These Hollow Vows Read online

  I reach into my bag and pull out two pouches. “Here.”

  Nik’s eyes widen. “Where did you get this?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Take it.”

  Wide-eyed and slack-jawed, Nik peers into the bags before shaking her head. “Brie, you can’t.”

  “I can and I will.”

  Nik stares at me for a long beat, and in her eyes I see her desperation warring with her fear for me. Finally she pulls me into her arms and squeezes me tight. “I’ll repay you. Someday. Somehow. I swear it.”

  “You owe me nothing.” I pull out of her arms, eager to get home and clean up. Desperate to sleep. “You would’ve done the same for me and Jas if you could have.”

  Her eyes fill with tears, and I watch one spill over and down her cheek, smearing her makeup as it goes. Her gratitude morphs to worry as she spots my bloody hand. “What happened?”

  I make a fist to hide my sliced palm. “It’s nothing. Just a cut.”

  “Just a cut? It’s an infection waiting to happen.” She nods to her bedroom. “Come with me. I can help.”

  Knowing she won’t let me go without a fight, I follow her into the tiny room where there’s a rickety dresser and the bed she and her daughter share. I sit on the edge of the bed and watch as she shuts the door behind her and gathers supplies.

  She sinks to her haunches in front of me and paints a salve on my cut. “You got this getting that money.” It’s not a question, so I don’t bother with a lie. “Are you okay?”

  I try to hold still as the salve seeps into my skin. The flesh itches where it knits together. “I’m fine. I just need some dinner and a nap.”

  Dark, incredulous eyes flash to mine. “A nap? Brie, you’re so run-down I’m not sure anything but a coma would refresh you.”

  I laugh—or try to. It sounds more like a pathetic mewl. So tired.

  “Another payment due to your aunt?”

  “Tomorrow.” I swallow hard at the thought. I’m seventeen, but I’m magically bound to a contract that will, at this rate, keep me in Madame Vivias’s debt for the rest of my life. When my sister and I signed ourselves into servitude nine years ago, Uncle Devlin had just died and Mom had abandoned us. The payments Madame V required then seemed reasonable—and much better than the uncertain fate of an orphan—but we were little girls who didn’t understand things like compound interest or the insidious trap of her penalties. Just as Fawn didn’t truly understand the contract she’d signed with Gorst.

  “And thanks to us,” Nik says, reaching for the gauze, “you’re going to be short again.”

  “Worth it,” I whisper.

  Nik squeezes her eyes shut. “This world is so screwed up.” There’s no way Fawn can hear us unless she’s listening at the door, but Nik lowers her voice anyway. “I have a friend who could give you work.”

  I frown. “What kind of work?” There’s none that can earn me the kind of money I need. None except— “I might as well work for Creighton Gorst if I’m going to do that.”

  “Creighton would take half your earnings.” Nik wraps my hand and gives me a sad smile. “There are fae who pay a premium for the company of a beautiful human and more if you’ll bind yourself to them. Far more than Creighton can offer.”

  “Faeries?” I shake my head. I’d sooner get involved with Creighton’s handsy clients than give myself over to a faerie. My people used to believe the faeries were our guardians. Before they split the sky and opened the portals, the fae visited at twilight in their spirit forms—just a shadow or an outline in the trees that looked like something living.

  My people called them angels. They’d kneel and pray for the angels to stay close, to protect them, to watch over their sick children. But when the portals opened and the angels were finally here, they didn’t protect us at all.

  Because the fae aren’t angels. They’re demons, and they came to exploit us, to steal babies and use humans as their slaves and their breeding stock. They tricked thousands into signing over their lives to fight in their wars. Only when the Magical Seven of Elora, the seven most powerful mages from this world, came together did we guard the portals against them. Now they can take a human life only if it’s fairly purchased or freely given—a magical safeguard that the clever faeries have created a hundred workarounds for. In practice, this protects only the rich and powerful.

  “Better than nothing,” say so many who support the Seven. “It’s a start.” Or worse, “If people don’t want to be sold to the fae, they shouldn’t take on so much debt.”

