Queen of faces, p.1
Queen of Faces, page 1
Copyright
First published in the United Kingdom by Harper Fire, an imprint of HarperCollins Children’s Books, in 2026
Published in this ebook edition in 2026
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Text copyright © Petra Lord 2026
Map illustrations copyright © Nicolette Caven 2026
Cover illustrations copyright © Micaela Alcaino 2026
Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2026
Petra Lord asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
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Source ISBN: 9780008688592
Ebook Edition © January 2026 ISBN: 9780008688615
Version: 2026-01-23
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Dedication
For Leelah
The Four Schools of Magic
Physical
Control of the Tangible World
Colour: Green
Abilities: Elemental magic, manipulation of physics and chemistry
Sinew
Control of the Body
Colour: Red
Abilities: Bodily manipulation, enhancement of strength and speed
Praxis
Control of the Self
Colour: Purple
Abilities: Mental enhancement
Whisper
Control of Others
Colour: Blue
Abilities: Psychic influence, thought manipulation
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Dedication
The Four Schools of Magic
Map
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
About the Publisher
Dear applicants,
Welcome to the 1,273rd entrance exam for Paragon Runic Academy. For your own safety, please follow the enclosed instructions exactly as written.
The exam will take you approximately thirty-one hours. At the conclusion, you will retain no memory of the test material or of what transpired in the examination room. This loss of recollection may cause panic or distress, and counselling is available upon request.
If, during the test, you experience symptoms of psychosis or are unable to remember personal details such as your name, please raise your hand and a proctor will arrive to administer treatment. If you have a physical impairment that prevents you from completing the test properly, please raise your hand and a replacement body will be provided for the duration. If you observe any unusual phenomenon in the examination room, such as but not limited to: uncontrollable laughter, flashing lights, objects moving themselves or voices, please raise your hand to report it.
Any applicants found cheating will be subject to immediate putrefaction.
Thank you for taking part in this esteemed tradition. We wish you good fortune.
You may begin at the sound of the bell.
i cried scarlet. bloody tears slid from my cheeks, dripping on to the marble.
The chefs were cooking a roast in Clementine’s wood oven. The other maids shrugged off the thick grey smoke, but it irritated my eyes. On good days, I cried like a normal person, watery, salty tears soaking my mattress in the basement.
This was not a good day.
I hauled the trash can through the entrance hall, arms shaking. Its handles bit into my fingers, but I didn’t drop it. The tears made me dizzy, but I kept walking. If I took too long, Clementine would have me scrubbing toilets all night. Or she’d hold my pay for another month. I adjusted my grip, back straining, and managed to get a sweaty hand on the doorknob.
As I gripped the polished silver, I glanced at the mailbox beside me. A slender rectangle by the front door, mermaids engraved on its imitation gold leaf.
Still empty. My letter was late. Five hours, six minutes and counting.
Maybe the postman was swamped. Maybe his bike had got a flat tyre.
Or maybe I’d failed the exam. Maybe there was no letter.
And without a letter, I was dead. Watery blood dripped from my face, a cruel reminder of that fact.
Two steps from the front door, a car shot past me, roaring down the streets of Lowtown. I staggered back on the cobblestones, inches away from crushed toes. Three years in the capital, and I still hadn’t acclimatised to those puttering steel boxes. Automobiles had been around for decades, but back home, you were lucky if you owned a horse for the farm, much less anything with a motor.
I gazed up as I trudged to the seawall, hoping to catch a glimpse of Paragon Academy. No luck. Grey clouds from the ocean had merged with smog from the city’s factories, blotting out the sky. The sun looked like a rotting peach as it set behind Mount Elwar. There was no glimmer of light in the heavens. No Paragon.
Please, I prayed, let it be me this year. Up there in the clouds, you could walk on water, freeze a lightning bolt in your palm or squeeze sawdust into diamonds. Up there, illness was just a suggestion.
It felt so close. All just a letter away.
But only if you were special. That’s what they muttered, from the silver mansions of Hightown to the filthy speakeasies of Lowtown. Maybe you were the smartest gnat in your village. Maybe you were the cream of the crop. You still didn’t stand a chance. Thousands of teenagers took the exam every summer, praying for a ticket to paradise. But in the end, barely a handful received their tiny blue envelope.
