus Igitur”; the Somersetshire ballad “The Trees They Grow So High”; two eighteenth-century (as far as I know) Gaelic love songs written by women, “Ailein Duinn” by Annag Chaimbeul and “Fear a' Bhàta” by Sìne NicFhionnlaigh; Robert Burns's “Ae Fond Kiss”; and the Oxfordshire ballad “Oxford City.” The long spell in chapter XXXIII is borrowed from a thirteenth-century liturgical poem, with apologies to its various possible authors.