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“Don’t be such a fool! ItisLady Galantia,” the maid said before she lifted the train of her gray cotton dress and hurried over. “Oh, my lady, what happened to you? Gods, you’re shaking. Gavric, call for the girls to haul hot water into the lady’s chamber this instant.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Now! Or do you want her to die of the cold?”
The guard, Gavric, blinked at me, his face blank with shock for a moment. Then, with a rushed nod, he disappeared through the door in the gate, which he left open.
The maid, who I now recognized as Jana, took the shawl off her shoulders and draped it over mine, her warm touch a welcome change from the icy chill that gripped me. “Come with me, my lady. We’ll have to get you into a tub and warmed up before you fall ill with fever.”
Trembles wracked my entire body, turning each step inside and up along one of the winding tower stairs into a stuttering struggle while my teeth chattered along. Gods, I was so cold, so tired, and yet, my head spun with a hundred thoughts.
“Maren,” Jana said to another maid we passed. “Fetch Lady Brisden and bring her to Lady Galantia’s old chamber. Be quick about it!”
I followed her along the outer balcony toward the door to my chamber. “M-my Fa-ha-hather?”
“I don’t think he’s inside the walls, my lady.” Jana opened the door to my room. “Might be with the ship builders down by the bay, last I heard. Now sit, my lady.” I needed no telling twice when she helped me into the wingback chair by the hearth. She lowered onto the hearthrug, immediately building a fire with the kindle and oak that sat in a crate beside the stone. “Just as soon as the water arrives, we’ll get you into the tub.”
My old wooden one, which she pulled from the back corner of my room and dragged the heavy thing behind the silk-embroidered privacy screen that stood nearby. The door swung open, letting in two young girls who carried buckets of steaming water. One after another, and in a shared effort that turned their cheeks red, they poured them into the tub.
“Don’t dawdle,” Jana told them before they left with the emptied buckets, then she gestured me to my feet. “Oh, how you’re shivering, my lady. We’ll have to get you out of this dress.” Her fingers made quick work of the lacing in the front, only to struggle with peeling the black shadowcloth off me, soaked and stiff as it was. “Curse the gods, this is a strange silk. Almost as if—” Her eyes snapped toward the creak of hinges, then the maid hurried her limbs into a curtsy. “My lady.”
The room cooled so quickly, even the young flames seemed to struggle in the hearth as they bit at the kindle, courtesy of Mother’s arched brow that seemed solidly frozen on her stony expression. “It isyou.”
It was a sad consolidation, how the disapproval in her voice didn’t ache the way it used to, if only because my heart was a shattered, bleeding mess in my chest already. “Sorry to disappoint, but, yes, M-mother, I have c-come home.”
“This is no longer your home. You ought to be at Deepmarsh, about to depart for Tidestone by carriage before the wedding that was to safeguard the future of our entire house.” Pale green, fur-lined cotton shifted around those three angry steps that put her right before me, her graying hair elegantly pinned up and standing so at odds with that unrefined curl on her upper lip. “What have you done?”
The accusation in her tone filled my chest with a chilling tension that even the now crackling fire in the hearth couldn’t warm, torturing an organ that seemed to pour into my ribcage with each aching beat. I was so sick of everyone’s disdain and disappointment!
“What have I done? Me?” I fought the chatter from my teeth as I yanked on the shadowcloth, revealing the scar on my breastbone. “I have bled and hurt to safeguard the future of our entire house, only for you to abandon me to the hands of the most hateful soul that wanders this earth! Tell me, what has Father done to him to create such malice? And while we are at it, what haveyoudone?”
Mother’s face tightened as her cold gaze lowered to my scar, her lips thinning into a harsh line. Did she know? Did she knowwhatI was?
“Out!” Mother’s shout had Jana jumping before she scurried away, yet her eyes remained on my scar, harsh and ungiving. “You will let nobody enter this room. Nobody, do you hear me!?” When the door fell heavy into its lock, Mother lifted her slender fingers. Instead of settling on my scar, however, they fumbled with something on my dress. “Get out of this thing.”
I looked down at her fingers, watching them pull a creamy feather from where it must have gotten stuck on the inside of the shadowcloth dress. My stomach sank deeper the higher she lifted it up between us, only for her to turn around and let it drift into the hearth.
Flames devoured my feather with a combusting hiss that matched the flare of anger that ignited at my core. “You knew,” I murmured and let my eyes find hers, the heat inside me clashing with the chill of her blue irises. “You always knew what I am.”
“Nobody can find any of your feathers, as unsusceptible as they might seem.” She kept yanking on the fabric, letting it pool by my feet. “If anybody finds out, then we are both as good as dead.”
ChapterFour
Galantia
Present Day, Tidestone
“Get in the water,” Mother said and ushered my naked form toward the tub. “You will tell me what all this is about. What of the betrothal to Prince Malyr?”
I stepped into the tub, one arm crossed over my breasts while the other covered my crotch, hissing at the way liquid heat encapsulated my feet as I mocked in the most pompous cadence I could manage, “Because he is… noah… looooard.”
“Do not be smart with me,” she scolded as she turned around, picking my dress up from the ground. “You will tell me everything, Galantia. What of the alliance?”
That was the least of my concerns right this moment, no matter how close Taradur’s soldiers were to our borders. “Are you a white Raven?”
The way she threw an insulted hand to her sternum and spluttered in offence was answer enough. “What of the wedding?”
“I don’t give a whit about the wedding!” I shouted. “Who am I?!”
“Your obstinance knows no bounds,” she hissed. “Is that what you have been taught among these… animals? To abandon the few graces you possessed and forget your loyalties?”
“Oh, yes, because wanting to know why I sprouted feathers is such an impertinence. Where was your loyalty when you left me behind in that village? When you abandoned me to a man Father once flogged and tortured yards away from my bed?”
