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I smile at her back as she continues the washing. Of everyone I know, Reena has been the most consistent friend. An uplifting, healing presence. Always able to make me laugh, even on my hardest days.
Regardless of what it means for me, if true love exists, Reena deserves it.
We rush as best we can through the remainder of the washing. By the time we slip from the room, my arms ache something fierce. I grab fresh undergarments from my quarters, and then Reena takes my hand and pulls me toward her place down the narrow hall.
Like me, Reena is an orphan. Unlike me, she is autumn fey, and she didn’t get shoved into a family that treats her like manure to scrape off one’s boots before coming inside. Instead, she and her older brother, Tarriel, came here six and a half years ago — shortly after I returned from the spring kingdom of Palla — and got jobs as servants. She and I were best friends before the end of her first day and have only grown closer. Tarriel worked his way out of the kitchens, through the guard, and now stands as a lieutenant. Reena recently took over as the laundress’s assistant.
And I remain what I’ve always been: the half-human girl who helps wherever she can and tries to stay out of her stepfamily’s way.
Once inside Reena’s room, she readies two baths, each with a towel nearby. She used to have a roommate, Naama, a sweet woman a little younger than us, but she married one of the groundskeepers about a year ago and moved to the gardeners’ quarters. We’ve only seen her in passing a few times since.
As the water heats, Reena rummages through her wardrobe. I float my way toward her shelves and parse through her new books. One with snowy white and pale blue swirls on the spine snares my attention.
“How do you have a winter fey book?” With the borders closed, winter fey items have become increasingly rare.
“I saved up.” She flashes a playful grin my way. “You know, you could afford books too — or a decent dress — once in a while if you stopped giving things away.”
My cheeks warm, and I lower my gaze. “Others need it more. What am I going to do with money?”
She snorts. “Buy books or dresses?”
I giggle once and flip through the colorful pages. “This must have cost two months’ wages, Ree.”
“Three.” She sniffs and holds a blue dress against her body before tucking it away and glancing over. Soft eyes sweep across me, and she sighs. “You’re right. You’d never be able to do it. Too sweet. I hope that someday, someone spoils you the way you deserve. Since you won’t spoil yourself.”
Reena primarily spends her wages on clothes and books and boasts an impressive display of both. I love books but don’t care much about clothes. My stepmother used to have at least half of my wages garnished for “proper” dresses so I wouldn’t “embarrass her by embarrassing myself” at social functions. She left me only enough for hygienic essentials. She doesn’t take as much anymore. And I don’t know what she uses the money for now.
“Here. You can wear this one.” Reena offers me a dusky orange gown, the color of a rusty sunset. She picks a bright yellow one for herself and prances off toward the bathing screen.
My reflection catches my eye. I tip my head to the side to study myself in the dust-speckled mirror. She’s right. The simple brown and tan dress hangs on my form. It’s so worn now that it almost appears too big. Maybe over the next few months, I’ll try to keep my wages so I can buy a new dress entirely.
Thoughts I’ve long since tried to bury pull at my awareness. Spiteful words spewed from the sisters I didn’t choose but have never been able to fully escape.
Vallda scans my gown and grimaces. “You’re wearing that? Oh, Ashalia, couldn’t you at leasttryto look presentable?”
My pulse races in my ears. “Stepmother bought the dress —”
Devikka cackles, silencing my protest. “She probably didn’t think it’d look so awful on you, though.”
I swallow hard and force back the condemning memory. A hundred more stand ready to take its place, mocking me from the mirror. Nerves wrestle for a hold on my mind.
Will they know me? They never see me, only look down at me, but is it enough?
Releasing a huff, I pull my gaze from the mirror. Shadows shifting on the wall behind the bathing screen indicate Reena getting undressed. With my heart pounding at the thought of what lies ahead, I take a deep breath and lay the dress over the back of a chair. Then I strip off my outfit and hurry through my bath, though I take additional time to scrub my face and hair.
In the dim light, my wet hair looks more brown than blonde. When I was little, before Papa died, I used to wish I had darker hair. Hair like him and most of the other spring fey. He’d tenderly scolded me for it, told me I was who I was for a reason and that I shouldn’t wish to be someone else.
Still, moving here with my stepmother and stepsisters when I was six — to live among the darker-haired and darker-complexioned autumn fey — only increased the desire to fit in. While there are a handful of human or part-fey servants on the castle grounds, I’m the only mixed girl who isspringfey. I’ve mostly grown out of caring if others accept me or not.
Even if my hair still more closely resembles wheat stalks than dying leaves.
I have my Derian human mother to thank for that, forest keep her. Though, that’s only according to my dear father. I have no memories of her, only a spattering of things he said about her, one of which is that my hair is the same color hers was. I’ve gripped the charm necklace she left me and imagined her holding me, dancing with me, so many times that it almost feels real. Even though I barely remember him, I know I have his eyes — a mixture of blue and green that plants me squarely among the spring fey.
Between my hair, my eyes, my lighter skin, and my lack of magic — impossible because human blood neutralizes even royal fey blood — I’m mostly the spitting image of my mother. With just enough of my father to confuse people, make me even more otherworldly here in the autumn kingdom of Hazal.
I try to hold my parents so close, so tight. Yet as the years pass, I find them slipping out of reach. How can I miss people who only linger in a handful of my memories?
Perhaps the absence of a male presence in my life was what made me so susceptible to Kirran’s charms.