When I reached the seawall, I planned to empty the trash can over the ledge. Instead, I fell on top of it, my chest slamming into the tin. Melon rinds and goose livers poured out, mouldy and rotten. They dropped past a carved staircase and plopped into the water below, forming a carpet of congealed filth.
I bent over the can, dripping blood into the sea. My tears dissolved like ink in a water glass, tiny clouds of red. The ocean seemed to go on forever.
When I finished, I crawled backwards, out of breath. My white maid’s cap had come loose, and clumps of hair drifted in my face. I grimaced. Though I was only seventeen, my scalp was already teeming with wispy grey strands. I’d drowned it in yellow dye, but that didn’t stop my hair from looking like a mangled bird’s nest.
Still, I refused to cut it. It was the only part of my body that looked feminine. The only part I liked. And things weren’t getting better.
Most fabricated bodies lasted at least fifty years. I’d worn mine for fewer than eight, and it was already breaking down.
Out of the corner of my eye, a tiny
My hand reached into the bottom of the can, and I tossed some scraps in its direction. Grey little vermin needed all the help we could get.
I wiped my crimson tears with the inside of my cap, somewhere the others wouldn’t see. Then I staggered back in.
When I got down to the kitchen, the other maids were sitting on stools around a radio, giggling and nibbling on slivers of strawberry cake. Guillaume had whipped up the batter for Clementine’s party, and there must have been some left over. No one moved to offer me a slice.
My chest tightened. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. My taste buds and nose had stopped working over a year ago.
One of the girls, Beatrix, glanced back at me. I gathered my courage and shuffled towards a gap in the circle, putting on a smile. I could be friendly. Maybe they didn’t hate me.
Beatrix stepped to the left, closing the gap. Another girl muttered something, and they laughed.
A dull ache grew in my stomach, and I backed away. They found me repulsive.
I could hardly blame them. My shoulders were broad, my jaw wide and my forehead bulging. My eyes were too small, and my nose was too big. When I looked in the mirror, I felt nauseous.
‘Gage!’ Guillaume barked, chopping vegetables in an oily cloud. ‘Do you get paid to daydream?’ He snapped his fingers, pointing at wine bottles in a cooler. ‘Wash up and serve the guests.’
I jogged down to the basement and washed my hands with the grimy tap. As I scrubbed, my eyes flitted to my mattress on the floor. My little home in Clementine’s cellar, next to a dozen more for her other servants. I wanted to crawl under the sheets, flip through my romance manga and hide there until my letter came. If my letter came.
But I didn’t do that. I just went back to the kitchen, grabbed the bottles and trudged up the central staircase. As I walked, the splintering steps turned to waxed hardwood, so smooth they were difficult not to slip on. The peeling paint faded into bone-white marble.
Clementine didn’t care much about her servants’ accommodations. But for the eyes of her wealthier friends, the upstairs had to be perfect. It had to resemble their opulent mansions, not the house of some grasping striver.
The dining room stretched two storeys high, with a fake-gold chandelier hanging from the ceiling and elaborate metal patterns melted into the windows. The guests sat at an oak table carved with roses, bathing in the hazy sunset. Gentle swing music drifted from a gramophone.
I served the first guest, a tall, broad-shouldered man, pouring wine into his burnished glass. My hands wobbled as I recognised his face. Gabriel Heywood. A wealthy shipping magnate, suspected of ordering the deaths of two business rivals. A criminal, like so many of Clementine’s associates.
Officially, my employer owned a logistics company, running a handful of cargo ships in and out of Elmidde’s port. But her servants knew the truth, whispered in the dark corners of her basement. She was a mercenary, a gun for hire selling her skills to the fattest purse. Beatrix had seen her one night at the back door, her rain jacket covered with blood. And according to Abigail, her closet had a false bottom filled with guns. These gold-plated drunkards were probably her clients. Men and women whose business she desperately coveted.
‘Plum wine,’ said a feminine voice behind me, ‘from a private vineyard in Kshatra.’
‘You must be drowning in profits, Clementine,’ said the man beside me. ‘No wonder you can afford a model like that.’
I glanced behind me, and froze.
Clementine was wearing a designer body.
The woman I knew was short, blonde, muscular, with a voice turned hoarse from chain-smoking. Today, she towered over her guests. The sunset glowed on her milky skin and high cheekbones, and flecks of silver glimmered in the whites of her eyes. Scarlet hair tumbled past elegant shoulders, and a blue pearl necklace sat at her collarbone, her signature jewellery.