  “Why would they pay when they can just glamour women into giving them whatever they want?” I ask Nik.

  “Keep your voice down!” She cranes her neck to check that the door behind her is still closed. “Not everything you hear about them is true. And my friend can—”

  “It’s out of the question. I’ll find another way.” If I know anything, it’s that I’ll never trust the fae.

  “I’m worried about you,” Nik says. “In this world, the only power we have is in our autonomy. Don’t let anyone back you into a corner. Don’t let your desperation make decisions for you.”

  Like it did for Fawn. “I won’t,” I promise, but it feels hollow, as if my voice already knows it’s a lie. I’m working all the time and stealing as much as I can get away with, but I can’t keep up.

  Even if I were okay with selling my body—and I’m not—I don’t want anything to do with the fae. I don’t care how much money they offer. There are more important things in life than money. Even more important things than freedom—like taking care of your two little girls and not abandoning them so you can run off with your faerie lover.

  * * *

  “I hear you, girl,” Madame Vivias says the second my hand hits the knob for the basement.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. I should’ve come in through the cellar door. It’s after midnight, and I have no energy for whatever task she’s planning to give me. Lowering my head, I turn to her and give a brief curtsey. “Good evening, Aunt V.”

  “Good evening. Tomorrow’s the full moon.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You have my money?”

  I keep my gaze leveled on the hand propped on her hip—a sparkling ring on every finger. Any one of those rings could cover this month’s payment. I don’t lift my head. I won’t give her the satisfaction of seeing the fear in my eyes. “I’ll have it tomorrow, ma’am.”

  She’s silent for so long that I dare to lift my gaze to hers. She’s adjusting the thick strands of glittering jewels hanging from her neck and scowling at me. “If you don’t have it today, what are the chances you’ll have it tomorrow?”

  Not very good. But until it’s officially too late, I won’t admit it. Every time we’re short, our contract grows longer and our payment higher. It’s a vicious cycle we can’t seem to escape. “I’ll pay you tomorrow, ma’am.”

  “Abriella!” The shrill cry comes from the stairs, and I have to fight my flinch at my cousin Cassia’s voice. “My dresses need washing!”

  “There are fresh dresses in your room,” I say. “I pressed them this morning.”

  “None of those will do. I don’t have anything to wear to dinner tomorrow night.”

  “My room needs cleaning,” Stella, her sister, says, because gods forbid I do more for one spoiled cousin than the other. “The last time she did it, she barely spent any time in there, and it’s beginning to feel grimy.”

  Madame V arches a brow and turns back to me. “You heard them, girl. Get to work.”

  Sleep will have to wait a few more hours. I pull back my shoulders and turn toward my cousins’ rooms.

  Chapter Two

  THE SECOND I STEP into our shared bedroom in the cellar, Jas launches herself at me. “Brie! You’re home!” Our bedroom is little more than a storage room with a bed in it. I found the cinderblock walls claustrophobic when Madame V first moved us down here, but now we’ve made the space our own. One of Jas’s handsewn tapestries hangs over the bed, and
our assortment of personal trinkets—odd stones and shiny scraps of cloth that have value only to us—decorate the top of the rickety dresser.

  I hug my sister tight, breathing in the fresh linen scent of her. She might be only three years younger than I am, but in some ways she’ll always be the toddler I wrapped in my arms to rescue from the house fire.

  Jas pulls back and grins. Her brown eyes are bright, and her sleek chestnut hair is bound in a knot on top of her head. My sister is my opposite—all soft beauty, like her cheerful personality. I’m all hard angles and stubborn will, with hair the color of a blazing fire, much like the rage I carry inside me.

  “I heard you up there,” she says. “I would’ve come to help, but I was working on new dresses for Stella and Cassia.” She nods at the gowns now hanging on the stand in the corner.

  “What’s wrong with the eighty other dresses they have?”

  “They’ll never do!” she says in a mock-falsetto imitation of our cousins.

