CHAPTER 1
Hanna
Three years earlier
Ilook like I walked out of someone’s Victorian fetish magazine.
Not that there was anything wrong with that. On a regular day, I had a tendency to err toward the style myself, but I really had to wonder if that was what the dress designer was going for. I stared at myself in the huge, ornate mirror in front of me, blinking owlishly.
“Oh, Hanna,” my mother gushed from behind me as she adjusted the train of my cape. “This is definitely the one.”
I couldn’t recognize myself in the witch that stood before me. My life was one obligation after another, and all I wanted to do was run away. To escape this existence that was expected of me.
They said the dress was enchanted to ‘honor the Greyleaf legacy.’ To me, it felt like a spell meant to trap.
Layers of pale green silk floated around me like mist, threaded with silver runes that pulsed faintly in time with my heartbeat—or maybe in time with the magic binding me to a future I didn’t choose.
The corset, laced tight enough to remind me to stay quiet, shimmered with delicate embroidery of ivy and thistle—poisonous plants disguised as flowers.
My mother had chosen that detail. A reminder that beauty and pain belong together.
The sleeves trailed down my arms in soft transparency, as if the fabric itself were made of regret. The veil, light as breath, smelled faintly of rosemary and control. The woman staring back at me looked like a storybook witch queen, regal and doomed in equal measure.
Everyone at the wedding would see power. All I could feel was the cage stitched into every seam.
My breathing was becoming erratic, and all I wanted to do was rip the dress off of me. It was smothering me and I was going to suffocate to death.
“Just a few more adjustments, I think,” my mother was saying, whispering to the dressmaker she’d specifically hired to create this monstrosity of a dress. Her eyes were critical as they surveyed me from head to foot. “And I think you can at least try to lose a few pounds before the wedding, Hanna.”
The last sentence was a snap of censure. One that I was very used to in my life. I’d been hearing her voice in my head like that since I was a little girl.
Stop eating now, Hanna.
No dinner tonight, Hanna.
Why don’t you start running, Hanna?
I kept my thoughts to myself, because they’d never been welcomed.
Telling her that I’d actually lost ten pounds since the wedding was announced—-because I couldn’t force myself to eat a bite of food—wouldn’t fix anything.
Nothing was ever enough and I’d never be the daughter she’d always pictured in her head anyway.
God forbid I tell her I actually like my body.
I’d inherited my curves from my paternal grandmother—my favorite person in the world—and my mother had never let my father forget that fact. His side was where all the terrible genes came from, apparently.
Instead of focusing on her, I kept my gaze on the dress, wondering if I was imagining the corset getting tighter. Sweat blossomed on my skin and I gasped, waving my hands in front of my face as my vision went blurry.
“Aw, she’s getting overwhelmed,” the dressmaker cooed. “I know, most brides see themselves for the first time in their dress and they start crying.”
She hurried over to the side-table where there was a gilded box with tissues. She bustled back, holding a couple out to me and I took them, not sure what else to do. If I didn’t, my mother would realize that it was panic and not joy that I was feeling.
“Corwin’s going to love you in this,” my mother hummed, tapping my stomach—because she always tapped it like she wished it didn’t exist. I’d always been too big for her. Taken up too much space. And I was certain that my fiancé thought the same.
She perused me from head to toe again, shaking her head.
“I still can’t believe he agreed to marry you,” she sighed, mostly talking to herself.
She did that often. “He had so many options after all.” She fluffed at the sleeve of my dress before giving my arm a hard squeeze.
“You’re so lucky. That kind of male doesn’t come around often.
You need to become the kind of wife that he needs. ”
Even with those words playing in my head—because I always had to become something, I was never quite good enough on my own—her thin fingers digging into my arm were enough to bring me back from where I’d been losing my absolute shit.
My mother stared at me, as if waiting for something and I nodded my head, well used to her.
There wasn’t anything I could say that would stop her criticism. I’d been trying since I was a child. My father was just as bad. He lost himself in a bottle and didn’t come out. I wasn’t sure if he was a meaner drunk or sober, since he was never truly sober enough for me to know.
