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Read an Excerpt From The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden
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Read an Excerpt From The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden
In a desperate gamble to save her throne, a young monarch conceals a secret marriage in the shadows of an enchanted forest…
By Katherine Arden
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Published on May 21, 2026
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We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden, a new fantasy novel set in historical Brittany—out from Del Rey on June 2nd.
Anne of Brittany was a child when France invaded and drove her royal father to his death. Now she is a young woman, sovereign duchess of an occupied realm, and France means to crown their conquest by marrying her to their king. Such an alliance would put her title, her lands, and her body forever in the hands of her enemies.But Anne refuses to be the last duchess of Brittany.Her only hope of resisting conquest is another alliance sealed with marriage, so Anne arranges a daring last gambit: a secret betrothal to Charles of France’s greatest rival. But secrets are hard to keep in a world where rival courts spy on each other with diviners.The forest of Brocéliande was once the haunt of Merlin the Enchanter and the long-lost faerie queen. But magic is long gone from Broceliande, except for the occasional sight of a unicorn and one critical quirk: This ancient forest is completely hostile to divination.While pretending compliance with France, Anne plans a unicorn hunt in Brocéliande. A bit of pointless pageantry. A diversion so she can wed in secret.Or so she thinks.
Chapter 1
The French envoy came to Nantes on the last Sunday of Eastertide, when all the Breton court were still at church, when the hiss of rain and the pealing of bells swallowed the hoofbeats and shouts of his company. The court heard Mass unaware of his coming; they schemed and gossiped and took communion just as always, and no one from the pot-boy to the duchess knew that from that year, Christendom would never be the same.
Rain does not fall in Brittany so much as hover, filling the air with vapor, so that the courtiers emerged from the cathedral and were instantly wrapped in cloud. The bells overhead rang loud enough to shake the raindrops crooked. Arrayed in their Easter best, the court glowed in the gray light, though there were fewer of them than there should have been. Many had died in the war with France, many more were still far away awaiting ransom, like ambulatory notes payable in their conquerors’ chateaux.
At the heart of the crowd walked a girl with merry eyes, a floating violet in a sea of cut-velvet and silk hose, cloth-of-silver and the smell of myrrh, concentrating as she held her skirt clear of puddles. This was Anne, duchess regnant of Brittany, her hair caught back in a diadem and pearl-studded crespine, though she wore no other jewels. They had all been sold to pay her garrisons.
She did not know that a French envoy had come to the castle. Indeed, she was expecting a messenger from quite another direction, and that expectation lit an already-animated face. She and her maids-of-honor were playing a game of riddles as they walked.
“—I am in all things and through all things,” declaimed the prosiest among them. “I am in candles and lamps and water and dice. I am the word of God; I am the blessing of mankind I am—.”
“Divination,” answered four brisk voices. All of Anne’s maids-of-honor were clever.
Another of them began a different riddle: “Three pears hang, three monks pass, each takes one, yet two remain, how—.”
Jean de Rieux had been named Anne’s guardian by her father while the latter lay breathing blood on his deathbed, and now he watched the riddle-game with an indulgent, anxious face. He was of far too sober a mind to make up riddles. He said, low, “Highness, have you seen the diviner this day? What news?”
“Of my messenger? None yet,” murmured Anne, leaning on his arm to dodge another puddle. Rain filled the air; she breathed it in. “I shall ask when I have dry feet. But knowing where he is will not bring him here the faster.”
De Rieux shook his head. “I have warned you against overconfidence, my daughter. This—your—arrangement—” He stumbled on the right word, so great was the secrecy, though the clamor of bells overhead muffled their voices. “—It is a notable victory, but you must not sell the bear’s skin before it’s been killed.”
“Or in this case married. Let us all pity the bear,” said Anne and smiled impishly up at him. Ducal dignity could not quite hide her pleased excitement, and she was not yet twenty. “I have not been hasty.”
Before De Rieux could answer, Anne’s sister Isabeau darted up to them, dragging her soaking hem straight through the puddles. She was ten years old, restless as a baby duck; her dark hair had already begun the inevitable process of slithering loose of its careful plaits. She skidded across the stones, De Rieux caught her and Anne said, “Isabeau, unless you intend to man the battlements yourself, I beg you will not bankrupt me keeping you in shoes. We must pay our soldiers.”
