Page 18 of How to Marry a Winged King

I should have made an attempt at denial then. Said something that made me sound convincingly innocent. Or said literally anything in my own defence. Instead, I stood like a frightened deer as the silence grew longer and deeper and more incredulous and Lord Bloodthorn gave a furious huff of impatience and pressed the mask against my face.

I jerked backwards, taking the mask with me, thanks to the perfect fit. I had no time to recover my balance, because Lord Bloodthorn was already pulling me upstairs to my attic, with my stepmother and sisters in silent entourage.

Lord Bloodthorn pushed me, stumbling, up the stairs ahead of him. Inside, I was still frozen. His hands pinched, but it all felt like it was happening very far away.

The search of my room took approximately three seconds to uncover the dresses and shoes hiding in the back of my wardrobe. That had been an obvious hiding place, with the excruciating benefit of hindsight.

He dragged me and everything else back down to the parlour, I think because he was annoyed by having to stoop to fit under my attic ceiling. The objects made an incriminating pile on the coffee table, the unearthly glass slippers and Tāwhiri’s feathers punctuating the now-crumpled dresses in accusatory slashes.

“Sit,” said Lord Bloodthorn curtly. “Put these on.”

I didn’t want to step into the glass slippers, but Lord Bloodthorn manhandled me with casual, cruel fae strength, his grip painful as he shoved me down onto the nearest seat and wrenched off my ordinary shoes, shoving the glass ones into place. They fit perfectly.

He stared down at me with grim satisfaction as the illusion swept over me. “So. You tricked the king. I suppose that’s to be expected of a deceitful mortal’s get.”

My sisters were looking at me as if I were a stranger. I kicked off the shoes with sudden violence. They flew across the room. One hit the wall with a sharp crack of glass. The broken heel came to rest right-side-up, disconnected from the rest of the shoe. Good.

But Lord Bloodthorn merely looked down at me with cold contempt, as if I were a misbehaving child. “Where did you get these things? Don’t make me compel it out of you.”

I shivered. Compulsion is a terrible kind of high sidhe magic that presses against the will, the lesser cousin of the binding curse he’d laid on me. If he tried to compel me, and I resisted, would he realise my dawn-curse was broken?

But I wanted him to know where I’d gotten the slippers. “Tāwhiri gave them to me,” I said, suddenly defiant, and he hissed at my casual use of the king’s name. “He wanted me to come to the ball. He wants to marry me.”

They didn’t believe me. Denial shone from all four faces, mixed with great lashings of confusion. That was perhaps the worst part, that I could see what they were thinking: how could Tāwhiri have given such attentions to someone so ordinary and so far beneath him? It didn’t make sense to them.

“He is trying to shame us,” Acantha said softly, finding the only explanation that fit.

I flinched.

“To test us,” Lord Bloodthorn agreed.

I stood up, fists clenched. “This isn’t a test! He doesn’t care about sidhe blood or any of that! That’s your obsession!” I flung at my father, who didn’t look at me.

Ignoring me, he picked up the silver mask and handed it to my sister. “But one should not play games against the house of Bloodthorn. Wear that and call the king’s bluff,” he said to her.

Acantha didn’t look at me either, but unlike her father I could tell that she was having to try quite hard not to. Her hands shook slightly, and her bracelet clicked against the edge of the mask as she took it. Behind her, Rose wore a troubled frown, but she said nothing. My stepmother was wringing her hands silently and looking at nobody, as if hoping that would make all this conflict go away.

A strange calm washed over me. “It won’t make any difference. The king doesn’t want to marry anyone else. It doesn’t matter what you do.” It mattered what I did. My dawn-curse was gone. Bloodthorn had no hold over me, I realised with a kind of awed thrill.

I had my father’s attention again, and it made my stomach tie itself into knots despite my bold words. He smiled. It was not a nice smile.

“Oh?” he said. “The king has sworn to choose his bride by the end of Third Night from amongst those present of the twelve houses. That will certainly not apply to you.”

THIRD NIGHT

THEY LOCKED ME in the attic.

Which, again, with the perfect clarity of hindsight, was an entirely predictable outcome. Being freed from my dawn-curse had made me idiotically forget the more mundane ways a person could be controlled.

It was so stupid, to be defeated by a mere locked door. I rattled the doorknob without success and then went and found my hairpins. The lock ate them, bending each one horribly out of shape. It wasn’t my ineptitude, or not only my ineptitude; it was Bloodthorn Manor, maliciously obeying its lord’s command to keep me in. I wasted a few more pins trying to prise open the windows, with similar results.

Eventually I ran out of pins and slumped back on my bed to stare at the ceiling.

Maybe it was better this way. Someone like me marrying Tāwhiri had always seemed too far-fetched to believe. I was free of my curse, if not technically free at this exact moment. But someone would let me out of this attic tomorrow, and after that I could leave the manor permanently, so long as I was careful. I didn’t need Tāwhiri.

Night Sister knew how angry Lord Bloodthorn would be if Tāwhiri chose someone other than Acantha for his bride.

I felt a flicker of unease. Tāwhiri would pick someone, wouldn’t he, rather than choose to be forsworn? He was a practical man.