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“That’s not true, faywen,” she said, voice sharp. “He will treat you well. He’ll care for you better than his own, or I’ll know why. Isn’t that right, Kirwan?”
He smiled. “I can swear no harm will come to her by my or any fae hands.”
Meliora’s nails pierced my shoulder. She understood the meaning behind his word choice clear as day.
“In the carriage, girl,” Kirwan said. “Don’t make me change my mind.”And take Meliora instead.
I untangled from my sister and bent down, opening my arms to Jaclan. Gisela took that moment to shoot out from behind the cracked door. I hugged the twins tight.
“Be well, my loves. Listen to everything Meli says.”
Standing up, I brushed a kiss over Meliora’s forehead. She was crying too much. Mama would figure out something was wrong soon. I had to be gone before then.
Chin raised, I walked to the door without looking back at my family. Kirwan’s smirk taunted me the whole way.
“Tell Adan I won’t be long.”
“What—?”
Kirwan advanced on my mother.
“No, you leave her!” I cried, grabbing his arm. “You know she’s not well.”
Kirwan threw me off. His strength enough to toss me across the room again. I grabbed my siblings as he slammed Mama’s door shut, hurrying them out of the house.
We didn’t make it far down the path. Meli turned on me, clinging tight and tripping me up. Her weight pulled me down onto the earthen lane. I suffocated under Meli’s, Jac’s, and Gisela’s embrace. The twins did not understand what was wrong, but they knew enough to be worried about anything that made Meliora cry.
I opened my mouth—to give them reassurance. Tell them everything would be okay. Say that their worry was silly.
Nothing came out.
A war wife. The polite, official term for what I would be. The actual term. The one that would be yelled at me in the streets. Branded in the stares I received in the marketplace. Hissed at me as I descended back staircases and crept out of darkened rooms.
Was whore.
Decades after King Kazimir decreed that all women must have their magic bound and rendered unusable by age ten, his son set down another decree. The men who now had to fight alone on the battlefield deserved comfort in the long months and years they spent far from home. They deserved a body to warm their bedrolls, soothe their aches, and sweeten their nights.
Naturally, their actual wives had to stay home and fulfill the only role still available to them in a magical society—raising the next generation of sons to fight and daughters to bear them. Thus, a contingent of women would be sent along with the regiments. The war wives.
Over the years, the soldiers would make more demands of their king—binding the chains tighter around women. A war wife could not be claimed by one man. They were to be shared among whoever wanted them. War wives were not only for soldiers. Nobles and high-powered fae could make use of them how they wished. A noble can take a war wife into their home, imprisoning them with the man who now owned her, and his true wife who hated her. And the law that they fought the hardest for—any children that resulted from their union would be her responsibility.
The men were required to do no more than pay for their sons’ education. But if Jaclan went without food, clothing, and a roof over his head, Xandros Waterdancer was not obligated to doanything about it. A sentiment he proved when we went without all three, and I begged him to help the twins—his children—at the very least. He had me thrown away from the carriage and continued on to his grand manor on the hill.
In the end, when a war wife got too old, when they had too many children, when the sickness took them as it would take every woman of Lyrica, all that was left for a war wife... all that would be left for me was to lie ill and broken in a little room, while my children cried outside—covering their ears.
I opened my mouth to tell my siblings that if I survived the beastly men who slaughtered our soldiers in droves, the life that awaited me afterward was nothing to fear...
...and a sob tore from my throat.
I cried—squeezing them tighter than they squeezed me. I had finally done it.
I ran out of lies.
Chapter Two
“Let’s go, girl.”
Kirwan walked out of my house, his presence imposing and out of place amid our humble home. He tossed a weighty coin purse at Meliora—his final insult upon every exit. Making us take the payments for his time with our mother, even though all payments are supposed to go through the broker.