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The Unicorn Hunters
Katherine Arden
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Katherine Arden
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“Give me a spear and I will guard the wall,” retorted Isabeau, swinging an imaginary weapon. She hardly came to De Rieux’s shoulder, barely shorter than Anne, though Isabeau gave every promise of overtaking her. The child was all long, awkward limbs, while Anne was small and glossy as a cat in a dairy.
“Will you? I pity the French,” said Anne, tweaking her sister’s nose.
Isabeau butted against Anne’s shoulder and smiled up at De Rieux, who was her guardian too. They were all crossing the drawbridge that divided the city of Nantes from the vast new ducal keep that Bretons called, simply, the Castle of the Dukes of Brittany.
Half-tuned music and laughter trickled from the castle windows and from the wall-top as a bright stream of courtiers passed beneath the barbican and crossed the courtyard. The rain was falling faster. Isabeau had been dignified all through church, and Anne saw her trying to be stately again now, though she made a small, irrepressible skip before she caught herself.
Anne said, “Isabeau, if you cannot sit still this forenoon, let you put on a good cloak and run about the garden.” If Breton children were kept indoors when it rained, they’d never go outside. “Only be sure and bring me a posy when you return.”
Isabeau lit up. “Will you come with me and pick the flowers?”
“I will not.” The mist showed every sign of thickening, enough to lay sparkling droplets on her violet bodice. “I am going to sit by a nice fire, embroider my altar cloth, entertain deputations, and gossip furiously.” She gave her sister an innocent look. “You may come in if you like and hem a kerchief.”
Isabeau shuddered and slipped away at once, turning back to wave, trailed by her exasperated governess and a tutor with a dripping nose.
It was only after Anne, smiling, had watched her sister go that she realized something was wrong in the courtyard.
A string of unfamiliar horses was being led to stabling; an unfamiliar equerry stood by the horse-troughs. A loud blend of strange voices echoed in the guardhouse. Who had come? A glimpse of banner or shield, tabard or surcoat might tell her, but rain hovered still, cold and close, blurring the world like a painter’s fingertips. Whoever had come, it could not be her messenger. Her messenger was riding alone, in secret.
She and Jean de Rieux exchanged wary glances as they passed into the castle proper.
Her bastard half-brother Henri, Baron of Avaugour, met Anne in her garderobe, a private chamber above the oratory, where she entertained her intimates and read documents, sewed and gossiped with her maids-of-honor. The light was gray near the windows, rosy near the fire, wavering in places from the interplay of rain and firelight. Rugs and wolfskin and tapestry softened the stone. Every courtier with a reason to wait upon the duchess was already in the room, passing news in low voices. Henri scythed straight through them all, a high, outraged color on his handsome face.
When Anne was crowned, some had whispered that it was a shame the duke’s only son could not inherit the duchy. Anything, they said, would have been better than giving the realm to poor Francis’ barely-grown daughter. Henri just laughed at those people. “Lord,” he’d told Anne. “Who’d want it? All those papers to read. Treaties and accounts and letters. And old men talking. You like it, you unnatural creature. They think you only live to frolic, but they don’t see the look in your eye when you preside over that council.”
Anne did like it. Although sometimes she envied Henri whom God had made tall and broad, a knight and a man. Any or all of those attributes would have made her life much easier.
She crossed the garderobe and planted herself beside the hood of the enormous stone fireplace, nodding at the reverences of a dozen courtiers. “Tell me your news, brother. Who has come? I saw the horses below.”
De Rieux followed them to the fireplace, his mouth downturned and worried. Her council was scattered about the room: clever, jolly Dunois, whose father was the famous Bastard of Orléans. The Comte de Comminges, and Montauban her chamberlain, catlike and wary and intensely loyal. They all drifted unobtrusively nearer, while her maids-of-honor raised a chorus of chatter to mask their conversation.
“La Trémoille is here with a grand escort and messages from the French court.” said Henri, low. “He has had word via diviner and rode from the garrison at St. Aubin-du-Cormier. I think he is come to insist upon the French marriage with no further delay.”
Anne went very still. Her mind, instantly, darted back to the day of her coronation. She had been too young and red-eyed, her father newly buried.
