Page 5 of Apples Dipped in Gold
Jackal rose to his feet.
“Promises are binding, but they can be broken,” said Jackal. “Lies do the breaking, Llywelyn. There are always consequences for lies.”
Llywelyn straightened beneath my brother’s threat butsaid nothing. Jackal left the kitchen. Hans followed, and so did Michal, who shoved Llywelyn aside and stumbled after them, not sparing her a single glance. She sat, stunned, mouth open and eyes wide, realizing suddenly that she had chosen the wrong brother to seduce.
I grabbed my cloak and trailed behind my brothers, stopping at the door. Jackal had mounted Rooster, and Hans had hopped in the wood cart tethered to his harness. Since Michal was the last to join, he walked behind them as they made their way into the forest.
I watched them go and Llywelyn approached, pausing to look at me.
“Why do you stay here?” she asked. “You could leave while they are away.”
Her question felt like a trap, a way to trick me into saying something she could offer to my eldest brother.
“I belong here,” I answered.
Llywelyn gave a breathless laugh. “I thought there were consequences to lies, Samara.”
I looked at the woman, fair even in the pale morning light. It might be a lie, but for me, the truth always had greater consequences. It was something she would never understand.
“The church bells are ringing,” I said, and as the words left my mouth, a silver sound echoed in the faraway distance.
Llewelyn’s eyes grew wide and her cheeks red. “You cruel wench! You were supposed to warn me!”
She shoved past me, my shoulder slamming into the frame of the door as she sprinted across the frozen ground, down the winding road, and into the town of Gnat.
Chapter Two
A Handsome Prince
Samara
I watched my brothers until they were consumed by the forest, and for a brief moment, I found myself hoping they never returned, but my guilt was so great, I spoke aloud to whoever might have heard my thoughts.
“Forgive me. I know not what I think,” I said.
It would be better if I disappeared. I had nothing to offer Gnat, save what I did for my brothers, but there were a number of women, as Michal so often demonstrated, willing to fill my role, and they would do so happily.
Even knowing that, I did not leave. I couldn’t. Llywelyn was wrong. This house belonged to my parents. My father had built it, and my mother had made it beautiful with her paintings. They were buried in this ground. I could not leave them, and I could not leave Mouse or Rooster. They were my best friends, and Iwould never abandon them to the cruelty of my brothers no matter how often I dreamed of a different life—or none at all.
I closed the door and headed back to the kitchen where I gathered the dishes, sliding scraps into a bucket. I’d have to bury them later, since I could not be sure that Hans hadn’t poisoned what remained. I had only made that mistake once—tossing leftovers out the back, thinking that the birds or the deer might eat them, but the next morning, I’d found three dead wolves.
Hans had laughed—and then laughed harder when I’d had to bury them.
Once the dishes were washed, I moved upstairs to finish cleaning Jackal’s floor.
I lowered to my hands and knees, prying pieces of ceramic from between the cracks of the wooden floor with a knife. I suspected my brother had crushed them into the seams when I’d gone downstairs for another pitcher, and I knew if he found so much as a sliver of porcelain remaining, he’d break everything in the house in retaliation.
So I was careful, but the pieces were sharp and cut into my fingers. I did not mind the pain so much as the blood, because it reminded me of my dream, and my dream reminded me of the fae, and the fae reminded me that I had once been in love.
Foolishly in love.
And when I thought about love, I thought of everything that came with it and what I would never have—passion, protection, trust. I’d longed for someone to touch me because they desired me, and I’d wished for it only once. In the aftermath of that wish, whatever magichung heavy in the air forced me to cut off the only hand that had offered me any kindness.
When I was certain there was not a single shard of ceramic left, I scrubbed Jackal’s floor on my hands and knees and moved on to Michal’s and Hans’s rooms, then the staircase and the small living room, where I had to pause because the floor was covered in what appeared to be black soot—ashes from the fireplace.
Another one of Hans’s cruel jokes.
My face was suddenly flooded with heat, and my fingers curled into my palms. I was used to this feeling—this deep and painful anger—but this time, it frightened me because I couldn’t shove it down. Instead, I let it erupt and used it as I dragged the ash-covered rug outside and heaved it over the rotting wooden fence. I swiped a log from the ground and began to beat the rug.
