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And freedom.
“Haeowen,” Meliora called. “The water’s boiled.”
I patted Gisela’s head on the way to the kitchen. “You keep practicing, faywen.”Sweet one. “You’re going to leave your instructors speechless.”
Meliora looked up from the pot when I rounded the corner. She didn’t let her voice carry. “You shouldn’t tell her those things,” she said, taking the basket from me. “It’ll just make her hate you when she learns the truth.”
“Did my lies make you hate me?”
She didn’t answer.
She didn’t have to. My sixteen-year-old sister was called stoic, and other unkind things, for the blank, unsmiling expression she carried through our village, but her thoughts always shone like fireflies in the night to me.
She did not hate me for letting her believe in a fantasy... most days.
Today was not that day.
“She keeps asking to go to school with Jac.” Meliora gave her back as she set about washing and chopping the vegetables. “We don’t have two years’ worth of lies to keep her from realizing there’s a bigger reason to why she can’t go. It’ll only take one word from one of Jac’s new friends to shatter her illusions. They’ve started following him home.”
“Because Jac tells them all sorts of fanciful tales of the pet dragon we keep in the barn, and that one of the faeriken visits him at night and tells him the secrets of the wild kingdom.”
“Yes,” she said flatly. “He’s almost as experienced a liar as you. His study of you rivals any accomplishment he could achieve at school.”
I winced. Yes, Meliora wasn’t too pleased with me that evening.
“I sense I’m not all that’s set your teeth on edge.” The line of her shoulders hardened. “After all, you’re quite used to the stories I tell the children. What’s added to your ire today?”
She didn’t speak for so long, I assumed she wouldn’t answer. I turned to put Savia down for her nap.
“The royal wedding approaches.”
The whisper tickled my ear, stopping me in my tracks. “Yes. So?”
“A procession from the wild kingdom arrives in a week’s time. They say the king of Wind and Wild is bringing a hundred men with him. Wonder what it says that despite his upcoming marriage to Princess Emiana, he won’t set foot on our soil without a small army.”
“Why are we speaking of this, Meliora? The likes of us aren’t invited to the wedding. We won’t even be among the crowd of people lined along the main road, watching the procession arrive.”
Her shoulders hunched. Thechop-chop-chopslowed as her blade settled on the wood, and stayed.
“They’ve been having trouble finding war wives willing to service King Alisdair’s people. Kirwan offered me.”
Clang! Clang!
I spun, knocking over our drying tin cups and bowls. Savia jerked awake—screaming.
“No! He can’t— You won’t!”
Meliora hunched over, resuming her chopping. Her refusal to look at me proved one thing at that moment.
She was crying.
It was no wonder she was furious with me that day. When she was small, I encouraged her every wish and dream. I filled her head with stories of all the wonderful things she could be.
I certainly never told her that she’d be denied education, work, status, and opportunity. That we’d struggle for food, medicine, and money... until one day a loathsome man offered her up against her will in service of the one thing our kingdom still valued of women—our bodies.
“He can’t do this. Once you take official work, it’s branded your profession for life. A nobleman could take you from us. You could be called to war. And none of that comes close to what the faeriken men would do to you. They’re little more than beasts.”
“I offered s-such arguments,” she rasped. “They fell on deaf ears. The palace has raised the reward to one hundred and fifty kiruna. Kirwan means to have a cut.”