“I will not marry the king of France,” she had told De Rieux. She knew—everyone knew—that if she wed the king of France, then there would be no more Brittany. Only France, from the Rhine to the stormy sea. “I promised my father.”
“What choice do you have?” De Rieux had rejoined, with some justice. Her father had lost a war over this very question, and died in the aftermath. Brittany was a fair green jewel rich with the wealth of the sea, and France was ten times its size and coveted it. Brittany was also Anne’s bridal-portion, and would go to her husband when she married. Of course France wanted her.
“I will make myself new choices,” she had said then.
And she had. She was sure of it. Her secret messenger from Flanders was carrying Brittany’s salvation even now, sewn up hidden in his saddle-skirt.
“They must have found out,” whispered De Rieux.
Anne’s mind was racing. She said, “Perhaps. Or perhaps not. He would have brought soldiers if he knew, and he has only his escort, hasn’t he?”
“But why else would he have come now?” murmured Montauban.
They were all worried and she did not blame them. If France laid bare her plans too soon, she would be deposed. Or taken away and married forcibly. She was finding it hard to draw a full breath.
“I can think of a few reasons,” said Dunois, brows drawn together. “But I like none of them.” He took a gasping draught of his spiced wine.
“He has not said why he is here, only asked for audience with the duchess,” said Henri. Her brother had no head for statecraft. He liked jousting and expensive horses and a well-cut doublet. But he was an easy, kindly man, her father’s mistress’s son.
Anne’s rising heartbeat seemed to shake her whole body; she forced her voice to mildness. “We’ll find out soon enough. Give him my utmost respect and say we honor our cousin of France and wait upon his noble general’s convenience.” She’d given standing orders to treat anyone from the French court with an exasperating degree of servility. She cast a speculative glance at her brother. “Henri go and put on something more expensive. That vulgar hat with the ostrich. I want him to think you have ambitions and have spent all your money.”
“What?”
“Now,” said Anne. “Quick. He’ll probably come in here any moment, when he gets the summons. Hates delays. Don’t you remember? And another thing—,” She whispered in his ear.
“I don’t understand,” said her brother dubiously.
“No need,” said Anne. She said it cheerfully, but the firelight kept wanting to go sideways in her vision, to remind her of the stabs of light that roared from besieging cannon. The first time she had seen La Trémoille was from the wall of that very castle. He had been directing the French army that was methodically laying siege to their battlements. Her father had pointed out the three blue eagles of his standard, noted the bombards being drawn into position to fire.
That day was years gone, but the cold fear of it seemed to cling to her.
Henri said, “You should know that my hats are the envy of the court.”
“Now.”
He went off, muttering something incredulous about how their easy-tempered father had sired such a baby tyrant. Anne smiled as she watched him go, but her smile faded again when she met De Rieux’s worried eyes.
* * *
Four years ago, Guillaume de la Trémoille, lieutenant-general of France, had been the architect of the conquest of Brittany, and in his firm opinion, the war had stopped too soon. The Bretons had been defeated, roundly, at St. Aubin-du-Cormier, but France ought not have heard their suit for peace after the battle. They should not have relented, in the face of Duke Francis’ death. They ought to have driven on, reduced the chateau at Nantes, taken Rennes, packed off the girls, the ducal heirs, to be wards of the crown of France and set a loyal man—himself, for preference—in the seat of the duke of Brittany.
That was the way wars were won.
That was how the old king would have won.
But Charles was young and naïve and desired to emulate Saint Louis, his canonized ancestor, in the matter of virtue. Virtuous kings, Charles opined, did not seize territory on the thinnest possible claim, backed up with a legion of bloody hired swords. Virtuous kings enlarged their holdings by good, lawful, Christian marriage, and both Brittany’s heirs were girls.
His court agreed in public, but in private they wondered what Charles’ warlike father would have said to his amiable son.
La Trémoille knew very well what the old king would have said and wished with all his might that he could have said it for him.
The only saving grace of it all had been that the new-crowned duchess was a mere slip of a silly child, a puppet on an all-but-bankrupt throne. Charles was young and much given to amorous intrigues; the crown was distracted by wars in Burgundy and it did not seem so very risky to wait for the girl to grow up a little. She would be less likely to die in childbed.
