“Were you indeed?” Lady Nirella’s tone suggested she found this claim about as credible as the existence of economical goblins. “How fortuitous that I’ve saved you the trouble.”
Before Mariselle could formulate a suitably respectful retort, the door burst open and a harried-looking footman appeared.
“My lady, I’ve searched the morning room, the blue parlor, and—” He caught sight of Mariselle and stopped short. “Oh. Lady Mariselle. Your mother has been asking for you.”
“How convenient that you’ve found her loitering in my presence,” Lady Nirella remarked dryly. “You may inform Lady Clemenbell that her daughter is attending me.”
The footman bowed and retreated, but not quickly enough to escape Lady Clemenbell herself, who swept into the room like an agitated thundercloud.
“Mariselle! I’ve had half the household looking everywhere for—” Her mother’s voice cut off abruptly as she registered her daughter’s appearance. Her face drained of color. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO YOUR HAIR?”
Mariselle winced at the volume. “Good morning, Mother.”
Lady Clemenbell advanced, circling Mariselle as if inspecting an offensive sculpture. “Is this—are you—” She appeared to be having difficulty forming complete sentences. “Blue! Your hair isblue!”
“How remarkably observant,” Lady Nirella murmured.
“I believe,” Mariselle said with admirable composure, “that it may be the result of the bracelet Lord Evryn gifted me yesterday. A simple enchantment gone awry, perhaps. He found it at that charming little curiosities shop and most likely didn’t realize it contained a spell of some sort.”
Lady Clemenbell clutched dramatically at her chest. “Vesper’s Curiosities & Oddities? Well ofcourseit contained a spell! That Rowanwood boy has done this deliberately! This is an outrage! What will people say?”
“They will say,” Lady Nirella interjected coolly, “that the young Lord Rowanwood has a surprisingly whimsical sense of humor, and that my granddaughter carries off an unusual hair color with remarkable elegance. Now, Clemenbell, I require a private audience with Mariselle regarding matters that do not concern you.”
Lady Clemenbell drew herself up like an offended peacock. “Mother Brightcrest, with all due respect, anything concerning my daughter most certainly does concern me.”
“Does it?” Lady Nirella tilted her head. “How fascinating that you’ve onlyjust remembered this fact, when you’ve spent years devoting all your attention to Ellowa.” She gave a dismissive wave of her hand and turned away from Mariselle’s mother. “I shall ring when we’ve concluded our discussion.”
Mariselle bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smirking as her mother’s face flushed. Lady Clemenbell opened her mouth, closed it, then turned on her heel and stormed out, her magic slamming the door with enough force to rattle the ornaments on the mantelpiece.
“You shouldn’t provoke her so,” Mariselle said, though she couldn’t keep the appreciation from her voice. “She’ll be impossible for days now.”
“Your mother has been impossible since the day she married into this family,” Lady Nirella replied dismissively. “Now, show me your hand.”
Mariselle hesitated only briefly before extending her right hand. It wasn’t as though she could refuse. She bit her lip as her eyes traced over the glimmering silver lines of the fake ‘soulbond.’ How furious would her grandmother be when she realized what it truly signified?
Lady Nirella took Mariselle’s hand in her own and leaned over it, examining the mark with such intensity that Mariselle half expected it to begin smoking under the scrutiny.
“Hmm,” Lady Nirella said finally. Then she reached toward the small side table, her gloved fingers closing around a leather volume whose presence Mariselle had missed until this moment. She opened the book to a marked page and held it beside Mariselle’s hand. The illustration depicted what appeared to be an identical mark, rendered in meticulous detail.
Mariselle’s stomach plummeted. The charade was over. Whatever differences existed between a genuine soulbond mark and the contract mark on Mariselle’s hand, her grandmother would discover them now. She felt light-headed with panic, her carefully constructed plans dissolving around her.
A wild impulse seized her—to confess everything, to pour out the truth about the cottage, about accidentally agreeing to the contract, about her hopes and plans for Dreamland. If anyone might understand her fascination with the abandoned attraction, it would be the woman who had experienced it at the height of its splendor. Her grandmother, who had shared tantalizing fragments of Dreamland’s wonders throughout Mariselle’s childhood, painting pictures with words of a place where imagination became reality.
She opened her mouth, on the verge of revealing everything, when hergrandmother snapped the book shut and pronounced, “It does indeed appear to be a true soulbond. How extraordinarily inconvenient.”
Mariselle hesitated. Closed her mouth. Relief flooded through her, followed by the reminder that she needed to maintain the pretense of being helplessly, desperately enamored with Evryn Rowanwood. “Inconvenient?” she repeated, feigning indignation. “But Grandmother, I love?—”
“Stop.” Lady Nirella set the book aside and took both of Mariselle’s hands in hers. “My dear, you do notlovehim,” she said gently, her eyes filled with a compassion that Mariselle rarely witnessed in her family. “What you’re experiencing is old magic interfering with your heart’s natural inclinations, placing emotions within you that were never truly yours to begin with.”
Unlike her parents’ hysterical objections, her grandmother’s calm rationality created a space where Mariselle felt she might actually be heard rather than merely lectured at. The absence of histrionics was almost startling after her mother’s near perpetual state of crisis.
“Would it really be so bad, Grandmother? To marry a Rowanwood?”
Lady Nirella was silent for a long moment, her gaze distant as though she were seeing beyond the confines of the room, perhaps into the past itself. “Yes,” she said, refocusing on Mariselle. “It would be.”
Her quiet declaration carried the weight of absolute conviction, yet Mariselle remained confused. The more she interacted with the Rowanwoods, the more this ancient animosity seemed like a relic that had outlived its purpose.
“What really happened, Grandmother?” she asked, her voice quiet but earnest. “All those years ago. What could possibly justify maintaining this feud for generations?”