  I would’ve thought I was too exhausted for it, but I laugh. Whatever the losses of my day, whatever new penalties tomorrow’s missed payment will bring, I’m glad to be home. To be here with Jas, who’s unusually chipper for this late hour. I narrow my eyes. “What has you so excited?”

  “Didn’t you hear?” She has the absolute worst poker face, and her big smile reveals that she has some exciting news.

  I’ve been working all day. Other than my short visit with Nik and Fawn tonight, I haven’t talked to anyone. The kind of people I work for believe the help should be neither seen nor heard. “Hear what?”

  She’s practically bouncing. “In one day’s time, Queen Arya will open the doors to the Court of the Sun. She’s giving humans safe passage to Faerie to attend the celebration at her castle.”

  “What? Why?”

  “She wants to find a human bride for her son.”

  I grunt out a disgusted huff. “Of course she does.” The fae are good at many things, but reproducing isn’t one of them, and without offspring, their lines die off—especially when so many immortals were lost in the Great Fae War. Good riddance.

  “You really didn’t hear about it? It’s all the girls at work were talking about today. A Faerie Ball. We’re swamped with rush orders for new dresses.”

  “You’ll have to remind me to stay far away from the portals.”

  She giggles at my cynicism. “Brie! This is the Seelie Court. The good faeries! The faeries of light and joy.”

  “You don’t know that,” I snap. “You don’t know they’re good.”

  Her smile falls away. I’m a jerk.

  The last thing I want to do right now is pick a fight. “Sorry. I’m just tired.” So tired.

  “Look at your hands.” She runs her thumb across my cracked knuckles where the skin is raw from cleaning compounds. “Do you really want to be stuck in this basement for the rest of our lives?”

  “Anyone who goes to that court has a death wish, Jas. You know as well as I do that there are no good faeries. Just degrees of evil and cruel.”

  “Not so different from humans then.” She drops my hands. “I heard you and Madame V talking. I know the next payment is coming due, and despite your efforts to keep me in the dark—”

  “I don’t want you to worry.” All I truly want is to protect her, my sweet sister with her optimism and joy, who loves me even when I’m a hateful grump. I’m not sure I deserve her.

  “I know the contract as well as you do,” she says. “She keeps adding those penalties, and we’re never going to escape her without some sort of miracle.”

  “And the miracle you’re counting on is beneficent faeries? I think we’d be better off going to the gambling underground and trying our luck at cards.”

  She turns to a lavender dress in the corner and smooths the fabric of the deep neckline. “One of the girls I work with has a cousin whose friend fell in love with a golden fae lord. She comes back and visits with her family. She’s happy.”

  “It’s always a friend of a friend—do you notice that?” I try to keep the bite out of my tone this time. “No one who tells these stories actually knows the person who’s supposedly lucked out with the good faeries.”

  She turns away from the dress to frown at me. “There are more good faeries than bad, just like humans.”

  I’m not convinced that’s true of either. “Even so, a ball? Like, with dresses and fancy stuff? Faerie nonsense aside, I’m supposed to try to impress some stuck-up noble prince? Can’t you just hang me by my toenails instead?”

  She rolls her eyes and sits on the edge of the bed. “You don’t have to go, but I want to.”

  I recognize the stubborn edge to her voice. She’s going to go whether I want her to or not. I don’t even have to take a full step to sink onto the bed beside her. I fall to my back and stare at the ceiling. “I don’t like it.”

  “I thought you two might still be up.”

  Jas and I both whip around, and the sight of Sebastian’s broad frame filling the doorway sends the small amount of adrenaline I have left zipping through me. My heart pounds a little faster, my blood runs a little hotter, and longing clenches my stomach in its fist. Sebastian is just a friend, he’d never see a scrappy thing like me as more than that, but no matter how many times I lecture my heart, it refuses to listen.

  He ducks his head and leans against the frame, his sea-green eyes scanning the space as if he hasn’t been here hundreds of times before. Madame V moved us down here not long after Uncle Devlin died, claiming we’d have more privacy this way. Even then, we knew that the cold, dark room with concrete walls, no windows, and space for little more than a shared double bed and a dresser was an attempt to put us in our place.

