LADY CHANGELING (PREORDER🔔)

PROLOGUE

Sera, Age 5

I have no idea what my true face looks like. 

But I do know that the face I’d worn the day my mother came to collect me was one she could be expected to be happy to see. It was hers after all, from when she was about my age. 

Nanny had showed it to me only once, but I’d remembered because it was hers. So I’d put it on that morning just like I’d put on my embroidered pinafore, starched white apron and little red shoes. I hadn’t thought it odd at all, even though Nanny had slapped me for it. 

All I’d wanted to do was please and impress my mother. Because I’d wanted her so desperately to love me and to finally take me home with her. 

“There she is,” the old lady said when she and my mother finally arrived at the little cottage I’d spent my entire life at. “A carbon copy of you at her age. Thank the Gods.”

I peered up into my mother’s face, trying to see if I’d impressed her. It was hard to make out her features, buried as they were, in the shadowy depths of her wide bonnet. I seemed to catch a glimpse of worried eyes that might have softened slightly as she stared at me. 

I’d smiled then, and curtsied, exactly the way I’d been taught by Nanny. “Hello, Mother.”

“Well behaved too. You have done well, Nanny.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” I didn’t turn to see her face, but I could tell from the way Nanny gripped my arm that she was still worried.

And yet, we were already heading into the carriage. Mother still hadn’t said a word. But she did let me sit beside her. I settled onto the seat, marveling at the softness of the velvet cushions and the sweet perfume that emanated from her. 

I was almost on her lap. In her arms. I wanted so much to cuddle close and feel her warmth around me. I wanted to tell her I loved her even though I couldn’t remember ever meeting her. I wanted to say I’d longed to see her ever since I could remember.

But I stayed silent as the carriage rolled away, keeping my hands neatly folded in my lap the way Nanny was reminding me to, with her sharp eyes and pointed looks.

I kept as still as a doll until night fell and little wil-o’- the- wisps began to bloom in the darkness beside the road. Then I glanced up to find that Nanny was already nodding off in a corner of the carriage. The old lady was asleep too and snoring slightly. I couldn’t tell if my mother had also succumbed to slumber. She hadn’t taken her bonnet off and was still sitting upright, though she seemed more relaxed than she had been for miles.

Slowly, gently, I began to lean towards her, until my head touched her arm. She seemed to tense for a moment then. But she didn’t push me away. And, with her warm presence beside me, I finally drifted off, feeling happier than I’d ever been in my entire life.

* * *

When I came to, the sun was shining in my face. My head was still lying against my mother’s shoulder, one of her gloveless hands clasping mine in a loose grip. Her skin was as soft and smooth as silk, and her perfume had faded to give way to a subtle scent that felt safe and familiar.

“I love you, Mama,” I whispered, the tight knot I’d carried within me since forever slowly unraveling.

Her hand tightened on mine and I felt her move slightly against the top of my head. Was she awake? Had she actually heard me?

“I—” My heart leaped as she began to speak.

The old lady screamed.

I jumped, scared almost out of my skin, and turned to find her pointing at the window.

There was nothing outside but rolling green meadows dotted with cows.

“Your face!” Nanny hissed, and I finally realized what the fuss was about.

I gathered myself, twining all the threads back together as quickly as I could.

But when I turned to my mother, she was still staring at the window, where my reflection had been.

“Mother?” I whispered, hoping against hope that she hadn’t seen anything.

But the paleness of her lips, barely visible under the shadow of her bonnet told me everything.

“You… is that how you truly look?” she asked, her words barely louder than a breath.

“I… no, this is how I look,” I began, but Nanny was already nodding.

“It is only one of her faces,” she said, her voice shaking slightly. “I tried to train it out of her, I swear I did. She appears normal most of the time. But it can sometimes change depending on her moods.”

The old lady clutched her walking stick and rubbed its wooden knob so vigorously, I almost expected to see it burst into flame. She thumped it on the floor of the carriage, hard. “This won’t do. It won’t do at all.”

My mother tensed, then nodded.

“But this is how I look, I promise—” I begged, even though I had no idea why I had to.

“Stop the carriage!” the old lady banged her stick against the roof. “Stop, NOW!”

The carriage stopped. One of the footmen opened the door and leaned down to exchange words with the old woman. 

Then he reached for me.

“Wait, what are you doing?” I cried as I was dragged across my mother’s lap. I grabbed for her skirts, but Nanny wrenched my hands off. 

