I can almost feel the heat of Blessing’s blushing cheeks from my side of the curtain, so certain am I of her reaction. This is the moment another girl might simper or play coy. Yet, despite her discomfort, I hear Blessing say, “I have no need for such praise. This much and more has been spoken to me too many times to count tonight. I am weary of it.” There is a note of impatience in her voice. I cannot help but admire her for it.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Auren says cheerfully. “I was hoping you were not that kind of girl. I had to be sure, of course.”
I press closer into the curtain, my interest piqued.
Blessing gives one of her tinkling laughs. “Well that makes things much easier, though I wouldn’t have you think I’m ungrateful that you stepped in when you did. I’m not used to so many people as this. My sister and I live alone, you see, and our lives are very quiet and simple.”
“Alone? You’ve no parents, then?”
“My mother and stepfather died four months ago.” The sorrow that is sharp in Blessing’s voice echoes in my own chest. Auren is quick to respond to it.
“I am sorry,” he says. “What a horror for you. We don’t have to speak of it if it will cause you pain. My own father died a year ago. It is hard to move on,” his voice lowers a fraction, “but not impossible.”
So in a matter of moments they move from formal to intimate, and I hear their talk continue as if they are childhood friends who have just been reunited. I step away from the curtain and shake my head. After everything, here is Blessing once again, ready to pluck happiness as if it is a bright flower which has sprung up just for her. I am frozen with warring emotions, torn between wanting to rejoice with my sister at this unexpected gift and wanting to trample its delicate petals beneath my feet.
This had been my plan, of course. Dear Hazel had thought I would be a match for Auren, but I had known better. Who better fit to be the wife of a lord than Blessing? I had wished this for her. I had planned it.
Swift on the tail of this thought comes another darker one. An image of Blessing slipping her foot into the fey slipper. Then another, from a deeper place, of her hand lying contently in my father’s.
Am I to let this happen? How easy it would be to snatch this happiness out from under Blessing, just as it has been snatched from me so many times. My heart beats a wild, unsteady rhythm as I press to the curtain once more. Blood rushes in my ears.
“I will certainly take my mask off,” Blessing is saying. “But I will not do it alone. You must take yours off at the same time.”
“Very well.” Auren’s voice shakes with amusement. Perhaps it is the first time he has felt joy since his own father died. My resolve wobbles sideways.
“Are you ready?” Blessing’s voice is teasing. “One.” She draws out the number as she says it, and I hear Auren snort with laughter. They are, after all, but two children together. “Two.”
My fingers are slick with sweat as they grip a fold of the curtain. I am ready to rip it aside and stop this nonsense, but somehow I am waiting a second longer, and then another.
“Three!”
Their laughter dies to silence as, behind the curtain, they gaze on one another’s unmasked faces. I have missed my moment and now I am nothing but an intruder. I am keenly aware I have stepped into a sacred circle, a place I have no right to be. My face is hot and my eyes are burning with inexplicable tears.
Truth hits me with the force of a storm.
I am not that person. I do not have to be that person ever again. I do not need to break the happiness of others merely because it is not my own. Perhaps I once was that girl, but something has changed in me. A seed born of fey music and broken glass pushes at my heart, tiny but stubborn, and I know for a certainty that I am new.
I step back from the curtain and bump into something solid. Someone.
“You see,” a voice says, close to my ear. “I knew this place was not your home.”
The words catch like a barb in my heart, so close are they to what I feel already. I gaze up into the face of the one who spoke them. The man wearing the crowned mask looks back at me. Behind the thin layer of iron his dark eyes are two shining stars. My breath comes in quick, shallow spurts. I thought I would never see him again.
He does not give me time to respond. His fingers are already woven through mine as he says simply, “Will you dance?”
My blood races like quicksilver through my veins as he leads me to the center of the floor. But he does not stop there. We go straight through the crowd of people with their frills and baubles and masks, onto the veranda beyond. Yet even here we do not stop. The chill wind catches at the edges of his long cloak and at the rim of my gown as we descend the stone stairs and step onto the lawn.
