In an Orchard Grown from Ash

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I’ve been so grateful to work with such an incredible team on this duology. I owe so much to Sarah Peed, and to Daniel Carpenter at Titan—thank you for the care and thoughtfulness with which you’ve shepherded this series to its close. Thank you, too, to my agents, Kim Witherspoon, Jessica Mileo, and Daisy Parente. Your support and guidance are more valuable than I can say. Massive thanks to Del Rey—Keith Clayton, Alex Larned, Tricia Narwani, Scott Shannon—and to everyone in publicity and marketing, particularly David Moench, Jordan Pace, Ada Maduka, Ashleigh Heaton, Sabrina Shen, Tori Henson, and Matt Schwartz. I am, as ever, honored to be on your team. To Catherine Bucaria, Rob Guzman, Ellen Folan, Molly Lo Re, Jesse Vilinsky, and Abby Oladipo, thank you so much for the time and detail you put into these audiobooks. Thank you to David G. Stevenson, Tim Green, and Faceout Studio, for the gorgeous hardcover (and for your patience as I rambled on about shades of green), and to Regina Flath and Elena Masci for the incredible paperback refresh. Thank you, too, to everybody who helped make the inside as beautiful as the outside, particularly Sara Bereta for the interior design, and Cara DuBois, Sam Wetzler, and Pam Alders in production. Heartfelt thanks to my friends—JD, CH, RB, MH, ET, RT, and more—and family for their support and good humor, to my early readers for their assistance and feedback, and to all those who helped me direct my research. I also want to thank everybody who has supported this series: booksellers, reviewers, bloggers, and creators on TikTok and Instagram, among others. I appreciate the work you do for this community so much. Perhaps most important, thank you to you for picking up this book. And to my cat, Scallion, who cannot read it (we hope) but who will delight in biting the corner of a hardcover copy for the rest of her days. By Rory Power Wilder Girls Burn Our Bodies Down The Wind-up Garden Series In a Garden Burning Gold In an Orchard Grown from Ash AUTHOR’S NOTE The fictional setting of In an Orchard Grown from Ash is inspired by various parts of the world but is not intended as a true representation of any one country, culture, or language at any point in history. For a list of applicable content warnings, please visit the author’s personal website at itsrorypower.com. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rory Power lives in Rhode Island. She has an MA in prose fiction from the University of East Anglia and is the New York Times bestselling author of In a Garden Burning Gold, Wilder Girls, and Burn Our Bodies Down. itsrorypower.com Instagram: @itsrorypower Chapter One ALEXANDROS The guards were discussing his overcoat. They had been since Legerma, where Lexos had been passed into their care, and they were not being quiet about it. It was, according to them, quite ugly and in need of mending, along with a good wash so that it might stop stinking up the carriage. One of the guards had even tugged on the hem a few minutes ago, as if expecting a seam to give and the whole thing to come apart in his hand. Lexos had said nothing then, as he did now, sighing and settling more deeply into the corner of the carriage before shutting his eyes. He knew he looked quite Thyzak in his dour black coat and that its sleeves did nothing to hide the beautiful silver bracelets that had been bent around his wrists—ornamental chains to mark his status as a captive of Tarro Domina. But he was warm, and he could tell, from their occasional shivers, that the guards were not. They were dressed for a standard spring; the weather they found themselves in these days was anything but standard. Snow was still falling, even as the season began to tip toward its end. It melted quickly, to be sure, but it left the ground unsteady and the air heavy with mist that took too long to burn off. It was a shame. Trefazio was meant to be beautiful this time of year. Rhea had told him once that it was her favorite place to make a marriage, although it had been some time since she had married anyone outside of Thyzakos, since their father’s efforts had turned toward securing the support of his own stewards. It didn’t do, lately, to think of his sister, but he couldn’t help it. Every night on his trip across the countryside he fell asleep remembering the look on her face that day at Stratathoma, in the silence after he’d finished reciting the prayer meant to end her life. Her shock, that he had tried. His, that it hadn’t worked. Wherever Rhea was now—and he was very sure that she was still alive, sure to his bones—it was with the matagios on her tongue, a little black spot marking her as their father’s eldest child and successor. Had she made any peace with it, he wondered. She had never wanted that power. Especially not at the end. But power or no, she was free. He hoped she was pleased with that, because he could not be pleased for her, not when he was stuck in this carriage on the latest leg of his tour of the countryside. Every few days they would stop, and Lexos would find himself in some city or town he’d never heard of before and be given hardly a minute to catch his breath before being paraded down the street: the Argyros prince, federation traitor, and fugitive, captured once more. He’d asked one of the guards if this was a popular Trefzan hobby—if there were other parades on the off days, perhaps for anyone who had worn a non-Domina shade of green—but apparently this was a custom Falka had invented just for him. Lexos couldn’t decide if that was flattering or not. At least Tarro had gone back to Vuomorra. The first few cities