The air outside was shockingly cold compared to the warmth of the carriage. It was barely dawn, dark enough for a few wisps to still be lingering in the shady hollows beneath bushes and tree roots. Dew coated the grass, soaking my skirts.

“Mother!” I called back when the footman began to pull me away from the carriage. “Mother!”

“Be still,” the footman said when I tried to twist away from him to get back to her.

“No, Mama, please!” I cried. “MAMA!”

“Don’t look,” I heard the old woman say.

Those were the last words I heard before I was lifted into the air and tossed over a bridge into frigid, rushing water.

CHAPTER 1

Present Day

Hartvale, Buckinghamshire

“See? She’s talking to them, I swear.”

Edmund raised a brow at Lawrence but crouched down anyway, slipping through the shadows to join the twins behind a bush. 

Ophelia stood about twenty feet away at the edge of the pond, skirts hitched and muttering to herself while will-o’-the-wisps danced over the water. 

He felt like an overgrown raccoon, spying on her in the brush with his younger siblings. But Ophelia hadn’t been well lately, and the last thing he wanted was to needlessly startle her.

“She can’t be talking to the will-o’-the-wisps. They’re not intelligent. She’s probably just studying her reflection in the pond. I heard Betsy crying about how she could possibly be expected to do her job as a lady’s maid when Philly insists on experimenting with fire magic by curling her own hair. Apparently she singed an entire chunk off the back because she started daydreaming and let her fingers get too hot.”

 “Really? She burnt her hair with just her fingers?” Laurence sounded entirely too excited about the prospect. “Do you think she’ll teach me how to do that?”

Vivian huffed. “I should hope not! It’s dangerous. And besides, you don’t need to curl your hair. It’s already an unruly mop as it is.” 

“No more unruly than yours,” her twin jabbed back—just before a yelp that suggested Vivian had pinched him. A squeal followed, then scuffles that made Edmund grit his teeth.

“Shhh!” Edmund hissed without turning his eyes from Ophelia, who was now backing away from the pond while beckoning to the wisps. “Behave, or I’ll send you back to the house.”

“She started it,” Lawrence began, but he clamped his lips shut when Edmund slanted a look at him, ears turning pink.

The twins were at that awkward age when they wanted so much to be taken seriously… and yet were still unable to resist squabbling like children. Edmund had no idea how his mother managed without being driven up the wall by them.

“We girls are usually perfectly decently behaved. It’s just when Laurie comes home that things get… uncivilized,” Vivian huffed, informing Edmund that he’d inadvertently spoken out loud.

Laurence snorted. “You mean ‘interesting.’ You lot would be stewing in boredom if I didn’t return now and then to revive you.”

“Oh? Is that why you’re home so early this time around? To revive us poor boring females… not because you were sent down from Eton for dueling?”

Edmund sighed as Lawrence spluttered, then ducked forward, taking care to dart from bush to bush to keep Ophelia from noticing his presence as he followed her towards a copse of trees. 

She was definitely up to something, given the amount of wisps around her. He had no idea how she was doing it, but it looked as if she were herding them like sheep. But for what purpose? Will-o’-the-wisps were curious little things, but Vivian was right. They weren’t intelligent and were of no particular use. So why was Ophelia surrounding herself with them?

Edmund crept even closer, squinting through the gloom. The wisps provided an eerie blue light, but he could have sworn he’d just seen a spark of something brighter.

Could Ophelia be attempting to do some sort of magic with the wisps? But that didn’t make any sense!

Foreboding coursed through him when his sister’s hands lit up with an unmistakable glow.

“—just because you’re jealous!”

“I’m not jealous! I’m the better magician anyway, magic or no magic, and—”

“Can you please be quiet!” Edmund hissed again.

This time, the twins must have detected the note of concern in his voice, because they immediately fell silent. 

Until Vivian gasped. “No! She can’t do that. Can she?”

“Do what? What’s she doing?” Lawrence demanded.

“I… I can’t be sure because I’ve never read about anything like it in your textbooks, Laurie. But doesn’t it look like she’s…”

“Like she’s what?” Edmund growled, turning to Vivian when she hesitated. Though she was far from the strongest, of all his siblings, Vivian had the greatest sensitivity to magic, and could often tell what spell someone was going to cast before they even casted it.

“Like she’s funneling her magic to them. Her fire magic,” Vivian said faintly. “But that can’t be possible… can it?”

Edmund whipped his head back towards Ophelia. 

