Page 10 of How to Marry a Winged King

After wearing the tūī’s midnight green dress, I now knew I was indeed hopelessly shallow about fripperies. There was a hurt there, deep as a bruise, but I didn’t want to press on it too badly.

“Well, go and get ready,” Lady Bloodthorn told me after an infinitesimal pause. “You want to help your sisters, don’t you?”

A strange conflict of emotions welled up in me. “Yes,” I said, and didn’t know whether I was lying or not. It must be nice for fae, to always be sure about such things.

But before any of us could leave the room, Lord Bloodthorn appeared in the doorway. He was smiling, and I wished I could disappear into the walls, but his gaze didn’t fall on me; his attention was all for Acantha.

“I have brought you a gift, my dear,” he said to her, his smile sharp enough to cut. He held a slim wooden box.

Acantha took it from him, and I craned my neck to see its contents without success. Acantha smiled at Lord Bloodthorn, though I could see the hint of confusion in her eyes. “Thank you, my lord. They’re beautiful.”

“Allow me,” he said, revealing the contents of the box to be twin gold bracelets in a pattern of leaves and thorns I was intimately familiar with, having climbed up the tree they were based on to rescue the king. Or to fake-rescue him, I supposed, with bitter amendment.

Acantha did an admirable job of keeping composed as he clicked each bracelet into place, even though I knew she was just as puzzled as the rest of us. Lord Bloodthorn was not given to random acts of generosity.

She gave a sharp gasp as the second one went on, pulling her wrists away from him and scrabbling for the clasp. The blood drained from her face.

“What—” she asked, sounding frightened in a way that she never did.

“These will keep you from disappointing the king tonight,” Lord Bloodthorn told her. “Do not bother trying to remove them; I have the only key. But then, why would you want to? Your claws are of no use to this House. Do not fail me again.” He gave another dagger smile before he turned and left.

Acantha stared down at her hands, spreading her knuckles over and over in a way that usually resulted in her golden claws extending. Her fingernails remained pink and blunt.

AS USUAL, I KEPT three paces behind my family in the Butterfly Market. My stepmother and sisters were all pretending that everything was painfully, cheerfully fine. They chattered with brittle-edged brightness, about the weather and the wares and the people we passed, as if filling up all the spaces with fluff would leave no room for anything serious to exist. Like the fact that Lord Bloodthorn had just casually and cruelly bound his own daughter right in front of us.

Well, he’d done that once already, hadn’t he, and we all pretended the dawn-curse was fine, didn’t we? But I’d always assumed my sisters were safe from him. Safe-ish. To find that even Acantha could suffer his wrath made me want to both break something and weep.

The market was even busier than usual—clearly other members of the court had had the same idea. We ran into the same Sweetgrass fae who had sneered at the idea of humans last night, coming out of a glamourist’s shop. They had their own hopeful scion in tow, a thin-legged man with mesmerisingly perfect skin and startling purple eyes—his grass-name was Lavender, I remembered. Even with all that, he had nothing on Acantha’s beauty, a fact that clearly cheered Lady Bloodthorn immensely as she haughtily acknowledged the pair.

“They bought a glamour for him,” Acantha said in a low voice after they had departed. “He had a green cast to his skin last night.”

“I can bestow pure sidhe beauty on anyone,” the shop’s proprietor broke in behind us. His gaze flicked over Acantha, and he bowed his head. “Not that you need it, my lady.”

Only I noticed how Acantha’s fingers curled reflexively before she stopped herself. The bracelets gleamed. Hot anger rose up in me all over again, and I pressed it down as I’d become so practiced in doing.

The shopkeeper’s gaze had moved on to Rose and Lady Bloodthorn’s horns. He didn’t acknowledge my presence at all. “I have some glorious hair enchantments in stock, if your companions would care to try them.”

Lady Bloodthorn said that they would, a hand sneaking up to rub at her left horn before she could stop herself. Acantha and I were left to explore the depths of the shop while Lady Bloodthorn and Rose tried on different styles.

I eyed a wall of different-sized scissors labelled “enchantment shears”.

“Shall we try them on the bracelets?” I asked Acantha in an undertone.

Acantha was bending over a display of brooches glamoured to wink like eyes. She raised her gaze briefly to the wall of scissors, and for a moment there was a spark of something wild in her eyes, but then it was gone. She gave a minute shake of her head. “I am not going to try anything, and you should not think of it either,” she said.

“But Lord Bloodthorn—” I began hotly.

“—Our father is acting in the best interests of our house. I never intended to be anything other than the perfect sidhe bride until after the wedding in any case. The bracelets don’t change that.” Acantha’s tone declared the discussion now closed.

“Do you even like him?” I asked, unable to leave it alone.

She frowned. “Who?”

“The king.”

She shrugged and opened another drawer in the brooch cabinet. “He’s handsome, powerfully magical, and rules the Golden Wood. What’s not to like?”

I bit my lip. “But if he weren’t? What if he were a, a humble woodworker or something? Would you still want to marry him?”