Slippers of Pearl (Tales of a Cobbler Mage, #1)

Faryn has spent his life running away from magic, but what he never understood is that you don't choose magic-magic chooses you. Faryn would rather make shoes. Shoes are predictable. They don't change shape or try to bite him. But when he awakens a feathered serpent inscribed on a golden disc, nearly losing some fingers in the process, he doesn't get a choice. After his uncle-who has a bad habit of dying-is fatally poisoned, Faryn's family packs him off to the King's Seat to learn magic and find his place as his uncle's heir. What he discovers instead is a knack for making magical shoes, that turning a girl into a goose is a bad way to make friends-and dying her bright blue only aggravates matters, sinister apples that enchant all the maidens at court, and a royal edict to undo the apples' magic if he wants to keep his head. As magic propels him onward, Faryn finds himself locked in a dungeon fashioning shoes out of the shadows so he can escape. It is then that Faryn realizes that people severely underestimate the power of shoes, and he must exploit that weakness if he's to save the kingdom.