Chapter 2
CHAPTER
2
It was the middle of the night by the time I returned to my room. Versa was sleeping soundly across the hall, and for that, I was thankful. I was never good at lying; even worse at lying to her. The only time we ever pulled off lies was when we were in on it together and out to mislead our parents. For as innocent as she came off to others, only I knew her secrets and occasional antics.
I had no idea what story my parents would tell her in the morning about my upcoming “disappearance.” I certainly didn’t want to spoil things by coming up with my own falsehood. I knew I wouldn’t be nearly creative enough to spin up something believable off the cuff, not with Versa’s eyes on me.
I glanced around my bedroom at the wall of trinkets that I’d collected from my father’s various travels. He’d always bring me back something so that we could share in his adventures. A way to learn about the people, the customs and the beautiful places beyond the sea. I noted the top few shelves consisting of a handful of unique instruments, none of which I could play, but all equally interesting to inspect and admire. My favorite was the golden flute with decorative mother-of-pearl embellishments.
To the right of the instruments were an arrangement of masks and dolls, each intricately painted in a beautiful array of colors that were beginning to fade from the sunlight glaring in through the giant windows. Each of the items made me nostalgic for my childhood, and what ordinarily wouldn’t have seemed long ago, suddenly felt so far away.
My collection of books was precious to me. I couldn’t fathom the thought of them covered in dust, and I hoped that after my disappearance they’d find a new home, someone to love and cherish them the way I had. I acknowledged how I had them meticulously arranged in an order that only made sense to me. Row after row I scanned, remembering how quickly they overflowed my shelves and I had to beg Versa to let me move some of them into her room. Given the questionable content, I was too embarrassed to store them in our family library.
My room was already beginning to feel lonely and foreign. I hated that this simple change of direction in my life made me feel like a stranger in my own home, my own room. A home I had made memories in for 25 years, some of which were captured in paintings displayed throughout the gallery.
On every special occasion, my mother insisted that we sit for hours while some poor artist struggled to paint our family in a way that met her extremely high standards. Mother spent weeks planning our attire for these portrait sessions, trying her best to ensure that our outfits appeared cohesive. Not surprisingly, that same rationale gave her an excuse to pore over expensive and exotic fabrics, allowing her to commission new dresses to be made for all of us.
She constantly critiqued the artist, implying that our beauty had not been captured accurately enough, but what she really meant to say was her beauty. For all my mother’s kindness, she was also vain. Rightfully so.
I’m glad to say my sister and I did inherit her looks, but we were both much humbler. If you glanced at the portraits quickly, it was clear that we were our father’s daughters. His bloodline dominated all our major features. Our heads were crowned with long, dark brown hair—so dark, it was almost black—falling like tendrils well past our shoulders. We bore the same sparkling emerald eyes as him, and nearly translucent eggshell skin. Our father’s cheeks, however, were always rosy, permanently sun-kissed from years at sea under the relentless sky.
However, the foundations of what made us considerably attractive Fae were our mother’s perfect nose, pouty lips, sharply arched cheekbones, and deep-set eyes.
Some might have considered her intense burgundy hair color harsh, for it appeared like blood if you stared long enough. Her olive skin was that of her mother’s, and all the females who came before in their family. At least from the paintings I’ve seen.
She was what most would refer to as intimidatingly beautiful. Her dark eyes were like endless pools of ink. If you stared into them for too long, you’d find yourself drowning. Sometimes, I’m convinced it was her eyes that first ensnared my father.
My mother is intense. My father, on the other hand, has a light-hearted and jovial exterior, but could be brutal when it came to matters of commerce.
In my mind, they were the quintessential opposites attract love story. Since many High Fae families were focused on keeping bloodlines strong, they often denied their children the chance at finding a true mated bond or love match. Instead, they relied on favorable arranged marriages. I have never actually encountered a pair of mates myself, as my mother and father were a love match. For that, I am grateful to have grown up witnessing two people who, despite not having a mated bond, chose each other for all time.
