Page 4 of Loving Storm (Ashes & Embers 5)

Oh well. It’s not like I have much control over whatever plagues me.

I’m the only sick one in the family. My sisters share none of my symptoms, and there is only one other like me in the village—a young boy, nine Bounties old. The son of the baker. I once saw him collapse after a particularly brutal coughing fit in the middle of the village. His father rushed him to the apothecary but, of course, there was nothing that could be done. Same with me.

Nobody knows what illness we carry, and so no help can be given.

If the fae healer came more often ... maybe things would be different.

She only comes once a year—and she only ever seems to have time to tend to the fae trackers and guards in the village. No time for us, unless we have enough of a bounty to trade off with her.

Help can be bought around here. When it comes to the fae, everything has a price. Thing is, not everyone can afford the cost.

Icouldsee the healer, if I offered her a year of labour. She would steal me back to her realm and keep me for a full Bounty term. But then, that’s assuming I would survive it.

Not all those who trade labour for favours return. Not all survive.

Guess that’s the way when it comes to the dark fae.

Tearing me out of my spiralling thoughts, Milan slams down a pan of kneaded dough on the bench, hard, and glares at me.

The sound jolts through my brittle bones like the shock from a morke’s tentacle. Forcing myself up on my elbows, I cast a weary look her way.

Her narrow face homes in on me. “At least stir the potatoes, will you?”

Tossing a glance at Mother, I wait for her intervention. There is none. She only pinches her thin lips in answer, tucks a yellow curl behind her ear, and keeps busy with the seeds she’s separating into paper bags.

With a lengthy sigh, I roll myself off the couch. Beneath my flesh, my bones creak in protest. But it’s no use. It’s either stir the potatoes or stir the pot with Milan, and I can’t afford any trouble to come before the prince does.

If Father was here, he would defend me. He wants me out of the way and rested as much as possible. Though I’m not exactly the heir to the bargain and all that comes with it, being the last-born, he does what he can to keep me safe.

You see, weaklings around the fae are targets. And I might as well paint a ‘kill me’ sign on my forehead whenever I’m near them. That’s one of the reasons I keep my head down in the village with all those trackers and guards around.

As I kneel down at the hearth, the flames are quick to burn my face, hot. I feel my cheeks turn red, my own ashy curls (borrowed from Mother) start to dry up, and the skin on my hands sear.

Flexing my fingers, I reach for the kitchen rags on the hook beside the fireplace. I use them to shield the heat from my hands as I lift the lid of the largest pot. A wooden spoon pokes out from its edge, and I stir the filmy layer of gunk from the top of the foamy bubbles, separating it.

As I stir, movement at the window catches my attention. Lazily, I turn and watch the familiar farmhand cart a tall basket down the side of the house. As though he can feel my gaze on him, his head turns to the side and eyes find mine. He pauses for a beat, and suddenly it’s not just the fire heating up my cheeks.

Jasper is the handsomest of all the eligible men in the village with his sandy blond hair, yet silky waves that forever seem to glisten in all the artificial light around the village. His narrow mouth suits the sharp cut of his jawline, giving him a soft, almost pretty appearance.

Of course, he has no interest in me, not with my coarse curls and sickly pale skin and wider hips than most of the other women in the village. His gaze cuts behind me to Milan (all slim and narrow) in the kitchen before he looks back and chances a tight smile at me—one that deflates my insides. One of pity, not mutual attraction.

He moves on down to the front of the house, where the carts are ready for the day’s harvest.

A deflated sound escapes me as I turn back to the hearth.

Fixing the lid back on the pot, I switch for the oats and stir them for a while. I get lost in the motion.

My sisters have better chances of securing marriage around here than I do, and not only because I’m sickly. Amelia inherits the farmhouse and all that comes with it, and she’s built for labour. A working woman. Milan has the feminine cuts to her that soften her harder dark eyes and the forever flat line of her mouth.

But me?

Well, no matter the food rations we might suffer through, I have those hips that Grandmother once called ‘made for birth’. My belly isn’t exactly flat all of the time and my skirt lumps out at my bottom a bit more than the skirts of the others.

Slim as I may be, the curves I wear aren’t exactly desirable anymore. Grandmother told me that it was different once upon a time. But that world is lost to stories and no matter how much I might wish it, they are not a part of my reality.

So I close the lid on the oats and all thoughts of marriage and the handsome men around the village, then fix myself on the worn-out rug in front of the fireplace.

Heat is swirling around me, enveloping me like a familiar warm embrace.