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

and cursed. What they don’t tell little girls is that monsters live on street corners, in warm houses, and that they carry rosy-red candles to banish all that darkness that is supposed to frighten the children.

“Humans fear the dark because it is filled with things they cannot understand.” Aisling shook her head. “I have never felt fear while languishing in the darkness. But I’ve felt fear with a blazing fire burning all around me until even my shadow fled the light.”

The duchess hummed. “So it is true—they still burn witches.”

“They prefer to hang us.” She thought of the hanging tree, the hundreds of souls crying out that she would never be one of them because she already belonged to the Fae. “But a fire will always suffice.”

“Then why him?” The duchess nodded at Bran. “Why the Unseelie prince who has never cared for a thing in the world?”

“He saved me from the fire.”

“Please. Spare me the theatrics. That is not why you are interested in him at all. Anyone could have saved you from burning. Even that damned familiar who’s wandering my halls, shouting at my guards as if he owns the place.”

Aisling gently set her cup onto the table and rearranged her legs so she wouldn’t kick one of the kneeling men in the face. They held the table up silently and without complaint. Their sightless faces reminded her far too much of herself.

Why was she so interested in Bran? Because of his foolish nature, how he never failed to argue with her, his bravery, his desire to do good, his hatred for anything that was structured. It was all there and more.

“It was the fire,” she said with a shaking voice. “Not the physical one which tried to claim my life, but the fear of fire itself. Somehow, he wiped away the remaining pieces of me that desired the light. He understood my fear and welcomed me into the darkness without judgement. He desires the rot and the ruin. The moth-eaten fabric of our being is one and the same.”

And it made her heart hurt to think of it. He had already admitted he couldn’t look at her face, and she couldn’t curse herself again. Aisling refused to become less of a person for him. She couldn’t imagine him ever letting go of ancient heartbreak, so where did that leave them?

In a place between places. A world between worlds. They hovered at a standstill, and neither of them knew how to fix it.

He glanced up, as if he felt her gaze upon him. She saw the instant flash of heat, the darkening edges of his eyes, and the flare of the feathers on his skull. Then it all faded away, a mask of disinterest in its place.

“Do you think he’s not interested in you because you have a face?” the duchess asked.

“I think you know why he’s no longer interested in me, and that is something you hid on purpose.”

“Even I don’t know the history of every faerie that walks my halls.”

Aisling glared.

“Perhaps I knew there was history between him and another, but I didn’t know you would look so much like her. It is a striking resemblance.”

“You know my sister?”

“I know your entirely family, Illumina. That is your given name, isn’t it?”

Power flared in her hip bones, spreading down her legs, and cementing her to the ground. The use of her true name burned.

“That name has not been uttered since I was a child,” Aisling growled. “It is not one I consider to be my own.”

“Yet it still holds a little bit of power.” The duchess reached for her cup, swirled it three times, and turned it upside down. The dregs of tea leaked onto the saucer, stretching like tentacles.

Aisling didn’t want to remember the dreaded name. It wasn’t attached to her anymore, other than the fleeting memory of a pale woman who had once stroked her hair during a nightmare. “Illumina,” the woman had whispered, pressing lips against her forehead. “It was just a nightmare, sweet.”

But Aisling had known even as a child it wasn’t a nightmare. Her desires and thoughts weren’t normal. She wanted desperately to be something more than just a pretty daughter of the Seelie Fae. Her sister played in golden fields filled with pretty blue flowers and never stared at the darkened forest beyond.

Her family had named her Illumina, the daughter of light. And her entire life she had dreamed of beasts in the forest howling her name. But she didn’t fear the monsters.

She wanted to become one.

“I’ve never seen leaves like this,” the duchess murmured. She reached in a single delicate finger and touched it to the bottom of the cup. “Not a one out of place, and each resting in the quadrant of your future.”

“Is that so?” She tried to stop her voice from shaking.

“I see a war crow,” the duchess continued, “returning from battle, blood dripping from its wings. I see nightshade, bitter and poisonous, wrapped around a heart. I see a crown, a blood-drenched land, and feathers falling from the sky like rain.”

Aisling’s quiet gasp seemed to echo as all sound fell away from them.

The duchess looked up and met her gaze, fear glowing in the depths of her emerald eyes. “Perhaps you shall be the one to kill me after all.”

“Where is your husband?”

“He prefers to remain away from such revelries.”

“Then you are in grave danger,” Aisling whispered. “I don’t want to kill you.”

“Because you see something of yourself in me?”

“No,” a choked sob burst from her lips, “because I see myself becoming you.”

They stared at each other. Two dark women with souls stained from the blood of innocents. Magic sang in their bones, lamenting the deaths but celebrating the power that came with such a loss. They both had suffered at the careless hands of those who had tried to strip them of their power, and both had shown their enemies what happened when they tried to burn a woman who carried fire in her breast.

She