In her twenty years, she could count on one hand the number of times she’d been summoned to the family’s presence, and each occasion had left fresh wounds on her already battered soul.
There had been the time when she was ten, called down to be informed that her childhood nurse—the only person who’d ever shown her genuine affection—was being dismissed for “filling the child’s head with nonsense about her being special.” There had been the time when she was fifteen, summoned to stand silent while her mother explained to a visiting duchess why the Ashfords kept their eldest daughter hidden away: “A family tragedy, you understand.
The girl is simple-minded, prone to fits.
We keep her comfortable, but she’s not fit for society.” The lie had been delivered so smoothly, so convincingly, that Kat had almost believed it herself.
And there had been the time, just last year, when Marcus had dragged her down to the drawing room to show her off to his friends as a curiosity—”Come see the family ghost,” he’d laughed, while his companions had stared at her red hair and pale skin and made jokes about witches and changelings.
She’d stood there, trembling and silent, while they’d circled her like wolves around wounded prey, until finally her father had dismissed her with a disgusted wave of his hand.
Each summons had been a fresh humiliation.
A new reminder of her place—or rather, her lack of one.
“Of course,” she managed, her voice coming out smaller than she’d intended.
She set the book aside with trembling hands, marking her place carefully even though she knew exactly where she’d been, even though she’d read this particular passage so many times she could recite it from memory.
Habit.
Routine.
The small rituals that gave structure to her shapeless days.
She stood; her legs unsteady after hours of sitting curled in the window seat.
Her plain gray dress—the color her mother insisted she wear, claiming it made her “less noticeable,” though Kat suspected it was really meant to make her look like a servant, like someone who didn’t belong to the family at all—hung loose on her thin frame.
She’d lost weight over the summer.
The meals had been smaller, less frequent.
She suspected the kitchen staff had been instructed to reduce her portions.
Another small cruelty, so minor that it would be impossible to prove, impossible to protest.
She smoothed down the skirt with shaking hands, trying to make herself presentable, though she knew it was futile.
Nothing could make her presentable in her family’s eyes.
Not the dress, not her posture, not any amount of effort.
Her hair alone condemned her—those wild red curls that refused to be tamed, that marked her as different, as other, as wrong.
She followed the butler’s rigid back through the library door and into the corridor beyond.
The hallway was dim after the bright sunlight of the library, and Kat’s eyes took a moment to adjust.
The walls were paneled in dark wood, hung with portraits of Ashford ancestors going back generations.
Stern-faced men and elegant women, all of them with dark hair or blonde, all of them with the proper coloring, the right features.
None of them with red hair.
None of them cursed.
She’d studied these portraits during her rare excursions through the house, had memorized the faces and the names written on small plaques beneath each frame.
She’d searched for someone, anyone, who might look like her, who might explain where her red hair had come from.
But there was no one.
The Ashford line was unbroken in its blonde-haired, blue-eyed perfection.
Except for her.
Her mother had once told her, during one of her rare moments of speaking to Kat directly, that red hair sometimes appeared in families as a sign of infidelity, of bad blood, of a stain on the family tree.
“Though your father is too proud to admit it,” Lady Vivienne had said, her voice dripping with venom, “everyone knows what your hair means.
Everyone knows you’re a curse.”
Kat didn’t know if that was true.
Her father had never denied her, had never publicly questioned her parentage.
But he’d never claimed her either, never showed her any affection or acknowledgment beyond the bare minimum required by law and social convention.
She existed in a strange limbo—acknowledged enough to bear the family name, but rejected enough to be hidden away like a shameful secret.
The corridor seemed longer than usual, stretching out endlessly before her.
Or perhaps it was just that her feet were dragging, her body instinctively trying to delay whatever awaited her in the drawing room.
Each step felt heavy, weighted with dread.
They passed the music room, and Kat caught a glimpse through the open door of the pianoforte where Celeste practiced every afternoon.
Her sister’s music was always perfect, each note precise and lovely.
Kat had taught herself to play by ear during one of her rare unsupervised moments in that room, had discovered she had a natural talent for it.
But when her mother had discovered her touching the keys—had heard the music and come running, thinking it was Celeste—she’d flown into a rage.
Kat’s hands still remembered the pain.
Her mother had grabbed a ruler from the music stand and struck her hands over and over, not stopping until blood ran down Kat’s fingers and dripped onto the ivory keys.
“How dare you,” Lady Vivienne had hissed with each strike.
“How dare you touch what belongs to your sister.
How dare you presume you have any right to make music, to make beauty, when you yourself are so ugly.”
Kat had been banned from the music room after that.
Her hands had taken weeks to heal, and even now, years later, she could still see the faint scars across her knuckles.
They passed the portrait gallery, where a massive painting of the family hung in pride of place.
It had been commissioned five years ago, and Kat was not in it.
The official story was that she’d been ill the day the painter came.
The truth was that her mother had simply not wanted her included.
The painting showed Lord Edmund in his finest coat, Lady Vivienne in sapphire silk, Marcus standing tall and handsome, and Celeste seated prettily in the foreground, the jewel of the family.
The perfect Ashfords.
Unmarred by any cursed daughter.
Kat’s chest tightened as they passed it.
She’d seen that painting a hundred times, and it never stopped hurting—that visual confirmation that she was not part of this family, not really, that she’d been erased from their story as thoroughly as if she’d never been born.
The butler’s footsteps were crisp and even on the polished wood floors.
Kat’s were quieter, hesitant.
She could hear her own heartbeat pounding in her ears, could feel sweat beginning to prickle at the back of her neck despite the coolness of the corridor.
What had she done?
What new transgression had been discovered?
Had someone seen her at the window?
Had a servant reported that she’d been reading books on paganism and old gods?
Had her mother finally decided that even the library was too good for her, that she should be locked in her room entirely?
Or perhaps—and this thought made her stomach drop—perhaps they’d finally decided she was too much of an embarrassment to keep at all.
Perhaps they were sending her away to an asylum, or a convent, or some other place where inconvenient daughters could be permanently disposed of.
Her breathing was coming faster now, shallow and quick.
She tried to calm herself, tried to remember the breathing exercises she’d read about in a book on Eastern philosophies.
Breathe in for four counts, hold for four, breathe out for four.
But her lungs wouldn’t cooperate, and the air felt thin and insufficient.
They turned a corner, and the drawing room doors came into view.
Ornate oak, carved with the family crest: a golden lion rampant on a field of blue, surrounded by a wreath of laurel leaves.
The lion’s mouth was open in a roar, its claws extended, its tail lashing.
A symbol of strength, of nobility, of power.
How many times had she traced that symbol in books, studying the heraldry of noble families, knowing she bore the name but would never truly belong to it?
The Ashford lion was famous, recognized throughout the kingdom.
It appeared on documents and seals, on the gates of the estate, on the livery of the servants.
It represented everything the family stood for: pride, power, prestige.
And she was the stain on that proud symbol.
The flaw in the perfect image.
The butler paused before the doors, his hand on the ornate brass handle.
He glanced back at her, and for just a moment, his professional mask slipped.
His expression softened almost imperceptibly, and he said in a voice so low it was barely a whisper: “Whatever happens in there, Lady Katriana, remember that you have survived worse.
You are stronger than they know.” Then the mask was back, and he opened the doors.