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The door creaks open, and I step into the foyer.
There used to be a portrait of my father and mother to the right, above a fine cedar table.
It appears both have been sold.
There’s a line of weathered wallpaper on the wall where my father used to look down upon me with a smile.
The snarl that escapes my lips echoes through the empty space.
When I was human, I might have assumed the manor was empty, abandoned.
But I am not human, and I can sense her heart pounding.
I follow the panicked trail through the empty halls, the servantless corridors, and up the stairs.
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 asI 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?”
