A Dance with the Fae Prince by Elise Kova

 

Chapter 1

When the money ran out,Joyce sold the paintings, then Father’s silver, then my mother’s jewelry and dresses, then everything of value in my corridor. She sold and sold to fund her parties and ambitions. She sold to try and reclaim some of the glory that died with my father.

Now there is nothing left.

So today she will sell my hand in marriage.

It hasn’t been said plainly. I just know it to be true. I’ve known it for over a year now—I feel it deep in my bones, in the same way I can feel a storm lingering just beyond the horizon, the air thick with anticipation. It started with little comments my sisters made, small things, here and there. Every time, I was “unreasonable” for reading between the lines.

But that’s where the truth always lies, isn’t it? The unsaid between.

Then, mentions of marriage and “suitable arrangements for my age” became common around the dinner table. I eat too much and do too little. Marrying me off makes the most business sense, and Joyce is a businesswoman before anything else.

The thoughts are as heavy and inescapable as the fog drifting across the rolling highlands that stretch from my father’s estate down to the dense forests that cluster at the foot of the Slate Mountains. These worries have been an unshakable cloud hanging over my head for weeks. I shift Misty’s reins in my hands. She lets out a whinny and shakes her head; I pat her neck in response. She can sense my displeasure.

“It’s all right,” I reassure her. But I honestly have no idea if anything is all right or not. Today’s the day Joyce will meet with the man who will purchase my hand in marriage. Everything hinges on discussions had in a room that I’m not even privy to. “Let’s go, one more run to the forest.”

Misty is a gray-colored mare, but I didn’t name her for her coat. She was born in the late fall months like this three years ago. I stayed up all night in the stables with her mother, waiting to meet her. I wanted to make sure that I was the first person she saw.

She’s the last thing my father gave me before his ship went down.

From then on, every morning, we’ve been inseparable. Misty runs with a speed that makes me feel like my feet have left the earth and I soar with the birds above. She runs because she understands the pain of being trapped and saddled day after day. As we fly over the wet soil, cutting through the mist like an arrow, it crosses my mind not for the first time that maybe we should just keep running.

Maybe I could liberate us both. We would go…and never come back.

The trees come out of nowhere—a solid line of sentinels, more like a wall than a forest. Misty rears back, nearly throwing me. I tug and twist, regaining control. We trot along the doorstop of the dark forest.

My eyes scan between the trees, though there is little to see. Between the mist and the thick canopy, anything beyond a few feet is as dark as pitch. I tug lightly and bring us to a stop to try and get a better look, though I don’t know what I’m searching for. The townsfolk say that they see lights in the woods at night. Some brave huntsmen who dare to go past the natural barrier of man and magic claim that they have seen the wild and wicked creatures of the forest—half man, half beast. The fae.

Naturally, I’ve never been allowed into the woods. My palms are slick with sweat and I rub them on the thick canvas of my riding pants. Just being this close always fills me with a restless anticipation.

Is today the day? If I run into the forest, no one would follow me. People who go into the forest are presumed dead after less than an hour.

The sharp cry of our rooster echoes to me over the slowly sloping hills. I glance back up in the direction of our estate. The sun is beginning to tear through the mist with its obnoxiously bright fingers. My brief moments of freedom have expired… It’s time to face my fate.

The ride back takes twice as long as the ride out. Pulling myself away from the brisk twilight dawn, thick mist, and all the great mysteries that lie in that dark wood becomes harder and harder every day. It’s made no easier by the fact that the last place I want to return to is the manor. The woods are appealing, by comparison.

Halfway back, it strikes me that this is the last time I’ll make this ride… But I have no doubt that the freedoms I enjoy here, however limited they are to the brief hours of the early morning, are going to completely disappear when I am married off to some rich lordling to be his broodmare. When I will be forced to suffer whatever abuses he inflicts on me in the name of the most wicked thing in the world: “love.”

“Katria, Joyce is going to skin you alive for being out so late,” Cordella, the stable hand, chastises me. “She’s been out here twice already looking for you.”

“Why am I not surprised?” I dismount.

Cordella slaps me lightly on my upper arm and points a finger in my face. “Today you have an opportunity most girls would only dream about. The lady of the house is going to find you a smart, sensible match with a man who is going to care for you the rest of your days and all you have to do is smile and look pretty.”

