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As we neared the town hall and the carriage slowed, Charles sighed. “Try to behave yourself,” he said, as if I’d ever caused a scandal. “Maybe someone will want you for your dowry at last and take you off my hands before I marry. Father should have known better than to let someone unnatural like you under our roof.”
The young men were whispering about me again—just as I’d expected. Sitting in the corner with the matrons and other ineligible women, I plastered a demure smile on my face and pretended I wasn’t listening.
It was a game I’d played often over the past year. Smile. Sit up straight. Act as if I couldn’t hear the words, as if nothing could upset me, and try to lose myself in a daydream of the happy past or some unattainable future.
In my mind, my heart was as impenetrable as stone, as cold as ice. The scathing words, the suspicious looks, and the frequent rejection didn’t cut me.
Of course, that was all a lie.
“Her hair has turned even greyer—or perhaps it’s silver,” Frederick Rains muttered. “Did you see how it glistened when she came in? Like moonlight. Unnatural.”
“Perhaps this winter solstice will be when her magic manifests,” Jacob Wick insisted, crossing his arms. “I can’t believe Charles hasn’t cast her out.”
My stomach tightened. For most of my twenty-one years, I’d loved my unusual features because Father had, and because he’d told me that, before Mother had passed of a fever when I was too young to remember her well, she had loved them too. Back then, the townspeople had been led to believe I was Father’s child by blood, not marriage, and though they’d sometimes muttered or looked at me strangely, they’d been pleasant enough. Butnowadays, with my true heritage constant speculation, I was forever shunned and whispered about.
And now I had the growing fear that Charles—who’d promised Father before he died that he’d care for me—would decide his loyalty to his dead father wasn’t as strong as his desire to be rid of me and the taint I spread on his precious reputation.
“Sweet Miss Florentia Cantwell,” came a wheedling tone as the young men ended their talk in favor of seeking out partners for the next dance. “Too shy to mingle with the other young ladies?”
I stiffened and turned, my muscles already tensing with my urge to flee. Mrs. Eggerton studied me with false sympathy.
“I think we are well enough acquainted that you can call me Ren,” I insisted. Florentia was too formal, too extravagant, and I’d always disliked it.
Mrs. Eggerton tsked. “Would you disregard the name your own mother bestowed on you?” Her eyes roved over me. “My dear, I think you should try to put yourself out there. How do you expect to catch the eye of one of these handsome gentlemen if you’re always hiding in the corner? False modesty doesn’t become a young lady, especially someone of your age who should be thinking of finding a suitable match.”
Heat flared in my veins, but Mrs. Eggerton wasn’t finished. “You know that it hasn’t been easy on your devoted brother to care for you, and I have reason to expect he’ll be married soon. I’m sure his generosity—and my daughter’s—will know no bounds, but is that something you want to take advantage of, lingering in their home after the wedding?”
My fists scrunched in the fabric of my dress, but I swallowed back my growing hurt. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure I fully concealed it. Her daughter Louisa wasn’t the worst of the young ladies who scorned me, but she hadn’t gone out of her way to befriend me either. We exchanged passing pleasantries,especially now that she’d captured Charles’s attention, but it all seemed superficial.
And I’d already heard more than one of Charles’s berating remarks about how I would be even less welcome once he was a married man. He’d reminded me of this fact at breakfast this morning.
“Tonight, I’ll see Miss Eggerton again, and I expect to make my intentions toward her known. If I end the evening an attached man that much closer to marriage...well, it is that much closer to the day this house will have a woman running it. My new bride won’t want to share this space with you. At twenty-one, you should be trying to be useful and strike a match yourself, not continue to live off my charity.”
My throat burned. “If you want me to marry, perhaps you should stop encouraging the rumors about me.”
Charles leaned forward, his dark eyes alight with a livid glow. “But saying you have fae blood is the truth, is it not? Look at your grey hair, like a crone before your time. You arenotone of us.” Sneering in disgust, he turned away, as if I weren’t worth wasting another moment on.
Inhaling deeply, I forced my pain and fear about the future down. I wasn’t an old maid, but the constant reminders from everyone around me about how generous my brother was in continuing to care for me were growing repetitive and worrisome. I clung to the hope that Charles would be too afraid to break his word to our deceased father to turn me out. But what if that lingering loyalty eventually faded?
Standing without bothering to do more than dip my head in the barest of curtseys toward Mrs. Eggerton, I shifted past everyone on the sidelines. They had no trouble enjoying themselves, all conversing politely, laughing easily. They hadn’t a care in the world—at least not here, at a ball. This was where the rest of society set aside their grief and worry.
It was the opposite for me, a constant string of rejection and loneliness. At every ball, if I dared to gather my courage enough to even attempt to socialize, I was faced with the same treatment. Gentlemen whose gazes wouldn’t linger, who muttered excuses before I could converse with them even though we’d grown up together. Or those who dared to speak or even dance with me, but never deigned to treat me as more than an acquaintance.
Superstition ran too deeply in the veins of these people, despite the fact that I’d never once shown a propensity toward anything fae. My ears were curved and delicate and utterly human. Only the flash of gold in my brown eyes and the silver stream of my hair marked me as unusual, but those meant nothing when I didn’t have magic. My mother had been human. If there was fae blood in my heritage, it was so diluted as to be nearly nonexistent. I wasn’t like the half-fae we occasionally saw wander into town or dance in the streets on winter solstices, the ones who possessed pointed ears and wielded magic proudly.
The song drifted to an end and the dancing couples parted, many spinning away from the dance floor in favor of finding food and drink. My eyes skimmed the crowd, searching for one of the men who’d humor me with a conversation. I’d smile and laugh and pretend so Mrs. Eggerton and Charles would have no grounds to accuse me of not trying.
I swallowed back the regret threatening to clog my throat. Once, I’d dreamt of marrying for love. Now I knew that was a fool’s dream. The best I could hope for was a marriage of comfort, one that would offer me a place in this world where perhaps I’d be respected as the lady of a household, a wife, and not a strange outcast girl with no future.
A flash of blond so pale it appeared white burned in my vision, and my gaze sharpened. Across the dance floor stood a stranger, clothed all in black leathers vastly different from thecoats and trousers the town gentlemen wore. His short hair was the shock of white-blond I’d noticed, a bright gleam against the darkness of his attire and his gold-toned skin. His piercing eyes met mine, burrowing into my soul.
The heat of the room vanished, and my blood turned to ice.Fae.
I knew before my eyes raked over his pointed ears. He was too handsome, his aura too...other. Even from across the room, I felt an unnatural pull toward him, the sort I’d been warned about all my life. Fae were beautiful and charming and magical on the outside so they could attract their unsuspecting victims, but their hearts were ruthless and bloodthirsty.
It wasn’t unusual for fae or half-fae to wander across the border of their world, called Brytwilde, and into ours. Fae from the winter kingdom of Silverfrost climbed down from the mountains to explore the mortal towns that lived in their shadows more often than we humans liked to contemplate. What startled me most was that this fae man hadn’t glamoured himself to appear human, and that no one else seemed to find his presence unusual.
Rarely did the fae come for peaceful reasons. Sometimes they came to strike dangerous bargains, to glamour mortals into obeying their every whim, or to steal someone outright. My town of Altidvale was relatively safe due to old deals struck between its founders and the fae, ones that kept the fae from meddling with us as long as we allowed them certain liberties. One was that anyone who ventured past our borders too close to the mountains was as good as theirs, and we humans promised not to search for our lost loved ones. Another was that anyone who left their homes on the night of the winter solstice also belonged to the fae, who were allowed to wander our streets freely then.