Indeed, the wisps around her seemed to be glowing unusually brightly for wisps that were meant to melt away in the light of the coming dawn. And now that Vivian had pointed it out, he could indeed detect Ophelia’s fire magic twining with the blue flames of the will-o-the-wisps. But why…

“Egad, she’s making a pyre!” Lawrence exclaimed. “Look, she’s piled them all in a bunch and—”

Edmund launched himself forward just as Ophelia began laying herself down onto her bed of fiery wisps.

“Stop!” he cried as he ran. “Ophelia, don’t!” 

But his sister didn’t seem to hear him. Or maybe she couldn’t, above the crackle of the flames surrounding her.

Edmund threw his magic forward, trying to snuff them out with a blast of cold damp air.

But Ophelia’s fire had always burned brighter than anything he’d ever seen. It roared back in response, springing into six foot high flames that were anchored in the wisps.

He skidded to a stop, holding his hands up against the wall of heat blasting against him. “OPHELIA!”

His sister finally turned, her dark brown hair streaming about her face, somehow not catching fire despite the fiery sparks and streaks of flame licking up her arms and shoulders. She frowned darkly as if he was the one who’d gone insane and lit himself on fire. “Edmund!? What is the matter with you? Why are you—”

“You stop this right now!” Edmund demanded. “PUT OUT THE FIRE!”

Ophelia shook her head, blazing like a bonfire. “No. I’m not going to put out the fire! It’s helping to cool me down!”

Edmund’s jaw dropped. That was utter madness. But there was no point in reasoning with her. Ophelia had always been the most stubborn of them all. 

He dropped to the ground and dug his hands into the dirt, calling on the ancient magic that laced the land beneath them, while Ophelia spouted what she obviously thought was a perfectly sensible explanation for lighting herself on fire. 

“—which is why—wait, what are you doing? Edmund!?”

The makeshift earthen shield Edmund threw up hissed as flames battered it, eating away the water in the soil. But he didn’t hesitate, trusting in Hartvale’s magic to step in where dirt and dust fell short as he stepped forward through the flames to grab Ophelia and throw her over his shoulder.

“NO!” Ophelia shrieked, flailing and kicking at him. Her skin was scorching hot—like an ember fresh from the fire. He half expected to see steam rising off of her. “Edmund, PUT ME DOWN! PUT ME DOWN RIGHT NOW OR I SWEAR—”

He tuned out her shrieking as he ran to the house. He had to help her. Though he had no idea how. But maybe… maybe Mother would.

“Edmund, this is the LAST warning, I swear I’m going to—”

Or they could call the local wisen, at least until they could get the magister doctor out to see her. After all, this was a magical malady of some sort. It had to be. He refused to believe his sister had truly gone insane.

Though, given what she’d been through it wouldn’t be completely unexpected. But it had been years since the hydra attack that had felled their father—and forced her magic into sudden bloom. Magic never followed a set course… but surely hers should have stabilized by now?

Edmund was in the midst of trying to recall how his magic had kindled when a blast of heat slammed into his back, nearly knocking him over.

“Are you trying to kill us both?” he yelled over his shoulder, just as his sister spat, “How do you like that, you big oaf!?”

“I’m saving you!”

“No, you’re interfering and hauling me around like a sack of flour! PUT ME DOWN!”

Edmund growled low in his throat, burst into a renewed sprint, then swung Ophelia down just as he sensed she was getting ready to blast him again. 

They were already at the front door, anyway. If she insisted on challenging him again, she’d bring the entire household down upon them.

Ophelia glared at him, looking as if she had half a mind to burn him to a crisp, anyway. 

Or at least try to. 

What she had in raw power, Edmund more than rivaled with control and technique. He was older than her by ten years, after all. And he didn’t just have to rely on his own power. As heir, he could call upon the might of Hartvale anytime he wanted.

The front door banged open, releasing their mother along with Betsy and several other servants. Ivy and Clarie were up too, but they stood in the doorway, staring out at Edmund and Ophelia with wide eyes.

“Oh, you’re safe, I was so worried!” Mother gasped as she ran to Ophelia. “I thought you were sleeping off your fever, why did you go out?”

“She gave the will-o-the-wisps her fire!” Vivian blurted out as she and Lawrence ran up to them, panting. “How did you do it, Ophelia?”

“That’s hardly important compared to her making a pyre and throwing herself on it,” Lawrence added.

“What!?” Mother gasped. 

