Ardelia - Of Mud, Matrimony, and Other Misfortunes
The words appeared at dawn, bleeding through every mirror in Prylon simultaneously:
Dearest ones, matrimony is a blood sport, and our newest player is already bleeding. One wonders whether Lady Elimbra’s latest project will survive the season or simply offer tomorrow’s best scandal. Place your bets.
The ink faded before anyone could scrub it away, leaving only the faint scent of nightshade and malice.
MY SLIPPER VANISHES INTO the mud with a wet, obscene sound.
I grab for it and miss, and my other foot slides sideways on the path, dragging the silk hem of my dress under until it clings heavy and cold against my ankle—the same ankle I twisted stepping off the carriage this morning. The hedgerow beside me shivers, and I recognize moonwort by its blue leaves and toxic sap, the kind Father uses in sleep draughts when distilled. Its petals chitter at a frequency just above hearing.
I have been in Fae territory for ten minutes, and even the shrubbery has opinions.
I fish my slipper from the muck and move. The path ahead takes me to Silverthorn Hall, where Lady Elimbra Kadawn waits to assess my marriage prospects—Father said, pressing her gold-sealed letter into my hands, one season, one match, and our debts will be cleared. He conveniently did not mention that no human had wed into Fae nobility in half a century, or that Lady Elimbra’s promise was payment for saving her favorite servant from fever. A life for a life, her servant’s for mine.
My satchel digs into my shoulder, heavy with books I borrowed from Father’s locked cabinet: Bargains and Boundaries, Seven Great Escapes. Judging by the silt creeping up my skirt, I have mastered none of them.
Straight spine. No tears. No tripping. Mother’s rules, delivered when I was five years old, and her words still taste of lavender soap and something copper-bright underneath. I straighten, blink back the moisture in my eyes, and trip over a vine that was not there a second ago.
I push myself up and keep walking.
The trees part, and Silverthorn’s gates rise from the fog. Twisted marble and gold, floating lanterns drifting overhead, and the air smells of ozone and rain—that metallic brightness that settles in your sinuses and stays there.
A sound breaks the vapours. Hoofbeats closing fast.
I throw myself sideways but not soon enough, and a stallion storms past so close the wind yanks my hair across my face and stings my eyes. Sparks fly where hooves strike stone. My foot catches wrong, my ankle screams, and I go down hard.
The rider wheels back, and for a moment he just looks at me—sprawled, dress ruined, completely at his mercy. His stallion’s coat drinks the morning light, black as something that has never seen sun, and the man himself sits still in the saddle with nothing human in his face. Nothing soft.
I had seen Fae before: half-bloods in Shademarse with features softened by human ancestry, glimpses of full-blooded Fae passing through our village, beautiful and ruinous as storms. I have never been this close to one.
His eyes are two different colors—one molten gold, one deep impossible blue—and both of them are fixed on me with the indifferent attention of someone deciding whether to step over an obstacle or simply kick it aside. His face belongs in Father’s anatomy texts, all clean lines and sharp angles. My fingers itch to trace his bone structure just to confirm it’s real. Dark hair falls in waves that the mist has made artfully disheveled.
Every sensible thought is urging me to run.
“You could have—” I start.
“Could have.” His voice is crisp, without inflection. “Did not.”
He dismounts in one fluid motion. I scramble backward in the mud, but he is already standing over me, so much taller than I expected. His shirt hangs open at the throat, silver cuffs trapping the light, and up close I can breathe him: wine, crushed juniper, smoke.
The surrounding shimmer is stronger at this distance. It raises the fine hairs along my arms, making my teeth ache.
“Do you know who I am?”
My brain is screaming at me to apologize, to grovel, to make myself small and harmless and forgettable—and instead my mouth opens without permission.
“Entitled.” I wipe mud from my palm onto my already-ruined skirt. “Drunk. Dangerously late for an appointment that probably involves trampling more humans.”
His eyebrows rise.
“Is that all?”
I push myself to my feet, biting down hard when my ankle takes the weight. Standing, I come up to his collarbone. I have to tilt my head back to meet his gaze, and I hate that—hate that he is looking down at me, while my pulse is hammering for reasons that have nothing to do with fear.
“You want more?” I brush at my skirts, buying time for my voice to steady. “Reckless. Discourteous. Possessed of a horse that moves like a nightmare given legs and a face that suggests the same sculptor made both of you, and not for kindness.”
He stares at me. Neither of us shifts.
Then the corner of his mouth twitches.
“You missed handsome.”
“The attempted murder has distracted me.”
He laughs—a genuine sound, startled out of him—and for just a moment his whole face changes, opens. My breath catches. Then the coldness slides back into place, and I remember what he is.
“Sharp tongue.” He takes a step closer, and I force myself not to retreat. “Best take care where you point it, little human. Not everyone finds spite as amusing as I do.”
“Better than a dull mind.”
His jaw tightens. The masseter jumps once beneath that perfect skin—a tell, I note.
“Humans usually cower when I ride by.”
“Humans have somewhere to run.”
That catches him. His head tilts, just slightly, and his gaze drops to my mud-caked slippers, my ruined hem, the satchel of books still clutched against my side. When his eyes return to my face, the assessment in them has sharpened.
“You’re bleeding.”
I glance down. My palm is scraped raw from the fall, blood mixing with muck in thin pink rivulets. I had not noticed.
“I’ll live.” I curl my fingers closed, hiding the wound. “Will the next human you nearly trample?”
He reaches into his coat, and I tense—but he only pulls out a handkerchief, dark fabric embroidered with silver thread. He holds it out.
I do not take it.
“Accepting gifts from the Fae is not a good idea,” I say. “Chapter three of every book I have ever read about your kind.”
His mouth curves, and it is not quite a smile. “Clever.” He tucks it away. “Clever enough to know that standing in roads is foolish?”
“Clever enough to know that a rider who cannot control his mount has no business lecturing others about foolishness.”
His stallion snorts, tossing its head, and those eyes fix on me with an intelligence that makes my skin prickle.
He swings himself into the saddle in one elegant motion, gathers the reins, and the distance between us opens. I can breathe again.
“Stand somewhere else, little human.” He wheels the horse. “Or wear bog-colored clothing. Practical.”
“Perhaps steer your beast better.”
He glances back over his shoulder, sunlight catching those mismatched eyes. “Which one?”
Then he is gone toward the estate, hoofbeats fading into mist.
I stay there with my hands shaking, blood dripping from my fist, and watch until he disappears. The anger is easier to hold than the rest of it—the heat still sitting low in my stomach, the echo of his laugh, the way he had looked at me.
Gilded ass, I think, and start walking.
The gates open without a sound as I approach.
I walk through because Father’s debts will not forgive themselves.