The Faceless Woman by Emma Hamm (i love reading .txt) 📕

up the maid’s back. Aisling smirked at her stiffened posture and waltzed to the bed. She wasn’t afraid of a little hard labor, and if they didn’t want to clean her room, then that was no skin off her back.

She grabbed the first pillow and smacked it hard. Dust billowed into the air, white and cloud-like, striking her nose with surprising force. She rocked backward, sneezing multiple times until the air cleared.

The maid covered her mouth and giggled.

“Goodness,” Aisling gasped. “How long have these pillows been sitting?”

“About half a century, madame.”

“That explains it.” She placed the pillow down and gently backed away. “We’ll leave it there then. And please don’t call me madame. I’m anything but.”

“You travel with the Unseelie prince. You must be equal in rank to the Duchess?”

“Unlikely. Didn’t you hear him say I was his servant?” It was all she could do not to make a face. “I’m no lady.”

“Seems odd that the mistress would give you a maid then.”

It was, but Aisling wasn’t going to encourage the meddling. She nodded in response and gestured behind the maid to the door. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to rest. It’s been a long journey.”

“I’m certain it has.” The maid pointed toward the fire. “If you really are a servant, perhaps that’s a better place than the pillows.”

“You don’t say.”

The maid left with her pride still intact. Aisling couldn’t say the same for herself.

She glanced at the mound of pillows, her body aching for a single moment of weightlessness. How long had it been since she’d slept in a bed?

Shaking her head, she refused to let the thought linger. She’d slept on the ground most of her life. Worrying about a bed wasn’t like her.

Aisling eyed the door, wondering just how long it would take until the faeries tried to spy on her. She couldn’t lay down runes on the floor. They were easily found, and the Duchess likely wouldn’t appreciate her ruining the floor.

Instead, she grabbed the nearest candle and circled the room.

“By fire, I ward thee. Guard this space from all ill will and all those who wish to harm me.”

Aisling repeated the gesture with flicks of stagnant water, with her own breath, and the last remaining apple cores from her pack. It wasn’t much, but it was at least a little bit. She felt the golden light of the wards lift over her head and connect at the peak of the ceiling.

Now, she could sleep.

“That Unseelie is making you soft,” she grumbled as she dragged a few of the carpets toward the fire. “You’ve done this before, and you’ll do it again. Ridiculous woman. Lingering on thoughts that have no place in your head. Where’s your courage?”

“Where is your courage, indeed?”

Aisling stiffened. She recognized the light-as-air voice but hadn’t expected it to show up in her own room.

The duchess stood in her doorway. Her eyes were raised, following patterns in the air that Aisling could not see. The slight woman reached forward and tapped, her fingernail pinging on something invisible.

“Not a bad spell,” the duchess said. “You’re missing a section here, though.” She pointed at a small piece of Aisling’s spell, then stepped into the room, unhindered and without trouble.

Aisling frowned. “I missed nothing. Those wards are airtight.”

Their magic traced down her spine, strong and without flaw. She had been placing wards since she was a child. There was no possible way those wards had a hole in them.

The duchess’s eyes narrowed. “How intriguing. Why wouldn’t your magic be flawed? You are, after all, human.”

A bell rang in Aisling’s ear. The words weren’t entirely truth. In fact, they’d been carefully said to pull out a secret. The duchess didn’t actually believe them, nor was she insinuating that Aisling was actually human.

Sarcasm was a faerie’s greatest weapon.

She spun on her heel and lifted a hand, the eye in the center of her palm blinking. “What do you know?”

“Nothing as of yet,” the duchess soothed. “But I intend to understand what you are. Or perhaps who you are, if you know it.”

“You know I’m not human.”

“I suspected it the moment you first walked in.”

“That’s a shame,” Aisling growled. “I thought it was impossible for anyone to see through the curse binding my face from sight.”

“Any face is as much a mask as your curse. We wear false expressions, whisper secrets and lies, until our flesh becomes hard like stone. Your curse hides your identity, not your soul.”

Aisling blew out a breath and lowered her hand. “I’m not sure I like that anymore than someone not being able to see my face.”

“May I?” The duchess gestured toward the fire. “You promised me your story, and I rarely sleep at night.”

“Why?”

“Nightmares plague even the best of us.”

Aisling searched the other woman’s gaze for some clue of her plan. Why was the duchess here? Did she really want only a story?

Twisted words were hard for Aisling to follow. She had dealt with young faeries, on the off chance they had wandered by her hut. But they were usually weak and meddled in human affairs as a way to relieve their boredom. Royalty was an entirely different story. The duchess had thousands of years to perfect careful words and veiled truths.

Aisling worried what secrets she would reveal. Her story would be laid bare in front of this powerful being, but more than that, her soul.

She hesitantly stepped toward the fire and sank down with the duchess.

The tiny faerie reached out her hands toward the warmth and rubbed them together, letting out a happy hum. “It’s nice, is it not? A fire on a cold night always reminds me of home.”

“I’ve never thought of a palace as a particularly warm place.”

“I never think of this as my home,” the duchess murmured. “I wasn’t always a duchess.”

Aisling nodded. “That’s right. You’re a self-made woman.”

“I fought tooth and nail to own all that is mine and will continue to do so until all the breath leaves my lungs.”

Gods, Aisling didn’t want to see herself