21. Lissy
LISSY
I've been humming for three days.
I catch myself doing it at the cutting table, in the shower, on the stairs. The same six notes, over and over. I don't stop myself, because I'm happy. My whole body has been humming like a struck bell, and I've spent three days living on cloud nine.
The masterpiece for Mirelle's wedding dress stands on its form with the first panels pinned. The same leather from Ysolde's dress is worked into the edge of the bodice. The thread from Brynna's lies waiting, and the silver from Saskia's dress is on the spool.
Three sisters woven into one dress, waiting for the fourth to join them.
The best night of my life, I told him. In case you're lying there wondering.
And whenever I stop humming, my doubt rears its ugly head.
The needle. The oak. You know how this ends.
I've fought that doubt for three days. The fable is only a story, I tell myself. The Sunfell women in my family were only unlucky.
I am allowed, for once, to want something for myself.
The doubt mostly goes away when I hum, so I keep humming. It’s my armor against the doubt.
The bell rings, and I turn around smiling.
Delighted by who I see.
It's Ysolde. Behind her come Brynna and Mirelle, the latter wiping her boots neatly on the mat like she doesn't have a worry in the world.
Saskia comes through last.
Her face stops the hum dead in my throat.
I have seen Saskia delighted, Saskia bored, Saskia mid-battle-form in a half-pinned mock-up. But I have never seen this. Her jaw is set. Her eyes are flat. Her hands keep curling and uncurling at her sides like they're searching for a weapon.
"Good morning," I say slowly. "The fitting isn't for a week. Not that you're not welcome, but—" I look from face to face. Gray. Shielded. Blank. Murderous. All four of them wear difference expressions. "What happened?"
I look behind them. "Where's Torgan?"
"At the Hall," Saskia says. Her voice quivers with the anger brewing inside her. "Where he'd better stay until I decide how I'm going to kill him."
"Saskia," Ysolde breathes.
"What, Ysolde?" Saskia throws up her hands. "She's going to hear all of it in the next ten minutes. Let her know that her lover ruined our sister's life."
Saskia looks at me, and there's something in her eyes besides murder now.
Something that hurts worse.
Distrust.
"Hello, Lissy," Mirelle says pleasantly, stepping around her sisters. "I'm glad you're open. I need to settle my account."
She sets a purse on my counter.
"I'm canceling the dress. There won't be a wedding." She says it the way you'd report the weather to a stranger. "I've brought payment for the work done, and I apologize for the inconvenience. If the fabric can be reused for another client, keep the difference. It's good fabric."
I look at Mirelle.
Gentle Mirelle, who always talked about how her turn was coming next. Who floated through a wedding breakfast three days ago, flashing her ring in everyone's face.
She'd been so happy.
And now?
Now she looks back at me with mild, pleasant patience. Nothing behind her eyes. No grief. No anger. Not even relief.
A blank spot where a person used to be.
"Mirelle." My mouth has gone dry. I reach for her, and she startles like a lost puppy. "What happened? Did you and Caden fight?"
"Nothing happened. I thought about it, and it was a mistake. The families won't work well together." She smiles. It's a polite smile, and that's all it is. She has never once given me this smile. "It's better that it ends now rather than later."
I've fitted brides for eleven years. I've seen cold feet. I've seen women break off engagements in that chair, in tears or in rage.
Ended love always looks like something detonated or broke.
This looks like nothing.
Not a heart broken.
It’s like her heart was removed.
The floor tilts, because I've heard this described before, months ago.
At a spell shop where an orc bought an anti-love potion.
"No," I whisper.
"Torgan bought a potion months ago," Ysolde says, not noticing my shock. "An anti-love draught. For Mirelle. To end the courtship before it began." Her voice stays level the whole way through. "He swears he never used it. But someone took it and did."
I don't move.
"He told us everything," Saskia says. "Where he bought it. What he paid." A pause, and the blade of her voice turns toward me. "It was here. In Starling Vale."
The room goes small.
"I know," I whisper, closing my eyes against the tears.
