“No choice for what?”
“You may not like it…” Gayle warned.
Eislyn’s eyes narrowed. “Likewhat?”
“I’ve got a few wigs below deck. Left behind by some travelling minstrels.” Gayle grinned, and her freckles stretched across her cheeks. “They’re all boys’ wigs though.”
Eislyn glanced over her shoulder at the approaching docks. What Gayle had said was true. Shewasrecognizable. Everywhere she went, people knew who she was. There wasn’t much she could do about the way she walked or the curves of her ears. But she could damn well do something about her hair.
“They might be less suspicious if they think I’m a boy.”
“Yes, problem is…” Gayle leaned forward. Her breath frosted from her thin lips. “The only way the wig’ll fit is if we shave off that hair.”
Eislyn pulled back. “Shave my hair?”
The corners of Gayle lips inched up. “Aye. Your hair is far too long and thick. The wig’ll never stay on if we don’t do something about it.”
“But…” Eislyn trailed off, absentmindedly lifting a hand to the curling strands of her silver hair. An unexpected twang went through her heart. It was just hair, and yet it felt like the last unravelling strands of a life she’d left behind. Falias, her glistening city of ice. The library where she’d curled up with a book, tucking those strands behind her ears. Her father, her family. Eislyn’s eyes fluttered shut. Her mother’s face flashed in her mind. Sweet and heart-shaped with an ever-present smile. Silver hair tumbled around her shoulders, wild and free. Eislyn could not remember much about her mother, but she remembered that beautiful, smiling image, always.
“Eislyn, if you want to do this, you’ve gotta do it now,” Gayle warned. “We don’t have long before we reach the shore, and then it’ll be too late.”
A sharp pain went through her belly, but then Eislyn steeled her nerves, and nodded. “Alright. Let’s do it.”
Grinning, Gayle led her below deck to her cabin where she dug out a pair of sheers and a razor from her mound of belongings and supplies. Eislyn chose not to ask why she had that razor in the first place. She’d learned a lot about these smugglers in their journey through the icy sea. They had done their fair share of murdering to survive.
“Sit,” Gayle ordered.
Eislyn obeyed and plopped down on a wooden stool that Gayle shoved into the center of the small cabin. Gayle’s quarters were twice as large as Eislyn’s had been, but it did not feel like it. There was so much stuff crammed into every corner—an old armoire spilling clothes onto the floor, a collection of barrels that smelled suspiciously of whiskey, and dozens of paintings stacked vertically against the walls.
Eislyn’s silver hoarfrost cloak hung on a wooden hook by the door. Her heart twanged at the first snip of the scissors. Dark thoughts threatened to spill into her mind. In truth, she had lost everything. Her home, her family, her life. Vreis was gone, and so was any hope of any safety within the Ice Court. Everything had turned hard and cruel and wrong.
So, what was some hair next to all that? It was like a bloody appendage, clinging on to its body with one measly bit of flesh. In the end, it would lose. Might as well make it a clean break.
Still, her tears were hot in her eyes as thesnip,snip,snipof the scissors continued, echoing louder and louder in her ears. The weight on her head lightened as great, big chunks of her hair fell like feathers to the wooden floor.
Gayle sighed and stepped back. “Alright, that’s about all I can do with the scissors, love. I can leave it like this, and the wig should work. Or I can finish it all off with a shave.”
Eislyn reached up and fingered the rough edges of her hair. She did not need to see it to know that she looked like she’d gotten into a fight with the scissors. It was all uneven, cropped short and jagged so that clumps of it stuck out from her head.
Tears slipped from her eyes, spilling onto her cheeks. “Go ahead and shave it.”
* * *
Eislyn stood on the bow, shielding her eyes against the midday sun. The ship slowed on the choppy waters as the island drew near. It would only be moments before they reached the shore. She reached up and felt the rough wig. It felt hot and scratchy against her shaved head, but she was thankful for the thick, scraggly strands of dusty blonde that covered her pointed ears.
Gayle shot her a sideways glance. “You never did tell me why you’re so intent on going to the Empire of Fomor. Why didn’t you want to take refuge inside a friendly court? I’m sure the Sea Court would have gladly taken you in, you being Thane’s betrothed and all. Or we would have sailed south, to your father.”
Eislyn’s heart almost shattered at the idea of home. After everything she’d been through in the past year, a part of her wanted nothing more than to curl up inside the library with a stack of books while Albin droned on about the dreary day-to-day business of life inside a castle. There were mouths to feed and grain to store and squires to train. All boring, mundane nonsense.
And it was the kind of nonsense Eislyn ached to find.
But she could find no one else to do this. Not unless she wanted to lose so much more time. And the fae had already lost enough of that. Her father probably wouldn’t believe her even if she tried to explain to him what she’d found. Glencora was still ill in her bed. Reyna was off doing Reyna things. Charging through the countryside on a quest to save a king.
Vreis was...gone.
Heart pounding, she reached up to her throat and wrapped her hand around his amber jewel. Her cheeks burned as memories flashed before her eyes. His flesh sliced. His blood painting the wooden floorboards. The power in her veins shooting from her palms, shattering her cousin into a thousand tiny shards. Someone she had trusted with her life.
Where had that power come from? She’d been too scared to give it much thought since it had happened, and luckily, it had not popped back up again.
