Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100363 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
* * * *
The flames in the parlor’s hearth do nothing to warm me. If I change out of my sodden mourning dress, perhaps it will chase off the chill. I don’t believe it matters; I will be cold to the marrow of my bones for the rest of my life.
I know that Thrace killed my mother. That truth freezes me. That truth, and the knowledge that he will never face justice, are slowly turning me to ice from the inside out. The proof I have is flimsy, a single empty glass with a trace of iron powder at its bottom. But my mother was in exile from her court when she died, and the fae prefer to handle their own grievances among themselves. With no power—magical, symbolic, or otherwise—I will only be able to watch as Thrace spends my fortune and seeks out his next victim.
“It’s freezing in here.” The floor creaks under Thrace’s feet, but only because he wants it to. He has a gift of moving silently, like an insect. He chooses to let me hear his slow approach. “And you’re still in those damp clothes.”
“It makes no difference.” I rise from my chair. “I don’t wish to disturb you with my presence in your parlor.”
The speed with which he stands before me is frightening. So, too, is the smirk that grows across his cruelly beautiful mouth. “Come now. Do you think I would expel you from your home? Nothing has changed, Cenere. You’re still a member of my family.”
I’ve never been a part of anyone’s family. It was Mother and I alone for twenty-five years, and we liked it that way.
At least, I thought we liked it that way, before Mother met Thrace. Then, she was all too eager for new company.
I tried not to take it personally. I still try.
“We are not family,” I say, my hand curling into a limp fist at my side.
I can’t get past him. He looms over me. “That is easily rectified.”
His sneer tells me a truth I don’t want to know: we have been playing a game, and I am unaware that I have been losing the entire time.
“Just as your mother neglected to declare you her inheritor, she also failed to declare you my ward.” He reaches out and snags a long, copper ringlet that fell from my bun. “But there are other ways.”
The backs of his fingers brush my cheekbone as he tucks the hair behind my ear.
I step back, shivering with rage and disgust. “I’m not interested in those other ways. This is my home. I don’t care what anyone says. It’s my house and I want you out!”
Where did that boldness come from? Not my mother, who never raised her voice above the playful stirring of rowdy leaves on the wind. Maybe this is my magic; this rage, this loss of control.
He shakes his head. “Oh, Cenere. Why must you be so obstinate?”
I bolt for the door, but I am exhausted and trapped far too easily by Thrace. He grips me by the wrist and drags me through the parlor.
“We’ll perform the binding oath tonight,” he says, while I dig my heels futilely against the floor. Well, not so futilely; my shoes catch the lip of the foyer rug and I trip, momentarily twisting enough in his grasp to rip my arm away. He swipes out for me, but I dodge him. He catches a ruffle at my waist and it tears away. I hold up my skirts and throw myself out the door, into freezing rain that slashes against my face. Thrace will not pursue me. It’s too much effort, and he is patient in his deviousness.
He will enjoy it all the more when I return, defeated. When I have no choice for survival but to submit to him.
I run, with no notion of where I’m going, through the mist-shrouded forest, through the rain that pricks like needles against my cheeks and turns my hair into a sopping pile atop my head. I don’t even think of my destination until the hem of my torn dress is weighted with mud and my soaked slippers touch the cobblestone path through the graveyard. My aching lungs beg me to slow, and the sacred ground seems to pull the last of the strength from my legs, as if to assure me that I’m safe now. That I can rest.
It isn’t true, but I let myself believe it enough to catch my breath and press my hand to my cramping side. Stumbling, I make my way to the ancient cenere tree in the middle of the graveyard.
My mother named me after this tree, this specific one. The one she now rots beneath. So often, she combed through my curls and told me the story of how she sat beside the cenere sapling and how her tears watered it and made it strong.