They’re lucky their families didn’t intervene. I am also lucky that despite Versa’s betrothal being what would be considered a financially beneficial arrangement, she was happy. The attraction was there, and I believe my father would have never forced a decision upon her. We were his pride and joy, after all, and he’d never have condemned one of his daughters to sadness… I paused, contemplating the thought that despite that, I was indeed condemned—and powerless to stop it.
Each portrait featuring two daughters now felt like it might as well be just one. Will they miss me? And for how long? Hundreds of years could pass until my family took their final breaths, and my time amongst them was a mere season. Not that they would, but there was even time for my mother and father to replace me with a newborn should they so choose. Maybe even a male heir.
It never did bother them that they only had two daughters. Even though the families of the High Court were encouraged to breed large families. It’s a shock they stopped after me and my sister, but they did get two for the price of one. I couldn’t help but feel some sense of impending grief, that for my mother and father these portraits which brought them joy would someday make them feel despair.
Two hundred years since the Offering had last been called… My thoughts drifted to how many other households contained paintings with generations mysteriously lost to this command.
I shook my head in frustration; I was wasting my time already with what-ifs and pointless scenarios. I had thirty days of freedom ahead, with no idea how much actual time after that. I had no way to know if I’d even make it to twenty-six, let alone two hundred. Thinking about the long lives my family had ahead of them did nothing to ease my mind. Instead, my anxiety was growing.
There were many unanswered questions; I tried my hardest to sharpen my focus on the next month and ignore whatever lay beyond. I sat in the bay window of my room staring out into the expansive courtyard and sprawling gardens all bathed in moonslight.
On the window frame, I noticed a silver spiderweb glistening and watched as a brown spider crawled from one end to the other toward a small fly it had captured. The innocent fly was so unaware of what was coming, how brief its life would now be.
I waited nervously to witness its demise, wondering if it would struggle, put up a fight, or simply succumb to its fate. The anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach grew as I grabbed some nearby parchment, ink, and a quill and rested the paper atop a hard book. My mind began to wander as I scribbled the item that would definitively sit at the top of my list.
It’s not that I had been saving my maidenhead. It’s more like it wasn’t important enough to pursue. While some of the ladies at school spent their spare time bashfully teasing or lusting after their classmates, I was quite the opposite. I loved to learn and invested every free moment in the pursuit of knowledge.
My father’s collection of maps was of special interest to me. I’d wanted so badly to learn to navigate the seas and travel with my father’s fellow merchants on their voyages. He always promised me that someday, when my education was complete, he’d guide my path toward becoming a guild member.
So far our time together at sea was fleeting, I was eager to learn everything I could about his trade. I followed the deckhands around, observing their chores and adding colorful words to my vocabulary—to the amused disappointment of my father. He showed me the purpose of tying different types of knots, and we practiced them together, both laughing when I inevitably became tangled and frustrated.
“All in good time, dear. A sailor is not a master of all things on her first few voyages.”
Although his travels were usually benign, some were quite dangerous. I had no fear of it, though, only a growing anticipation for the sway of the sea, and the horizon serving as my only comfort as we sailed into the unknown.
I would trace the lines on the maps for hours with my eyes, scanning in between each territory, mountain top, river and body of water. I loved the smell of them. They combined some of my favorite scents of old dusty books and sea breeze. With some of them you could even feel the sea salt on your hands when you ran your fingertips across them. Evidence of past adventures.
But it wasn’t just books or curiosity about the wider world that made my wheels turn. I was fascinated with the sciences, as well, understanding how the land provided the necessities of life if one only knew where to look. Things to hurt and to heal, things to nourish us and to destroy us. I had an immense respect for all these things and the harmony in which they balanced, humbling all living creatures. One might think someone so focused on academics might be lacking in strength and agility, but in that, too, I was gifted.
It didn’t matter if I was training alone, running the woods of our sprawling land, or practicing hand-to-hand combat, I couldn’t get enough of that adrenaline. It soothed me. And where most felt the rumblings of fury or fear, I felt a deep sense of calm and awareness.