I’ve had enough people “caring for me” to last a lifetime. But instead, I say, “I know. I merely wish I got to have some kind of say in who that man is.”

“It doesn’t matter who the man is.” Cordella begins unfastening the saddle as I take the bridle from Misty’s mouth. “All that matters is he’s rich.”

When Cordella looks at me, she sees a young heiress. She sees the house, the dresses, the parties—all the presentations of wealth that Joyce can’t let go of. She sees the glittering facade left over from a time when we genuinely had all of those good things, long before it was all hollowed out from the rot of poor decisions and my father’s death.

“I hope for the best,” I say finally. Anything else would give off the appearance of being ungrateful. And from where Cordella stands as a woman of modest background and opportunity, I have no reason to be anything less than grateful.

“Katria,” my youngest sister calls from the veranda that wraps around the entire manor. The sun has barely woken, and she’s already dressed, looking like she is the one who will get married today and not me in my old, threadbare, mud-stained clothes. “Mother is looking for you.”

“I know.” I pass the bridle to Cordella. “Do you mind taking care of the rest?”

“I can make an exception today.” She winks. Cordella has made such “exceptions” more than once. Misty was a gift from my father, not from the lady of the house. Not long after he began to be absent more than not on the trade routes, Joyce decreed that we could not spare any more expenses on horses. She was already aflame by the fact that Father wouldn’t let her sell the foal off. So, if I was to have a horse, then I would be the one who would take care of it. Never mind that my sisters both have had stallions boarded for years and hardly ever ride them. Their expenses have never been “too much.”

“Thank you,” I say earnestly and start for the manor.

“You stink,” Laura says with a laugh as I approach. For dramatic effect she pinches her nose.

“Are you sure that’s not you?” I give her a sly grin. “I don’t think you bathed this morning.”

“I am as sweet as a rose,” Laura proclaims.

“A rose?” I waggle my fingers. “Then what are all these stinky thorns?” I descend on her, tickling at her midsection. She squeals, pushing me away.

“Don’t! You—You’ll get mud on my skirts!”

“I am the mud monster!”

“No, no, save me!” She roars with laughter.

“That’s enough.” Helen cuts through the brief moment of levity with a severe note. Even though she’s younger than me, she acts like she’s the eldest. She’s the one really in control between the three of us. Mother’s favorite. “Laura, come,” she orders our younger sister.

Laura looks between Helen and I but relents to Joyce’s second-in-command.

“You cannot keep acting like that,” Helen scolds Laura.

“But I—”

“These childish notions. Don’t you want to be a proper lady?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then you should start acting like one.” Helen’s short-cropped blonde hair falls over one side of her face. She has been coddled her entire life, and yet she moves like an assassin. She’s constantly lurking in the shadows, and in my nightmares.

Someday, Laura will wake up and be just like her. The sweet girl I know will have been finally crushed under Helen and Joyce’s heels.

“What do you need, Helen?” I try and bring the attention back to me to spare Laura.

“Oh, I came to deliver a message.” Helen’s smile is like a snake’s. It’s the same smile as her mother’s. The same smile Laura will learn to make, in time. There are very few things about my father remarrying after my birth mother’s death that I consider a blessing. But knowing that I don’t share blood—and that horrible smile—with the woman who raised me is one of those few things. “Joyce wants you to go and mop the entry for our guests today.”

A sudden and intense aroma of smoke fills my nose. I refrain from rubbing it. Whenever someone tells a lie, the scent of smoke is thick in the air. I tried to explain the sensation before and was locked in my room for speaking nonsense. So I’ve kept silent about the gift since then. It has become one of my precious few tools of survival.

“You mean I must leave and stop sharing your delightful company? How will I ever survive?” As I go to enter the manor through the door at Laura’s right, Helen catches my arm.

“Don’t think that just because you’re getting married you’re suddenly better than us. You’re a bastard child, born out of wedlock, and a shame to our family name. You’re going to marry the lord of some sad little nowhere plot of land and live out the rest of your days in the obscurity we’ve prepared you for.”

Laura stares at her toes. There was a time she would’ve stood up for me. But that willingness has been crushed. Such sweetness…such light…fading right before my eyes. And I’m too weak and sad to stop it.

“I don’t want to keep Mother waiting.” I yank my arm away.