On this side of the house no lanterns are lit. There is only the moon to guide our steps. The frosty grass sparkles like a thousand glittering diamonds spread before our feet. It is this, then, that is to be our ballroom. Already he is lifting my hand and bowing low. My nerves run smooth at that, and I let go a breath which is part laughter and part bliss. I offer a curtsy in return, and we begin.
The steps to this dance are like none they will be dancing inside. These steps are a part of me. This dance is the dance of my childhood. The music, unfurling gently toward us from somewhere beyond the shadows, sends shivers of recognition down my spine. We leap and whirl, our feet as light as wishes, as we dance a fey jig. A night such as this should send cold straight to my bones, but I cannot feel it while I touch his hand.
As I dance, something strange happens. Each step I dance is a step backward for my heart, and by the time we are finished, breathless and smiling, it is once more the heart of a child. I have danced back to my childhood. I have found the path and returned to the place I began. The glass slippers are gone from my mind, as if they had never been. I do not need them. I think perhaps I never did. It must be a miracle, a miracle that should set the ground trembling and change the very colors of the sky. Yet it happens quietly, as sweetly as a flower opening. I am left quivering and weak from the sheer joy of it.
I hardly dare to bring sorrow to this perfect moment, but I know it must be done.
“The slippers …” I do not finish, but he understands.
“They were nothing,” he says.
“Nothing?” I cannot fathom it, for I saw the heartbreak on his face when they shattered. “But I destroyed them.”
“The slippers were nothing,” he repeats. “I only wished to stop you from destroying something more precious to me still.”
My voice falters a little as I ask, “And what was that?”
“Yourself.” He shakes his head as if he cannot believe I need to be told.
When he reaches to draw me close, I do not resist. It would be as foolish as refusing air into my lungs. We stay twined together for the space of twelve heartbeats before he speaks.
“Do you remember, I wonder?” His breath is warm on my hair.
“Remember?”
“Me. Do you remember me?”
I draw back and lift my gaze to meet his. He reaches to lift his mask. I have seen the fey man only a handful of times and already his face is as familiar to me as my own. But only in this moment do I understand why. I have known him all my life. The veil lifts from my memories and the truth dazzles my eyes.
“You,” I breathe. “You were there. When I danced in the glade with the others. When I was a child.”
He dips his head in a bow of assent. I can see from the small quirk at the corner of his mouth that he is pleased I know him.
“And it was you who helped me the time I fell. It was your hand that lifted me and held me close.” I look at him with new eyes, my heart beating fast. “You didn’t danced, though.” I frown as the memory uncurls in my mind. “You watched the rest of us from your place at the edge of the clearing, yet you never joined us. Not once.” I pause. “Why?”
“Can you not guess?” He tilts his head in a way which is becoming familiar to me. “Y
ou were but a child, then, as you say. Yet I loved you. The moment you were born, I felt your presence. Even across the divide of our two worlds, it jarred me to the core. You were for me, more to me than even the blood in my veins. And I have loved you since that day. I have only been waiting these years for you to be ready to love me in return.” The look he gives me is rippling and deep, as palpable as a caress, and my ears are burning from its passion. “I would not dance with anyone,” he says, “until I could dance this dance, tonight, with you.”
I remember myself as a child, pudgy and awkward and unsure of myself. For a moment I wonder how anyone could love such a child as that, let alone the woman she promised to become. My wonder lasts only an instant, then it is gone. For I cannot deny any of this. The truth of it is radiant in his face, as powerful as a wave that threatens to drown me.
My shoulders shiver and a lifetime of sorrow drops from them like an unwanted skin. With a boldness that leaves me breathless, I stretch on tiptoe and press my mouth to the fey man’s in a quick, hard kiss of joy. His lips turn upward beneath mine as he smiles, and his arms come around me. But I slip out of his embrace with a laugh and knit my fingers through his once again. There will be time enough for embraces later, and I fully intend to make use of it.
For now, I want to dance. My feet are restless to join the music I hear all around me.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It is the early hours of morning when I step into the coach. The world is awash with a foggy gray light and the moon is paling in a winter-white sky. I pull the lacy curtain from the coach window and see people everywhere, flooding the veranda and the wide stone steps, preparing to leave the ball.
Among the departing crowd I spot Blessing. Her arm is wound through Lord Auren’s. Their masks are nowhere to be seen, doubtless lying forgotten in the shadows of a window alcove. The glow on their faces is enough to make me blink, as if the sun has just peeked from behind a cloud. They descend together and he helps her into the coach, though it is clear neither of them wishes to release the other’s hand.
As Blessing steps into the carriage, she gives a little twist and puts a hand to her mouth. Her shoe hits the graveled drive with a soft plink. In an instant, Auren bends to retrieve it.
“I’m so clumsy,” Blessing says by way of apology. But her smile is playful.
“Here, sit down,” Auren commands. “I will help you put it on. You are clumsy, aren’t you?” he teases as his eyes sparkle at her.
Blessing shakes her head. “Keep it. Then you will be forced to visit when you return it to me.” She tilts her head to the side. “I think I will need it soon. Tomorrow, in fact.”
I lift my hand to hide my smile. I can scarcely believe this brazen sister of mine.
Auren makes a mock scoffing sound. “Forced? What’s this? Do I seem false-hearted, that you must force me to visit you?”
Neither of them spares me a glance, they are so lost in this foolish lovers’ banter. But I am not the same person I was mere hours ago, and I do not begrudge them a moment of it. When Blessing leans into the coach and the door is shut at last, she turns to me at once. The fire in her gaze nearly knocks me backward.
“Izzy, forgive me.”
I am startled into silence. She has spoken the very words on my own lips.
“Once, I blamed you for being an unworthy daughter,” she says. Her face gives a small spasm of shame. “I never gave a thought to how unworthy of a sister I was to you.”
This is too much for me. “Blessing—” I begin, but she lifts a hand to silence me.
“You were right,” she says. Tears make her eyes glitter like jewels. “I wanted your father for my own, you know. I threw over our friendship for it. I was ashamed of how badly I wanted him to be my father, and … and not yours.” She sniffles. “Yet somehow, the whole time, I loved you just the same. I swear I did.”
I am nodding already, for I understand. In fact, I think there is no one on earth who understands better than I. I take a breath and prepare to plunge into the darkness of my own regrets and confessions. Blessing anticipates me.
“Please don’t, Izzy.” Her touch is delicate on my hand. “I know. I know you’re sorry, too. And I understand why you did the things you did. I do, truly. Please don’t apologize to me. Let us be sisters once more, that’s all I ask.”
My smile is sad, for Blessing has done it again. It is the last thing she steals from me, this apology, and it is perhaps the most painful. Yet I nearly get to my knees and thank her, because the last tattered fragment of truth has fallen into place.
Everything I ever believed stolen from me was only something being given, something being shared which I did not wish to share myself. I did not wish to share Blessing with Father, I did not wish to share Father with Blessing, and I did not wish to share the fey slippers with anyone at all.
I was the breaker of my own heart, time and again. I did not need the fey slippers to tread upon it, for I have been treading on my heart these many years already, shattering it bit by bit in the clutch of my own grasping fingers.
Though relief washes through me, a thin vein of something else is there, too. It is the one last truth I uncover. The truth I think everything else has been buried within for the whole of my life.
I can never be whole. I do not belong here.
I am not home.
It is an emptiness that resounds in me, demanding to be answered.
Yet something else trickles in between the cracks of this despairing thought. The hope of finding something to fill that emptiness. The hope that, perhaps, I have found it already. And suddenly hope is a thing alive, soaring in me. Its wings beat against my ribs, wild with the promise of joy.
I take Blessing’s hands in mine. For all that I thought we were sisters before, this is the moment we are sisters in truth. Pain and sorrow and heartbreak draw us close. Our wounds bleed together and make us true kin.
My happiness at reclaiming this gift at last is tinged with a dark slash of grief, for I now know I must leave it behind.
* * *
The household already begins to stir. The maids are in the hall, hiding their yawns as they poke at the hearth fires to get them roaring again. Blessing and I go straight to our rooms. At our doors, we stop to give each other a last look down the length of the corridor. We smile and say goodnight at the same instant, which makes us both laugh. Hazel is behind us, shooing us into our rooms.
“Stop your girlish nonsense, the two of you,” she says. “Get to bed and sleep as long as you like. After a night like this one, you’ll certainly need it. Ring for lunch when you wake and I’ll send it up.” She squints at me. “I’ll be up with it, mind, for I intend to hear about everything that happened at that ball.”
I roll my eyes at Blessing and she giggles. Impulsively, I rush down the hall and throw my arms around her. It is both an act of headlong childish love and of sorrowful farewell. I think she must feel it, for when we part she searches my face as if looking for something she cannot quite understand.
When the door to my room is closed, I shed my gown quickly and lay it on my bed. I slip into my simplest dress and throw a heavy cloak over my shoulders. I glance a last time about the room, which is flushed with rising sunlight, then step lightly out my door and into the corridor once again.
I jump backward, heart pounding, when I come nose to nose with Hazel. For a moment I think she will scold me as she takes in my appearance. Then I see her face. It is wretched with sadness and old beyond her years. She does not say a word. It is clear she understands what I mean to do.
“Oh, Hazel,” I say, biting back the sob that rises in my throat. As I take her hand, regret pierces me. “If I could tell you what I feel, what this is …” I begin. But something changes in her face again.
“I tried.” Her voice quivers. “I tried to make you fit in. I tried to make you happy here.” She puts a wrinkled hand to her breast. “I think I always knew you did not belong. From the moment I came to your father’s house
and saw your wild eyes and the fiery heart that hid behind them … I just knew.” Hazel smiles at me. Her old face becomes lovely with the brilliance of that smile. “It doesn’t matter where you go. My love won’t be stopped from following you there.” She lifts her chin, daring me to gainsay her. I stand still, not sure I can tear my eyes from her beloved face. But she swallows, gives me a little shove, and says, “Go.”
As I pass Blessing’s door, I trail my fingers across the chiseled wood of it. I can almost feel the warmth of her dreams on the other side, pulsing and alive. They will all be for Auren now, and I wish her joy with every part of my heart.
Once I am in the garden I do not bother bridling my feet any longer. The hood of my cloak falls back as I dash down the frosted garden paths and plunge into the forest. Night is sloughing from the world and the rising sun flings a glittering luster through the trees. In no time I am deep within the wood. My feet find the familiar path on their own and soon I am standing at the clearing. It is empty but for a doe grazing on the acorns that peep from the snow, and she skitters away the moment she hears the crunch of my feet.
Just as I am wondering if I have been rash to come here, just as I suspect I have been foolish to think this possible, I see him. He appears in the glade as if he has stepped straight from one of the beams of sunlight spilling between the trees. It is the first time I have seen him in daylight, and suddenly I am shy. He has to beckon to me before I am willing to enter the glade myself.
Each step I take toward him is one more step closer to home. The truth of it sings in my blood and tingles across the surface of my skin. The wild thing that was in me, flapping its wings to escape, has quieted.
“Welcome to my wood,” he says, holding a hand out to me.
I cannot say a word in answer. I can do nothing at all, in fact, but stare at him. In the light of the day, I see that his face is a world. And it is not just any world, but my world. Father and Mother are there, Hazel and Blessing and forests and streams and moonlight and wishes and even slippers made of glass.
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