1. Chapter 1 #2
She crossed to the kitchen to set down her burden and then turned back to study me. “You look flushed.”
“Do I?”
“You are not getting ill, are you?” She came over to press a hand to my forehead. “You know how important it is to take care of yourself.”
“I feel perfectly fine,” I assured her.
“Good.” Auntie hated it when I was sick.
It was difficult for me to heal others when I was not feeling well, and natural herbs and healing draughts were hard to come by, which meant that Auntie would have to purchase healing potions.
I hated drinking magic. It made me feel off and I didn’t trust it. If only I could heal myself.
Auntie went back to the door and disappeared through it once again, this time leaving it open.
This was part of our usual routine. I sighed, envious of her ability to move about so freely.
She went to retrieve a bucket of water from the well close by so that I could wash the bottom of my hair.
Having so many people touch it, sometimes with blood on their hands, left it looking a bit gruesome by the time I was done each day.
I looked out at the sprawling view beyond my balcony and, seeing no one else on their way to visit me, I started pulling my braid over the railing, careful not to let it rub against the stone, lest the strands break.
My hair was long enough to reach the bottom of the tower while still leaving a bit of it trailing on the floor where I sat.
For a year after my gift manifested, it had grown at an unfathomable rate, reaching past my feet in the first month and growing more and more each day.
Aunt Ethel wouldn’t let me cut it, saying it would destroy the magic, and I’d been terrified that it would never stop growing.
Fortunately, it had stopped after a year, leaving it ten times my own height.
After I’d washed the bottom portion of my hair, I arranged it on the floor in a pool of sunlight to dry before helping Aunt Ethel prepare our evening meal.
“Did I hear Gregor here early this morning?” she asked after we’d sat down to eat.
My heart jumped, wondering if she’d seen the book, but she sounded more curious than accusatory—stars be praised. “Yes, he’d gotten into a tussle with a friend and hurt his arm.” I was grateful to have that truth to tell her.
“He comes to see you often.”
I snorted. “He’s a foolish boy who thinks he’s invincible.” Just like the rest of them.
She looked me over with an intensity that made me squirm. “He’s a man now. And he likes you.”
It was an odd thing to say. Was she suggesting that someone liking me was a bad thing? “We are friends,” I said, trying not to sound like that fact was monumental in and of itself. After all, I didn’t have friends.
“Lyrielle…” Her face softened and she gave me a pitying look.
It was a look I’d seen often and one that I loathed.
It was the face she made when she was going to tell me a harsh reality of life that she expected me to swallow despite its biting bitterness.
“You know you can never be with him, dear.”
My eyelids fluttered and widened in surprise. “Be with him?”
She tilted her head toward the little rounded balcony where my chair sat, and her pitying look turned stern. “Your life is here. Any ideas you may have about marrying that silly boy and going away should be set aside this moment. You are obligated to do what you can for the good of others.”
My mouth dropped open in confusion. I’d never once thought about Gregor in a romantic sense.
He made me smile. He treated me like a whole person, not just a tool to be used.
But I’d never let myself wonder if I could marry Gregor.
Despite my yearning for a family, I refused to torture myself by pining for young men who were out of my reach.
I longed to marry someday, but I had to leave this tower first. I’d always assumed I would be allowed to grow up and have a family of my own, that I could have the sort of life my parents had lived with each other, but the way my aunt was speaking…
I spoke up, my voice tentative. “Surely I will marry some day, Auntie. Every woman should have her own family.”
She leaned forward and cupped my cheek in her hand. “Not you, my darling. You must utilize your gift. That is your work.”
My eyes stung. “But that doesn’t mean I need to stay here all the time, does it?” I pleaded.
“You listen to me,” she said gently. “Your magic is powerful. We are lucky we live so far from the seat of the High Court; if they knew of your abilities, they might want you for themselves. Or worse yet, they might feel threatened by you.”
“But I’m no one.”
She shook her head, her brow furrowed in concern. “Not to them.”