But now La Trémoille meant to wash his hands of Brittany. He wished never to see another raincloud so long as he lived, wished never again to ride while soaked to his shriveled skin. He wanted to go enjoy his lands and titles, the gifts of a grateful France. Then he meant to raise fresh troops and go and fight a fine plundering war far away in sunny Pavia.
The duchess must marry. She is past old enough, and Charles is crowned king. It must be now, Marguerite had written him. Marguerite of France was the king’s elder sister, his regent before he came of age. The cleverest woman in Europe, the most powerful. Even after Charles’ coronation, she kept a knowing hand on the reins of state. She shared entirely La Trémoille’s views on the danger of leaving Brittany half-conquered. You will go to Nantes and set this marriage in motion. You will frighten them if you must.
With these injunctions echoing in his mind, very grand in a new doublet, Guillaume de la Trémoille went to wait upon the duchess of Brittany, prepared to terrify her and her council if they proved in the least resistant to this imminent and necessary French marriage.
A repast was laid out already on long boards in the duchess’s garderobe. She did not receive all her court here; this was a meal of her intimates. She got smartly to her feet when he made his bow and greeted him with touching shyness.
La Trémoille’s heart sank at the sight of the food: all sugared fruits and marchpane. A meal for a spoiled child. At least she was pretty. Perhaps Charles of France, also something of a fool, would like her. They could be fools together and leave the business of governing to others.
Breathlessly, the duchess encouraged him to try the delicacies, and when he had choked some of them down, she asked timidly, “Monseigneur, have you messages for me?”
La Trémoille shoved the last of the sweets away. “Madame, I am come on behalf of the crown of France, which greatly desires to settle with all dispatch the alliance between Charles the king and his beloved subject Anne of Brittany. I am empowered to do all that is required to facilitate this longed-for union.”
“Oh,” she said, looking tentatively down the table, as though expecting someone to chide her. “I suppose—it’s only—I fear…” She trailed off, biting her lips.
La Trémoille followed her gaze, suddenly alert. He and Marguerite had discussed the likelihood that someone in the Breton court, holding particular sway with the duchess, would delay the French marriage in hopes of a bribe. Was there such a person?
“But not so fast, sister,” said a ringing voice a few places down the table. “You have forgot the unicorn.”
This man, perhaps. A great handsome knight by his clothes, brawny arms crossed over a straining doublet and wearing upon his head the most vulgar heap of dyed ostrich feathers La Trémoille had ever seen.
“Oh—Henri,” said the duchess, looking uneasy. “The general does not care about unicorns.”
This must be the Breton bastard, the eldest child, knighted by the duke and created Baron of Avaugour. Rumor said Francis had got the boy on the old French king’s castoff mistress. A bastard must always be chewing at the doors of power and a royal bastard doubly so. What would he want for a bribe? La Trémoille almost forgot the duchess, staring at this upstart. “What unicorn?” He was expecting the commission of some tapestry or other nonsense thing.
“Oh,” said the duchess confidingly. “It is only that we have had word that a unicorn has been sighted. In Brocéliande.”
All around the table, voices seemed to drop; the word Brocéliande itself breathed out dark mystery. Men told wild tales of that ancient forest. That the fair-folk, the korriganed, had lived long in its shadows. That an unwary traveler might stray into the Lost Lands, only to vanish forever, or return a century hence, still young while his whole world had spun out from under his feet. And they also did say, with more force than mere rumor, that Brocéliande was one of the last, best places in Christendom for men to hunt unicorns.
A unicorn was the noblest and rarest prey in Christendom. The fire-drakes, if ever they had lived, had not been seen in living memory, and one could not hunt sea-drakes. Sea-drakes hunted men. At least, that’s what seamen said, when their ships did not come back. But now and again, one heard credible tales of a unicorn. Like his master the king, La Trémoille loved to hunt. “A unicorn, you say?”
The duchess threw a diffident glance at her brother. “We had a message from Trécesson. A lymerer with his dog, seeking stags for his master, came upon the beast in Broceliande. Four days ago—or was it five? I thought—I mean I thought—that perhaps we should try and hunt it. While I am—” she stumbled over the words, going modestly pink.
La Trémoille knew what she was trying to say. To hunt a unicorn required two things. The first was a virgin of high birth and unimpeachable virtue, to bait the unicorn. And the other was a hunt so extravagant that the mere dazzle of it would tempt the vain beast near.