The whole room seems to hold its breath.
"You what?" Brynna asks. "How?"
"I—"
"How, dammit?" Saskia thunders.
I lick my lips. Saskia could kill me for hiding this, even though I didn't know I was hiding anything.
"I was helping a client with a fitting," I say. "I went to the spell shop to get a potion, and there was a young orc lord there buying an anti-love draught."
I meet their eyes, trying to make them understand.
"It was Torgan."
"Months, Lissy." Saskia takes one step toward me. "You watched our brother buy an anti-love potion, and then you came to our weddings."
"I didn't know who it was for."
It is true. It is also not enough.
But Saskia won't stop now that she's charging.
"You made our dresses. You sat at our table and held our baby cousin, and you never said one word."
“I didn’t know it was for Mirelle. He was a stranger, and I overheard a private sale. Noemi stopped me from interrupting. I couldn’t come to your family with something a customer bought in confidence.”
The words are true.
They still aren’t enough.
“I thought about it later,” I continue. “When I knew Torgan. When Mirelle’s courtship began. I told myself the potion belonged to some old business. To some woman from before.”
Ysolde’s face goes very still.
“And you never asked him?”
No.
That is the part that belongs to me.
"No," I say softly. "I never asked."
Who is she?
For months, I asked the dark that question. The woman he paid twenty gold pieces for. The woman he loved enough to protect from her own heart. I measured myself against her. And when I lay in his arms three nights ago, I nearly convinced myself it had all been a nightmare.
There was never a woman.
There was only his baby sister, who he'd been trying to protect.
"I..." My throat closes, and I have to try again. "I didn't know."
Saskia looks at me for a long moment.
"That could have been for me," she says. "Or Ysolde. Or Brynna. That potion could have been meant for any one of us. It could have ruined any one of our lives, and now it has ruined Mirelle's. And you didn't think to tell us?"
I won't cry.
I won't cry.
"Why did you come here?" I ask. "If you think I'm... whatever you think I am. Why come to my shop?"
"Because Torgan told us where he bought it," Brynna says finally. Her voice is precise and cold. "At the spell shop in Starling Vale. We thought you might know something."
"And you do." Saskia practically spits the words. "More than we thought."
"We need Noemi to look at Mirelle and tell us exactly what was done," Ysolde says. "How long it holds, and whether it can be undone."
I look between them, wanting there to be something I can do to change the past.
There isn't.
Instead, four strangers look back at me. Mirelle looks blankly. Saskia looks betrayed. Brynna won't meet my eyes. Ysolde's face has gone deathly still.
My hands shake as I take off my apron.
"It's only two blocks," I say. "Follow me."
Noemi is grinding something at her counter when the five of us come through her door. One look at my face and she stops.
"Lissy?"
"Look at her," I say, gesturing toward Mirelle. "Please."
Something in my voice tells her how serious this is, because Noemi comes around the counter without another question. The sisters part for her, bringing Mirelle forward.
Mirelle stands in the middle of the spell shop, patient, hands folded, admiring the vials on the shelves like a woman waiting for a coach.
Noemi looks into her eyes. She takes Mirelle's wrist and holds two fingers to her pulse. She says a word I don't know, softly, and passes her palm in front of Mirelle's face.
Mirelle doesn't react at all.
"Congratulations on your engagement, my lady," Noemi says gently. Conversationally, like she's testing the water. "The whole town heard about the proposal."
Mirelle cocks her head. "There's no engagement. I ended it."
Noemi stills. "Why?"
"It isn't meant to be."
"Do you miss him?"
"No."
One simple word.
Then a faint crease crosses her face, there and gone. Some buried thing surfacing for half a breath.
"I keep waiting to," she says. "It seems like I should. But... I don't."
Saskia turns and walks to the window, tears in her eyes. Ysolde and Brynna don't move at all, which is somehow worse.
Noemi's hands slowly curl into fists.
"It's my brew," she says.
