Queen Abra didn’t have to utter a lie to deceive me. It’s true—the lenders took the manor from my stepmother.
But I bargained away my life with Nox for nothing.
Because my stepmother is hiding in the attic.
As soon as I enter the tiny space in which I was caged for months, my stepmother attacks.
She throws herself from the shadows, a cast iron pot in her hand, one that’s so rusty I suppose she couldn’t fetch a good price for it, and aims it straight for my head.
I reach out and snatch it from her with the ease of one grabbing a match from an unsuspecting toddler.
Her empty wrist comes hurtling for my face, but to my new instincts, she might as well be trying to cut through a cold stick of butter with the blunt edge of her hand.
I consider catching her wrist midair, but I instead step to the side.
She lets out a wild cry as her momentum propels her over the top of the staircase, but before she can plummet to a broken neck and her death, I grab her by her braid and yank her backward.
My stepmother stumbles, but to the ground this time, and she soon goes scuttling back on her hands and knees, spewing blubbering tears upon the floor.
“Please don’t hurt me. Please, take anything you want, just don’t hurt me. I was only trying to hide, to protect myself. I want no trouble, and I haven’t seen your face.”
I roll my eyes and pull my hood down, revealing my face.
My stepmother blinks, and for a moment, we just take each other in. She’s considerably thinner than she was only a few months ago, and I wonder then if all the queen’s money went to paying off past debts. It doesn’t seem there was much leftover for food, but I suppose the anxiety of losing all of one’s possessions could do that to a person—leave their body wasting away to nothing.
She’s still dressed in finery, though. Still has her jewels and baubles dangling around her neck, pyrite bangles jingling at her wrists, and little opal flowers braided into her brown hair.
“I see you’d sell all of your daughters before giving up a single one of your trinkets,” I say, and though I expect the words to come out tinted with disgust, I can’t seem to find the energy to infuse them with anything resembling caring.
“I didn’t sell my daughters,” she practically spits. Now that she’s realized it’s me, all the fear has drained from her expression and only cruelty remains. “I sold the leech who ruined our lives. Who almost ruined our names.”
There was a time in my life when I might have tensed at such a statement. “Oh, is that how Chrys feels about being bartered off to a dull soldier with half as many wits as her?” I ask, and even on the ground, my stepmother shuffles.
She regains herself quickly enough, but I don’t miss that I’ve ruffled her.
“Am I missing something, stepmother?” I ask, and I should probably be disgusted by the way I relish this, but I’m not.
The woman juts out her chin and declares, “Chrys betrayed me. Betrayed her family. She is dead to me.”
I’m not sure what Chrys, the darling angel, could have done for her suffocating mother to forgo claiming her, but I’m more than eager to find out.
“What? Did she lose one of your earrings or something?”
Clarissa hisses, and spits more than speaks. “Chrysanthemum ran away. Eloped with a farm boy from the country. She ruined us,” she says, which answers my other question—whether my other stepsister, Elegance, is still in the picture. Apparently she is, though I can’t scent her in the house.
I humph. “Well. Good for her. Perhaps I’ll visit my sister and congratulate her when I’m done with you.”
My stepmother bristles, and I quite enjoy it. “Your sister is out birthing babies to a farmhand while Elegance and I are left to ruin. The guard was more than displeased when she ran off. He demanded we hand over our entire fortune, or he’d turn us in to the king himself.”
“By your entire fortune, I’m assuming you mean the money the queen gave you in exchange for selling me into slavery.” My grin is saccharine, though my tone is not.
Clarissa flits her hand dismissively. “You clearly weaseled your way out of it regardless, so I don’t know why it should be of any difference to you. If not for me, you’d still be locked up in that cell.”
Her gaze scours my body, and I see it then. The realization in her eyes that I have changed.
“What did they do to you?” she asks, her eyes widening in horror. I watch as they trace the shadows set underneath my eyes, the way my skin is free of the blotches that so often speckled it, the way my limbs are more lithe, my body firm and athletic.
She tries to hide it, tries to escape my notice, but I catch her checking my ears.
I am more beautiful than I once was.
She’s realizing that too.
“Oh, all sorts of things,” I say, unable to help the way my lips curve as she squirms. “Or did you not think to ask, when you sold me for a handful of silvers, what the queen might intend to do with me? Did you know about the experiments, Clarissa? Were you aware of the weapon she sought to create?”
A twisting of the truth, of course, but oh do I revel in the way it makes for a glorious shudder.
I kneel before saying, “Did you know you’re the first person I’ve sought out since the queen set me free? She wished to reward me for the things I’ve accomplished for her.”
Clarissa scrambles to her feet and lunges for the door, but I block her path before the woman can as much as blink.
“Sit back down,” I say through clamped teeth.
She does as I say, but there’s more hate in her eyes than fear. “You selfish brat of a little girl. After all I did for you.”
But I’m crouched next to her, tracing my finger across her throat like I’m marking the intended path of a blade. “All you did for me?” I whisper. “You locked me up in this attic. You locked up a child like I was a feral animal to be caged.”
To my stepmother’s credit, she doesn’t shrivel in my presence, not even when the aura of death sluices off of me in waves. “I wouldn’t have considered you a child. Children don’t whore themselves out to—”