What better bait for a unicorn than this beautiful, high-born fool? And what nobler quarry for a man than a unicorn? La Trémoille hesitated, remembering his orders. Then he said, “It would be a fine thing, to hunt a unicorn.”
In a hectoring voice, Henri of Avaugour answered, drinking his wine, “Then why do we speak of marriage? Even the breath of coming unchastity might ruin all—it is said that unicorns know these things, monseigneur.”
The duchess was blushing even more furiously, biting her lips.
La Trémoille considered. Just the chance of it fired his blood. A living unicorn, at bay… “A small delay before negotiations begin might be possible,” he said at last.
A small, odd smile came to Henri of Avaugour’s lips. “I knew you were wise, monseigneur.”
The bastard was probably still holding out for a bribe, thought La Trémoille. Well, an estate in France could be found for him. But let it be a wretched estate.
The duchess, still scarlet, said, “I shall make of the unicorn’s horn a wedding present to the king of France. You shall take the hide, God willing, for all the world to marvel at, monseigneur.”
Her look was soft, earnest. And when she put out her hand to be kissed, he did it with less than his usual coldness.
* * *
They got rid of La Trémoille at last. The general had unbent considerably at the thought of hunting a unicorn, though he stared daggers all the while at poor Henri. He even ate some marchpane, though he grimaced, and drank his cup of wine—Anne had made sure it was the sweet kind that gave you a headache—and then took his leave. The servants came in his wake to draw the cloth and clear away the boards and trestles. Soon there would be proper feasting in the great hall.
Anne finally gave in to the fit of laughter that had been trying to burst out of her all that while. When she looked up, wiping her eyes, Henri was grinning too, still wearing that ridiculous hat, and that started her off again. She said, “Let us hope the feast tonight contains a few bearable dishes; one cannot subsist on marchpane.”
“Lord, how do you do it? One moment my sister is there and the next there is a ninny blushing on cue. And yon Frenchman’s no fool yet he swallowed that nonsense about future unchastity.”
Anne said, “He was pleased with his own superiority. It makes people unwise.”
She had not let any of her councilors, not even Jean de Rieux, assist at the comedy she played for La Trémoille. Henri was the only one she needed, and a great crowd would merely increase the odds that someone let something slip. But La Trémoille had not been gone a candle-mark when De Rieux hurried up the stairs. “What did the general say?” he asked urgently. “What does he want?”
Henri was still grinning. “He had no idea what struck him. The duchess has that effect. And of course, I gave my sister vital assistance.”
Anne had resumed her accustomed chair and was putting minute stitches in the vast watered-silk sweep of an altar-cloth; she said austerely, “We have convinced the general to delay any talk of my marriage to the king of France until after we all go hunt unicorns in Brocéliande.” She turned her altar-cloth in the firelight, wishing for her favorite thimble. Being gold, it had been sold too.
De Rieux looked tolerably blank. “But—why? There are no unicorns. Or, there have been no sightings. Not these twenty years.”
“That,” said Anne. “Is entirely beside the point. We have bought ourselves time.”
“To what purpose? You have bought yourself a week or two, no more; it will not make a difference.”
Anne laid the cloth aside. “That’s where you’re wrong. Consider only—,” she broke off.
Her court diviner was called Calyx; no one recalled his birth-name, except for some dusty scribe in the Diviners’ Guild. Every diviner took a Latin name upon achieving his mastery. Calyx stumbled into the duchess’s garderobe now, three-parts drunk. That was to be expected. Calyx was an oenomancer, who read his divination in the dregs of wine. With a bleared eye, carrying bottle and cup in his slack hands, he said, “You sent for me, highness?”
Anne leaped up, pausing only to see that her maids-of-honor tidied her altar-cloth away and secured the needle. “You are a welcome sight, auspex—” that is what diviners were called in the formal language of the court. She pulled him at once to the deep window embrasure, with the rain sluicing fast past the leaded panes. Diviners needed clear light for their auguries.
Anne had sometimes wished for a court diviner whose gift came in a more practical form—the Guild contained diviners by dice and clouds and water and candlelight—but the Guild also kept a relentless grip on its masters and would not send a gifted young diviner to work in a court as beleaguered as hers. Especially not with its sovereign a woman unwed. Calyx was old and his eyes were bloodshot; his hair swooned greasily from a velvet cap of uncertain cleanliness, his mouth was a sea of wine-stained stumps, and she could wish that his gift did not require the drinking of quite so much wine. But her father had liked Calyx. And Anne loved and missed her father.