"You sold it." Saskia rounds on her from the window, and for a moment, I think I'm about to watch her take apart the spell shop brick by brick.
Noemi doesn't step back. She's half Saskia's size, and she doesn't give up an inch.
"I sold it at a licensed amount of the potion , watered down to last only a month, and it’s legal in every realm," she says.
"And I told your brother to his face exactly what it would cost both him and whoever drank it.
" She crosses her arms. "I've refused stronger men than him over this counter, my lady.
I didn't refuse him because he asked how to do the least harm. Men planning harm don't ask that."
Her chin comes up.
"Be angry at the thief. I am. And before you get angry at her, Lissy was right not to tell you what she overheard in my shop. The confidence was mine, and I made it clear the transaction was private.”
Saskia turns toward her.
“She should have asked your brother once she knew him,” she says. “She didn’t. That was fear, not betrayal. Don’t confuse the two.”
Saskia holds her stare. Then something goes out of her shoulders, and she turns back to the window.
"Tell us the rest," Ysolde says.
Noemi tells them what she told Torgan so long ago, only this time in more detail. Details we can already see in Mirelle's detached gaze. The flatness. The politeness. The feelings she once emanated now lifted out clean like someone scooped it out.
"It can't be undone," Noemi finishes. "Emotional potions can't layer without disastrous consequences. A counter-draught would make a bigger mess of her." She nods toward Mirelle, pity in her face. "The only cure is time. A month from the dosing, give or take a few days."
"Fuck," Saskia groans, rubbing her face.
"And then she'll feel all of it," Noemi says quietly. "Everything the draught held back, arriving at once. And everything she did while it held. Sending the letter. Giving up the ring."
Brynna writes the date of the wedding at the top of a fresh page and underlines it twice. Her pencil shakes.
Noemi goes to stand beside Mirelle.
"My lady," she says gently, taking Mirelle's hand in both of hers. "Somewhere underneath where you can't reach, there's a door, and everything you felt for Caden is sealed behind it. The potion locked everything inside the room. It didn't empty it."
She holds Mirelle's eyes.
"In a month, when the door opens on its own, it will hurt more than anything has ever hurt you. When it does, I want you to know that none of this was your fault. Not the letter. Not the ring. Not one word you said while it held. Keep that. Promise me you'll keep that."
Mirelle considers her for a long moment before nodding, bewildered.
"I promise," she says.
Then she turns pleasant again, the door swinging shut.
"Though I really do feel fine."
Out on the street, the sisters close around Mirelle like they’re guarding a celebrity, and I don’t blame them. Mirelle is like a ghost of the person she once was, like she’d float away if the wind picked up too much.
Ysolde turns to me with cold courtesy. "Thank you," she says.
They're leaving.
They came for answers, and now that they have them, they're going home to deal with this.
And I will be left here by myself.
"Take me with you," I find myself saying.
Saskia's laugh has no humor in it. "Why? So you can watch our family fall apart?"
I swallow thickly. "Because I have to talk to Torgan My voice comes out steadier than I have any right to expect. "Because there's a thief who wants to end Mirelle's union, and she was about to marry into the same family that's been trying to take over my shop and my town."
I look at Brynna, who still won't meet my eyes.
"Brynna has research for me, and my friends' shops are under siege, and I—"
My voice cracks, finally, right down the middle.
"And I need to look him in the face and understand what happened."
Silence.
A cart rolls past.
"She should come," Mirelle says pleasantly. "It's only sensible. Brynna, you do have the research, right?"
“I do,” Brynna says. “But there’s a lot, and without context…”
“Let me see,” I plead.
Nobody says anything.
Then Ysolde closes her eyes for one moment. When she opens them, the coldness has cracked just enough.
"Get your coat," she says.
I lock the shop with the unfinished masterpiece standing in the dimness behind the glass. Then I climb into an Oakenshade carriage full of silence, and we ride for the Hall.
I'm not humming anymore.
The doubt in my mind no longer needs to sneak up on me.
For the first time in my life, I'm riding straight toward the part of the story where the needle breaks.