Page 39 of Stolen Threadwitch Bride
Except he was the latter, wasn’t he?
Yes, Mama had told me a million times the fae were like the djinn who’d stolen her friend and left her broken. She’d warned me that they were inhuman monsters who wore pretty flesh to tempt us closer and felt nothing but greed and lust.
And yet Ly had shown me it wasn’t true. I’d glimpsed grief for his parents, anger at my foolish escape attempt, and kindness with no bargain attached. Yesterday, when he’d said those things about my scars, he’d stood to gain nothing from it. And it wasn’t as though he could lie.
“Ari?”
Blinking, I sucked in a breath. “Yes, sorry, I… Heh, well, we’d normally say ‘I was off with the faeries,’ but I’m already there, aren’t I?” I found myself grinning and waving him in.
He chuckled as he approached, and yes, now I paid attention, I realised every footfall was silent.
My eyes narrowed. “How long were you standing there?”
His gaze slid from mine and went to the toile. “A little while. You were so absorbed and… it was pleasant to watch. Did you know you have this little frown when you work?”
My cheeks burned. He’d watched me, and he’d liked doing so. It didn’t mean anything. Couldn’t. I was, in his words, a “mere human” and why would a fae lord want that when he could have a fae lady who was as beautiful and powerful as he was? My gift was useful to him for now, but I’d be fooling myself if I thought I was powerful enough, pretty enough…anythingenough for someone like him.
I cleared my throat and returned to stitching. “You’re not the first to tell me that.” The yawning hole at the centre of my heart expanded as an echo of Papa ruffling my hair ghosted over my scalp.If the wind changes, you’ll stay that way,he’d warned me.
“Then I’m not the first to observe your skill at work?” His smile was only half-teasing, the other half was gentle, coaxing. It warmed that emptiness in my chest.
I finished basting the seam. “Papa would tell Mama and me stories as we sewed. He knew all the best ones—he’d travelled Europa, even told his tales to kings and queens.” He’d had a sonorous, musical voice that had lulled me to another place as my needle rose and fell, as steady and easy as breathing.
“So your mother taught you to sew. Was she a threadwitch, too?”
“A seamstress. She had no magic… but it feels a sin to call heronlya seamstress.”
I shot him a glance, pride for my parents warring with the fear of boasting. But he watched me snip the thread and drop the end in a small bin, apparently content to listen. “Her goldwork was the finest in Europa and won her a position working for the Queen of Frankia. That was how she met Papa.”
He’d called it love at first sight, like King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. Mama always laughed and kissed his cheek when he said that. Once I was older, she explained it waslustat first sight and later developed into love. That sounded more realistic.
I re-threaded my needle, knotted the end, and worked on the next seam. We stayed in silence like that for several minutes, me working, him watching, our breaths settling into something rhythmic and deep.
“If you wish,” he murmured as though not wanting to startle me again, “you can make things for yourself. I don’t mean for this space to only be for you to work on our bargain.”
That explained the various rolls of different fabric—far more than I’d requested in my shopping list. I nodded in acknowledgement, needle dipping and rising, thread going slack then taut.
“And”—he paused—“and I know you took all your meals in here yesterday. You’re not a slave, you know. We abhor—”
“I know. Everyone in Albion knows—it’s illegal in our country for a reason.” The fae hated slavery, and engaging in it was a surefire way to get yourself damned. Papa had said it was because some unscrupulous craftsfolk, like the cobblers and spinners in the stories, had once set traps to enslave fair folk to work for them tirelessly without pay. “But if I’m not a slave, then what am I?”
I didn’t dare look at him. The silence ticked on.
He shifted, sleeve rustling against the table. “I didn’t make myself clear when we made our bargain. I’ll pay you for your work, a more than fair wage.”
I could’ve laughed. For all the years I’d spent desperate for money, now I was surrounded by wealth and finally understood it wasn’t the money itself that I’d needed. It was what it offered.
Options. Opportunities. Freedom.
And here I was with money, but none of those things.
Oh, the bitter irony.
In Elfhame, I was property or perhaps a curiosity—the fae lord’s pet human. Even if he didn’t think that way, everyone else did.
Even if I made all the money I needed or wanted, I’d never get to go where I wished, do what I wanted, move to a bigger city and open my own atelier. Although I’d let go of that dream a long time ago, in Briarbridge I still had the chance to one day change my mind andtryto pursue it. But here?
For all Lysander’s home was beautiful, it was a prison. It could never be my home.