Edmund threw a reproachful look at the twins, then signaled to Bellamy, their butler, who quickly began ushering the other servants indoors. “She wasn’t hurt, I got to her in time—”

“Excuse me? She is right here!” Ophelia exclaimed.

“But why did you try to burn yourself on a pyre?” Edmund’s heart ached as tears sprang out in their mother’s eyes. “My darling... is it… is it that bad?”

“It’s not—it’s… I—” Ophelia spluttered.

Mother tried to enveloped her in a tight hug, but Ophelia drew back. “Really, this concern is unnecessary. I wasn’t trying to kill myself!”

“Then what exactly did you think you were doing?” Edmund couldn’t help but say cuttingly, while he watched their mother try to hide her hurt. “Curl your hair?”

Ophelia’s eyes burned into his.

“How dare you!” she hissed. “You barge in trying to play the hero—”

“Can you blame me?” Edmund shot back. “I watched you try to set yourself on fire, Ophelia!”

“That’s not what I was DOING! For once, why don’t you listen to me!?” Ophelia cried at the top of her voice.

Everyone began speaking at once. 

His mother tried to cajole Ophelia, while the twins jabbered on about having seen it all happen, and Ophelia resumed trying to explain why what she’d done had been a very good idea.

Edmund held up his hand, trying to calm everyone down.

Then suddenly, Mother gasped mid-sentence, clutching her arm. “Ah!” 

“What? What is it?” Edmund asked, instantly by her side.

“It’s nothing.” She tried to hide it, but Edmund immediately understood what had happened. She’d had an arm around Ophelia, and a patch of exposed skin on her wrist had been seared by the heat radiating from her daughter.

“Oh!” Ophelia lifted a hand to her lips, her eyes wide. She began backing away from them.

“It’s nothing,” Mother repeated firmly. “You’re running just a little too hot, that’s all, my dear.”

“But I hurt you,” Ophelia moaned. “It’s getting worse… I don’t even know—I can’t—” She shook her head, then spun around and began running.

“Oh, Edmund, stop her!” Mother cried desperately.

Edmund exploded into motion, chasing after Ophelia yet again. But he wasn’t fast enough to catch her before she threw herself into the fountain.

Cries of alarm rose in the air when the water hissed and threw up a veil of mist. 

Edmund conjured up a breeze to dispel it as he dove into the pool. The water wasn’t deep, but Ophelia had dunked herself completely underwater… and she was motionless when he hauled her into his arms.

CHAPTER 2

“Ophelia? Ophelia! What’s wrong with her?” Lawrence asked as he helped Edmund carry their sister out. She was utterly drenched and unconscious.

“I don’t know,” Edmund replied through gritted teeth. 

His mother had rallied herself and was already summoning servants to bring towels and fetch help. He carried Ophelia indoors and up the stairs to her room where he deposited her on her bed.

Then he was promptly chased out while his mother and several maids fell upon Ophelia, presumably to change and dry her and do whatever they could for her comfort. 

He made sure the magister doctor as well as the village wisen had been sent for, then slumped against the wall in the hallway, feeling utterly useless.

How had he allowed things to go so far? Had he been shirking his duties? How had he not known that his sister was getting so unstable? So close to the edge? What could he have done differently?

“If only Father were awake,” Lawrence muttered beside him.

Edmund glanced down the hall to the suite of rooms his parents shared, where his father lay as still as death on their bed.

Phillip James Everhart was gone, for all intents and purposes. Oh, his heart still beat, every other minute or so. But it had been ten years since he’d begun his slumber—a magically induced coma they’d been forced to place him in to spare his life from the hydra’s incurable venom. 

Ten years since Edmund had become the head of the family at the tender age of eighteen. He’d spent the years grieving and trying to fill his father’s shoes.

He thought he’d done his best, but now… it was obvious he was still lacking, wasn’t it? His sister was troubled, he’d known that. But he hadn’t realized just how serious it was till now. Or perhaps he had and he’d just refused to see it.

Edmund stayed outside Ophelia’s door until help arrived, both parties turning up at nearly the same time. 

Wisen Elspeth, as creased and creaky as ever, was still spry enough to overtake Magister Doctor Kettleby on the stairs. Granted, she did have the advantage of a sturdy walking stick, which somehow slipped at just the right moment to whack the good magister on his shins.

“In her chamber, then?” she asked as she sprang up the last stair, barely waiting for Edmund’s answer before she headed towards Ophelia’s room. The wisen had attended every Everhart birth, and was regularly summoned to treat everything from fevers to broken limbs. Though Kettleby had since opened a practice in the neighboring town, she remained a more familiar figure in the village. But Edmund wasn’t going to take chances with Ophelia’s health. He’d summon the Royal Magister himself if need be.