No matter what she says, I can gloat a bit today. I am the first to marry. Something that Helen wants desperately. She sees me as getting something before her for the first time in her life. The irony is that it is also the last thing I would ever want.

I enter the manor through a short hallway that deposits me into the main entry. Wilted flowers slump over the edges of cracked vases and perfume the air with the peaty and sickly-sweet scent of the early stages of rot. The delicate paintings of the ceiling are soot-stained from years of burning candles with not enough cleanings between. Before the incident on the roof, Joyce tried to force me up on one of the rickety ladders not long after the first time my father left on one of his ships to try and clean the ceiling. Given how young I was, I’m fairly certain she was trying to kill me. “If you’re still burdening our coffers at this age,” she said, “Then the least you can do is help with the upkeep. You have the hands of a man but the work ethic of a child.”

As if I didn’t spend every hour, of every day, already repairing and fixing this run-down remnant of bygone days. That is another thing that makes me darkly happy about this whole situation: They are going to lose their most valuable servant.

But as quickly as the wicked thought enters my mind, it leaves. There are vague memories in the recesses of my mind of this place in its early days, when it was still lovely. Of her, my birth mother, the mysterious woman my father met in his journeys as a young merchant and brought home with him, ignoring all expectations of an up-and-coming young lord. I can remember sunlight streaming through the now grime-covered windows that overlook the front of the manor. If I squint…I can almost remember her face, hovering over me. A rainbow of color fanning out behind her. She’s beaming with joy and love as she sings one of her songs that are imprinted on my heart. I know laughter and music once filled these halls—filled me. But here and now, it almost seems too impossible to believe.

“What are you doing?” A gasp echoes from the mezzanine. I look up to see the only “mother” I have known, the woman who raised me, sweeping down the stairs in a bloodred, velvet gown. Her pale hair is piled up and harnessed by a tiara, making her look like the princess she’s always wanted to be. “Men are going to be arriving any moment and you’re standing there looking like you’ve been rolling in the pigsty all morning.”

My clothes aren’t that bad, but I don’t argue. “I was coming in to change now.” I ignore Helen’s lie about the floor. I wonder if it upsets Joyce that I don’t fall for their attempt to trap me into a scolding.

“Good. I have suitors to attend to.” She folds her hands over her stomach, her nails painted the same shade as her gown. “Do your best to clean up as well as you possibly can. Otherwise, a man might realize what he’s marrying and will run away before the papers are signed.”

What, not who. I have always been her little monster. “I’ll do my best.”

“Good.” Joyce wiggles her shoulders and stands a little taller. Whenever she does this, I can’t help but imagine her as a large bird ruffling her feathers. “With any luck you will be married before sundown.”

“Married? Not engaged?” I knew the discussions were happening…but I thought that I would have a little more time. That maybe I could meet the man before we were wed. That I could ruin this somehow.

“We’ve spoken about this many times.”

“I don’t think we have.” We never have. I know it. And yet, my certainty is shattered with her heavy sigh.

“You are clearly misremembering again. Don’t worry, I am here to help you.” Joyce gives me that serpentine smile and settles her hands on my shoulders. I believed this lie of hers once. “So you’re going to be good for me and not resort to one of your dramatic outbursts, yes?”

Oversensitive. Dramatic. She treats me like I am constantly on the verge of flying off the handle. As if I have ever done anything of the sort.

At least, I don’t think I have…

“I’ll be good,” I hear myself saying. There’s an instinct to the response. It’s not me. It’s what she’s trained me to be.

“Excellent.”

We go our separate ways, and I retreat to my room.

The second floor of the manor contains what are traditionally the family quarters. I lived there, once. But when my father began traveling more and more, suddenly Helen needed a whole room for her art studio, and my bedroom had the best light.

Here is where you live now, Joyce’s voice echoes back to me as I stand at the threshold of the dark hall that leads to my room. I light a nib of candle—one I took when replacing those in my sisters’ rooms. It illuminates the cracking plaster of the halls. The crumbling stone that tells the truth of this manor.

It’s too much. There’s not enough money to keep it in repair, not really. I do my best for the memory of my mother…and so that if Father ever returns he has a home to come back to. But all Joyce cares about are the common areas and her rooms. There’s money enough for those. For the facade. Everything else, I think she would let burn.

