Page 4 of Lich's Bride

KIRA

The collar around my neck is a cold weight, the opal stone resting at the hollow of my throat pulsing with a faint, unsettling energy. The towering, cadaverous figure who placed it there - Malachar, he called himself - leads me through the gawking crowd, his gloved hand wrapped around a delicate silver chain attached to my new adornment.

I feel like a pet being led by its master, and a hot flush of mingled fear and indignation rises in my cheeks.

As we approach an ornate black carriage hitched to a pair of spectral horses, I dig in my heels, a last flare of defiance rising in my chest. "Wait," I say, my voice emerging as a raspy croak. Malachar pauses, his burning emerald gaze sliding to me with a sort of idle curiosity.

I swallow hard, forcing my chin up to meet those fathomless eyes. "You don't have to do this," I say, striving for a calm I don't feel. "Just take me home. I won't tell anyone about… about any of this. I swear."

Malachar's mouth curves in a patronizing smile, as if he's humoring a particularly slow child. "Your destiny lies beyond the mundane realm of your former life, little one. You belong to my world now - to me."

I open my mouth to argue, but he cuts me off with a sharp tug on my leash, making me stumble. "Your efforts to negotiate are quaint but ultimately futile," he says, his mellifluous voice dripping with condescension. "Now come, your new life awaits."

With that, he ushers me into the carriage and, with surprising gentleness, helps me up into the plush, velvet-lined interior. I slump onto the bench seat, my eyes burning with unshed tears of frustration and fear.

As the door snicks shut behind me, I take in my posh prison with a sort of dull despair. It's all burnished wood and rich fabrics, with a decanter of deep red liquid and a tray of exotic-looking fruits and sweetmeats resting on a low table.

But a gilded cage is still a cage, I remind myself.

The carriage rocks into motion and I lunge for the door handle, a wild thought of hurling myself out into the wild flashing through my mind. But the handle doesn't budge, clearly sealed by more than mere physical means.

Malachar's urbane voice drifts through the ornately filigreed screen separating the driver's box from the cabin, making me start. "I wouldn't bother trying to flee, my dear. You'll find my enchantments are quite unbreakable."

I slump back against the plush upholstery, hopelessness washing over me. "Why are you doing this?" I whisper, more to myself than my captor. "What do you want from me?"

"All in good time," comes the maddeningly cryptic reply. "For now, suffice it to say that I have great plans for you. Plans that require you to be at my side and under my tutelage."

A thought occurs to me then, a last desperate gambit. "My family will look for me," I say, injecting a quavering note of defiance into my voice. "The police, the FBI… They won't stop until they find me."

“If not for the fetch taking your place, that would be an issue, of course. But she’s already in place and quite at home. Common fae practice, you understand.”

"A fetch? Is that supposed to be like some sort of doppelganger?" I echo, my voice thin with disbelief. "You expect me to believe that some… some magical clone is going to step into my life and nobody will notice?"

Malachar's chuckle is a dry, rasping sound, like the rattle of old bones. "Ah, the confidence of youth. You vastly overestimate your own uniqueness, my dear. Humans are such simple creatures at heart, so easily fooled by a familiar face and a few well-placed platitudes."

I shake my head stubbornly, even as a chill of doubt snakes down my spine. "No. No, my mom, my friends… They know me. The real me. They'd see through an imposter in a heartbeat."

"Would they?" Malachar counters, his voice silken with mockery. "Consider, child, how well do they truly know you? How much of yourself have you kept hidden, even from those closest to you? We all wear masks, present the face we think the world wants to see. Your fetch will simply… slip into the role you've already created."

I open my mouth to argue, but the words die on my tongue as memories flash through my mind unbidden. All the times I've forced a smile, laughed off a hurt, pretended everything was fine when I was crying inside. All the secrets, dreams, fears, and doubts that I've never voiced aloud.

Would the people in my life - even the ones who love me most - really notice if those masks became my true face?

Malachar, watching me closely, seems to read the direction of my thoughts. "You see?" he murmurs, his tone almost gentle. "In time, the fetch will become the reality. The Kira they knew will fade, like a half-remembered dream, and the fetch will take your place seamlessly. As far as the world is concerned, you will simply… go on. Graduate, get a job, marry, bear children… live out a mundane little life, none the wiser."

I flinch as if slapped, each word hitting like a physical blow. The idea of my life, my identity, being so easily co-opted, so casually overwritten... It's a violation almost worse than the abduction itself.

"Why?" I manage to choke out past the tightness in my throat. "Why go to such lengths? If you're just going to keep me prisoner anyway, why bother with a… a replacement?"

Malachar shrugs, a strangely elegant gesture for a walking corpse. "It is the way of the fae, soon you will come to know more of their ways, understanding them.” His lips quirk in a humorless smile. "They can be merciful, in their own fashion."

"Merciful?" I spit, a sudden flare of rage burning through the fog of shock and despair. "You call ripping me away from everything and everyone I love merciful? Stealing my face, my name, my very life? That's not mercy, it's… it's..."

"A chance," Malachar cuts in, his voice suddenly hard as granite. "A chance for something more than the petty concerns of your old life. You have a destiny now, girl. A purpose. In time, you will come to see your former existence for the insignificant thing it was."

I reel back, my brief surge of defiance guttering out like a candle in a gale. Because beneath the anger, beneath the arrogance, there's something in Malachar's ageless eyes that terrifies me more than any threat or cruelty.

Conviction. Utter, unshakable conviction.

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