Page 1 of A Fable of Riddles and Redemption

Chapter one

Banished

Zorina

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The first thing she did after essentially being banished from three different realms was change her name. The last thing she needed was for her mother to escape imprisonment in whichever dungeon she was currently locked up in and track her down.

And so, for a fresh start, Odile became Zorina Nova, a name that embodied the new life she hoped to build for herself.

If only building that new life was as easy as changing her name.

If only forgetting her past was as simple as fleeing across Caelia.

While her mother was a terrible person, she missed her father with a relentless ache. Due to her mother’s actions—and her own foolishness in following her horrid example—she no longer had contact with either of her parents. It was necessary to completely cut herself off, but it was difficult to keep that distance from her honorable father. She often wondered how he felt about everything that had happened—and how he felt about her now.

Since he still lived in one of the realms she had unofficially been exiled from, Zorina couldn’t exactly ask him to find out.

Working as a shopkeeper’s assistant was a fall from the life she used to live as a merchant-turned-nobleman’s daughter, and while the eccentric potter she worked for was mostly kind and paid decently well, it was a far cry from the lifestyle she once knew.

As was living in a tiny vine-covered shack on the edge of the city Adael—but at least there, she was well-hidden. Even if her mother did somehow manage to escape and track her to Jolan, she would be hard pressed to find her tucked away in the woods beside the busy port city that currently served as the realm’s capital. The actual capital, Kalyca, had been abandoned five years ago after word of a beast invading the castle came to light.

Zorina thought the rumors were an excuse to avoid the snow that had taken over the region rather than fact. All the same, she stayed out of it—and out of the cold of Kalyca. Adael seemed like a safer place to hide and start anew, anyway.

Broom in hand, she tried to brush her morose thoughts aside as efficiently as she swept the dust, debris, and broken bits of pottery scattered across the shop’s wooden floor. Zorina tossed her long pale blonde hair behind her back as she made quick work of cleaning up. Though the moment Jurian walks out of his workshop and back into the storefront, I’ll have to do it again.

Jurian Atkins, potter extraordinaire, was more than a little sloppy when bringing finished pieces from the workshop to the front of the store. He typically kicked bits of broken clay—both baked and unbaked—across the floor in the process. And, for some inexplicable reason, he tended to hide gold coins randomly throughout the pots in his store.

It was madness. Sheer, utter madness.

His pottery was beautiful and well-crafted, but between his shop being located near the edge of town and his questionable sanity, it did not garner as much patronage as it likely should have. The shop did well enough to keep a stable income, but not well enough to draw unwanted attention to Zorina—which suited her perfectly.

A rattling noise startled her from her thoughts, and she winced. Jurian was likely on his way back to the storefront, where he would assuredly mess up the floor she’d just finished sweeping. It seemed almost pointless to put the broom away, but she leaned it against the wall anyway.

Yet as she glanced toward the door connecting the storefront to the workshop, she saw no sign of him coming. Curious, Zorina walked across the room and peeked through the door to find him sitting quietly at his wheel, shaping a mound of clay into a pot. She watched him for a moment, wondering how to account for the sound she’d heard.

A loud crash behind her made her whirl around in astonishment. Several pots lay shattered on the floor—with a red panda pawing and sniffing at the pieces.

“Shoo!” Zorina grabbed her broom again and swung it toward the animal, trying to scare it away rather than harm it. Instead of fleeing, however, it dug through the detritus and retrieved a handful of gold coins.

“Zorina!” Jurian cried. “What’s going on out there?”

“A red panda knocked over some pots,” she explained hurriedly, still attempting to frighten it off.

Rather than running to the slightly ajar exit, the red panda climbed up a shelf and knocked over another pot. And another.

Jurian rushed into the storefront, wet reddish-brown clay coating his hands and dripping on the floor. “Zorina! Get it!”

The red panda leapt down from the shelf as Zorina swung her broom at where it had just perched. “I’m trying!” she grunted.

Again, the red panda dug through its own mess and collected more gold coins in its paws.

“Thief!” Jurian yelled.

Zorina tried not to roll her eyes at that. It was an animal—granted, one who seemed to like shiny things—not a criminal. It wasn’t like the creature had a moral code to guide it. And it probably would have left the shop alone if the owner hadn’t been foolish enough to stick coins in the pottery he sold.

All the same, the red panda wreaked havoc in the shop, destroying pottery and snagging the gold coins left behind.