Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
OPHELIA
The door creaks open in the early morning, but we’ve been awake for hours.
There’s nothing to do but sit in silence, twisting in fear. The room is gutted of anything that made me who I am. My sewing machine is gone, and the books I once read are, too.
Helena turns her head abruptly, staring at the doorway.
I hope it’s my stepsisters, but I know it’s not. What little luck I was once afforded has run out.
Lady Ashbridge stands with a tray of food.
It’s a scene that would have once been reversed; I’ve brought her many breakfasts in bed.
Now, she brings the same for me: two cups of steaming tea, two shelled eggs, and loaves of bread.
It is a fine breakfast, but I’ve become accustomed to sweet pastries and fresh fruit.
My stepmother is keeping us as prisoners, but it appears she doesn’t intend to starve us. Still, I’m suspicious, my nose curling as she sets down the tray.
Perhaps she plans to poison me.
“Eat,” Lady Ashbridge says. “I will bring you another meal this evening.”
“Why?” I spit out. “Will you keep us captive forever?”
It’s a strange thing to ask aloud. As cruel as the lady of the house has always been, I never thought she was the type to hurt someone. What is the end of this wretched plan of hers? Surely she won’t do away with us.
Fae often live long lives, but we’re easy to kill. I’ve seen evidence of that when poor Tibalt slashed through the corrupt carriage driver. That death will forever be on my hands, and I can hardly live with it.
How can Lady Ashbridge, or anyone, exist with two deaths?
“Why would I tell you my plans?” Lady Ashbridge smiles a wicked smile. Her lithe fingers glide over the old, wooden doorframe; it may appear feeble, but it’s the only thing keeping us trapped.
“Then you have no plan at all.” I lift my chin higher. “If you won’t tell me, I believe you are without direction.”
While I speak, I send tendrils of magic toward the lady.
Her emotions aren’t high. Some wear their feelings on their face, or else right above their head, making them too easy to pluck right out.
Lady Ashbridge hides hers deep in a cage in her chest. I can sense the cage around them, but reaching the emotion is another thing.
Another lock I can’t pick.
What is it that makes her want to treat us with so much cruelty?
I push my magic into the chest in her heart, exhaling sharply.
“Do not misunderstand me, child,” she says. “I have plans for you. And—”
All of my magic rushes back at me, and I stumble onto the bed.
“Stay out of my heart,” Lady Ashbridge snaps.
My pulse races. “How did you—?”
“Do you think I cannot feel your revolting fae magic poking and prodding?” She clicks her tongue. “What a fool you have become while pampered by that rotten prince.”
How does she know where I’ve been?
I exchange a look with Helena, whose fingers twitch at her sides. She may be planning something, and I don’t know what, but I’ll keep Lady Ashbridge distracted.
“Then you’ve been spying on me,” I say. “How?”
“I have eyes and ears all over that castle. That is all you need to know.”
Her answers are becoming increasingly less sensible.
My brows furrow. “I never knew any of this, Madame. I had no idea you were interested in the castle and the fae, beyond your prejudice.”
Her eyes narrow, and she holds the doorknob. “There is much you do not know about me, but you will not pry it from me, no matter how many times you ask. Eat before your bread grows stale.”
Lady Ashbridge is dismissing herself. She’ll leave. We’re losing our chance, what little chance we have.
“Wait—” I call.
It’s a desperate attempt at giving my friend another moment of preparation, but it seems she doesn’t need it. Helena holds her hands at her chest and spreads them apart—light bursts into the room.
I duck and cover my eyes, blinded by the sunlight.
Lady Ashbridge stumbles and screams.
“Now,” Helena yells. “Run!”
How can I run when I can barely see a thing? I follow Helena’s voice, sprinting through the bright sunlight. Helena’s hand grips mine, soft and firm beneath my fingers, and she leads me down the stairs.
“The light won’t last long.” Helena pants. “We must—”
She freezes. I do, too, and it’s no choice of our own to remain so still. We’re stuck in place, trapped again. All I can move are my eyes, which dart around, searching for an answer.
Lady Ashbridge appears in a puff of dark smoke.
Tears fall from her bloodshot eyes, and her irises flash red.
She holds an amulet above her head. That gaudy necklace she has always worn is clenched in her bony fingers.
I’ve never liked the thing, but it makes me sick now.
It turns my blood to ice. It turns my body into ash.
I’m nothing, as she always intended me to be.
Heavens. Why can’t I move?
“You thought you could run from me,” she says. “But the fae’s magic is no match for a sorceress’s. Did witnessing the curse I put on that land teach you nothing, child?”
I can barely let out a squeak.
“There you go.” A slow smile appears on her face.
