Page 2 of Voices in the Stars (The Lost Witch #1)

Thankfully, the chambermaid, Marie, had the bedroom that was right next to mine.

The stairs that ran up the center divided the upper section of the house.

The left side was reserved for Josi, Marie, and me while the other was an assortment of well-decorated bedrooms for the guests who never stayed.

Our parents were in a large room on the main floor.

There was one door that separated me from Marie.

It used to be Josi’s bedroom before she started moving her belongings to her fiancé, Ben’s house.

When I was in there last, only the bed remained.

So many wonderful memories had occurred in our rooms. Nights when we hid together, giggling, pretending that we couldn’t hear our parents calling for us to quiet down.

Now it was all gone. I was sure that within the next few days, even her bed would disappear.

Then, once she returned our nice set of trunks, it would be my turn.

To pack away every piece of myself and pretend it never existed.

A pit settled in my stomach. It felt like everything around me was changing except me.

Marie’s room was one of the easiest to recognize out of the three of ours.

She’d hung her paintings over the door. They were beautiful.

Most of them were charcoal sketches of a nearby lake she visited in the first few days of being here.

Our house was closer to it than where she had been living before.

I knocked on her door a few times, rocking my weight from foot to foot.

Shuffling faintly came from the other side of the door along with a muffled voice.

It opened a crack so light blue eyes could peer through it.

I parted my mouth in greeting, yelping instead as a hand grabbed me, pulling me into the room.

Marie shoved me until I was sitting on the edge of her bed. She glared at me, hands digging into her hips. I was older than her, but at that moment, I felt like her misbehaving child. I shifted against the soft bedding, rubbing the wrist she tugged. Disappointment radiated off her in angry waves.

“Hello to you, too,” I muttered, which was met with a roll of her eyes as she moved away from me.

The walls were white at one point. Now, every part of them was covered in drawings.

Most of them remained unfinished, unlike what she displayed outside.

They were partial sketches in here. Half of a forest. The head of a bird.

Experiments with the few colors she had.

Papers scattered along the wooden floor.

Most were filled with partial faces that gave the eerie feeling of constantly being watched.

Broken pieces of charcoal laid on top of them.

Her room was the same size as mine and Josi’s, but it felt much smaller than that. Pressed against the decorated walls were trunks that contained most of my clothing. They were dresses Adrian’s family bought me, so I had something presentable to wear while I was in their presence.

Guilt crawled through my stomach. I wished the trunks were kept in my room.

At least I had other places I could retreat to, unlike Marie, who was stuck in these claustrophobic walls.

I wasn’t trusted with anything nice like these.

A few too many stained dresses ruined any trust in me to keep these ones pristine.

Those chests were where she moved to so she could pull out one puffed up dress after another. My nose crinkled at the thought of being trapped within those dresses. It’s only for a few hours. For now. I tried to ignore my thoughts. Enough time had been spent dwelling on them today.

“Do you know the trouble you’ve already caused?” Marie snapped.

Her voice was hard to hear over the ruffling of fabric. The anger was harder to miss as dress after dress got tossed to the floor. Some I recognized as Josi’s, while others were new, tailored just for me.

“What trouble?” I feigned ignorance .

A dress was thrown at me in response. This one, I was present for when it was delivered by the tailor’s son.

It was hideous. It was a shade of green that reminded me of the basil that grew in our gardens.

There were puffy, tulle sleeves that stopped halfway to my elbow.

My skin crawled at the thought of being stuck in the scratchy material.

The skirt of the dress was made of the same material.

There were little red and pink spots throughout it.

I thought they were supposed to be flowers.

They looked more like a failed attempt at polka dots.

It was all going to make me look as if I was part of the hedges outside.

I gave Marie a pointed glance that she ignored.

There were certainly better options in those trunks.

“Running through the house like an animal,” she snapped, anger darkening her pale face.

I jumped as a pair of red heeled boots were thrown onto the bed next to me, followed by the rest of my clothing for the party.

I glanced at the small window. The sun was fully up in the sky.

It was quickly warming her bedroom. Today was going to be hot and uncomfortable, especially in this dress.

I huffed in response to what she said as I worked on sliding off my clothing.

Marie helping me dress the last several days had removed any possible insecurities I could have.

“I don’t see why it caused such a fuss,” I answered, pulling on the chemise. At least that would act as some barrier between me and the dress, though I wasn’t sure it would be enough.

“You know your mother,” Marie argued. “Did you hear the yelling those bakers got cause of the missing food?”

I shook my head, keeping my gaze trained out the window.

The trouble they would get into wasn’t a thought that crossed my mind.

All I could think about was the stifling dinner from the night before that I left without eating anything.

Most of my evening was spent outside, dreading today.

How I was going to hide everything I felt from everyone attending the party.

Maybe I would get lucky, and Adrian would take one looking at me and realize what a mistake this was.

It was a childish hope. I knew that, but I still couldn’t stop it.

All of this was rather childish of me; running around, stomping my feet at the thought of my family forcing me into this.

That did nothing to lessen the way I felt, though.

