Chapter Three
Serin
The mahogany doors flew open with a flourish by Vrad as he and the redheaded fae dragged me past the threshold on my knees, their hands digging in under my arms.
I’d never spent time inside a typical fae home before. My life was in the water. It was all I’d ever known.
But I’d heard stories of homes. I had mental concepts.
This was what I pictured when I heard about wealth. Endless stone floors, an abundance of windows, a hearth nearly as wide as the room itself, thick materials on the walls, furniture, and floor.
It was all lacking color, though. Just cold gray stone, black and gray and white fabric. Nothing vibrant, nothing of nature.
It was a fortress.
A place for a cold man with a frigid heart.
Almost as if I’d conjured him, a man appeared in front of me in dark gray formal attire.
He was tall and thin with gray hair, inky eyes, and a beak-like nose that he looked down at me as I was tossed at his feet.
This must have been the man who told the others to come and get me. To prepare me.
“Make her look at me,” he demanded, snapping at the redheaded fae, who was all too happy to grab a handful of my dark hair and yank it backward until the pain forced me to lift my chin to ease the ache on my scalp.
The man’s head tilted to the side, examining me for what felt like hours.
“Yes, yes, I think she will do. She has the look of my daughter. Passing enough, certainly, for those who have never laid eyes on her. And the veil will work in our favor here.”
“Really?” a feminine voice called, striding into the room. “You think that looks like me?”
The daughter then.
She looked much like her father: tall, lithe, dark-eyed, with the same distinct nose.
Her hair was long and dark, but thin and straight, unlike my thick, unruly waves.
My eyes were the blue of my lake. My nose was tipped up ever so slightly at the end.
And I had slightly more curve than this woman did.
But the father was right. At a distance, there was a chance we could be mistaken for each other.
“From afar, my love,” the father said, voice placating. “No one could ever mistake your beauty up close.”
“It’s an insult. They could have done better.”
“We were pressed for time, my dear. This alliance was forced upon us. I did the best I could do with so short notice. Or have you changed your mind? Would you like to marry the prince after all?”
“Absolutely not.”
“You could not do better.”
“Have you heard the stories of the prince?” the daughter asked.
“All young men are… spirited. A good woman has a way of softening them.”
“Maybe I would consider the prince if the rumors about the king—”
“Do not,” her father cut her off, “speak of the king.” There was warning in his voice, and the daughter looked immediately chastened.
“Well, as things are,” the daughter said, “I will not be joining that family. We certainly don’t need the coin or status.”
“No, but you may miss the social standing. You will not be able to attend the balls, parties, or gatherings you are accustomed to.”
“I have my plans. You know this. Besides, should circumstances change, I can claim my rightful place. And you can… toss that into whatever hole you dragged it from.”
In my mind, I could hear the song of my lake calling me home.
I’ll do everything I can, I sang back to it, but I wasn’t sure how well it could hear me, how far away I was.
“Lake, actually,” the redheaded fae supplied.
“Lake?” the daughter asked, face scrunching.
“Is it a naiad?”
“Don’t think so,” the redhead said. “Maybe just a Daughter of the Lake.”
The daughter sniffed at that.
“Well, you better have the servants get started on it if you want it to be passable to the Unseelie prince.”
With that, she slithered off much the way she came, leaving me once again alone with all three men.
The father regarded me for a long moment, his lips pursed. “Is she dim-witted?” he asked. “Why doesn’t she speak?”
“She screams well enough,” Vrad said, getting a whack from the redheaded fae.
“She’s probably just in shock, Mr. Grimwood,” he said, anxious to smooth over the other fae’s faux pas. “Besides, isn’t silent what the event requires?” he asked. “The bride, after all, doesn’t need to agree to any vows.”
“True. True. Very well. Bring her back into the servant’s quarters. They are waiting for her.”
I was too stunned by their words to resist when I was yanked back upward and swung between the two men as they carried me down a long, wide hallway.
Bride.
I was to be a bride?
A stand-in bride?
To the Unseelie prince?
How… why… there were too many questions and no one to provide answers.
The men dropped me on the floor in a large room lined with beds.
Two women stood beside a large tub with drab gray gowns and aprons and matching pinched, unpleasant faces.
“Well, leave, will you? This is not for men,” the older woman declared, waving at the men with a slate-colored rag in her hand.
The women waited until the men were gone to move.
But then they did so all at once.