My bed takes up the entire back of the room at the end of the hall, filling the space with wall-to-wall blankets and pillows. My old bookshelf, also far too large for this room, is mostly empty and the sparse objects that fill the shelves are practical ones only. My prized possession is the lute leaning against it. I go to pick it up and immediately think better of it. Someone is certain to hear me if I try to play now. I think Helen has trained hearing, like dogs, for the sound of my strumming. She protests whenever she is “forced to endure” a single note.

Once in a while, though, Laura will listen. I will miss the nights she finds the bravery to sneak down here and hum along to my playing. The only one who has heard my music in years.

Sighing, I turn to the wardrobe, surprised to find a new dress within. Well, it’s not technically a “new” dress. I recognize it as Helen’s from the springtime ball two years ago. It was only worn once, so the satin is still in pristine condition. I run my hands over the buttery smoothness, so different from the regular clothes I wear. The high neckline hides the scars on my back. No doubt intentional.

I dare to use the upstairs bathroom. It’s a small form of protest. But it feels better than the hot water stinging my skin. Most days I am the one heating and gathering the water for everyone else’s bath. At the end of it all I don’t have the energy to haul up my own. When I’m finished washing, I even dare to look through Helen’s cosmetics, selecting a soft rouge for my cheeks that accents the stormy gray of my eyes and a deep red for my lips that brings out the darker rusty notes of my brown hair.

I emerge a new woman. My hair has been brushed and carefully pinned in a cascade of curls that even Joyce would be proud of. I wonder if I would have looked like this every day had my father never married that woman.

Joyce was a widow before she married my father. It was a smart match on the outside: they both had young daughters in Helen and I, and were of a similar economic background—she had inherited a good deal of wealth from her previous husband in the form of rare silver mines to the north. The same mines that only my father’s ships could reach.

I caught on to her game early. But my father never saw it. Not even up until the very end, when he last left. He loved her. She had been the one to “save him” from the depths of despair following my mother’s death. Then Laura came along, the light in both of their eyes, and the “glue,” as they would say, to our dysfunctional little family.

Treading lightly across the squeakier portions of the floors, I sneak into my old room. It overlooks the front of the manor and gives me a view of the drive that connects us to the main road we take to town. Sure enough, there are three carriages parked along the front. I see a man in a top hat emerge from the main entrance of the manor. He exchanges a few words with his driver and speeds off.

I wonder how he feels about marrying a woman he’s never even met. Clearly he’s fine enough to come here and make an offer.

Then again, maybe we have met. Maybe the man I will marry is someone I’ve crossed paths with in town or at a ball. I shudder thinking of the lecherous Earl Gravestone and how he would look at me and my sisters in our dresses during our first seasons out among society. I pray that he does not come calling for me, or them when their time comes. There are some evils I can’t even wish on Helen.

I creep out of my sister’s art room before I can be found. Instead of taking the main stairs I take a side stair wedged between the primary bedroom and the wall. It’s a servant’s access that takes me back down to the kitchens. From there, I sneak through the house using other such hidden halls. One thing that my mother and sister never realized was that by making me their servant, and demanding I act the part, they also allowed me to learn all of the passages built long ago into this decaying home.

The wall of the sitting room adjacent to my father’s study glides open on hidden, silent hinges. I creep across the room, footsteps muffled by the carpet. At the far end, I press my ear against the wall and hold my breath. It’s thin enough that I can hear the conversations happening in the other room perfectly clearly.

“…and her dowry will be the north runner ships in the Applegate Trading Company,” Joyce says.

I bite my lip. There are no north runner ships, not anymore. Those waters are treacherous, and my father had one of the few captains in the world that could sail them. She was an incredible woman; I met her only once but was utterly enthralled for every second of our brief discussion. She was only a year older than me and had been captaining ships for two years already. Perhaps it was reckless youth that enabled her to chart a course that not even the hardest, most salt-crusted sailors would dare to try across those choppy waters to access a rare vein of silver.

But even her luck had run out, as all of ours does sooner or later. She went down with her ship, my father, too. I didn’t realize that Joyce had kept my father’s disappearance quiet. She’s trying to fully control the Applegate Trading Company, I realize. My nails dig into the wall. With my father disappeared—but not declared dead—she can assume control without question.

