DAYS 45-50
The carriage ridehome feels like wearing clothes that belong to someone else.
Day forty-six, and I sit between Father and his new wife Vivienne, watching familiar countryside roll past the windows. Everything looks exactly as I remember—the rolling hills dotted with sheep, the stone walls marking property lines, the village church where I was christened twenty years ago.
But I'm not the same person who left this world.
The dormant bond sits in my chest like a stone, heavy and cold and utterly wrong. Not painful exactly, but incomplete. Like I'm a melody missing its harmony, a equation with variables removed. The ache is constant, a hollow echo where something vital used to live.
"You're very quiet, dear," Vivienne says, her voice carefully gentle. She's younger than I expected, probably not much older than me, with kind eyes and nervous hands. "Are you feeling unwell?"
I want to laugh at the understatement. Unwell doesn't begin to describe the wrongness spreading through my bones, the wayevery cell in my body screams that I'm in the wrong place, with the wrong people, living the wrong life.
"I'm fine," I lie, the words tasting like ash. "Just tired."
Father shoots me a worried glance, and I can see him cataloging the changes. The silver threads in my hair that catch the afternoon light. The way frost patterns flicker across my skin when I'm distressed. How I keep touching my throat where the claiming bite has scarred over, a nervous gesture I can't seem to break.
"The physicians in town will examine you properly once we're home," he says. "Dr. Morrison has experience with... unusual conditions."
Unusual conditions. As if what's been done to me is some rare disease rather than fundamental transformation of my very nature.
The carriage wheels hit a particularly rough patch of road, jostling us together. When Vivienne's warm hand accidentally brushes mine, I flinch away instinctively. Her touch feels wrong—too warm, too human, lacking the ice-cold perfection my body was conditioned to crave.
"I'm sorry," I murmur, seeing the hurt flash across her face. "I'm not... I don't mean to be rude."
"You're adjusting," she says kindly, but I catch the uncertainty in her voice. She doesn't understand what she's dealing with any more than Father does.
How could they? How do you explain to someone that you've been fundamentally rewired, that your body was trained to respond to specific stimuli they can never provide? That every human interaction now feels like trying to speak a language you've forgotten?
The Montgomery estate appears as the sun sets, its familiar silhouette unchanged by my absence. The same ivy climbing thestone walls, the same windows glowing with warm light, the same gardens where I once played as a child.
Home. This should feel like coming home.
Instead, it feels like a beautiful prison designed for someone else entirely.
Day forty-seven, I wake up in my childhood bedroom and everything is exactly as I left it. Rose wallpaper, delicate furniture, the view of the gardens I once loved. But lying in my old bed feels like wearing a costume that no longer fits.
The sheets smell wrong—human soap and lavender instead of frost-pine and winter air. The mattress is too soft, too warm, nothing like the enchanted silk that molded perfectly to my transformed body. I find myself arranging the pillows in ways that make no sense, my hands automatically creating the nest-like structure that brought comfort in another life.
Dr. Morrison arrives after breakfast, a distinguished gentleman with graying whiskers and the kind of serious bearing that speaks of medical training in the capital. He carries a leather bag filled with instruments I don't recognize, and his eyes light with scientific curiosity when he sees me.
"Fascinating," he murmurs, studying the frost patterns that appear on my skin when I'm nervous. "The cellular changes are quite unprecedented. May I examine your magical emanations?"
He produces a device that looks like a cross between a compass and a jeweler's loupe, holding it near my hand while making careful notes. The readings seem to excite him, though his expression remains professionally neutral.
"The magical matrix has been completely altered," he explains to Father, speaking about me as if I'm not in the room. "Her body now operates on different fundamental principles. The bond you described acts as a grounding mechanism—without it, her magic becomes increasingly unstable."
"Can it be treated?" Father asks desperately. "Some way to help her adapt?"
Dr. Morrison shakes his head slowly. "The transformation appears to be permanent. Her magical signatures show dependency patterns that would be fatal to disrupt completely." He gives me a sympathetic look. "I'm afraid you're caught between worlds, Miss Montgomery. Neither fully human nor Fae, requiring elements of both to survive."
After he leaves, I sit in the parlor watching frost spread from where I touched the armrest. My magic responds to emotional distress now, beyond my conscious control. Every spike of anxiety creates ice flowers on the walls, every moment of despair turns the air cold enough to see my breath.
"Tell me about the bond," Vivienne says that evening, settling beside me with tea I can't bring myself to drink. Father has retreated to his study, overwhelmed by medical reports he doesn't understand.
"What do you want to know?" I ask, though even thinking about it makes my chest tight with longing.
"What it felt like. When it was... active." She chooses her words carefully, like someone walking on ice. "Your father says you seemed content there, toward the end."
