Chapter 2
Ceri
The scissors were flying again. I jumped to try and catch them as they lifted higher, my fingertips grazing the wooden handle.
I planted my hands on my hips, using my sternest voice. “I’ve told you it’s dangerous for scissors to fly. You’re going to impale someone.”
Luckily the dress shop was currently empty, but I had a customer coming any minute now, and I could not afford for the scissors to terrorize her.
“You almost got them,” a voice said from the painting that hung on the wall. Sometimes I regretted taking this painting from the castle and putting it in my dress shop so that Margaret could visit whenever she wanted.
I turned to stare at her. She stood in front of a woman in an extravagant pale yellow dress, who held an umbrella over her head, blocking out the sun.
“Good morning, Margaret,” I said. I turned to look for the scissors, but they’d disappeared. “Did you see where they went?”
She pointed toward a rack of dresses for sale. “I think they dove behind there—” She gasped.
“What?” I whirled around. “What did you see?”
“Oh, I just love that shade of chartreuse on you. How lovely.”
I groaned. “Margaret. The scissors. I can’t have them going rogue.”
“Oh.” She straightened in the painting, flipping her long black hair over her shoulder. “Right. I’m going to focus.” A sly smile spread across her lips. “Though I did hear some interesting whispers this morning about a certain high prince.”
That stopped me, and I turned to face the painting. “Is that why you came? To gossip?”
“No!” Her brown eyes shifted back and forth. “Well, maybe a little. I’m trying to keep you abreast of the current goings-on in the castle since you so rarely venture out.”
I turned back around, searching for the elusive scissors. I’d give them a good shake when I found them.
“Do you want to hear what I found out?”
“No, I do not,” I said, gaze homing in on a basket filled with balls of yarn. The balls trembled slightly. “Aha!” I ran toward the basket, and the scissors popped out, flying over my head as I crashed to the floor, balls of yarn spilling out everywhere.
“Prince Cillian wasn’t in his chambers last night or this morning!” Margaret burst out. “There. Oh, I feel so much better.”
I slowly rolled over and sat up, shoving a hand through the curly blond hair that I’d actually managed to tame this morning. It was all for nothing, since it was no doubt now a wild mess. “What?” I asked. “Where was he?”
He’d visited to play cards with Father and me last night, something he did every week, even though I always won. I wasn’t sure why he kept coming back, but he did. Although now that I thought about it, he had seemed more somber than usual, but where could he have gone after our card game?
Margaret leaned forward in her painting, eyes gleaming with the glee of a gossip who’d just shared something juicy. “That’s the thing. No one knows. I think he might be missing.”
I shook my head. Cillian was fine. How could one go missing in an invisible kingdom that none of us could leave? Besides, Cillian was a grown man, and I had more important things to worry about this morning, like scissors that were going to snip at anyone who walked through that front door.
Margaret cried out, and I jumped to my feet. “Did you see them? The scissors?”
“No, I just noticed that beautiful veil. Is it Siobhan’s?” She pointed to the sheer sage fabric hanging from a hook on the back wall, delicate roses stitched across it.
“Margaret,” I said, voice stern. “I have scissors to find. If you’re not here to help, then I’m going to need you to return to the castle.”
Her mouth twisted, and she tapped her chin.
“I should probably go in case the prince is back. I’ll let you know what I find out!
” With that, she dashed out of the painting, traveling to some other painting in the castle that was our next-door neighbor.
Margaret was one of the many items our sentient castle had brought to life, and while she was a friend, her fondness for gossip was irksome.
I wandered around the shop, sifting through dresses hanging on a rack, lifting random pieces of folded fabric that sat on the shelves.
No scissors in sight. My mind wandered back to what Margaret had said about Cillian, but I shoved the thought from my brain.
I didn’t want to know what he got up to, where he’d been last night.
Oh my godwitches. Here I was telling Margaret to focus, and I wasn’t doing the same. Time to shut off my brain and find these damn scissors.
Our statue of the godwitch of embroidery shook on the shelf where it sat, and I tiptoed toward it.
If the scissors knocked over the statue, my father would have a fit, and I’d never hear the end of it.
He’d claim it was a bad omen, that we no longer had the blessings of the godwitch.
These scissors were far more trouble than they were worth.
I stretched out a hand, snatching the little statue from the shelf. “Aha!” I yelled.
But there was nothing there. Damn. I carefully put the godwitch back beside a little bowl of coins and scraps of fabric that we left as offerings, hoping that the godwitch would watch over us from their place in the Otherworld.
Books lined the shelf around the godwitch, all showcasing outfits the godwitch had made throughout the eras.
They were my ultimate inspiration, and I loved how bold and brave they were with their designs.
This statue was a good example: clothed in baggy harem pants and a tight bodice-like corset, with their hair gelled and spiked.
