Excerpt from Nightbirds by Kate J. Armstrong, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

CHAPTER 1
Jewel, Star, and Sea

Matilde is a thousand layers of secrets. Some sit against her skin, there for anyone who knows how to read them. Others are tucked into a rarefied language only a few girls can speak. Still others have wings, and they are hidden inside her.

She smiles to herself behind her mask.

As Matilde descends the stairs into the ballroom, heads swivel. This is precisely why she made her family wait for over an hour before leaving for Leta's Season-opening ball. Grand entrances, she finds, are the only kind worth making. Especially during the summer season, when Simta floods with people from all over the Eudean Republic, come to make matches, deals, and fortunes in the City of Tides.

The room is full of finely dressed people, talking and swaying to a tasteful string quartet. It's clear that many of them have been to Simta's best trickster tailors, who have outdone themselves enchanting their outfits for the evening. The seed pearls at one girl's neckline unfurl into flowers. A boy's evening coat sparks every time someone touches it. Masks smoke, lapels bloom, gloves glow. Matilde is sure there are alchemical potions she can't see, hidden inside watch fobs and hollowed-out canes. Leta's added some to her candles so they flame cerulean and emerald and black, her House colors.

Standing here, you would never know that magic is illegal. In the circles Matilde swims in, such laws barely apply.

Her brother, Samson, gazes longingly at Æsa, their pretty housemate, but she is busy staring wide-eyed at the room. After a sidelong glance to make sure their dame isn't watching, Samson snags a few drinks from a passing waiter and holds one out to her. Æsa shakes her head—the newest Nightbird seems too nervous to enjoy her first proper Great House party. Matilde will have to work on that.

"I wish you had worn what I laid out for you, Matilde," her dame says.

A dress with frothy skirts, like Æsa's, and a far-too-tight bodice. The one that made Matilde look like a present wrapped for someone else.

"Really?" Matilde does a twirl. "I'm rather pleased with my choice."

Her gown is a columnar sheath, with beaded jewelflowers shimmering darkly against wine-red velvet, gathered up at one hip with a golden clasp. She likes how it's somehow both loose fitting and suggestive. It's her gran's from when she was a Nightbird, made over in the newest style. Perhaps that's why her dame doesn't like it—she thinks it's something Gran should have given her instead, just like her Nightbird gift. Intrinsic magic runs through most of the Great House bloodlines, passed down from woman to woman, but sometimes it skips a generation. Matilde doesn't think her dame has ever gotten over it.

Dame purses her lips. "It's just the cut is rather . . ."

Matilde smiles. "Rather ravishing?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of risqué."

Gran smiles in a way Matilde has practiced for endless hours but has yet to master.

"Good fashion is never risqué," she says. "Only a little daring."

Dame's lips pinch together even tighter.

Matilde runs a gloved finger down one of the jewelflowers' beaded petals. It curls, trickster-kissed to open and close as she moves. Gran has tried to grow real jewelflowers in their garden, but they don't do well outside the swamps of the Callistan. One bloomed last summer, though, its near-black petals begging to be touched. Gran caught her hand before she could. This jewel's beauty is her trick, she said. She lures in prey by looking soft, and once they're close . . .She let a ribbon fall, and Matilde watched the flower swallow it, sizzling as the fabric turned to ash.

She thinks of it often, that flower with a secret. Poison in the guise of something sweet.

"Let's get to our table," Dame says. "We must survey the Season's prospects."

Excerpted from Nightbirds by Kate J. Armstrong. Copyright © 2023 by Kate J. Armstrong. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.