Page 4 of Threaded

“Mariah.” A gentle voice pulled her from the dark pit of her memories, wrenching her gaze back to meet those of soft golden brown.

“Sorry.” She winced, glancing back down to her sandwich and taking another bite. “You know how much I don’t like coming into town.”

Her mother scoffed. “Don’t like coming into town when the sun is up, you mean.” Mariah shot her eyes back up to find her mother’s gaze glinting with humor. “And don’t talk with your mouth full; you might love that horse of yours more than most people, but I did not raise you in his barn.”

Mariah smiled, chuckling softly before swallowing her bite. “Sorry,” she repeated.

Lisabel rolled her eyes. “Stop apologizing and just start acting like the adult you so desperately want to be.” Her words were harsh, but Mariah could hear the lightness behind them.

Her mother wanted nothing more than to see all of her daughter’s wildest dreams come true. Even if Mariah didn’t quite know what those dreams were yet. All she knew—all any of them knew—was she would never be able to chase them in that slow, tiny town. It might be a place of crossroads, but the people here weren’t the sort to embrace any type of change.

It all started with its lord. Pompous, elitist Lord Donnet. His only qualification to rule Andburgh came from his name, and even that was washed up and scoffed at by the rest of the Onitan ruling class. He traveled far too often to other cities, feasting and drinking with other lords who had more to their names than he ever would.

Of course, he spent just enough time in his own city to collect his taxes. Mariah could still remember the night over eleven years ago when Lord Donnet and his cronies had nearly burst down the door to her family’s cottage at midnight, demanding their due. Mariah’s mother and father, while hardworking and able to offer valuable skills to the people of the city, didn’t have much to their names. When they’d been unable to scrounge sufficient coin to pay the Lord’s demands, payment had to be made in other ways. Wex had handed over his antique collection of swords and armor from his days with the Royal Infantry, and Lisabel, with anger burning in her golden eyes, had given them a small chest containing a delicate, silver dagger etched with a hundred pairs of wings, including the wings of a great dragon on its hilt.

“That dagger belonged to my father,” she’d nearly spat at the Lord. “It is the only of its kind, and the only piece of him I have left. I hope you are satisfied.”

Lord Donnet had only regarded the dark steel with mild disinterest before tossing it to his escort. “It hardly seems enough to pay your debts to the crown, Mrs. Salis, but I am feeling rather benevolent today. Therefore, yes, I am satisfied.” The Lord had turned, glancing to where Mariah stood in the small living room, her sharp eyes watching the entire exchange. Donnet had perused her, his slimy gaze sliding up and down her body, leaving her skin feeling oily and prickly. He’d opened his mouth again, as if to speak one more time, before her father had beat him to it.

“If that is all, My Lord, then we should like to return to bed. It is late, and my children have schooling in the morning.”

Donnet hadn’t looked away from Mariah; he only closed his mouth and smiled. “Of course,” he said, finally turning back to Wex. “I only wanted to let you know that your daughter is quite a beauty. It is too bad she was not born to … better circumstances.” And with that, the lord pushed his way out the front door to the Salis home, his lackeys following at his heels.

Mariah decided that night she hated that man.

That was also the night she’d realized even though her parents did their best, she wouldn’t let this rotten town trap her in its grip like it had done to them. So she’d decided to do what no other girl she knew had done.

She decided that when she was twenty-one, she would leave.

“Your mind is wandering again, Mariah.” Lisabel’s voice once again snapped Mariah back to the present. She looked to her mother and smiled weakly.

“How can you tell?”

“I can always tell. Mother’s intuition.” Lisabel paused. “Plus, your eyes get all hazy and unfocused. And your mouth hangs open. That one is quite the tell.”

Mariah’s smile turned into a wide grin. “My mouth does not—”

“Mariah! Is that you?”

A shrill, sing-song voice cut through Mariah’s familiar banter with her mother. She instantly grimaced, her jaw snapping closed and clenching. She held her mother’s stare, whose golden gaze had softened into one of sympathy before breaking from Mariah and moving to the source of that voice over Mariah’s shoulder.

“How lovely to see you, Annabelle.” Lisabel’s voice was as warm as honey, dripping with all the practiced calm of one who’d spent a lifetime healing those unable to mend themselves.

Mariah, meanwhile, couldn’t even hide her grimace as the girl behind her—Annabelle—spoke again, her unnaturally high voice grating against her ears.

“Oh, I am so well, Mrs. Salis! It is such a wonderful surprise to see you out and away from the clinic on such a beautiful day!” The voice moved around Mariah’s back, and now a figure stood beside their table, carrying with her the overly sweet scent of too much peony and rose perfume. Mariah finally lifted her gaze to meet Annabelle's brown doe eyes, her golden hair curled into perfect ringlets and piled atop her hair, her ridiculous fuschia gown full of bustled skirts and too much lace.

“And you too, Mariah! It is so rare that I get to see you now that we are no longer in schooling.” Annabelle twisted her delicate, powdered features into a mockery of a frown. “Tomorrow is your twenty-first birthday, is it not? I have not heard anything about your planneddebutante!”

Annabelle Tanne, daughter of one of the wealthier merchants in Andburgh, had always been far too interested in Mariah’s participation—or lack thereof—in society.

It made Mariah want to punch something. Specifically, Annabelle.

“That’s because I’m not having one.”

The gleam in Annabelle’s eye faltered. “You’re … not having adebutante?” She seemed to be scrounging for the words. “… Why not? Are you … are you unwell?”

Mariah’s gaze hardened; the harshness of the forest in her eyes swallowed the doe that lived in Annabelle’s. “Why would I possibly wish to plan a debut if I’m leaving Andburgh?”

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