“Yes. Yes, indeed.” Edmund knocked on the door, then held it open for the wisen when his mother called for them to enter. “All right, Magister Doctor Kettleby?” he inquired when the rather plump man finally puffed up the stairs, mopping his brow and glaring daggers at the wisen’s back.

“Quite. Just a little peaked. I attended a complicated birth last night.”

“Both mother and child survived, I hope,” Edmund said, watching Wisen Elspeth begin to inspect Ophelia.

“Of course, of course,” Kettleby harrumphed, as if it was unthinkable for his patients to expire under his care. “Now, what seems to be the matter here?”

“Burn out,” Wisen Elspeth said as she massaged Ophelia’s hands. “Conked herself out doing magic.”

Kettleby eyed the wisen, then snorted and bypassed her dismissively to heft his bulk towards Ophelia’s bedside. “I’ll be the judge of that.” 

He took out his wand and waved it thoroughly over Ophelia’s prone figure for several long minutes. Then he turned to Edmund and announced gravely, “I believe she’s suffering from a combination of physical exhaustion and magical depletion.”

“That’s what I said,” Wisen Elspeth scoffed, glaring at the magister doctor while he pretended not to hear her. Rolling her eyes, she continued. “But burn out isn’t the real problem, is it?”

Mother shook her head. “She’s not been right for quite a while.”

Kettleby completely ignored the women and turned to Edmund. “What exactly has your sister been up to, Everhart?”

Edmund was loath to tell them. But he had no choice, for Ophelia’s sake.

So he told Wisen Elspeth and Magister Doctor Kettleby what Ophelia had done, leaving nothing out. With their prompting, he even related the odd things she’d done in the past few years, which they’d dismissed at the time as the antics of an overly adventurous young woman, but which now in hindsight, might have been symptoms of a growing disease. Such as the time she’d ridden her mare out into a thunderstorm, laughing and daring the lightning to strike her. Or the time she’d swum into a lake filled with electric eels because she felt them ‘calling’ to her.

The wisen started shaking her head before he was even done, while Kettleby frowned until his shaggy brows met in the middle of his forehead.

“It is a form of magical madness,” the magister doctor finally said when he stopped speaking. “I’ve never seen it myself, but it has all the hallmarks of the cases I’ve read about. It doesn’t usually strike young women, though.”

Edmund’s heart sank. He’d suspected as much.

“But you can treat her?” Mother asked, a note of desperation in her voice.

Kettleby hesitated. “Does she have an animus yet?”

“She has attempted to bond one several times. But none of the animals could bear her magic. The bond either never held, or else the animal… expired.” They had already thought of that solution years ago. But after five dogs, seven cats, countless birds… Ophelia wouldn’t touch another animal if she was chained to it.

The magister doctor shook his head. “Then I can do nothing except alleviate the symptoms—bleeding should help balance her humours somewhat. But I’m afraid the underlying problem is chronic. And unfortunately, most of such cases I’ve read about resulted in early death.”

Mother made a soft, broken sound, one hand lifting to her mouth while she clutched Ophelia’s limp fingers in the other.

Edmund looked to Wisen Elspeth, but the wisen shook her head sadly. “Too much magic is rarely a problem amongst common folk. The only time I saw anything similar was when I was a gel.” She didn’t wait for Edmund to ask what had happened. “The man went mad. Attacked his family, then took his own life when he discovered what he’d done.”

“No, no, I refuse to believe there’s no hope!”

The pain in his mother’s voice jolted Edmund out of his despair. He went over to his mother and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. 

“There is hope. There has to be.” He looked towards the magister doctor once more. “You can’t tell me there isn’t anything in the entire magisterium about this. Our society is built on magic. We can’t just die from having too much of it!”

“Men have the strength to carry magic’s power, that is why it is men who have the lion’s share of it,” the magister doctor said with an air of quoting a textbook.

Wisen Elspeth scoffed quietly, prompting Kettleby to dart his eyes to her. 

“Something to say?” he inquired.

“Just that women often have just as much magic as men, and usually twice the skill at wielding it.” She held her head up high, as if daring the magister doctor to contradict her.

“And yet, women’s aethers fluctuate along with their cycles and wither away with every bir—why, that’s it!”

“What?” Edmund demanded.