“Finally, you’ve caught up. I am the one who cursed your precious prince.
I am the one that the wretched king betrayed.
I am the one who wrote the prophecy and forced you into hiding before you were ever born.
And I will be the one to tear down the Sun Palace and all others, once and for all.
A new reign of magic will begin under my crown. ”
All I can do is weep.
“Ophelia?” A faint voice whispers on the other side of the wooden door. “Please. Don’t panic. It is us.”
Us. I recognize Elisa’s voice, gentle and sweet compared to her mother’s harsh tones. The whispered words are the first I’ve heard from my stepsisters in months, and it does little to set me at ease. No matter how upset I am with them, I’m worried.
They are still here when their mother has gone mad. They’re in as much danger as I am.
“Who is that?” Helena asks, sitting upright.
I shuffle to the door and kneel by it, pressing my hands against the weathered wood. “It’s my stepsister—or perhaps both of them.”
“Yes,” Raia says. “I’m here as well.”
Raia is the reason I was exiled from my home, but despite our current situation, I hold no ill will for my younger stepsister. Perhaps anger will come later, but I don’t have the energy for such hatred when there’s a bigger threat in the home. Raia was naive; she didn’t know what she was doing.
None of us could have guessed it would turn out this way… unless…
“Do you know what’s happening?” I ask. “Why does your mother have me locked away?”
“We don’t,” Raia whispers. “Nor do we know how to help. Mother has been behaving strangely since you left.”
Strange does not begin to cover how their mother has behaved, but Lady Ashbridge has always coddled her daughters. They likely don’t know what their mother truly is.
I exchange a weary look with Helena. “In what way has she been strange?”
“She’s been disappearing for weeks at a time,” Elisa says. “She hardly eats, barely sleeps, and when she’s home, she seldom speaks to us. The house has become a mess.”
Now that I’m not around to clean, I suppose my bedchamber is dustier. I assumed the mess was only in my room, but if what Elisa says is true, Lady Ashbridge has been neglecting our once beautiful home.
“She took down your father’s portrait,” Raia says. “Replaced it with one of her own.”
My heart drops into my stomach, and my lower lip trembles.
My father. That portrait, one I’ve not seen in months, was all I had to remember my father by. Where is it? If there is any way to find it before I leave this place, I must. I will.
“Perhaps she’s finally done mourning him,” I say, bitterness seeping into my tone.
One of them wiggles the door, but it does not budge.
“I can’t believe she has locked you in there,” Elisa says. “She’s always been a cold woman, but I thought there was an end to her cruelty. This… this is…”
Raia sobs. I hardly hear the sound through the thick wood, but it’s almost certainly her. “Forgive me. I should not have—”
“Enough,” I say, cutting her hysterics short. “Crying over the past does nothing to help us in the present. Is there any way you can help free us? Will you find the key? We have someone coming to rescue us, and if you can help him inside…”
After everything, even with Raia’s crocodile tears, I shouldn’t trust her. Her adventurous side and the part of her that wishes to remain in her mother’s good graces are constantly at war, and there’s a chance she will betray me again.
It doesn’t matter; I’m at my lowest. If the sorceress wishes to kill me, so be it. There’s nothing more she can do to ruin me.
“We will help,” Elisa says. “And we will not tell mother we have seen you.”
“Then you should hurry off.” I rise and press my hand to the door. “She’s a sneaky woman, and she has ears everywhere. Don’t let her know we have spoken. Raia?”
Raia sniffles. “Yes?”
“Do not let her know.”
“I won’t,” she says.
Perhaps I can’t trust Raia, but my stepsisters are my only hope. After all I’ve been through, I don’t wish to lose friendship and hope. They’re the only lights at the end of this tunnel.
Their shoes click as they take their leave. The sound disappears, and I’m left in the darkened room with Helena again—another day of mediocre meals and stale air. The prince may never come, may not even know where to find us.
I float back to the bed and sit, stretching out my wings. After keeping them hidden for so long, I never knew how hard it would be to return to tucking them away.
I run my hands over a silky wing.
“Were you close with your sisters?” Helena asks. “You’ve never told me about them.”
“My stepsisters—but we were once dear friends, yes.” The sun creeps over the horizon, threatening us with another dreaded day. “Until they betrayed me. They’re the reason I was exiled from this town.”
Helena winces. “That is quite the betrayal.”
“It was, but they are victims of Lady Ashbridge as much as I am.” I smooth out my other wing. “If they free us from this awful place, all will be forgiven.”
“And if they betray you again?”
I have no family left. My stepsisters are as close as I have, but if they go to such lengths to keep me in this place…
My throat tightens. “Then I no longer have sisters.”
Helena wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me closer. “But you’ll always have me.”