The big house, the servants and the personal chefs couldn’t have come cheap. But that body had probably cost more than the rest put together.
Clementine smirked. ‘It’s a Freya Hampton. Bones as hard as steel. Skin like ivory. Hand-stitched muscles, with five times the normal fibre density. I transferred my Pith this morning.’
The party guests drew close to her, murmuring. Her Pith. Her mind, her consciousness. The flickering web of lightning in her skull. A soul as black and empty as they came.
I finished pouring and stepped away. As I reached for the doorknob, Gabriel Heywood called to me. ‘Servant. Edgar.’
I swallowed. Edgar wasn’t my name. But it was the name of my chassis model. A cheap, common face, worn by thousands of men and boys across the Eight Oceans. Sometimes, as shorthand, people used the model’s name instead of a real one.
I turned to him, wrenching my mouth into a smile. ‘Yes, sir. Can I help you?’
He grinned. ‘What’s your name, Edgar?’
‘Anabelle, sir. Anabelle Gage.’
‘Edgar,’ he slurred. ‘What’s wrong with your skin?’ He pointed to a stony patch of flesh on my arm, an island of grey in my rough olive complexion.
I stared at the pink floor tiles, pulling my sleeve over the blemish.
‘That’s how they’re designed,’ said Clementine, shrugging. ‘Edgars are made on the cheap, so their skin is less pale. That’s why they look a bit . . .’
‘Foreign,’ said another guest.
‘Confused,’ said Clementine.
My cheeks burned, and I shrank back.
‘Not its normal skin tone,’ said Heywood. ‘The grey stuff. How did you get that?’
‘I—’ My voice caught in my throat. My smile wavered.
‘Answer him, Ana,’ said Clementine, her voice soft but menacing.
‘I was born a girl, sir.’ I forced the words out. ‘When I was nine, I developed a terminal illness. My mother went to the black market, and this Edgar body was all she could afford.’ A defective body.
Heywood sniggered. ‘Hope she didn’t spend too much.’
Just her life savings and then some.
‘Too bad you’re not a Paragon rat,’ said Heywood. ‘They give out spare chassis like candy to students.’
‘Paragon,’ scoffed Clementine. ‘Some dusty old castle for pompous freaks. Believe me, no one needs that pigsty.’
I clenched my teeth.
In the three years I’d worked for Clementine, I’d never seen her wield a single scrap of the supernatural. She, almost certainly, was a Humdrum. An ordinary human, without a drop of magic in her blood. Her tiny mind would never grasp the true world of magic.
‘I don’t know,’ said Jasper Isley, a known terrorist mercenary. ‘I think that chassis would do just fine at a pigsty.’ The others laughed. Clementine smiled.
A droplet of sweat rolled down my back. My eyes bored holes into the floor. You’re all right, I told myself. It won’t always be like this. I let the dining room fade and pictured myself somewhere else: the lounge in one of Paragon’s dormitories.
I imagined sitting on a couch, feet stretched towards a crackling fireplace. Surrounded by my friends, studying and playing cards like they did in the photos, cracking jokes with brilliant, beautiful heroes like Adam Weaver. Sipping a cup of pomegranate cider with unblemished hands.
I could almost taste it.
I’d failed the entrance exam twice already. But I’d studied even harder this year. I’d crammed thousands of pages into my mind, camping in libraries, passing out on piles of textbooks. And I’d practised the one magic spell I knew for hours, testing it on alleycats until my skull burned.
There were rumours about the exam and its impossible pass rate. And even though I’d taken it three times, rumours were all I had. The proctors wiped everyone’s memories at the end of the test, leaving the contents a mystery. Official guides emphasised the importance of psychology, physics, chemistry – the foundational knowledge for magic. But the rumours whispered of other challenges: interviews, duels, mind-bending puzzles that induced madness.
I’d prepared for everything. I would make this year different, even if it killed me. And it almost had.
I’d spent thirty-one hours in an ancient lighthouse off the coast of the city, taking a test I couldn’t even remember. I’d emerged aching and dizzy, my arms covered in bruises, dried blood staining my lips. And I’d passed out in the basement for three straight days, my dreams haunted by death and deep oceans. Clementine had been furious. But it was a small price to pay.
