“Except Katriana,” Celeste said softly, and there was something in her voice—something that might have been sympathy if Kat didn’t know better.
“Poor Katriana, sent away to marry a monster.”
But when Kat looked at her sister, she saw that tiny smile again, that flash of triumph quickly hidden behind the handkerchief.
Celeste had won.
She’d been saved from an undesirable match, and Kat was being sacrificed in her place.
And Celeste was pleased about it, no matter how many tears she shed.
“When?” Kat asked, and was surprised that her voice came out steady, no stutter.
Perhaps she was too shocked for fear now, too numb for anxiety.
“The Archduke’s representative will arrive tomorrow to escort you north,” her father said.
“You leave the day after.
I suggest you spend tonight preparing yourself.” His eyes raked over her dismissively, taking in her plain gray dress, her wild hair, her thin frame.
“Though I doubt there’s much that can be done.”
“Perhaps she should wear a veil,” Marcus suggested with a smirk.
“So, the Archduke doesn’t flee in terror before the ceremony.
Though given his own appearance, perhaps they’ll make a matching pair.
Beauty and the Beast, except both are beasts.”
He laughed at his own joke, and their father’s lips twitched in what might have been amusement.
Celeste’s sobs had quieted to delicate sniffles now.
She peeked over her handkerchief at Kat, and for just a moment—so brief that Kat almost thought she’d imagined it—her sister’s lips curved in a tiny, triumphant smile.
Then the tears were back, the perfect picture of a frightened, grateful girl who’d been saved from a terrible fate.
“Oh, Katriana,” Celeste breathed, reaching out as if to take her hand, her voice trembling with false emotion.
“I’m so sorry it has to be you.
If there were any other way—if I were stronger, braver—I would go myself.
But I’m so frightened of him, of his scars and his temper and those terrible rumors.
I don’t think I could bear it.”
Kat stepped back instinctively, avoiding her sister’s touch, and hurt flashed across Celeste’s face—hurt that looked real but that Kat knew was as false as everything else about her sister.
Celeste was an accomplished actress.
She could cry on command, could make her voice break at exactly the right moment, could look wounded or frightened or grateful with perfect precision.
“But there isn’t another way,” Lady Vivienne said firmly, her arm tightening around Celeste’s shoulders.
“Celeste is meant for better things.
A duke’s son from the south has been making inquiries, and we won’t jeopardize that match by sending her north to that scarred brute.
You understand, don’t you, Katriana?
Celeste’s future is too important to risk.”
The implication was clear: Kat’s future wasn’t important at all.
Kat’s future could be thrown away without a second thought.
“The matter is settled,” Lord Edmund declared, returning to his chair and picking up the glass of brandy that sat on the table beside it.
He took a sip, savoring it, as if this conversation had been nothing more than a minor interruption to his afternoon.
“You’re dismissed, Katriana.
And do try to make yourself presentable for the representative’s arrival.
We don’t want him reporting back that we’re sending the Archduke a complete savage.”
Kat stood frozen for a moment, her mind reeling, trying to process everything that had just happened.
Tomorrow.
She had one day left in the only home she’d ever known—not that it had ever truly felt like home.
One day before she was sent north to marry a man rumored to be a monster, to live in a castle of nightmares, to face a temper that might very well kill her.
She should be terrified.
She was terrified.
But underneath the fear, something else stirred.
Something small and fragile and dangerous.
Hope.
Because anywhere—even the Shadow Lord’s castle, even into the arms of a scarred, rage-filled archduke—anywhere had to be better than here.
“Y-yes, Father,” she managed, dropping into a curtsy that her mother had never bothered to teach her properly, so it came out awkward and graceless, her knees bending at the wrong angle, her head dipping too low.
“Th-thank you for informing me.”
She turned to leave, her vision blurring with tears she refused to let fall in front of them.
She would not give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
She would not let them see how deeply their words had cut, how thoroughly they’d shattered what little remained of her heart.
“Katriana,” her mother called out, stopping her at the door.
Kat turned back, some foolish part of her hoping for—what?
A kind word?
A moment of maternal concern?
Some small gesture that might suggest Lady Vivienne felt even a shred of guilt about sending her daughter away to an uncertain fate.
Lady Vivienne’s expression was cold as winter frost, her blue eyes hard as ice.
“Do try not to embarrass us more than you already have,” she said, her voice carrying clearly across the room.
“The Ashford name may mean nothing to you, but it means everything to the rest of us.
When you go north, you’ll be representing this family.
Try to remember that, even if you can’t manage to be anything other than what you are.”
“Of course, M-mother,” Kat whispered, her voice breaking on the word.
She fled then, her composure finally cracking as she stumbled through the corridors back to her library.
Behind her, she could hear Marcus’ laughter echoing off the walls, loud and cruel and triumphant.
And beneath it, Celeste’s voice, sweet as poisoned honey, pitched just loud enough for Kat to hear:
“Poor Katriana.
I do hope the Archduke isn’t too cruel to her.
Though I suppose she’s used to cruelty by now.”
More laughter.
The sound of glasses clinking—a toast, perhaps, to celebrate being rid of the family curse.
Kat’s feet carried her through the corridors on autopilot, her vision blurred with tears, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps.
She passed servants who pressed themselves against the walls to let her pass, their faces carefully blank.
They’d heard, of course.
Servants always heard everything.
By tomorrow, everyone in the household would know that the cursed daughter was being sent away, married off to the monster of the north.
She wondered if they’d be relieved.
If they’d celebrate her departure just as her family was celebrating.
The library door appeared before her, and she pushed through it, stumbling inside and letting it close behind her with a soft click that sounded like a cell door locking.
She stood there for a moment, her back pressed against the door, her whole body shaking.
Then her legs gave out, and she slid down to the floor, her gray skirts pooling around her, her head falling forward into her hands.
She didn’t cry.
Not yet.
She was too shocked for tears, too numb to feel anything beyond a vast, hollow emptiness.
Married.
She was going to be married.
To a man she’d never met, a man rumored to be a monster, a man who lived in the frozen north among pagans and old gods and ancient, terrible things.
She should be terrified.
And she was—terror sat in her stomach like a stone, cold and heavy and impossible to ignore.
But beneath the terror, that small spark of hope continued to burn.