Page 5 of Claiming Glass

Three years ago, I planned my wedding in secret, believing love would conquer all. Death and years of grief proved me wrong. When I was finally allowed to return to Tal, I thought I held all the advantages. Marrying the princess of Oberwalden would be easy for I cared only for my revenge. It seemed I might have been even more naive than the first time I promised to wed.

But wedding or not, before the Day of the Dead and end of summer, I needed to find answers for I refused to be only a game piece in the largest King’s Conquest I had ever played.

Chapter two

Vanya

Lumi was not on the Rivertown barges.

The hawkers had not seen her, nor had the beggars at the Bone Grove or priestesses outside the black temples. I searched the night market in Midtown, watched her favorite food stalls and gambling tables.

With magic, I listened to each answer, searching for deception.

The people in Lowtown we used to greet every day only shook their heads when I asked, then gave me strange looks when they thought I did not see.

A little girl pulled at my coat hem, asking if I’d called the griffon that landed and the rain that saved their house. Her parents hushed her with fear in their eyes.

I had done something impossible. Revealed I had magic and, in their minds, was bound to become insane sooner or later. There were no more smiles. No requests for me to watch my former neighbors’ children for a few bells.

As soon as I convinced myself I had done everything I could, I moved on to streets where no one knew me.

What I did find—on walls and stalls, under cups, and on pamphlets—was a bloody stick figure calling for blood. In whispers, people told of restless Spirits and how the royals were to blame for the rising food prices. Of attacked farmsteads and how no one would have dared such action if the Death Goddess still watched over Tal. How the fire and plague outbreak were the royal’s fault or the Goddess’s punishment. With even lower voices, in alleys and shadows, they spoke of the dead walking at night.

They said on the Day of the Dead, the Death Goddess would bless the faithful.

The city filled with more people each day. A perfect place to disappear.

The magic swirled through me, impossible to shut off.

Lumi, I whispered to it. Nothing answered.I’m coming for you, and we’ll solve this. You’re the one who lied to me. I’m not leaving.

Maybe my words reached her. Maybe it was a prayer to the Wishmaker that after we screamed and laughed, hugged and fought, all would be well again.

I imagined her face, like a mirror of my own. Though that was no longer true. With the cut hair, two-year-old scar splitting her lip, and gaunt hardness, she was what I could have been. Instead, the palace had treated me well, adding curves to my fit form, and untangling my hair. I still wore the red lip tint, though I knew I should have left it behind with all the other riches.

Despite my commitment not to steal, I had brought one golden plate from the palace and sold it at the night market my first day, then splurged on two new shirts, instructing the seamstress to make the sleeves extra-long to hide the Oberwaldian noble’s sigil on my forearm. As soon as the fall winds came, I could wear gloves. Fornow, I hoped no one would notice an accidental peek of the dark blue and black lines swirling up my arm from wrist to elbow.

The last five years there had only been one place we had called home, and after three days of searching, I could no longer avoid it.

No matter how unlikely it was my sister would have left anything behind on Mandible Street, I needed to know. It was dangerous to go back after leaving my stepsister orphaned, bound, and cursed, but walking street after street, asking strangers, was not without its own risks. If Lumi wanted to stay hidden, it would not endear me to her if her disappearance and my search was market talk.

My feet led me back along the muddy streets. Instead of calling out greetings to the women chatting at the fountain or teasing the children, I stayed to the shadows before climbing Kirill’s back gate and, like so many other nights, quickly scurried up to our attic window.

Even in winter, I left it open for it had been my escape. But it was no longer mine.

Bats chatted, long used to my presence, as I dug my fingernails into the wood frame. It did not budge. Someone had latched it on the inside. Did they expect me to come here? Or had Kirill done it before he died?

I slid down and hid in the dark courtyard, knowing I should leave but unable to let go of the past.

Lights shone on the first floor. I crept closer. My stepsister had her back to me as she wrote in Kirill’s old study and ledger.

I settled behind a thornless rose bush—one of Kirill’s many shows of wealth—and waited.

Masked, my stepsister conducted business, seemingly taking over where Kirill left it without missing a beat. While I had not expectedgrief, this was also strange. The beautiful etched scales wrought in silver covered half her face and matched her ornate dress, showing only her kohl-lined eyes and painted mouth. She would stay covered until she could love someone more than herself. From watching her, the curse would never be broken.

Serves her right, a petty voice inside me said, while my mother’s softer one told me you cannot make a right with two wrongs. That I had to let go of the past to make something of tomorrow. Shame heated my cheeks.

“It’s not that easy,” I mumbled to myself, talking to the long dead after only three days of solitude.

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