So here I am, clinging to my cell bars like a convict who’s been holed up in here for a lifetime, rather than just a few weeks.

Twenty-eight days, to be precise. There’s no window down here in the dungeon, and I like to keep track by counting guard shifts. At least then I can be aware of when it’s going to take over my body again.

As the cacophony of footsteps draws near, voices echo through the dungeons.

A female, high-pitched, unsure.

Another, definitely nervous, but less willing to show it.

A woman, lips dripping with the rush of financial gain and opportunity.

I’m not sure whether my heart stops or withers up, deflates.

I return to my bed and crawl back in, tucking myself back into the thin blankets.

“If they ask, I’ve been stuck in a magical coma for weeks,” I mumble to my guard.

He shuffles. “Sorry, miss. Can’t lie.”

I peek out at his pointed ears, poking out from his head. “Right.”

I sit back up, figuring this interaction is going to happen whether I want it to or not—might as well get it over with.

When my stepmother reaches my cell, I meet her upturned nose with a devilish grin. If I’m going to be possessed, I might as well milk it for all it’s worth.

My grin must unsettle her, because her mouth drops slightly ajar, but only for half a moment before she recovers her composure.

That’s my stepmother’s specialty, pretending to have things she doesn’t.

That was how she got hold of my father’s fortune, doting on his little girl with gifts and toys. She’d stooped to playing with me back then, and my father had practically eaten out of her hand. Not that he loved her romantically—I don’t think he ever quite got over my mother. But he was sickly—he always had been—and he wanted me taken care of when he was gone.

He was gone alright, before he and Clarissa reached their first anniversary.

Clarissa purses her lips. “Should’ve known you’d find yourself in a place like this. You’ve been trouble since the day I laid eyes on you. It’s in your blood, child.”

I fight the urge to lunge at the cell door and instead grip my sheets in my fists. It isn’t the insults directed at me that bother me; it’s the ones about my blood, the implication of the disdain she harbored for my father.

My father.

My sweet, kind father.

What would he think, seeing me like this? What I’ve become?

Something like guilt and agony roils in my stomach.

Clarissa has a way of doing that, shooting a barb in one direction, and having it land somewhere she’d have never thought to aim.

“Your father would be ashamed of you,” she hisses. “Bringing dishonor upon the family.”

Alright, so maybe she would think to aim it in that direction.

“Family?” I say, pretending the comment rolled off of my impenetrable skin. “You only like that word when it’s convenient to you, Clarissa.”

Chrysanthemum, my youngest stepsister, the one about my age, shuffles uncomfortably. She’s never been quite as unkind to me as Elegance—yes, that’s her real name—her older sister and the spitting image of her mother both in soul and looks. They’re both brunette, with austere cheekbones and sharp gray eyes, both stunning in a severe way.

Chrysanthemum is softer, her brown hair slightly lighter, curling at the ends, her eyes blue rather than gray, her lips full and pink, her fair skin lightly freckled.

She’s the prettiest of all of us, and I don’t resent her for it. Sure, she has the backbone of a glowworm, and growing up, if Elegance decided to torture me, Chrys would be right alongside her in whatever devilish games her sister had come up with to make my life miserable.

But she always tried to make up for it afterward. If they hid the last piece of my favorite puzzle, she’d offer me hers. If they cut up my doll’s hair, I’d find one of Chrys’s dolls tucked under my bed.

It didn’t make me respect her then, the secret gifts, the reparations she attempted to make. It also doesn’t make us friends.

But on the spectrum of hate, I despise her far less than her sister.

My guard seems to notice Chrys, too. I can’t see his face, but his boots have shifted in her direction, and now he’s trembling.

Wait, no.

He’d already been trembling, as soon as we heard them shuffling down the stairs.

I stiffen. Something isn’t quite right—it never is, if my stepmother is around—but I can’t quite put my finger on what.

It’s then that I notice the other woman.

She’s cloaked, her hood drawn over her head, so I can only glimpse the lower half of her face. She’s pale—not pale like Imogen, whose skin is the color of water after it’s been used to soak rice. This woman is as pale as moonlight, as pale as the first frost.

Her lips are pale, too, and she wears no paint.

She stands behind Clarissa and Elegance, and while Clarissa likely interprets this as deference, the hair prickling at the back of my neck tells me she’s very, very wrong.

This female fears no one.

She’s fae. Even with her ears covered, I can tell by her height, by her perfectly symmetrical lips.

My fingers remain clenched in the sheets, but they’re no longer shaking from rage alone.

A scarlet grin slices across my stepmother’s face. “Oh, how glad I’ll be to be rid of you, my dear.”

I fight the urge to scoot back in my bed and instead mirror her smirk. “Seems ungrateful, since my salary is the only thing that kept you fed all these years. Whatever will you do without it?”

Obviously she won’t do without. That’s why the mysterious fae is here, right? But I know my stepmother well enough to know that taunting is the most direct way to receive information.

“Oh, we won’t be doing without anything. Not anymore.”

I swallow, but I keep my tone saccharine. “But, dear stepmother. You know no matter what she’s offered you, it will be gone before the season is over. When it comes to your girls, no expense must be spared.”

I’m pretty proud of my imitation.