Usually, this is the key to inciting my stepmother.
Perhaps that’s why I’m so unsettled when she only grins.
“Harold,” she nods to my guard, “open it.”
I can’t help the cackle that escapes my lips. “You think Harold’s going to disobey the Heir of Dwellen’s personal order and un—”
My words catch in my mouth as the guard slips his hands into his pockets and pulls out an iron ring of keys. “Sorry, miss,” he mumbles to me as he slides the key into the lock.
Fear slices through me, severing my bones and tendons and freezing my blood.
She’s sold me. Clarissa has finally sold me—to this fae female who refuses to show her full face, whose very presence chills my blood.
I’m not sure what scares me more.
Being sold to a stranger to be and do Fates know what, or that when the moon crests the horizon, I’ll no longer be tucked away in my cell.
“Please. Harold. You can’t do this. Whatever my stepmother is offering you, she doesn’t have it. She depends on my servant’s salary. She only pretends to be wealthy.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t care about Miss Chrysanthemum’s dowry, miss. We’ll do just fine on my salary, won’t we?”
He turns a head and winks at Chrys, who dissolves into her mother’s side. She blanches, and for a moment, I think she might vomit.
Oh.
Oh.
I grit my teeth, whirling on my stepmother. “You’d sell your own daughter for a copper?”
If Clarissa is ruffled by my comment, she doesn’t show it. “All my Chrysanthemum has ever wanted is a nice male to take care of her, to provide her a warm home in the winter and children at her feet during the Solstice. Now we all can be happy.”
“Why not Elegance? She’s the oldest,” I say, to which my eldest stepsister shuffles, actually shuffles, probably for the first time in her life. I note the weakness and exploit it. “Surely you’re not okay with this, with Chrys being sold off to a male she clearly does not want to marry.”
Harold clears his throat, but Elegance purses her lips. And from years of knowing the girl, it tells me all I need to know.
She’s already tried. She’s tried to fight her mother on this, and she failed.
The door creaks open, and something stirs within me, tasting freedom through the cracks.
No, no, no. “How late is it?” I ask, all thoughts second to that one. How long before it takes over my body?
“You don’t understand. You have to lock me back in.”
When my stepfamily shoots me confused looks, I turn to the fae female. “I don’t know what my stepmother told you about me, but I assure you, you don’t want me. I’m possessed, and when the full moon comes out, which it’s about to do, the thing inside me takes over. It will kill you. It’ll kill you and everything in its path to get back to the prince. You don’t understand—”
“Child, calm yourself,” the female says, her voice cool and firm and…gentler, more motherly than I expected from someone trying to purchase a slave. “I am aware of your gift. That is precisely why I’ve come.”
My muscles still, tense like a cat might before it launches on its prey.
Except this time, I sense I might be the little mouse.
I swallow, steeling myself. “I’m not going anywhere with you until you explain what you’re here for.”
My stepmother scoffs. “You’re going with her whether you like it or not, child.”
I ignore her, one of my favorite approaches to getting under her skin. She bristles, though this time the slight had not been purposeful. I simply can’t tear my eyes off the hooded woman.
“I think you’ll like what I have to offer.”
I bore my bare feet into the cold stone tiles, tracing my toe into the mortar, but I slip on my favorite mask. The nonchalant one that people so easily seem to believe. “I highly doubt you have anything that would pique my interest. I’m quite content where I am,” I say, flourishing toward my jail cell.
The female’s pale lips lift at the edges, amused. There, perhaps I can convince her she can take me willingly, if only she tells me what it is she has planned for me.
I have no intention of going with this woman, of course. But I’d rather her not know that until after she reveals what she’s planning.
I’m sure she expects me to be grasping for an escape, easy to win over if she dangles my freedom before my gaunt face.
I bet I look like that kind of girl, the scrappy sort always on the lookout for myself.
But Evander put me here for a reason, and he’s crossing the world to find me a cure, and so I’ll sit here in this cell until he returns to tell me there’s no hope.
I’m not sure what I’ll do after that. I’ve tried not to think that far ahead.
“You could possess a power far greater than the one you currently carry,” the female says.
I scoff. “Yeah, thirst for power isn’t exactly my vice. Sorry.”
The female draws her hood, revealing a perfect face with ice-blue eyes, sharp enough to pierce a soul. That’s not where my attention fixes, though. My eyes are locked on her bracelet, where a single blood-red jewel dangles.
