A B PORANEK’s A Treachery of Swans is an enthralling sapphic retelling of Swan Lake, for fans of Allison Saft and V E Schwab. Read on for an extract.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Magic has long been outlawed in Auréal. Odile has always known she’d be the one to restore it.
Raised by a sorcerer, Odile has spent years preparing for the heist of a lifetime. It’s perfectly simple: impersonate a princess, infiltrate the palace, steal the enchanted crown and restore magic to the kingdom.
But when the King is unexpectedly murdered, she’s forced to recruit the help of Marie, the real princess, and the two begin to unravel a web of lies and deceit that leaves Odile uncertain of whom to trust.
Soon though Odile must decide – her mission or the girl she’s falling for?
The fate of the Kingdom depends on her making the right choice …
EXTRACT
SCENE I
Théâtre du Roi. Night.
They will tell the story, later, of the white swan and the black, but they will tell it wrong.
It begins as they say: a beautiful girl pale as the moon, at the edge of the lake in the dark of night. And a sorcerer stalking from the shadows, foul-hearted and wicked, with the yellow eyes of an owl and fingertips coated in magic.
The Prince will come later, as will the ball, and the love story doomed by deceit. But for now, there is a theatre house, and there is a play, and there is a villainous girl whose story was never told.
First, allow me to set the stage.
The Théâtre du Roi is a grizzled, devouring edifice, sprawled languidly at the edge of Lac des Cygnes. Tonight, it is a well-fed beast, belly full of roaring noblesse and commoners alike, its candle-lit windows narrowed in satisfaction. It’s a Saturday, and on Saturday the Théâtre’s resident troupe puts on one of their legendary tragédies en musique, affairs of glittering splendour and dizzying dance and operatic, tear-wrenching song.
The play is drawing to a close, and I have been stabbed.
I rush from the stage with a torrent of applause at my heels, the warm slickness of blood sticking my doublet to my skin. The familiar stench of the dressing rooms welcomes me – cheap perfume and old sweat and something suspiciously like strong liquor, though the troupe has yet to locate the culprit of that particular smell. I yank the collapsible dagger from my chest and strip off the outer layer of my costume, a mass of heavy black brocade and pinned-on lace belonging to the play’s dramatically murdered Prince. I wipe fat, insincere tears from my eyes. Sweat slips down my spine – my feet ache from the Prince’s ostentatious pre-death dance number. Normally, I’d be elated, adrenaline singing through my veins, a satisfied grin on my face. But not tonight. Tonight, I have one more role to play, and it will be the most spectacular of my career.
There’s another swell of applause in the distance as the rest of the troupe finish taking their bows. I should be up there with them, but I need a head start to locate the target of my mission. As I pull the now-pierced bladder of hog’s blood from beneath my shirt, the other actors and dancers come surging down into the dressing rooms, a blur of gaudy costumes and gaudier faces, wrenching off headdresses and masks and unfastening heeled dance shoes.
There’s an uncharacteristic, tense energy to it all, putting a rueful note in the usual backstage banter.
‘Mothers be merciful, I nearly tripped over Guillaume’s train.’
‘Do you think they noticed that I started my aria off-key?’
‘Forget the aria, Maurice nearly knocked me off that wooden horse. Then Henri started to giggle, and he’s meant to be playing a corpse.’
I want to join them, to snicker and commiserate over stage mishaps or forgotten lines, but my stomach is too tight, my mind already on the task ahead. Tonight, the theatre’s audience is swollen to twice its usual size, filled with not only the usual attendees – court nobles and wealthy city merchants and any commoner able to scrape together enough to afford the Théâtre’s cheaper parterre tickets – but also nobles from across Auréal and beyond, dukes and duchesses and, most importantly, their daughters of marrying age. To them, our performance is only an appetizer, a prelude to tomorrow night’s grand ball – a ball celebrating the Dauphin’s 18th birthday, at which the realm’s future ruler is expected to choose a bride.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A B Poranek grew up splitting her time between Ontario, Canada and rural Poland, and eventually completed a veterinary degree at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences. A lover of mythology and history, she enjoys exploring both in her writing.
Her debut novel, Where the Dark Stands Still, an instant New York Times bestseller, is an ode to Poland’s folktales, while A Treachery of Swans transports readers to a world inspired by 17th century France.
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