“Why don’t you get her something to tame that frizzy mop on her head?” my mother scoffed, waving her free hand around my head as if my natural hair—that I’d inherited from her—was another atrocity.
She kept hers chemically straightened and tamed, always doing more and more to her hair and face to keep herself young and beautiful.
Whereas, since I wasn’t naturally beautiful—a fact that was well-instilled in my memory from childhood with my mother’s constant repetition of how much I was lacking—I never thought it would make a difference to keep everything coiffed and primped.
“This merger will be everything we need,” she hissed as soon as the dressmaker was out of earshot. “So don’t mess this up for us. I need you to behave yourself. I know that look in your eyes.”
I clenched my jaw, wishing I wasn’t so damn expressive. My face always got caught before my words.
“You will not ruin this for us.” Her hand squeezed harder and I winced, the pain shooting through my arm.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. My words clogged up in my throat anyway. What could I say? I’d always loved staying under the radar, being ignored by my family and spending my time in the potions lab instead.
It was the heart of our business after all. Greyleaf’s Apothecary---our family business—was well-known for its potions. We sold them globally. I’d always thought that we’d been doing really well.
But according to my mother, the only way we would be able to expand into the northern countries would be by merging with Ashvale Potions.
Their eldest son, Corwin Ashvale was the witch I was supposed to marry.
Our families both belonged to a long line of green witches.
Our lines probably interconnected at some point too.
I cringed at the thought that Corwin was actually one of my cousins once removed or something. It was a puke-worthy concept. Even looking at him, he wasn’t my type. Tall, dark-haired and pretentious.
If I was less afraid of my mother, I’d tell her that Corwin was more her type than mine. I liked males who were stronger, less refined. Deeper. But instead, I kept my words to myself, as I always did.
Talking back only made her cruelty worse. I’d learned to keep my silence. I’d perfected the art of retorting in my head but never out loud. The one or two times I’d done it when I was younger, I’d been scathed by her tongue.
The last conversation I’d had with Corwin had ended with him scowling at me after I asked him what the last book he’d read had been. “Reading is for ugly witches, Hanna,” he’d scoffed. “The rest of us spend time out in the real world.”
And by the real world , he meant out with all the same shallow, pretentious assholes who comprised our socio-economic bracket. I’d come to understand that Corwin spent his time out at parties and soirees just like my parents. That’s where they’d met after all.
I could usually get out of them by wearing a dress that was a tad too tight. The moment my mom saw a roll, she was more than happy to tell everyone that I wasn’t feeling well enough to leave the house.
I was almost certain that the rest of the world thought I had some kind of congenital disease. Not many of them had seen me since I’d turned twelve and had put on more weight than was seemly. Not that I minded.
Spending time with all the people working in our home instead of with my parents was far superior to spending the night pretending I was having a good time while tiny little bites of food floated around that no one ever ate.
I’d never understand how earth practitioners could be so far away from our roots.
Earth witches had traditionally been known for their enjoyment of food, sex and nature.
My family barely ate, rarely had sex from what I could tell from my parents sleeping in different wings of the house and never went out into nature. It was downright depressing.
I was different than them. I was a foodie—to the consternation of everyone around me. I loved to be out in open spaces as much as I could. And so far, I hadn’t had much sex, but from what I could tell, I enjoyed it.
I loved creating potions too. Something that my mother and father didn’t do either. They relied on the old recipes from my grandmother as well as any new ones that she’d put together when I was younger. It wasn’t until I was an apprentice in the apothecary that I’d started experimenting.
Those experiments had paid off. And while my mother always had a lot to say about everything I did, that was the one area she’d actually seemed... proud.
Now there were three potions that bore my signature calling card. The green hue that was imbued by my magick. We’d put them into mass production and they were now amongst our bestsellers.
I figured that with a few more potions, I would be able to make a dent in the expectations that were placed on me by my parents. Eventually they would love me, I was sure.
And this, I thought, with a deep breath, is why I’m going to marry Corwin. Even if I think he’s a pompous ass, he’s what they need. For the apothecary and for the family.
“I love it,” I lied, sending my mother a fake smile.
Her own smile grew satisfied and her claw-like grasp on my arm loosened. “Good,” she told me, patting my arm as if I was a well-behaved pet.