One moved behind me, tugging at my hair with a brush. The other wet the rag from the tub and scrubbed at me with uncomfortably hot water.
“What a state she’s in,” the one with the brush tsked. “There’s all sorts of things in her hair.”
“Pretty, though,” the older woman said as she rubbed my face raw with the scratchy rag.
“Right bit prettier than the miss,” the other one whispered.
“Hush now. You know how she has ears in the walls,” the elder chided.
“You think she will fit in the gown? She’s rounder in hip and heavier in the bust.”
“When has a groom ever objected to a heaving bosom?” the elder woman asked as she shoved a hand down my bodice to scrub the aforementioned bosom.
There was something deeply impersonal about it all. The way they spoke of me as if I wasn’t there. How they touched me as though I was a dirty table rather than another living being.
But perhaps that was better.
“Doesn’t say much, does she?” the younger asked after what felt like a lifetime of brushing and twisting my hair into a thick braid down my back.
“For the best, I say. No man likes a chattering woman. Besides, don’t think her talking would do any of us any good. If Mr. Grimwood and the missus get in trouble, we’re all out of a job. Might not like it here, but like an empty stomach a lot less.”
They prattled to each other the whole time they cleaned me, applied creams to me, then moved me to stand.
I didn’t know their intentions until the elder servant grabbed the bodice of my dress and tugged downward, exposing my breasts.
A yelp escaped me.
Not at my nudity, per se. But at the secret that was strapped to my thigh: the item I would wither and die without. The flask I needed them not to find and confiscate.
My hands rushed to my chest, covering myself.
“Oh, she’s shy,” the younger observed.
“Definitely not royal behavior,” the elder woman murmured.
“I can…” I started, having to clear my throat with how scratchy it felt without my water to swallow. “I can dress myself.”
The women shared a look, observed me, then shared another look.
“Suits me,” the elder woman said. “Careful not to ruin the gown, mind you.”
With that, they made their way out of the room, muttering to each other about how a shy woman was not going to enjoy the wedding night duties of a new bride.
I ignored that, waiting until they were gone, then quickly slipping out of my ruined dress and into the white one hanging nearby.
Reaching under the long skirt, I readjusted the tie holding the flask to my body before spotting a mirror in the corner of the room.
I made my way on numb legs over toward it, seeing a strange version of myself reflected.
It was me, yet not.
I’d seen myself reflected countless times in the still water of my lake—the flowing dark hair, the pale skin, the blue eyes.
But there had always been a wildness about me, an otherness that didn’t remind me of the countless women I’d seen stop at my lake to cool their feet, wash their hands, or take greedy gulps of water.
This woman looking back at me resembled them more than my own nature. I looked groomed, neat, and… civilized.
More so than that, I looked like a bride.
Since that was exactly what I was.
The servants came back, chattering to each other as they pinched my cheeks then pulled the veil over my head and face.
There I stood.
A bride.
A ghost.
I wasn’t sure which was more true.
I was led back out to the main room, everything fuzzy through my veil, but I could see the outline of Mr. Grimwood and the two beasts who first presented me to him.
“That will do,” Mr. Grimwood said after circling me. “That will do very well. Just one last thing. Will you lift the veil for a moment?” The women did as they were told. “Open your mouth,” he instructed.
I wouldn’t pretend to understand these fae’s ways. But I did know that I didn’t want whatever he was about to do to me. I pressed my lips into a firm line. “Open your damned mouth!” he snapped, grabbing both my cheeks in such a tight grip that it felt as if the bones of my jaw ground to powder.
There was no stopping the cry that escaped me.
And that was all he needed.
Something was shoved into my mouth.
A floral taste exploded across my tastebuds, but before I could place it, or spit the offending flower out, I felt it.
A numbness moving across my tongue, my cheeks, down my throat.
I couldn’t move my mouth.
Couldn’t make a sound.
Could barely swallow my own spit.
“What is that?” the redhead asked. “Could use it for my missus.”
A thousand objections piled up in my throat but could find no way out. Because these men could not have me showing up to the wedding and telling the prince that I was not the daughter.
But, eventually, this had to wear off, right? What then?
I swallowed hard, trying not to borrow tomorrow’s problems. There was enough to worry about in that moment.
“Well, bring the carriage around. We need to get this over with.”
With a hand bruising my upper arm, I was pulled through the house, outside, and hauled up into a covered carriage.