  Jas and I are short enough that the ceiling height isn’t a problem, but Sebastian’s over six feet tall and has smacked his head more than once. Not that it keeps him from visiting. He’s been sneaking down here for the last two years, since he started his apprenticeship with Mage Trifen next door. He’s the one who unlocks the door and sneaks us food and water when our cousins are feeling cruel and lock us in.

  “Still up,” I say, yawning despite the burst of energy I felt at his arrival, “but not for long.”

  “What don’t you like?” he asks, his brow creasing with his frown. “What were you talking about when I came in?”

  “Jas wants to become some faerie prince’s bride,” I say, scooting over on the bed to make room for him.

  My sister’s cheeks flame red. “Thanks a lot, Brie.”

  Sebastian sits between me and Jas before reaching out with one long leg to kick the door closed. He murmurs an incantation and snaps his fingers, giving a self-satisfied smirk when the lock on our side slides into place. Mage showoff.

  My cousins have made more than one crack about Sebastian’s friendship with me and Jas. They blackmailed us for months the first time they caught him down here, but I know they’re just bitter that Sebastian, a lowly apprentice mage, won’t waste his time looking in their direction. What Sebastian lacks in money and family connections, he makes up for in good looks—tall and broad-shouldered, gleaming white hair he keeps tied back at the base of his neck, and eyes like the raging sea. He’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.

  Objectively speaking, of course.

  Sebastian leaves in two days for another part of his apprenticeship, and I won’t be able to look forward to these late-night visits—the brightest spot in my life next to Jas. He’s taken trips before, but his training will keep him away for months this time. I’m dreading it.

  “I don’t want to be a faerie prince’s bride,” Jas says, pulling my thoughts back to the matter at hand. She shakes her head. “I just . . . It’s not that.”

  I arch a brow. “Really? Why else would you want to go?” When she looks at her hands, realization hits me so hard it forces the breath from my lungs. “You’re hoping to find our mother.”

  “If the stories she told us are true and the faerie she loved was a n
oble, they’d be expected to attend the ball.”

  “And what then, Jas? You think she’s going to see us and change her mind about what kind of mother she is? She abandoned us.”

  “She knew we wouldn’t be safe in Faerie.”

  When I flash her a hard look, she holds up her hands.

  “She had a terrible choice to make, and I’m not saying she did the right thing. I’m not even saying she isn’t selfish. I’m just saying that she is our mother, and if she knew about our lives, about the contract with Madame V . . .” She shakes her head. “I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t have any money. Maybe this lord she said loved her so much has no money, no lands, nothing that could help us. But maybe he does. And maybe she’s been living under the assumption that we’re happy and cared for.”

  My stomach knots. I don’t know how Jas maintains so much hope when everything about our life should have beaten it out of her by now. “If she really cared, wouldn’t she have checked on us sometime in the last nine years?”

  She swallows. “Then we’ll use guilt to our best advantage. Maybe she doesn’t care but will feel obligated to help us. We have to try. We can’t keep living like this.” She takes my other hand this time and frowns at the bandage. “You can’t keep living like this.”

  I bite back an objection. She’s right that something needs to change, but I’m not the kind of girl who looks to Faerie for answers. I turn to Sebastian. “You’re being awfully quiet.”

  He stands and attempts to pace in the three feet of space between the bed and the door. If his face weren’t creased with worry, it might be comical. “It’s dangerous.”

  Jas throws up her hands. “Thousands of humans are going to be there, dying for the chance to be a faerie prince’s bride.”

  “Dying being the key word,” I mutter. But she’s right. Though some will sneer at the girls planning to go, at least twice as many will put on their finest clothes and line up in hopes of becoming a faerie princess.

  “The golden queen is powerful,” Sebastian says, putting his hands behind his head in his typical thinking posture. “She’ll use her magic to protect the humans in her palace, but I don’t like the idea of you two going to Faerie and poking around looking for your mother. There are too many creatures over there who would love to snatch you at the first opportunity to fulfill their nefarious cravings.”