The trunk sat open at the foot of Kat’s bed like a mouth waiting to swallow what little she owned.
It was a small trunk, old and battered, with tarnished brass corners that had once gleamed but were now dulled to a greenish-brown patina.
The lock stuck when she tried it, requiring her to jiggle the key just so before it would catch.
One of the servants had dragged it up from the cellar earlier that evening, leaving it just inside her door without a word, without even meeting her eyes.
The sound it had made when they’d dropped it—a hollow thud against the worn floorboards—still echoed in her memory.
No one had offered to help her pack.
No one had come to see if she needed anything.
No one had asked if she was frightened, or sad, or if she wanted to talk about what was happening.
But then, why would they?
She’d been packing for herself, caring for herself, for as long as she could remember.
The servants had learned long ago not to show her kindness—Lady Vivienne didn’t tolerate it.
Any maid who’d been caught being gentle with Kat had been dismissed or reassigned to the most unpleasant duties.
It was safer for everyone if they simply pretended, she didn’t exist.
Kat knelt beside the trunk, her knees pressing into the threadbare rug that covered the floor of her small room.
The rug had once been beautiful, she thought—she could still see traces of a floral pattern in the faded threads—but years of use had worn it thin in places, and the edges were fraying.
Like everything else in her room, it was a castoff, something deemed too shabby for the rest of the house but good enough for the cursed daughter.
She ran her hand along the inside of the trunk, feeling the rough wood beneath her fingertips.
It smelled of dust and old leather and something musty that spoke of years spent in darkness.
There were scratches on the bottom, as if someone had once kept something sharp inside.
She wondered whose trunk this had been, what journeys it had made before being relegated to the cellar.
Had it carried a bride’s trousseau once?
A soldier’s belongings?
Books and treasures and all the things that made up a life?
Now it would carry hers.
All of it.
Everything she was, everything she owned, packed into this small, battered box.
Kat took a steadying breath and began folding her dresses.
There were more than usual—seven in total, and to her surprise, they weren’t her typical worn gray and brown castoffs.
These were newer, nicer.
Still simple, nothing like the elaborate gowns Celeste wore with their layers of silk and lace and embroidered bodices but made of better fabric in muted shades of deep blue, soft gray, burgundy, and brown.
Dresses that wouldn’t shame the family name.
Dresses that would make it look as though she’d been cared for, cherished even.
For appearances only, of course.
Her mother wouldn’t want the Archduke—or anyone else—to think the Ashfords had mistreated their daughter.
Better to send her north looking like a proper lady, even if she’d spent her whole life dressed in rags and locked away like a shameful secret.
Better to maintain the fiction that Katriana Ashford had been a beloved daughter, raised with care and affection, rather than the truth—that she’d been a prisoner in her own home, fed scraps and dressed in castoffs and beaten when she made too much noise.
It was soft, well-made, the weave tight and even.
The color reminded her of twilight, that brief moment between day and night when the sky turned deep and rich.
Under different circumstances, she might have been grateful.
She might have thanked her mother, might have felt touched by the gesture.
But she knew what it was: a costume.
A lie stitched in thread and dyed wool.
A pretty wrapping for a package no one wanted.
Still, she folded each one carefully and laid them in the trunk—all except the soft gray dress, which she set aside for tomorrow.
She would wear that when the Archduke’s representative arrived.
Simple, modest, unremarkable.
Perfect for a bride no one wanted.
The gray would make her red hair less noticeable, would help her blend into the background the way she’d learned to do all her life.
Her underthings went in next—plain cotton shifts and stockings with darned heels.
She’d mended those stockings herself, sitting by candlelight in the evenings, her needle moving in and out of the worn fabric.
Some of the darning was clumsy, the stitches uneven, but she’d done her best.
No one had ever taught her how to sew properly.
She’d learned by watching through keyholes, by studying the maids when they didn’t know she was there.
A single pair of worn leather shoes, the soles thin from years of pacing her small room.
A shawl that had once been her grandmother’s, the only thing she owned that had any real value, though it was moth-eaten now and fraying at the edges.
