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Read an Excerpt From The Redwood Bargain by Markelle Grabo
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Young Adult
Read an Excerpt From The Redwood Bargain by Markelle Grabo
I’m the fourth Redwood girl, and I mean to be the last.
By Markelle Grabo
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Published on March 25, 2026
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We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Redwood Bargain by Markelle Grabo, a young adult sapphic fantasy out from Page Street YA on April 28.
Indentured servant Katrien longs to make amends after a difficult choice extended her cousin Helsa’s servitude with their lord of the manor. So when a dark creature in the forest known as The Redwood Man demands the lord’s youngest daughter as payment for saving his life, Katrien is eager to make her own bargain that will guarantee her cousin’s freedom―so long as she can successfully lie.Katrien must fool The Redwood Man into believing she is the daughter he was promised, Lady Zaviera. Yet three girls have already lost their lives trying to pose as the young noblewoman, with the increasingly impatient forest lord seeing through each deception and exerting his wrath in return.To ensure Katrien’s success where the girls before her have failed, Zaviera and her sisters teach her how to be the perfect imposter, even as The Redwood Man’s sentient vines threaten to consume the manor and its staff. Turning a kitchen maid into a proper lady is no simple task, and matters are complicated further as Katrien begins to fall for the tenderhearted lady she might die for. Caught between duty, desire, and Zaviera’s own blooming feelings, Katrien must decide if she’s truly willing to risk her life to right past wrongs and sacrifice herself for the girl she’s come to love.
Prologue
Katrien
When our lord of the manor fails to return from his hunt in time for lunch with his daughters, my first and only prayer is that he never returns at all.
But like all my divine petitions, this one goes unanswered. Lord Elwood Barras of East Kernshire finds his way home after sunset, agitated and disheveled, and notably without his horse.
“Dead,” says the butler from across the kitchen, rousing gasps from my fellow servants. “His lordship didn’t elaborate beyond that.”
“He shot it,” fills in his lordship’s valet. “Poor beast suffered a broken leg.”
It’s unsavory to think of anything being shot, but horses frighten me, so I’d be more affected if one of the hounds met a similar fate. Thankfully both were found wandering the grounds hours ago, a bit rattled but otherwise unharmed. The tenant farmer who cares for the pair—Lord Barras doesn’t allow the hounds to reside within the manor—must be relieved.
It’s nearly midnight, yet light glows from the gas lamps, and every servant of the estate seems to have joined the butler and valet at the crude table where we take our meals. Tired footmen and hall boys who searched the forest; housemaids and the two lady’s maids shared among Lord Barras’s daughters; the housekeeper and the cook.
The kitchen and scullery maids are here, too, but we are working, clearing dishes and serving tea, trying to remain unnoticed as we catch whatever bits of information we can.
“He’s refusing to see a doctor,” continues the valet. “Claims he’s perfectly well.”
A frowning housemaid loudly sips her tea. “But I gathered his clothes for the laundry, sir, and they were covered in blood.” Muttering into her teacup, she adds, “Along with the most peculiar green sap.”
The valet’s eyebrows lift along with mine. “Blood and sap, you say? Well, when I helped him into the bath, I didn’t see a scratch on him.”
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The Redwood Bargain
Markelle Grabo
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The Redwood Bargain
Markelle Grabo
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A fellow kitchen maid sets a half-filled sugar dish and an empty carafe for milk on my tray. “What do you think, Katrien?” she murmurs into my ear. “Are we to assume all the blood came from the horse, then?”
With what I hope is a discreet shake of my head, I reply, “Doesn’t sound right.”
While Lord Barras insists on hunting without his valet, each outing brings more game to the kitchen than we know what to do with, indicating his skills as a marksman. I can’t imagine he would make such a mess of putting down his horse.
“He was muttering when he came in,” offers the butler, as if he overheard our exchange. “Seems like he was lost in the forest until a man showed him the way home.”
“What sort of man?” asks the housekeeper. “Why didn’t he come inside for a proper thank-you?”
The butler shrugs. “His lordship didn’t say. He did mention something about returning the favor.”
Now what could that mean? No one seems to have a clue, and a whole-body shiver runs through me at the eeriness of the tale, my unsteady hands causing dishes to slide and clatter as I return the tea tray to the counter.
With nothing more to glean from the witnesses to Lord Barras’s homecoming, the servants disperse. Most climb the service staircase to their rooms, though the butler insists the valet and lady’s maids check on his lordship and his daughters before retiring.
I linger in the kitchen, taking my time wiping down the counters because I hope to catch Helsa’s return from the stables. My cousin might feel obligated to speak with me if I have updates about his lordship. If only I could give her news that he failed to come back.
It’s not that I wish for Lord Barras’s death. He’s a foul man, but I don’t want his daughters to be fatherless as well as motherless. It’s just that, if he were gone, our recent troubles would be solved. Helsa might return to a decent schedule and stop sleeping among the horses. She might stop drinking too.
But another half hour passes without her arrival, so I toss the rag into the sink, light a candle for the journey to my room, and turn down the gas lamps. I’m about to ascend the stairs when there’s a curious tapping against the door.
It can’t be Helsa; she’d never knock, nor would any of the servants. Has someone telephoned for a doctor after all? I open the door, but the outside lamp illuminates an empty stoop.
“Hello?” I call, tugging at the strings of my apron, a nervous habit the cook always scolds me for.
No answer. No sign of anyone. I peer into the darkness beyond, wondering if I might catch sight of a moving shadow, but there’s nothing.
I close the door, suddenly eager to climb the stairs to my bed. But the tapping starts again. I frown, studying the door handle as if it might turn at any moment. The noise sounds so close—too close to come from anywhere else. I’m certain someone must be on the other side. A hall boy, playing a prank? If so, he’ll get an earful from me. I’m not in the mood for games.
