Matters Escalate
I STUMBLED BACK INTO the manor in absolute turmoil, and nearly managed to stumble right into a house brownie whilst still wearing my ballroom finery.
Some stray bit of self-preservation jerked me out of my stupor just in time, and I hurriedly hid in the water closet until the dangerous moment had passed.
The house brownies liked me well enough, but it wouldn’t be fair to test their good will against their fear of Lord Bloodthorn.
Heart pounding, I scrambled up the narrow stairs to my attic and slumped back against the closed door in short-lived relief, for the rattle of my family’s carriage on the gravel driveway sounded through the open window. Thorned Sister. This was all far too close for comfort.
What would my family think, to find me in an enchanted ball gown?
Gripped by sudden panic, I tore off my clothing and kicked the glass slippers away.
I couldn’t find the tūī-feathered mask, and for a nerve-scratching moment, I thought I’d dropped it on my way through the house, before I remembered I’d left it sitting on the tower.
Not ideal, but at least not incriminating.
I sank down onto the edge of the bed in my undergarments, breathing hard.
After several steadying gulps, I got up and hid the items deep in the recesses of my battered wardrobe before climbing into bed. It took a long time for sleep to roll over me.
WHEN I CAME INTO the drawing room after breakfast, the atmosphere bristled.
Acantha was at her writing desk, making one of her world-conquering lists with furious intensity.
My stepmother was scowling her way through the morning’s gossip sheet, the headline of which I could read from across the room: MYSTERIOUS STRANGER STEALS KING’S HEART? It made me want to grin maniacally.
Instead, I adopted a demure expression and poured myself a cup of tea.
“How was the ball?” I couldn’t resist asking with false casualness, despite Rose’s frantic headshaking.
Acantha hissed in a breath between her teeth.
“The masked lady was there again,” Rose said after it became clear that no one else was going to answer me. “The king left with her. No one knows who she is.”
Lady Bloodthorn put the paper down. “I have had messages flying back and forth all morning. No one has heard anything about her.”
“She can’t be a child of one of the houses, can she?” Acantha looked up from her list, where she had detailed the names of her competitors along with their weaknesses. “Which means he can’t marry her, regardless. I don’t know why he’s wasting everyone’s time with this, this nobody.”
“Perhaps that’s why he’s wasting so much time with a nobody,” Rose said, looking thoughtful. “To make a point.”
Acantha made a furious sound. “It’s an insult. Or it will be, to whomever he proposes to.”
“Maybe she’s not a nobody!” I said, more forcefully than I meant to.
Three sets of eyes swung towards me in surprise.
My fingers had curled themselves into fists without my noticing.
I hastily uncurled them and tried to sound only mildly interested in the topic.
“I mean, if no one knows who she is, she could be anyone, couldn’t she?
Anyone pure sidhe,” I amended. “Maybe she’s a sorceress, or, or a princess from another court. ”
Rose frowned at me. “How do you know what she looked like?”
My mouth went dry. “Isn’t that how you described her yesterday? I just assumed. What did she look like?”
Rose’s eyes widened, looking past me, and I turned with sudden foreboding. Lord Bloodthorn stood there. In his hand he held the silver mask I’d left on the tower last night. Tāwhiri’s green-black feathers glittered from its edges.
The room sat quiet as Lord Bloodthorn lifted the object to the light.
I took a half-step towards him, driven by an indignant objection that the mask was mine, and then jerked myself back, but my movement hadn’t gone unnoticed.
His gaze stabbed me. I tried to look as meek and unsuspicious and as generally not-there as possible even as sweat broke out on the back of my neck.
His lip curled, but he turned his cold gaze away from me and back to his real family. I nearly sagged with relief.
How had he gotten the mask? I’d taken off the illusion last night, on the tower, I thought with a thrill of pure fear. Had someone seen me? It had been darkly lit—would they have recognised me as human?
Lord Bloodthorn held up the mask by one of its long feathers so that it swung gently.
“This was left by the mysterious lady atop the western tower of the palace last night. His majesty had been picnicking there with her.” He sneered and threw the mask across the table, where it skittered to a stop near Rose.
“Do you know who she is?” Acantha asked, always the boldest of us.
“It does not matter who she is,” said Lord Bloodthorn. “What matters is that it was not you on that tower last night, daughter.”
Rose had picked up the mask and was examining it, frowning. “This doesn’t fit the face,” she said, almost to herself.
My panic, which had begun to ebb, swelled back in full force. I attempted to become one with the wallpaper.
“What?” Lord Bloodthorn barked.
Rose stiffened but lifted her chin. “This mask is made to be close-fitting. It doesn’t match the face of the lady we saw.