Although it was merely an exhibition, pure exhilaration consumed me when I was drenched in sweat and I could feel my body being molded into a weapon, like a newly-forged blade being sharpened. No matter how hard I pushed myself physically, I never felt satiated. And when there was finally no energy for sparring and training, I fed my ferocious curiosity for knowledge, consuming tomes on Fae history, politics, and commerce until that fire in me returned. Perhaps, while I was focused on the body and the mind, I may have deprived matters of the heart.
My sister, on the other hand, was doing the exact opposite. There wasn’t an admirer she didn’t have—both males and females. She didn’t even have to try; she simply existed. My father is lucky he didn’t know just how many suitors had pursued Versa in our youth. I always kept her secrets when she’d sneak out to meet them under the cover of night.
She’d return late into the evening and crawl into my bed to tell me of her adventures. We’d laugh at all their failed attempts to woo her and their weaving of poetic words trying valiantly to tug at her heartstrings. None of them were ever as suave as the romantics we’d read about in our silly little novels. And while a few may have been lucky to land a kiss here and there, it’s not like she was running about giving every attractive Fae all of herself. Anything I knew or learned, I learned because Versa did it first, and for that, I was immensely grateful.
She even told me of the time she went out with a beautiful young lady named Miran. She was the only female at school whose allure surpassed Versa’s, and it had made the males’ blood boil that she had zero interest in them. But she had been very interested in my sister. After enough convincing, Versa finally gave in and met her one evening.
When she returned to me that night, she explained that it had been one of the most physically captivating encounters she had ever had. By far the best kisser, and when Miran traced her lips alongside Versa’s neck, down her collarbone and then to her breast, she shook with a desire she had never experienced prior.
I thought this was something that would blossom, but Versa explained to me that while she was physically taken with Miran, she didn’t reciprocate her feelings. She looked at me intently that night and spoke these words, which I will always remember: “You can’t know what you do and don’t like till you try it. You can’t know your heart until your mind doesn’t fight it.” Versa was wise like that; an old soul wrapped in a delicate, beautiful shell.
The night Versa lost her maidenhead I was the first to know, and to say I had a hundred questions was an understatement. She didn’t make a fuss of all the things I thought she would. As expected, she mentioned there was brief pain and minimal pleasure. He was proper and understood the situation, so precautions were taken. I was glad to hear he was gentle, because Versa knew I would have slit his throat otherwise. She’d have helped me get rid of the body. We were thick as thieves.
As she continued her recollection, she seemed withdrawn in a dreamlike state. Changed in the smallest of ways. While she said she did not find her own climax, she treasured the memory of their bare skin against one another and was already plotting to see him again. She continued with these trysts for a while, and her stories became more passionate and detailed with experience and experimentation. Like I said, everything I learned, I learned through Versa.
I wasn’t completely inexperienced. After listening to Versa’s endeavors and explorations for long enough, I finally sought my own. I stopped ignoring the advances of my schoolmates and became quite obsessed with kissing. In fact, I made a game of stealing kisses between classes in the stone halls that I enjoyed more than I should have, as I was constantly putting myself at risk. Mainly of someone telling my parents what a little trollop I was being, but I didn’t care. They’d judge who I was kissing rather than the act itself. No one would be good enough for a High Lord’s daughter, certainly not without their approval first.
Kissing felt like everything to me. It felt like enough, and I didn’t have much interest in taking things further. Partly out of fear, but also because it just didn’t seem necessary. I had all the time in the world. I was more focused on excelling in my studies and thinking of a future at sea. The flirting, teasing and kissing were all part of luring them in only to catch and release. It was mostly harmless, but I knew some were quite disappointed when I didn’t return any formal affections, and that’s when I knew things had to end. When time is your friend, you don’t have to rush a good thing.
My thoughts turned back to the present, and here I was swallowing the painful truth of how time was no longer an ally. I held the quill to the parchment and began making a list of everything that came to mind. Small and big, silly and frivolous, serious and sad.
Lose my maidenhead
Seduce a stranger
Gamble till I win
Get drunk
Alter my appearance
Help someone in need
Get a tattoo
Do something that scares me
Swim naked in the moonslight
Say my goodbyes