Marie squeezes my shoulder, a knowing look on her face. She’s helped me get ready for years, but this is always where she leaves me. She can do nothing for this ache—the burn of knowing that I am nothing more than a currency for my parents to trade.
My bedroom door creaks open, and my mother steps inside. I avoid meeting her gaze in the mirror, turning and busying myself with pulling on my stockings and fastening the stays to my slip.
It’s been months since I’ve looked my mother in the eye. The last time I did, I was screaming at her until I lost my voice. She’d traded Aidia to a monster for the greater good of the family, even when she saw the damage done. I was more angry about my sister being used that way than I am about it happening to me for a second time.
Her reflection appears in the mirror, her appearance so like my own it’s like looking thirty-five years into my future. Her hair is still a dark raven-black, but instead of making her look young, it ages her. The color is too stark against her pale skin and plays up the prominent lines around her violet eyes—eyes that are only purple and blessed with magic sight because my father gave her a family heirloom ring that grants her the same vision the rest of us have by blood.
She’s still striking, with her tall, statuesque figure, high cheekbones, and full lips. Despite the lack of glamour, she still looks younger than she is—beautiful in a cold, calculating way that I would probably respect more if she weren’t my mother.
Even her aura is similar to mine: a bright golden swirl around her that remains close to her skin. Her blessing from Harvain is far kinder than mine. The Divine of Fortune loves to give eclectic gifts, and my mother’s is no exception. Her gift is retro-cognition. While most people would have seen it as useless, she landed my father because of the way she was able to glimpse into any political adversary’s past and find unseemly things. She gained my father’s attention by warning him about a plot another house had hatched against him. She’s kept his allegiance for years by continuing to find past sins of all the magical families in Lunameade.
I’ve watched her aura stretching out and probing guests for information at every event of the high houses we attend. None of them are the wiser, because you can’t fight off magic you can’t see or feel.
There was a time I worried she might realize what I’ve been doing in my free time, but she doesn’t like to look into her children’s pasts. That would require looking at her own failures, and that’s a thing she cannot abide.
My mother’s gaze drops to my star necklace and her hand instinctively comes up to the ruby pendant around her own throat. I haven’t asked Aidia, but I suspect that she’s stopped refilling my mother’s necklace with glamour magic. I respect my sister for the protest because there are few things more reliable than our mother’s vanity.
“Excellent work. You’re dismissed, Marie,” my mother says.
Marie gives me a wary glance before seeing herself out.
“Did you need something else, or are you simply here to fill me in on what you’re planning ahead of time for once?” I say as I run a finger over the belladonna flower embroidery along the edges of my purple silk dress.
My mother blows out a weary sigh. “Don’t sulk, Harlow. If we’d told you ahead of time, you would have just thrown a fit like you did with Aidia. You’re always so dramatic about these things—as if duty is optional. We all do things we don’t want to. It’s part of what it means to be a Carrenwell. We have to put the needs of the city first, not ourselves. You haven’t complained about any of your other siblings’ marriages.”
It’s not that I don’t care about my siblings, but most of them were too much older to bother with me. They’ve all married people they wantedto, and the only other sibling I cared about, Kellan, had been in love with his wife, Libby, since they were teenagers. I always knew he would be okay. It was Aidia and I who were the outliers—young and stubborn and ready to put up a fight.
Sometimes I wonder if they agreed to marry her off to Rafe to break both of us. Unfortunately for them, it had the opposite effect.
“You say that like I haven’t already done this once,” I snap. “You can’t just use the same ‘you owe us’ excuse every time.”
My mother holds up a placating hand. “They’ve been operating under our noses all this time and we have no idea if they’re actually coming home to us or planning our demise. This isn’t just about our family, Harlow. This is about the safety of the city. We don’t trust the Havenwoods.”
“So you’ll throw another daughter into the fire,” I say.
I adjust the sleeves of my dress, and my mother begins to button it.
“You’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, as you love to remind me all the time,” she says.
I want to argue, but she’s right.
“I know you think I haven’t been a good mother to you, but you should consider that it’s impossible to be a good mother to you, a good partner to your father, and a good ruler of Lunameade. So often those priorities are in conflict with each other.”
“How difficult for you,” I say.
“I can take your anger. It’s all you’ve ever given me. But I know how you feel. I share your victories just like I share your losses.”
I don’t like the way the words twist between my ribs like weeds looking for a place to grow. No matter how much I’ve hardened myself against her comfort, it doesn’t get any easier. It’s her trick, giving me a glimpse of her potential. I’ve always understood the impulse of wanting a mother, but when I’ve felt it, I’ve always imagined some alchemy of generic soft hands and tight hugs and the scent of rosebushes. What I want is the idea of a mother, not the woman standing beside me.
She fastens the last button, and I turn to face her. The admission that something is wrong with my magic is on the tip of my tongue. But telling her would require explaining what I was doing sneaking out. I don’t have it in me to give up the last escape hatch in my life, especially when I know she wouldn’t change her plan for the sake of my safety.
There are so many things I would like to say to her, but every time I give her a chance to be better and she chooses not to, it breaks me into smaller pieces. I’m already past the point of being certain I can reassemble myself, and I can’t take the reminder of my own brokenness when I need so badly to be strong.
A loud knock on the door shatters the silence between us. My mother rushes to let my father in.
He stands with his hands clasped behind his back in the practiced, militant posture of a man who always shows up ready to war with me.
My mother gives him an expectant nod.
