Page 78 of Stolen Threadwitch Bride
I needed to finish that suit, and Lysander needed to get the seed back. He would gain his full power and find a fae bride who’d live a long, long time, just like he would.
He’d be happy.
And I—I could go home and sew and one day help Rose look after her children.
It would be enough. Maybe not for joy, but for a quieter kind of happiness.
Becoming
Ileft the gloves between the aconite to press overnight and finished my offering for the Lady of the Lake. Another stone, covered and embellished. If she touched the stone and asked, light would appear.
When I crept to my room, neck, shoulders, and chest aching, I found three large trunks—the type I’d seen on the back of carriages. Was this Lysander’s way of asking me to pack and leave? I couldn’t blame him.
But inside, I recognised the brown folded blanket, the clothes beneath. They were mine. Tucked down the side, Mama’s mirror. In the next—my sewing tools in the box with a broken hinge. In the last were trinkets and Papa’s books.
Everything from the cottage.
The only thing missing was the furniture. I tried to laugh at the fact it had all arrived just as I was so close to leaving, but it came out as a grunt. At least I had my things—familiar scents and textures, the worn handle of the lamp I’d carried to bed every night since I was eight.
The hole in my chest opened to a crater.
Lysander had arranged this. I’d complained that I’d been taken away without my belongings and here they were. He must’ve had someone pack it all and bring the trunks here on a wagon. Was that the clatter of hooves I’d heard in the stable yard?
So much trouble, just for me.
He meant it as a comfort—yet another thoughtful gesture—but as I sorted through the items, I found my shoulders sinking. I put aside Papa’s books, my sewing tools, the little box of Mama’s hair combs, and the winged sabrecat statuette that she’d brought from distant Thanatolia.
The rest was junk.
Threadbare clothes and blankets. A cracked mirror that only gave a murky reflection. Chipped plates and blunt cutlery.
Why the hells had I cared about any of this? Why had I wanted it back? Why had I fought to return to it?
Even the smell… it was musty, not a trace of Mama and Papa anymore. How had I ever found it comforting?
That was why I’d cared. I hadn’t been clinging to the objects themselves, but to the familiarity. But I’d let familiarity and my own sense of control become too much, too important, and I’d lost myself in their lulling comfort. I’d let them blind me to anything else: to the dream of an atelier and to all I’d found in Elfhame—Lysander, this home, this life, this odd little family that I’d become a part of.
I hadn’t foughtforthat house in Briarbridge, butagainstchange.
But the world outside had changed in the short time I’d been in Elfhame—the aconite now blooming, lilac blossom unleashing its heady scent, the lengthening days.
Change was life.
Or life was change.
Either way, the only things that didn’t change were the dead. They were perfect glass-encased specimens captured in our memories, like the butterflies and cocoons in Lord Hawthorne’s study, never adapting, never growing, neverbecoming.
Iwanted to become.
* * *
The next day,I couldn’t put it off any longer. I finished the cuff of Lysander’s suit.
It was two days since I’d ended things, but facing him was still a challenge too far, so I left the suit folded on his desk. I couldn’t even write a note. What would I say? Much as I’d realised my mistake in clinging to the past, that didn’t change his future with a wife who was his match in power and lifespan or my inability to stay here and witness it.
I’d dreamt of butterflies, and their fluttering shapes clung to my thoughts all day as I busied myself. A thorough tidy of the workroom—fabrics folded and rolled, jars of beads lined up on their shelves, tools cleaned, oiled, and put away. If everything went to plan, I’d never sew in here again.
I’d hidden behind my old life, in a strange way grateful for the debts because they meant I didn’t have to face change.