“What does that mean?” She always said things like this, and I never understood what she was trying to say. Yes, she mistrusted the High Court, but didn’t we all? They were the most powerful people in the magisterium. Most were power hungry and ruthless.
“Your place is here,” she reiterated, each word carefully placed before me. “It will always be here. You are too valuable to throw yourself away on something as mundane as marriage.” She gave me a teary smile, then turned and walked back to the kitchen.
My lungs felt empty and I could not draw breath.
My limbs were numb. My one wish—to live my own life and have a family—had been instantly dismissed by the woman who called herself my family, my protector.
She’d brushed it aside as if just her few words could make me forget that there was an entire world outside of this tower, one that I was desperate to be a part of.
She expected me to stay. And stay, and stay.
I could not fathom what that would mean for my life.
She’d called my dream of marriage and a family mundane.
Was that what she believed motherhood to be?
Something completely unextraordinary? I’d spent years setting my own desires aside, doing all I could to help anyone who came to me.
I knew the value of helping others and I had no wish for people to suffer needlessly.
But it wasn’t all I wanted to do. Yet I’d done it, day after day, year after year.
I’d kept myself in this tower. I’d protected my hair and my gift, all in the hopes that one day my wants and wishes would matter.
But that day would never come, not if Aunt Ethel had her way.
And I knew in that moment, more than I’d known anything in my whole life, that I could not let Auntie have her way.
I would waste away, die, go insane if I stayed in this place much longer without hope, without the promise of anything other than this.
And if Auntie would offer me no hope, then I would have to make my own.
I had to find a way out of this tower. I had to leave—soon. As soon as I was able.
I started climbing the walls.
I’d been over it a thousand times in my head. Aunt Ethel was very careful to safeguard anything that could be used as a rope or ladder, and since my escape would necessarily have to happen in silence while she slept, I knew I had few options.
So I practiced climbing the inside walls of the tower every afternoon while she was gone. I’d spent a lot of time leaning over the banister, studying the structure of the tower, and I knew that the way the stone and mortar fit together on the outside of the tower was the same on the inside.
I had to make up excuses for why my fingers were scraped and raw when Auntie noticed, telling her it had happened while I’d scrubbed the floors or that I’d been tending the roses that climbed the tower.
Despite the difficulty of getting dressed while managing my hair, I started dressing myself without her help so she wouldn’t notice the inevitable scrapes and bruises on my shins and backside that resulted from my desperate endeavor.
After nearly two months, my strength and climbing abilities were improving.
I was able to climb up and down the walls of our rooms, clinging to the rocks and maneuvering along them for longer and longer periods each week.
Yet, the prospect of climbing over the balcony and down the entire height of the tower left me nauseous.
I started to doubt my conviction. Maybe I was being impulsive and foolhardy. Maybe Aunt Ethel hadn’t truly meant it when she said what she did.
So before I took my life in my hands and left this tower, I broached the subject with her one more time.
“I know you believe that my place is here, Aunt,” I said as we sat across from one another, eating our evening stew.
She paused her eating and fixed her eyes on me. “It is your place.”
“I know how important my gift is. I know the good I’ve done, and I want to do more. But I’m grown now. I must have the freedom to live my own life.”
Her nostrils flared and her eyes narrowed. “Freedom?” The whispered word felt dangerous. “Is that what you want?”
I swallowed and felt myself start to tremble. “Yes, Aunt.”
“Freedom has a price,” she said with a cold stare. “And believe me, my dear, you are not willing to pay it.”
I shrank a little in my seat, unnerved by her hard eyes and sneering mouth. What price was she talking about? Did she think I couldn’t handle the freedom to move about in the world of my own accord? Was she just trying to scare me?
“I’m not a child anymore, Auntie,” I said, managing to keep the quiver out of my voice. “You can’t ask me to stay in this tower for my entire life. I deserve to—”
She slammed her hand down on the table with such force that I jumped. “If you continue to bring up this ridiculous notion, then you might need to spend some time in solitude.”