“The solution!” Magister Doctor Kettleby practically crowed. “There is hope because your sister is a woman, don’t you see?”

“I know she is female, but what I don’t see is what you’re getting at,” Edmund growled out. “Unless you’re trying to say that the remedy for my sister’s ailment is childbirth!?”

“That’s precisely it!”

“Rot, all of it,” Wisen Elspeth snorted. “I've delivered hundreds of babies, and never once seen a mother’s power dry up. Women’s magic doesn’t bleed away during their courses or childbirth! It merely waxes and wanes as is natural when one’s body changes or undergoes strain.”

“Say what you will, it is a fact that men have more magical power. It is also a fact that the madness this young woman suffers from stems from her overly abundant and uncontrollable magic. Mark my words! Marriage and childbirth will be what cures her!”

Edmund exchanged stunned looks with his mother. Could they really help Ophelia in this manner?

“Perhaps this is it,” his mother said, smiling weakly at him. “Marriage and children steadied me. Perhaps this is what Ophelia needs.”

Wisen Elspeth shook her head. “Even if it helps, she can’t go on birthing babes forever. Magic aside, women fade with every birth.”

“But I had eight strong and beautiful babies, and I’m still here,” his mother said firmly, with enough hope in her voice that Edmund knew she was choosing to ignore Wisen Elspeth’s warning. Or perhaps not choosing. Needing to not hear it.

They discussed the situation for a while longer. But neither Wisen Elspeth nor Magister Doctor Kettleby had more to add, so they finally left, leaving Edmund alone with his mother, who looked as if she had renewed purpose in her life.

“You know she won’t want to marry,” Edmund said quietly as they gazed down upon Ophelia.

“She will if she finds the right man. The question is how we might bring that about. She can’t be presented in court—not in this condition. And a Season would be quite impossible.”

Indeed, it would be a veritable nightmare, even if she wasn’t suffering from this magical malady. Ophelia had always been a touch too wild and she’d never cared about what society thought of her. 

Edmund had always dreaded the day he’d have to escort her into society… but now, it seemed, it was the one thing that might lead to her salvation—according to Kettleby. He still didn’t quite know what to think about this ‘solution’ the magister doctor had proposed.

“You know what you must do,” his mother said, breaking into his thoughts. 

Edmund raised a brow. “You’re not suggesting I arrange a marriage for Ophelia?” He would never survive it. And neither would the groom, so the whole point of saving her through marriage was moot. He said as much to his mother.

“I’m not suggesting we arrange a marriage for her. But surely you must know of eligible young men who might suit your sister. Men with enough backbone, magical or otherwise, to match her. Perhaps even a man who might understand her… if not love her.” Mother sighed heavily. “I would really prefer if all my children married for love. But if it’s a choice between my daughter living or…” she broke off, her throat working.

Edmund looked away, giving his mother time to gather herself. “I can think of a few possible candidates,” he finally said. “But I would need to make further inquiries to be absolutely sure of their character before I allow them anywhere close to Ophelia. It will take time to be sure,” he warned.

“She will need time to recuperate anyway,” his mother said, her eyes bright but her voice brisk. “Although we should not delay too long. I don’t believe Ophelia is mad yet, but her behavior will fuel gossip that she is, and that will hurt her chances of marriage. It will hurt all your sisters’ chances.” 

“I will not let it come to that,” Edmund said grimly. He would double, no, triple her dowry if he had to. All their dowries. Though that might just attract fortune hunters. Either way, he’d find a way to get rid of the dross, no matter what.

“It might already be too late.” None of them needed to say the obvious. Wisen Elspeth and Magister Doctor Kettleby could be trusted to keep Ophelia’s condition secret. But servants talked, even ones as loyal to the family as the Everhart servants surely were. And even if none of them did, gossip invariably found its way through society, somehow.

“Then I will head to London right away and begin my search. If I’m successful, I’ll send word and we can make plans about how they should meet.”

Mother nodded, then closed her eyes. “Thank you, Edmund. This solution isn’t ideal, and I know how difficult it will be for you. I wish your father were here, but since he isn’t… I’m sure he would approve of what you are about to do if he were able to.”

Edmund could only nod before he leaned down to kiss his mother on her cheek. Neither of them voiced what they each were surely thinking: that this would never have happened at all, if his father were still among the living. 

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. And no matter how reluctant Edmund was to have to find his sister a husband, it was the only thing he could think to do to save her from her magic.

✨ Enjoying the story? Get Lady Changeling above to continue reading.