Kat paused, holding the shawl in her hands.
It was made of fine wool, soft as a cloud, dyed a deep forest green that had faded over the years to something gentler, like moss in shadow.
Her grandmother had died when Kat was five—too young to remember her clearly, but old enough to have vague impressions.
A kind voice.
Soft hands.
The smell of lavender.
This shawl was all she had left of her.
She remembered the day her mother had given it to her—or rather, thrown it at her.
Kat had been ten, maybe eleven, shivering in her cold room during a particularly harsh winter.
Lady Vivienne had come to her door, this shawl in her hands, and for a moment Kat had thought—had hoped—that her mother was bringing her something warm out of kindness.
“Your grandmother left this for you,” Lady Vivienne had said, her voice flat.
“Though God knows why.
She always did have a soft spot for lost causes.” Then she’d tossed the shawl onto Kat’s bed and left without another word.
Kat had cried that night, wrapped in her grandmother’s shawl, breathing in the faint scent of lavender that still clung to the fibers.
She’d cried for the grandmother she barely remembered, for the kindness she’d never known, for the mother who looked at her with such cold contempt.
She folded the shawl now with careful hands and placed it in the trunk.
Whatever else she left behind, she would take this.
This small piece of someone who had loved her, even if she couldn’t remember it.
Her brush and comb went in next, the bristles bent from years of battling her unruly hair.
The handle of the brush was cracked, and she’d wrapped it with thread to keep it from splitting further. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
A small wooden box that contained her few treasures: a ribbon she’d found in the garden when she was seven, a smooth stone from the courtyard fountain, three buttons that had fallen off one of Marcus’s coats.
The ribbon was faded now, its original bright pink dulled to a soft rose.
She’d found it caught in the rose bushes one summer morning when she’d been allowed outside for a brief hour—a rare privilege, granted only because her parents were away, and the servants had taken pity on her.
She’d been so excited to find something pretty, something that wasn’t gray or brown or worn.
She’d tied it in her hair and felt, for just a moment, like a normal girl.
Like someone who might be pretty.
Her mother had ripped it out when she’d returned, leaving Kat’s scalp stinging and her eyes watering.
“Don’t put on airs,” Lady Vivienne had hissed.
“A ribbon won’t make you any less cursed.”
But Kat had kept it, anyway, hidden in her small box of treasures.
Because it was hers.
Because she’d found it.
Because for one brief, shining moment, it had made her feel beautiful.
The stone was smooth and gray, worn by water until it was perfectly round.
She’d taken it from the courtyard fountain during another of her rare outdoor excursions.
She liked to hold it sometimes, to feel its coolness in her palm, to imagine all the places the water might have carried it before it ended up in the Ashford fountain.
The buttons were mother-of-pearl, iridescent in the light, catching rainbows when she turned them just right.
Marcus had never noticed they were missing.
He had so many fine things, so many beautiful clothes.
But Kat had noticed them on the floor of the hallway, and she’d picked them up and kept them because they were the prettiest things she’d ever seen.
Foolish things.
Worthless things.
A faded ribbon, a smooth stone, three buttons.
But they were hers.
They were proof that she existed, that she’d lived, that she’d found small moments of beauty in a life that had offered so little.
She closed the wooden box and placed it carefully in the trunk, nestling it between her folded shifts where it wouldn’t rattle.
And books.
She could bring books, couldn’t she?
Kat turned to look at the shelves that lined her small room.
Not the grand library downstairs—that belonged to the family, even if she was the only one who ever used it.
These were her books, the ones she’d been allowed to keep in her room over the years.
Novels and poetry, histories and herbals, a few volumes on astronomy that she’d read so many times the pages were soft as cloth, the spines cracked and mended with careful strips of paper.
She could take six.
She’d counted the space in the trunk carefully—six would fit if she packed them just right, if she arranged them along one side and filled the spaces between with her softer things.
Her hands hovered over the spines, and she felt her throat tighten.
How did you choose?
How did you decide which parts of yourself to carry forward and which to leave behind?