The angles aren’t sharp enough, the nose too broad and cheeks too round.
Almost like a—” Her eyes suddenly widened, and she cut herself off, but not before her gaze had flicked damningly towards me.
“Almost like a human’s,” Acantha finished for her.
It was as if a void had formed around me, dragging in sound and attention both, my entire family’s attention abruptly centring on me in a way it never had before.
I smiled weakly out of sheer self-defensive reflex, my mind scrabbling to find the words that would please them, but my brain felt curiously empty, as if the metaphorical void had also sucked all my higher brain power out.
Lord Bloodthorn stalked over to Rose and took the mask from her. “Put this on, Cinders,” he said in a low, dangerous voice.
I should have made an attempt at denial then.
Said something that made me sound convincingly innocent.
Or said literally anything in my own defence.
Instead, I stood like a frightened deer as the silence grew longer and deeper and more incredulous and Lord Bloodthorn gave a furious huff of impatience and pressed the mask against my face.
I jerked backwards, taking the mask with me, thanks to the perfect fit. I had no time to recover my balance, because Lord Bloodthorn was already pulling me upstairs to my attic, with my stepmother and sisters in silent entourage.
Lord Bloodthorn pushed me, stumbling, up the stairs ahead of him. Inside, I was still frozen. His hands pinched, but it all felt like it was happening very far away.
The search of my room took approximately three seconds to uncover the dresses and shoes hiding in the back of my wardrobe. That had been an obvious hiding place, with the excruciating benefit of hindsight.
He dragged me and everything else back down to the parlour, I think because he was annoyed by having to stoop to fit under my attic ceiling.
The objects made an incriminating pile on the coffee table, the unearthly glass slippers and Tāwhiri’s feathers punctuating the now-crumpled dresses in accusatory slashes.
“Sit,” said Lord Bloodthorn curtly. “Put these on.”
I didn’t want to step into the glass slippers, but Lord Bloodthorn manhandled me with casual, cruel fae strength, his grip painful as he shoved me down onto the nearest seat and wrenched off my ordinary shoes, shoving the glass ones into place. They fit perfectly.
He stared down at me with grim satisfaction as the illusion swept over me. “So. You tricked the king. I suppose that’s to be expected of a deceitful mortal’s get.”
My sisters were looking at me as if I were a stranger. I kicked off the shoes with sudden violence. They flew across the room. One hit the wall with a sharp crack of glass. The broken heel came to rest right-side-up, disconnected from the rest of the shoe. Good.
But Lord Bloodthorn merely looked down at me with cold contempt, as if I were a misbehaving child. “Where did you get these things? Don’t make me compel it out of you.”
I shivered. Compulsion is a terrible kind of high sidhe magic that presses against the will, the lesser cousin of the binding curse he’d laid on me. If he tried to compel me, and I resisted, would he realise my dawn-curse was broken?
But I wanted him to know where I’d gotten the slippers. “Tāwhiri gave them to me,” I said, suddenly defiant, and he hissed at my casual use of the king’s name. “He wanted me to come to the ball. He wants to marry me.”
They didn’t believe me. Denial shone from all four faces, mixed with great lashings of confusion. That was perhaps the worst part, that I could see what they were thinking: how could Tāwhiri have given such attentions to someone so ordinary and so far beneath him? It didn’t make sense to them.
“He is trying to shame us,” Acantha said softly, finding the only explanation that fit.
I flinched.
“To test us,” Lord Bloodthorn agreed.
I stood up, fists clenched. “This isn’t a test! He doesn’t care about sidhe blood or any of that! That’s your obsession!” I flung at my father, who didn’t look at me.
Ignoring me, he picked up the silver mask and handed it to my sister. “But one should not play games against the house of Bloodthorn. Wear that and call the king’s bluff,” he said to her.
Acantha didn’t look at me either, but unlike her father I could tell that she was having to try quite hard not to.
Her hands shook slightly, and her bracelet clicked against the edge of the mask as she took it.
Behind her, Rose wore a troubled frown, but she said nothing.
My stepmother was wringing her hands silently and looking at nobody, as if hoping that would make all this conflict go away.
A strange calm washed over me. “It won’t make any difference. The king doesn’t want to marry anyone else. It doesn’t matter what you do.” It mattered what I did. My dawn-curse was gone. Bloodthorn had no hold over me, I realised with a kind of awed thrill.
I had my father’s attention again, and it made my stomach tie itself into knots despite my bold words. He smiled. It was not a nice smile.
“Oh?” he said. “The king has sworn to choose his bride by the end of Third Night from amongst those present of the twelve houses. That will certainly not apply to you.”