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Poor communication skills? The bastard brothers have sent me a maid who can’t speak!

A maid who could not be forced to tell me the truth if I was clever enough to ask the right questions.

“I am so sorry,” I whispered, taking a quick step backwards to allow her into the room. “Have you read this note?”

Delia gave me a knowing look as she strode past me and set down a breakfast tray at the end of my bed. It told me all I needed to know—that she had indeed read the note, she was well acquainted with Wren, and that we would, in fact, get along very well.

When her hands were free, she gestured to the stitching across her mouth and shrugged as if to say that she was used to it. I decided not to do her the dishonour of apologising again, and instead focussed my attention on the food.

Thanking her for bringing the tray up for me, I settled in the middle of the bed with my legs crossed and began to dig in. I’d eaten about three meals worth of food at breakfast the previous morning, which was fortunate, considering the House was shunning me, but the early sense of hunger was already stirring in my belly again.

Delia left the room, but she didn’t close the door. A moment later, she returned carrying fresh linen and clothes, which she placed beyond the sheer curtain in the bathroom, and then kicked the bedroom door shut behind her when she came back once more with a large wooden bucket.

I froze with a porcelain cup of coffee halfway to my mouth.

The wooden bucket was familiar—a dark, stained walnut plated with iron rims. Delia’s hands were placed strategically against the wood, and I’d seen the burn marks on Lucais’s throat when they’d shoved his head into it…

She paused before the curtain, looking at me over her shoulder like my growing fear had taken physical form and struck her over the back of her head.

She gave me a pointed look and nodded, and then glanced down at herself with the same expression and shook her head gently.

I put my cup down before I dropped it and asked, “It won’t hurt me because I’m human?”

A reassuring nod.

“But why do you even have it?”

Delia filled her cheeks with air to emphasise the stitches sealing her mouth, and I winced at the way they tugged at her skin. When she continued her walk into the bathroom, I could have sworn her shoulders were moving with silent laughter.

I could not imagine being able to laugh at all after someone did that to my mouth. I could not imagine why Lucaishadn’t done anything about it, or why Delia had remained in his service if he was refusing to help her—or worse, ifhehad done it.

And I couldn’t ask her, either.

But I had no time to consider these things any further, because as soon as Delia began her work in the bathroom, I realised that the House truly was trying to oust me.

She’d brought the bucket in for the purpose of filling the bath with hot water because the marble tub had no taps or drain, and the House was being obstinate.

Delia began hauling the bucket back and forth from the sink, and I discarded my breakfast to offer her some help. I tried to tell her not to bother because the idea of manually emptying it out afterwards seemed exhausting, but she wouldn’t hear it. Waving me off, she continued moving with graceful ease between the marble tub and sink until the enormous bath was nearly half-filled with steaming water.

She motioned for me to undress and climb in while she retrieved a comb from the counter. I obeyed if only to avoid causing her any more grief than she was already receiving on a regular basis from Wren.

As Delia began to pull the comb through my hair, twisting and twirling it until my curls were more pronounced than ever before, I quietly mused on Wren’s behaviour from the previous night. Not only the things he’d told me, but the way he’d spoken to me, the way he’d looked…

The way he’d looked at me.

I wish things were different.

After he’d left, I had spent the rest of the day perched on the window seat, reading the book he’d given me. It was a story about star-crossed lovers that felt far too soft for his tastes, detailing a time in Faerie’s history whenLesser Faewas still a commonplace term.

The main character was a young High Fae man called Micael who came from a noble house, and he was falling in love with a Swapling—which I realised was the word being used to describe a Shapeshifter—called Livia, who had been enslaved to his family.

Despite the author’s insinuations that their relationship bordered on the unnatural and blasphemous, it hit all the right spots for a romantic tragedy and had me completely entranced. I’d read until my eyes started to sting, and then I’d carried it back to the bed with me and left it at my side while I curled up beneath the covers and thought about the enormous, brutish High Fae who’d given it to me reading it himself through every storm.

The thought was somehow warm, if thoughts could be considered by temperature, and I had drifted off to sleep feeling less lonely than I had in years.

I didn’t like Wren. He didn’t like me, either. But we didn’t have to like each other in order to understand.

Except before I had a chance to finish processing our newfound understanding, he’d proceeded to send me a snarky message the very next morning, accompanied by a poorly written note.