“That’s a very interesting proposition,” an old and weathered voice says.

I hope it’s not too interesting to whoever this man is. Because if he marries me for ships, and then finds out there are none, I am the one who will suffer. I have no doubt that Joyce will concoct a clever lie if she needs to, saying the ships went down just after the wedding. Calm down, poor fortune happens to everyone, I can imagine her saying.

“Indeed,” Joyce says. “So as you can see, this isn’t what one would think of as a normal marriage. I recognize that it is customary for the bride to bring her dowry. But I’m a shrewd businesswoman, and I know the value of my daughter and what I’m offering. As such, I am asking all potential suitors to let me know what they would give me in return for the benefit of her hand.”

There is a long pause. “My master has no interest in ships,” that weathered, weary voice says. “You can keep them.”

Master?Does that mean the man speaking is not my would-be husband? What type of man would send a servant to negotiate for me? I did not want love, but I had dared to hope for dignity. But if the man can’t even be bothered to come now, then how will he treat me once I am in his care?

“Then what is it that your master would like as a dowry?” Joyce seems absolutely flummoxed that someone would refuse the ships. Though I can hear the delight at this making her voice tremble.

“My master is a collector of a certain variety of rare goods. It is come to his attention that you are in possession of a particular tome he has long sought.”

“A book?” A pause. “Oh, you serve him.” Joyce’s voice sharpens. “I know Covolt always refused to sell it, but you will find me a much more amenable businesswoman.”

The book… They couldn’t possibly be talking about that book, could they?

When Joyce entered into our lives she decreed that all remnants of my birth mother be expunged from the halls. I had tried to object, but my father told me it was a natural thing for a new wife to do. That new love couldn’t blossom in the shade of old. One night I went to him, utterly inconsolable. I begged him to save something, anything, just one thing. I had already lost the memories of my mother’s face by then. I didn’t want to lose more.

It was then that he showed me the book. It was a small, old thing. Whatever lettering had once been stamped onto its leather had been mostly worn away with time. The only marking that was still discernible was an eight-pointed star at the top of a mountain imprinted on the spine. The writing inside had faded, leaving only illegible ghosts to haunt mostly blank pages.

My father swore to me that it was the one thing my mother had treasured most. The one thing she wanted me to have and keep safe—my birthright. And when I was a woman, he would give it to me. But in the meantime, he swore me to secrecy on the importance of the title. I’m sure to keep Joyce from destroying it like she did everything else of my mother’s.

When I was worried most that Joyce would discover the book, I had told Father I did not want to wait. Let me hide it, I’d begged. But he said I wasn’t ready. So he gave me the lute to ensure I had something of Mother’s, claiming it was the one she’d used to sing my lullabies.

“My master had hoped that would be the case,” the old man says. “He has empowered me to make the following offer: he will take the young woman’s hand in marriage and look after her for the rest of her, or his, days on this mortal plane—whichever ends first. She will never be left wanting. He asks only for the book as a dowry. Furthermore, to show good faith toward your family, he will pay four thousand pieces when the marriage papers are signed.”

My fate is sealed. Four thousand pieces is more than this entire manor is worth. That is one year’s operations of my father’s trading company during the best of times. I slowly slide down the wall as I realize this mysterious man who could not even be bothered to come in person will be my husband.

“That is a very generous offer indeed.” Joyce’s voice quivers slightly. I can imagine she’s frothing at the mouth. “I shall draw the papers to immortalize this agreement, and cement the marriage. Shall we sign them tomorrow when your master can come?”

“There is no need to wait.”

“Oh?”

“As I said, my master has empowered me to make such decisions on his behalf. I am able to sign for him and he’s given me his seal. He said, should you agree to our terms, to conclude business immediately.”

“Very well then.”

Somewhere between the mutterings over the best wording for the agreement, and the shuffling of papers, I stop listening. I lean against the wall, hands shaking, fighting for air. The world spins sickly fast. I knew this would happen. I knew it. But now it’s real and happening so quickly… I thought… I thought I’d have more time…

“There, it is done,” Joyce declares as she no doubt finishes signing my name on my behalf.

“Good. Tell your daughter to collect her things as you collect the book.” More scraping of chairs. “We will leave within the hour.”

Just like that, I am married and am leaving the only home I’ve ever had…for a man whose name I don’t even know.