The Bride Tournament (Hexed Hearts Book 1)(3)
Ellie had panicked. Father would never survive there. Plus, selling the estate would have meant leaving her ancestral home—her mother’s home.
So, she’d struck a desperate bargain with Lady Irene. Ellie would act as a pseudo-servant until an inexpensive butler and maid could be hired.
Or at least until springtime when the fashionable apartments came on the market, and Lady Irene could search for a suitable new place at her leisure. Or so Ellie had suggested.
Her father’s deteriorating health was the reason Ellie allowed the Burbes to boss her around. She stayed for him. She was almost able to purchase the estate anonymously, but she needed one more year’s worth of her small allowance and income from working in the castle to make a reasonable offer. One more year of saving and Ellie could buy the place, ensuring her father lived out the rest of his days in a familiar setting and Ellie got to keep her only tie to her mother.
She’d scoured the property over the years, selling off jewelry, gowns, artwork, silver, and old farm equipment to build up a respectable sum she kept hidden under the floorboards of her bedroom.
Working for the Burbes was temporary, she reminded herself.
Ellie poured a piping hot mug of peppermint tea and strode toward the south parlor. The heavy door creaked open on an angry groan, but her father did not glance up from his work. He’d changed so much in her short lifetime, from burly and healthy to wan and sick. He’d been a blacksmith when he’d met Lady Eleanor decades ago.
But he’d traded his bellows and hammer for country living and a wife he loved passionately.
Early on in their marriage, he began to handle the local flora and fauna lore. A simple job for a man new to the aristocracy, but as of late his notes made no sense, and Ellie intercepted the pages before he sent them off to his publisher.
Her father pressed blackened petals between the pages of his notebook. His calloused hands worked the delicate flower with a rare gentleness. He dipped a quill into blue ink and scrawled sapphire notes below the stem. Ellie couldn’t make out the upside-down print in his journal.
“Father, I have a meal for you.”
He grunted and pointed to an empty space on the wide table.
“Eat every bite.”
He grunted again and patted her hand in an absent manner as he continued his feverish notes. Ellie bit back the words she longed to spew. Her father didn’t listen. He’d stopped listening years ago.
She checked the hour on her pocket watch. She had just enough time to head to an important meeting before dinner. She untied the laces of her cream apron and hung the stained fabric on the back-door hook, trading the garment for her dark gray woolen cloak.
She stepped into the fall air and shut the door behind her. Autumn had arrived with a chilling coldness this year. The trees shook in the afternoon breeze, and the leaves whispered in a tongue she did not understand.
She tugged the hood of her cloak tighter. Elbourne Estate sat on the edge of the Royal Forest and was one of the last manor homes of its era. Most places had been restored or torn down and rebuilt. Not Elbourne. There was history here. A view into centuries past. It was another reason Ellie was keen on buying the estate: a new owner was likely to demolish Elbourne to put up a fresh manor house.
The history would be lost.
The carriage road to the Citadel stretched several miles, but the shortcut through the woods was a ten-minute jaunt. As always, she took the forest path. The back garden gate squeaked as she walked through and into an abandoned field to reach the forest’s edge.
A crow cawed overhead.
She craned her neck to spy the raven-feathered bird tilt its beak, one beady eye watching, waiting. She stifled a shiver and ducked around a twisted tree trunk. The forest stretched in a dizzying path along the edge of the Citadel. Her family estate bordered the city and was technically within its limits, which made it a valuable property for someone wishing to be close to the epicenter of the kingdom.
The gleaming white stone of the city’s walls paralleled the woods. A lone gate, guarded by retired knights, separated the woodland creatures from the Citadel’s citizens. A palatial city, designed in the time of the old magic, soared up from the cliff of a hill and towered above forests and fields.
In this era, the Citadel housed the keenest minds and the most prestigious practitioners of new magic—a fuddy-duddy excuse for flaunting wealth and lineage. The new magic, like all magic, needed a conduit, a source, and for the elite who lived in the Citadel, their power drew from their gold, unlike old magic that used conduits passed down through the generations.
Unfortunately, old magic had been phased out over several decades as it fell out of favor due to its instable nature. And then, the ancient conduits had been destroyed by order of the royal family in the wake of the last Bride Tournament. The old ways were banned as a result of an attempt on the current queen’s life during the competition, or so the stories say.
Now, few peasants owned the required gold to practice new magic and were therefore reliant on the nobility for magical needs. A system had arisen where peasants worked for the nobles in exchange for magical favors and a small pittance. The divide between the classes deepened every year.
She passed through the woods with ease, having memorized the location of every fallen tree and gnarled root.
“Hello there, Ellie, we’ve missed you this week.” The creased face of a guard poked out from the open gate, grinning.
Ellie smiled in return. “Rufus, I’ve missed you, too! Father had a fall and wasn’t feeling well, I stayed home to care for him.” She pulled two fresh apples from her pocket and tossed them to Rufus and the other guard, who shared the greeting.