Sunrise. That means my peace is almost at an end. My heart plummets at the thought of all the chores, mending, and verbal insults that await once I return to the apartment. I glance toward the horizon but can see no evidence of the sun, not with the towering smokestacks that invade the view. Yearning tugs at my unruly fae side, urging me to give in. With it comes an echo of a promise made long ago.
Always be wild. Promise me.
Setting my jaw, I rise to my feet, keeping my balance steady on the rooftop ledge. I pivot to face the chimney. Extending my arms, I rise to my toes and grasp the chimney’s crown, ignoring how the soot darkens my hands. The wisps swirl around me, giggling as I pull myself up. Climbing has always come easy to me because of my mother. She taught me to climb my first tree, helped me scale the roof of our manor so we could watch the sunrise together. The memory threatens to pull me down, but I use it as fuel instead. Once I’ve heaved myself onto the crown, I rise to stand, bracing my feet on opposite sides of the gaping flue, and face the horizon again.
“Jump. Fly,” the male wisp begs, but I ignore him.
“Sing,” says the first wisp, a hint of taunting in her eyes. “I know you want to.”
My shoulders tense at the dare while a sudden tightness in my throat begs to be freed. Climbing this high up, giving in to even a portion of my fae nature, always tempts me to sing. Just considering the action of setting my voice to a tune, letting it mingle with the quiet music of the morning, sends a painful longing through me. My throat bobs, pleading for a hum, but I swallow it down.
I shake my head. “I don’t sing.”
Not anymore.
The wisps continue to taunt and tease, but I tune them out. Instead, I focus on the view, gazing above the smokestacks and factories that make up the Gray Quarter, a neighborhood as bleak as its name. I look out at the rest of the sprawling city beyond my neighborhood, then at the mountains and countryside in the distance.
I don’t notice when the wisps get bored and float away, but soon I’m alone again, frozen in place, letting the breeze rustle my coat and dance through my hair while I listen to the shift in music.
First comes the beat of opening and closing doors, then the quiet pound of footsteps on cobblestones as the factory workers leave nearby apartments and workhouses for another grueling day of labor. Next comes the rhythm of horse hooves and carriage wheels, then of gears turning, of machinery roaring to life. My fingers flinch at my sides, eager to tap along to the tune, each digit haunted by the ghost of piano keys. It’s been months since I last played. Months since I felt that comforting, familiar weight of ivory against my fingertips, of sound reverberating through my bones. Even though I refuse to sing, I still find comfort in playing the piano. Still find a connection to my mother through it.
Or at least I did. Before my stepmother sold my pianoforte.
Sinking into the song, I allow my fingers to tap against my thighs. A crying babe screeches out, disrupting the melody like a missed note. As if on cue, the first blush of sun peeks over the mountains beyond the city, painting the sky in muted shades of blue and gold. I watch as it bathes the countryside at the base of the mountains. My breath hitches. Somewhere amongst that gold-flecked green lies my childhood home. The modest country estate where I spent the happiest years of my childhood.
Until it all changed.
Until the last time I sang.
And killed the only living person who loved me.
I swallow the searing lump in my throat and return my attention to the rising music, listening to it grow louder and louder, letting it drown out my hidden sorrow until it’s nothing more than a whisper in the audience. The tempo both quickens and slows as multiple musicians battle in disharmonious tandem. My fingers resume their tapping, chasing one beat, then the next.
Then I hear it. The chime of morning bells.
Good sense tells me I should get down and cleaned up before my stepmother seeks me out, but as the sun continues to rise, I find myself unable to look away. I remain in place, watching the golds grow brighter. The sun kisses more and more of Evanston. Any moment, it will illuminate even the Gray Quarter.
A flash of panic rushes through me, but a rebellious fire has my feet rooted to the chimney’s ledge. I will remain. Just a second longer…
“Ember!”
The grating voice has my back stiffening as it reverberates through the apartment below, sending all prior sense of rebellion leaking from my bones.
“Ember Montgomery!” my stepmother calls again.
Closing my eyes, I clench my jaw and reach for the locket at the base of my throat. Squeezing it tight to steady my nerves, I take a deep inhale and a slow exhale. Then, releasing the locket, I climb down from the chimney. From peace. From music.
All to fulfill a bargain I never should have made.
2
EMBER
Every human on the isle of Faerwyvae is taught never to bargain with the fae. It’s a tenet learned long before the human lands merged with the fae lands twenty-one years ago and unified under fae rule.
And yet, no one ever tells a fae—or a half fae like me—never to bargain with a human. I often wonder…if I’d grown up with a warning like those the humans are given, would I have gone through with the bargain three years ago? Would my grief and guilt still have been so overwhelming that I would have neglected to pause long enough to see the truth? The lie? The deception?
Not that the question does me any good. It won’t change that I’m bound to the bargain I made. Bound to my stepmother.