Divination was a useful and necessary art, although it was neither infallible nor omniscient. It could only answer questions that related to the bodily senses. A diviner might be asked, what color are the slippers of the Sultan in Stamboul, every day for a year and never get it wrong. More difficult were moods and intentions; names and numbers were impossible. To divine a place was possible, but only if the diviner could put a place-name to the colors or sounds or smells he found in his augury. Most diviners specialized in a small area.
Who is the betrothed of the Duchess of Brittany was a question that could be answered by a skilled diviner, working diligently—royal diviners kept careful physical descriptions of sovereigns—and one that Anne lived in mortal fear of the French court asking. But it had been Pliny the Younger, a diviner himself, who discovered the chief use of divination. For, as he said in a letter, if the emperor’s auspices can tell him the color of anything in the world, but the name of nothing, then all we must do is assign words to colors.
Now kings and generals and ambassadors and grand seigneurs all communicated via diviner. Diviners carried colored squares of cloth and each cloth meant something like safe, or war or beset or yesterday. The exact code changed from court to court. To send a message, the diviner merely laid down cloths in order and the recipient’s diviner asked his clouds or dice or wine or beetles to tell him, what colors lay today upon the table of the duchess of Brittany’s diviner? Diviners were kept busy relaying such messages all over the continent.
Anne said low to Calyx, heart beating fast. “Where is my messenger from Flanders?” Calyx could only answer if he had come near enough to Nantes.
Calyx drained his cup to the dregs, peered at the sludge on the bottom and said squinting, “The northwestern road. Will be here by nightfall or a little after if the rain keeps on.”
Anne bit her lip. The plan she was slowly forming was too complex to share via any code of colors. She said abruptly, “Calyx, is it true that there is no divination possible beneath the eaves of Brocéliande?”
Calyx stiffened. The moving rain-light grayed his face and made him seem older. “That is a cursed place for diviners,” he said at last
Anne leaned forward. “Why? Is it true then?”
She had the impression he would prefer not to answer. But he had to. It was one of the codes of the Guild, that a diviner must answer every direct question from his principal, and never lie. He turned his cup in restless hands. “No. Not exactly.”
“What then?”
Reluctantly, he said, “A diviner can set his inward sight upon Brocéliande. But he sees nonsense. If he persists, he goes mad. The chronicles say that long ago it was just the same if any man tried to use divination upon the korriganed or any piece of their realm in the Lost Lands.”
Anne clasped her hands, pleased. Her nascent plan depended on this peculiar quality of Broceliande. She did not fear the korriganed. They had not been seen for five hundred years.
“But,” added Calyx, setting down his cup with a click. “The forest is dangerous. Merlin the Enchanter was vanquished there, caught in the toils of the Queen of the Lost Lands, and no man of greater wisdom has lived since the world began. I beg you will not meddle with Brocéliande, highness.”
“No more than I must,” said Anne and smiled reassuringly at him.
He did not look reassured.
Anne bid her diviner go and drink something gentler than wine and get some sleep, then turned back to the fire. To De Rieux she said, “My messenger will be here at nightfall. You needn’t fret until then. Go and change, Jean. It may be a long night.”
Something in his heavy face lightened. “That is welcome news, highness,” he said.
Henri was still lolling in a chair by the fire, now addressing gallant remarks to Madeleine of Chateaubriant, the cleverest of Anne’s maids-of-honor. The lady was wearing a very demure expression that said she was enjoying herself. Damn them both, there was no time.
Anne crooked a peremptory finger at her brother.
Henri came over, reluctantly, “Sister, if you have more schemes involving hats and lying to the French—”
She interrupted. “I need you to go and intercept the messenger from Flanders and bring him here tonight. Secretly. La Trémoille mustn’t know. The northwestern road.”
Henri did not look enthusiastic. Madeleine was very beautiful and the rain had not let up.
Anne said sympathetically, “I know. But you may lounge about in comfort after the realm is preserved.”
Excerpted from The Unicorn Hunters, copyright © 2026 by Katherine Arden.
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