Maggie doesn’t want to know.until earth-shattering events force her to depend on Val and his shadows. He’s from Oldworld too-and he’s heard of Maggie’s stepfather, and has a guess about Val’s shadows. Then Maggie meets Casimir, the most beautiful boy she has ever seen. The magic-carrying gene was disabled two generations ago, back when Maggie’s great-grandmother was a notable magician. But-more importantly-what are the huge, horrible, jagged, jumpy shadows following him around? Magic is illegal in Newworld, which is all about science. Val is from Oldworld, where they still use magic, and he won’t have any tech in his office-shed behind the house. Maggie knows something’s off about Val, her mom’s new husband. Thus begins Lissar’s long, profound, and demanding journey away from treachery and pain and horror, to trust and love and healing. It is the beginning of winter as they journey into the mountains-and on the night when it begins to snow, they find a tiny, deserted cabin with the makings of a fire ready-laid in the hearth. Lissar, physically broken, half mad, and terrified, flees her father’s lust with her one loyal friend, her sighthound, Ash. On the day after the ball, the king announces that he is to marry again-and that his bride is the princess Lissla Lissar, his own daughter. But on Lissar’s seventeenth birthday, two years after the queen’s death, there is a grand ball, and everyone present looks at the princess in astonishment and whispers to their neighbors, How like her mother she is! The king is crazy with grief at her loss, and slow to regain both his wits and his strength.

Everyone loved the splendid king and his matchless queen so much that no one had any attention to spare for the princess, who grew up in seclusion, listening to the tales her nursemaid told about her magnificent parents.īut the queen takes ill of a mysterious wasting disease and on her deathbed extracts a strange promise from her husband: “I want you to promise me.you will only marry someone as beautiful as I was.”

Princess Lissla Lissar is the only child of the king and his queen, who was the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms.

Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley