Adelaide Forrest

One of the men nearest the cake leaned forward, snatching a piece off the fabric. He lifted a chunk to his mouth, chewing thoughtfully before he spit a hand-carved tiny baby into his open palm. “Fuck’s sake. Just what I need. Another mouth to feed.”

“Keep your dick in your pants then,” another man said, slapping him on the back.

I lifted the first bite of cake to my mouth, flavors of vanilla and cinnamon on my tongue as I chewed. There was nothing hidden within it, just the sweetness of the cake itself as I watched the others around me chew theirs.

I was through my second bite before something struck my tooth and I raised a hand to my mouth to pull it out. The ring glimmered in bronze against my palm, a sign of the shackle I’d spent my entire life knowing was coming.

There was a soft thump behind us, the group going still as they looked over my shoulder at the circle. I turned slowly, following their gazes to where a single candle had fallen off its stone and extinguished the moment it touched the grass, as if by an unseen force.

I swallowed, working out the placement for a moment before I turned back to the group with a shaky breath. The silence between them as they watched me rise to my feet spoke volumes about their belief in their Samhain traditions and the clairvoyance they brought.

“I should get home,” I said, looking at the sun just cresting the horizon through the trees.

Adelphia nodded, not even bothering to argue with me. There was nothing left to say.

The only candle that had fallen was mine.

There’d been many days when I’d gone to Temple and my prayers were filled with pleas for her to never discover the price I’d paid for it in the privacy of his library; I prayed she’d never learn the true cost of his kindness.

He was permitted mistresses, so long as they were not deemed virginal, and thus appropriate for marriage to other suitors. My most recent virginity test should have condemned me to a life as a mistress or Lady of the Night, but the doctor had deemed me pure. I knew it was a lie, and I suspected he did as well.

I just didn’t know why he’d hidden my secret, why he’d protected me from the harsh consequences for the things I did in the night, when my body seemed to come alive and hum with energy that I couldn’t restrain. Perhaps he’d protected the son of his friend, the only boy I’d trusted enough to be intimate with, even though Lord Byron would have benefited from the loss of my virginity.

Sometimes, in the night, I looked into that mist and swore I saw the shining beacon of dazzling blue eyes staring back at me

“You were always a pretty girl.” He tipped the vial over, pouring the amber liquid into the third glass of wine. The bittersweet aroma of belladonna filled the air as he emptied the vial into the glass, lightening the color of the wine a fraction.

“My Lord,” I murmured, my voice hushed as my body went still. A dose of belladonna like that would be lethal, would make certain I never saw the morning come. He lifted it from the desk, stepping around me and moving toward the library doors. He knocked on them, waiting until a servant pushed them open and accepted the wine from him without a word. She left the library, closing the doors behind her as Byron turned back toward me and stood beside my chair.

“She was meant to die slowly, gradually, over the years so that no one would suspect anything, but it appears we have run out of time,” he said, running the backs of his knuckles over the side of my cheek as I tried to process what he was saying.

I kept my mouth shut, not asking the question that didn’t concern me. Whoever he’d sent that poison to, I couldn’t let my curiosity prevent me from having the answers to what actually mattered to my life.

He waited, smirking down at me when I bit my tongue. “I prevented the physician from reporting you and didn’t send you to train as a Lady of the Night because that would have interfered with a plan that I’ve been working toward for a very long time.” He reached over, capping the vial of poison and depositing it into the waste bin beside his desk. “You would have ruined everything had I not intervened.”

“Lady Jaclen—” I said, snapping my mouth shut before the question could come. My tongue burned with the force of my bite, my hands trembling where I clasped them on my lap.

“Will be dead before morning,” her husband said, leaning back onto his desk once more. He stretched his hand out and caught my chin, leaning forward until his face was only a breath away from mine. “Do you understand now, Estrella?”

I nodded, squeezing my eyes closed as the horror of his intentions took root inside of me. I’d always thought myself safe from that kind of attention, so long as he never discovered I was not a virgin. Another man would take me in that way, but I’d thought myself safe from him, at the very least.

I’d never truly been safe at all.

“Why did you allow it to continue?” I asked, risking the next question.

He grinned, something evil lurking in his eyes, and I knew that whatever came next would horrify me. “Your virginity never mattered to me, though taking it would have been enjoyable. That is the High Priest’s prerogative alone. If anything, your Mist Guard saved me the trouble of listening to you cry during your first time.

“What are you hiding?”

“One day, I will answer all of your questions, but today is not that day.” He shook his head when I opened my mouth to protest, his forehead dropping to mine again as he closed his eyes. “Sometimes ignorance is bliss, little sister. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

Now I needn’t worry about any of that nonsense, because he already broke you in. I might have arranged for it to happen myself, in time.”

“But the High Priest said The Father has plans for me. I hardly think any of that matters now,” I argued, trying to push away the image of what might have come. For once, the idea of being sacrificed to the Veil wasn’t the worst horror I could imagine. “You can’t make me your mistress if I’m dead.”

“I wouldn’t need to kill Jaclen for you to become my mistress,” he said, grabbing a cloth off his desk. A bowl of water sat beside it, and he dipped it into the liquid as he lifted one of my shaking hands off my lap. “I need her to die so that you can become my wife.”

I flinched, the agony of those words striking me like a physical blow. I couldn’t be the Lady of Mistfell. I wouldn’t long survive a life with Byron as my husband—my days and nights dominated by his demands and his company.

“I’ve shocked you. Why did you think I brought you here and taught you to read? Why did you think I taught you the decorum of a lady at great expense to myself? My whore would not need to have such abilities,” he said, pressing the cloth into one of the wounds the twilight berries had left me with the day before.

“I never considered this,” I admitted. It hadn’t even been a possibility in my mind. Killing his wife, who was a distant relation to the King, was something unthinkable even for him.

“Mistfell needs an heir. Before the sacrifice tomorrow, I will announce Jaclen’s death and inform the villagers that I have chosen another wife to give them the heir they deserve. They’ll learn that The Father himself made his will for our union known to me as I sat beside Jaclen’s death bed. The High Priest will not dare to take you from that divine purpose, and he will need to choose another to sacrifice. We’ll be married within the week—”

“No.” The word hovered between us, filling the library with the muted sound of my voice and the quiet defiance that I hadn’t even meant to say aloud. My ears rang, while nausea swirled in my gut.

“What did you just say?” he asked, his body stilling as his gaze hardened into a glare. All traces of gentleness he’d deigned to show me as part of his act disappeared, the truth of him showing in his anger.

“No,” I repeated, my voice coming through with more strength. My heart was in my chest, my skin slick with a cold sweat as I drew my line in the sand. Some fates were worse than death.

This was one of them.

“You do realize the alternative is having your throat slit, just like your father?” he asked, the incredulous laugh that fell from his lips only serving to make me more determined to escape him. To make the choice that he wouldn’t approve of.

“I do” I lifted my chin and straightened my shoulders, projecting the posture of the woman he’d tried to mold me to become.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he scoffed dismissively, but behind his gaze, disbelief turned into knowing. He knew as well as I did that I’d meant the word. That I fully intended to say no to him.

“I was six when you held me still and forced me to watch them slice my father’s neck open. When they’d wrung all the blood they could from him, they burned him on a pyre and celebrated around his ashes. I hadn’t even turned seven yet when you first invited me to this library and allowed the Priestess to beat me until I curtsied properly, until I stood straight enough, and I knelt as long as ordered without complaint. I have spent a lifetime tolerating your touch and your attention. No more,” I said, the burn of tears stinging my throat and my nose and I held them back, refusing to give him that last part of me.

“And if I decide I do not need your permission? You think I have done all of this just to bow to your wishes?”

“Then I’ll tell the High Priest what you’ve done. You cannot keep me alive and keep me silent, as well, my Lord. Whether it is tomorrow or in a year, I will tell anyone who’ll listen that you’ve murdered your wife. What do you think the King would do with that information about his relative, when you and I both know you strive for far greater things than Mistfell?”