It all became too much at that dinner. I couldn’t handle Josi and my mother talking about our marriages as though they were blessings from the gods themselves.

That conversation was enough to send me running back to my room, skipping dinner and sleeping past breakfast. By the time I woke, there was nothing but the pastries being made for today’s party.

There were so many of them out that I didn’t think anyone would notice if a couple went missing.

They probably wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for one of the bakers sneaking up behind me.

Another childish act happened next—I ran.

I was unable to face my mother this morning, so I fled, hiding up on the roof until Josi came.

“I didn’t think about that,” I said instead of trying to explain while Marie tugged on the dress until it sat in a way that made her happy.

“That’s the problem, you don’t think about these things,” she pointed out.

I let Marie tug me around as she finished. She was right, even if there was more to my actions than I shared with her. I still didn’t consider the consequences for the others. It was hard to consider those things when it felt like the walls of my world were closing in on me.

There was the possibility that I was simply being dramatic, and Adrian would just ignore me.

There was still the chance that everything I feared would end up happening.

From the wedding to the last of my days.

He would rein in his control of my life, and that is what I wanted to fight against. All I craved was the freedom to make my own decisions.

To experience my own life. Not the one everyone expected from me.

That freedom is exactly what I was at risk of losing.

My gaze drifted to the window as Marie tugged at strands of my hair. Guests were filing out into the lawn from the house, birds scattered as they milled about, looking for their seats. There were more birds than usual today, or maybe I just noticed them more because of my own urge to fly away.

Something shimmering in the sky pulled my attention.

It was a quick flash that reminded me of rainbows that appeared when light shone off our glass cups.

I squinted my eyes, trying to shift closer to get a better look.

Kids yelling as they ran through the yard caught my eye instead.

One was holding a magnifying glass above their head while the others chased after him.

My shoulders relaxed as the tension melted from them.

Not a weird light. Just a reflection from the glass.

Marie tugged at my head one last time as she finished twisting the pieces of my blond hair together.

It was how she loved to style my hair. A twisted wrap around my head with loose strands framing my face.

She always told me it looked like I was wearing an intricate crown.

To me, it looked like a bird made a home on top of my head.

“Let’s go,” she muttered, her voice still steeped in anger.

I nodded, glancing out the window once more.

There was an odd tugging sensation in my stomach, as if there was somewhere important I was supposed to be right now.

Somewhere that certainly wasn’t playing hostess to a bunch of strangers.

I tried to shake the feeling away. Dread.

That’s all it was. It’s what happened every time a party was thrown.

That didn’t help settle the uneasy way I felt as I ripped my gaze from the window, closing the door behind us.

My parents’ whispers drifted from the floor below me as I paused on the landing upstairs. With a brow cocked, my foot hovered above the first wood step that should’ve taken me down to the party. Everyone must have been kicked out, as their hushed voices were all I heard.

“Can you please try to enjoy today?” my father pleaded with my mother.

There was a loud huff. A glass pinged as it was heavily set onto a table.

“We’re this close to getting rid of her. She’s going to ruin it.”

My chest tightened at her words. A shaking hand covered my mouth as tears burned the corners of my eyes. It hadn’t been easy accepting what they agreed to on my behalf, but I didn’t realize how far I’d pushed my own mother.

“Enough,” he snapped. “That’s our daughter that you’re talking about.”

“You seriously don’t feel it?” A dry laugh left her. “Josi is our daughter. There’s something off about Cece. ”

“Oh, not this again,” my father huffed; footsteps echoed as one of them moved. “You’ve been spouting this nonsense since she was a child.”

“Exactly!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been telling you this for the last twenty years, and you haven’t listened.”

“Because I’m not going to let you go around telling our daughters that one of them doesn’t belong. Thank the gods that neither of them has heard you.”

“Josi just doesn’t want to believe me,” she muttered.

A gasp left me. My body froze as all talking stopped. My nails dug into the side of my face as I pressed harder against my mouth, clenching my eyes shut as I waited for one of them to come upstairs.

I knew not accepting this engagement had crushed many of my mother’s hopes.

Never did I think it went beyond that. My mind replayed every sideways glance she gave me and any time her voice was raised at me.

The fact that the walls were covered in paintings of the three of them going back to when Josi was a small baby.

It was only recently that I had been forced to sit for newer paintings.

There was nothing that was mine from childhood.

No knitted blanket like Josi had. There were no paintings of our mother cradling me as a baby.

None of it had been great in the moment, but now, knowing my own mother didn’t think I belonged here, it felt like someone rammed a dagger into my chest.

Two sets of receding footsteps had my shoulders relaxing as my hand dropped from my face.

My head shifted to the side as I stared down the hall I came from.

The thought of hiding this day away was so tempting.

It would just end with my mother stomping through the house, screaming at me, which was the last thing I wanted.

My shoulders squared as I turned back toward the stairs, focusing on keeping my breathing steady as I made my way downstairs. Each step squeaked underneath me. Everything would be okay for now. At least there was a limit on how poorly she would treat me in front of Adrian’s family.