I pull open the door a second time, only much quicker, hoping to catch the rotten trickster in the act. The sight of a green snake writhing on the stoop makes me jump backward, a scream nearly escaping my lips.
I clutch at the collar of my kitchen dress, my heartbeat heavy under my hand and loud in my ears. I grasp for the broom leaning against the wall, meaning to sweep the snake away before it can slither inside.
It turns out my foolish eyes are the true deceivers, because at second glance I realize the green thing is not a snake. It’s a vine, one of the ivy vines that adorn the manor’s exterior walls. And it’s not alone. More vines join the first in a slow crawl, leaves trembling as they scrape against concrete, against each other. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Shuddering, I slam the door before the vines cross the threshold, returning the broom to its position against the wall. Surely this is a matter best left to someone else. The groundskeepers. The butler. Anyone but me.
The tapping begins a third time. I ignore it, candlelight guiding my way as I ascend the stairs at a rapid pace, breath held until I’m safely in my room. I climb into bed, but I don’t sleep. The servants’ quarters occupy the very top floor of the manor; the vines will have to travel quite a way to reach me. Even so, I stare at the crack beneath my door, listening for rustling leaves.
Ivy is fast-growing; the groundskeepers often mutter about its invasive nature, and if they could guarantee it wouldn’t upset his lordship, they might do away with it completely. But I’ve never heard them gripe about it moving the way I just witnessed.
Could I have imagined it, then? I’ve been on my feet all day. I haven’t slept well since Helsa and I fell out. Did hearing what happened to his lordship and envisioning a strange man in the forest simply prime me for wild fantasies?
I drift off, still wrestling with these thoughts, only to be startled awake by a resounding scream.
A second cry draws me from bed, propelling me down the service staircase in only my nightclothes. In the kitchen, I encounter a trembling scullery maid and ivy covering every surface.
Vines crisscross the table, curl around the edges. Leaves spill from the sink, gaslight illuminated in their glossy sheen. The counters are draped in a mass of writhing green.
The maid clutches my arm. “Katrien, what do we do?”
“Find a groundskeeper,” I say, nudging her toward the stairs without tearing my gaze from the scene. “Quickly.”
Frantic footsteps carry her away, their sound soon replaced by a string of gasps and startled curses. I’m not the only servant to have been called by her screams. Footmen and housemaids crowd around me, pointing and grabbing hold of one another, seeking comfort as they confront a horror that should only exist in nightmares.
From the table, a vine shoots out with alarming speed, darting through the air to wrap around a footman’s neck. A second follows the first, and he’s yanked to his knees. We surge toward him as one, grasping and pulling, tearing and screaming.
We free him before his face turns fully purple, then we push his stumbling, wheezing body toward the stairs. My ears ring. Bile burns my throat. Beside me, a housemaid drops to the ground, three ivy vines around her ankle.
The ivy pulls her back into the kitchen. She shrieks, desperate hands outstretched. I grab one and a hall boy grabs the other. But the vines are so strong. The bottoms of my bare feet burn as they skid across the floor. My arms ache against the strain. Ivy crawls up the girl’s legs, vanishes under her nightdress. I swallow against the foul taste in my mouth.
Something grabs my waist, but it’s only the arms of another maid, offering aid. A footman does the same with the hall boy. I glance over my shoulder to see a chain of servants forming.
I’m warmed by our collective effort, but the housemaid is sobbing. She’s almost more vine than girl now.
Just when I think she’ll be entirely consumed, and perhaps the rest of us with her, both groundskeepers arrive, garden shears at the ready. Once the girl is free, we leave the pair of young men to battle the vines. We know when something’s no longer our fight.
Bloody clothes. Green sap. A man and a favor. Our lord lost his way in the forest, and now our manor is under siege.
* * *
The ivy vines are only the beginning.
Mere days after his lordship’s disastrous hunt, fully grown redwoods appear across the estate. Unlike the ivy, they don’t harm us servants. It’s the livestock they’re after. Sheep, goats, and chickens are drawn as if pulled by invisible strings. More than a dozen animals are found dead atop the roots, traces of bark shavings in the foam spilling from their mouths. Some sort of poison, I hear. Lord Barras orders his tenants to keep their livestock in pens.
A few days more and the ground is shaking. Some tremors break vases and statuettes; others cause falls down the stairs. They don’t seem to extend past the manor, as no one comes to offer aid, and no one here sends for it, fearing Lord Barras’s wrath. His lordship decrees that until further notice, no servant will leave the estate, and all visitors to the manor are to be turned away unless they are tenants making their regularly scheduled deliveries.
But all is not lost; his daughters have a plan. A plan to make the estate safe again, to finally appease the man in the wood, the cause of all this terror. He had sent the vines, redwoods, and tremors because he was promised a prize for helping Lord Barras, one my lord had failed to deliver.
He had been promised a girl. Not just any girl, but one of Lord Barras’s daughters: a Lady of East Kernshire. But the ladies pay this condition no mind. They’re too clever to relinquish one of their own; they know better.
And yet all their cleverness is no match for him.
We servants call him The Redwood Man. I can’t explain his power or why he bargained with Lord Barras. All I know is his disappointment, his unmet hunger. Because each time the ladies send a girl of their choice to the wood, their offered prize is rejected by week’s end.
The first corpse found at the forest’s edge has evergreen needles stuffed down her throat. The second has a tree branch through her middle. The last girl is missing her eyes.
There will most certainly be a fourth. The only question is who she will be, and if she will be the one to finally fool him.
Excerpted from The Redwood Bargain, copyright © 2026 by Markelle Grabo.
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