A small rustle sounded from behind me, and I whirled to the right, facing another shelf.
I narrowed my gaze, wishing for a simpler time. One when nothing in my dress shop was sentient.
That had changed when the Fair Folk had come to Fairwitch Isle.
Or we’d come to them. It was complicated.
Either way, now all sorts of items had become sentient, and it seemed the closer you were to the castle, the stronger the magic.
Hence why my scissors had suddenly developed a love of playing hide-and-seek.
I stepped in front of a shelf full of folded fabrics, a rainbow of color, and went deathly still. A piece of red silk was out of place, the corner rumpled and sticking out. I never left my fabrics in disarray. An unorganized shop turned customers away.
I reached between folds of the red fabric, feeling for the scissors, when a sharp pain shot through my finger.
“Ow!” I snatched my hand away, blood blooming on the tip of my finger as the end of the scissors peeked out. “Was that really necessary?” I glared at the tool, and it wiggled out of its hiding spot and flew back into its basket, right next to the yellow settee that sat in the middle of the shop.
“Good morning, my darling—” My father appeared in the doorway near the back that led up to our apartment, his face paling at the sight of blood on my finger. “I’ll call on the healer immediately.”
Oh no, I hadn’t meant for him to see that.
He rushed into the room, still in his nightgown, white hair sticking out in different directions.
“Don’t panic. Nobody panic.” He ran to the door, then stopped, put his hand on his head and turned.
“Everything will be just fine.” He changed direction and ran across the room toward a little desk tucked into the corner with my sewing machine and dresses that needed mending flung across the table next to it.
“Papa, it’s okay. It’s just a small cut.”
He settled behind the desk, reaching for the ink pot and quill, and began scribbling a note on the parchment, ignoring me. “We will make sure you get the best treatment, the best medicine—”
I sighed and strode toward him, gently prying the quill from his hand as a drop of blood splattered to the parchment.
“You’re going to bleed out,” he said. “It was those damned scissors again, wasn’t it? We need to get a new pair.”
“Bleed out? Papa, it’s barely a scratch. And where will we get new scissors from?” I asked. “We’re at the top of a mountain, completely isolated from the world, and the nearest town is a three-hour walk. I can always make the trek—”
My father shot to a stand. “Down the death trap we call a home? No, no, that won’t be necessary. We’ll keep the scissors, but they need to behave, or I will lock them in the drawer again.” He raised his voice, and the scissors quivered in their basket.
He turned his attention to my finger, but thankfully, the bleeding had subsided.
It was too early for my father to already be so worked up.
I should’ve been quieter chasing those scissors.
I should’ve been more careful. Now my father would be extra anxious the rest of the day.
He’d be more jumpy than usual, and he’d hover. I hated when he hovered.
His thick eyebrows scrunched together. “What did I tell you about chasing those things?”
I laughed. “I didn’t exactly have a choice. How else was I to catch them?” I grabbed his shoulders and began steering him back toward the stairs. “You do know we have an important client coming this morning. I didn’t want the scissors on the loose while she was here.”
Understanding lit his eyes, the same mahogany shade as mine. “Ah, yes. When is she due?”
My gaze flicked toward the big windows at the front of the shop, taking in the blue wood framing them that I loved.
It was my favorite color of blue. I still remembered Cillian stopping by while I was painting, insisting he’d help, which ended with him flinging paint on me, which had turned into an all-out war, paint everywhere except the wood frame where it needed to be.
My hand went to my cheek, right where Cillian had so effortlessly smeared the blue paint.
I could still feel the brush of his thumb.
Every day when I walked down the stairs into our dress shop, that wood frame was the first thing I saw, and it always made me smile.
My father gasped, making me jump. “Ceri, dear, you’re going to catch a cold. What are you doing wearing practically nothing?”
I looked down at my outfit: a chartreuse dress with a skirt that flared out and thin sheer straps that hung over my shoulders, exposing my arms. I raised a brow. “Practically nothing? Papa, I have an entire dress on. Besides, it’s springtime.”
He shook a finger at me. “I saw clouds this morning. Thick, dark ones. A storm is coming and with it, a chill.” He put a hand to his head. “And possibly dark omens. Oh, that’s not a good sign for the prince and his bride. We’ll have to warn him.”
“Okay.” I pushed him toward the stairs, hoping that if he got dressed and had some tea, some of this anxiousness would subside. “I will put on a shawl if it will make you stop grumbling at me. Also, I’m not the one still in my nightgown.”
He shot me a look out of the corner of his eye as he shuffled toward the stairs. “I’ll get dressed and make some tea, and you see about that shawl.”
“Yes, Papa.”
He disappeared as the door to the shop burst open, the missing prince’s bride standing in the doorway.