𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟐

𝘏𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩 

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╰┈˚ · ° .  WE DINED ON ROASTED VENISON THAT NIGHT. The dinner, as usual, was filled with chatters from my eldest sisters. I ate in silence, leaving the conversation to them. But as always, it was some type of complaint. About the villagers, how they had no manners or social grace... I honestly couldn't care less about it.

"Well, I said to him, 'If you think you can just ask me so nonchalantly, sir, I'm going to decline!' And you know what Tomas said?" Arms braced on the table and eyes wide, Elain shook her head.

"Tomas Mandray?" Feyre interrupted. "The woodcutter's second son?"

Nesta's blue-gray eyes narrowed at her. "Yes," she said, and shifted to address Elain once again.

"What does he want?" She glanced at our father. No reaction—no hint of alarm or sign that he was even listening. Lost to whatever fog of memory had crept over him, he was smiling mildly at his beloved Elain, the only one of us who bothered to really speak to him at all.

"He wants to marry her." Elain said dreamily. I blinked and then blinked again. Disbelief and amusement grew into me at the thought of Nesta marrying the woodcutter's son.

Nesta cocked her head. Just like a predator would'd. "Is there a problem, Feyre?" She flung her name like an insult making my jaw ache from clenching it so hard.

I blinked another time, even knowing it was foolish to react to my sister's taunts, I couldn't help but let out a loud laugh. "You can't chop wood for us, but you want to marry a woodcutter's son?"

It was a laugh so loud and definitely not expected, that for a second, I swore I had seen everyone at the table jump at the sound. And it was a wrong laugh. An empty one, almost hollow in its sound.

Nesta's face now reminded me more of a predator ready to bounce on its next prey, then anything else.

Squaring her shoulders, my eldest sister decided it was easier to take it on Feyre. As much as she detested it, Nesta knew that if she could be cold, I could be much colder. She could've been harsh and disrespectful and I would just stare at her, with lifeless eyes. She searched for the trigger in everyone, the thing that makes you thick and explode but with me, she had found none. Nesta was anger made person, cold and unforgiving. And I was the nothingness, uncaring and hollow that sometimes even my heartbeat felt like it echoed in the shell of an empty body.

"I thought all you wanted was for us to get out of the house—to marry off me and Elain so you can have enough time to paint your glorious masterpieces." Nesta sneered at the pillar of foxglove that Feyre had painted along the edge of the battered table.

"Watch it." I spat, hissing the words with a coat of venom.

"Believe me," Feyre said to the older girl, interrupting the tense stares between us "the day you want to marry someone worthy, I'll march up to his house and hand you over. But you're not going to marry Tomas."

Nesta's nostrils delicately flared. "There's nothing you can do. Clare Beddor told me this afternoon that Tomas is going to propose to me any day now. And then I'll never have to eat these scraps again." She added with a small smile, "At least I don't have to resort to rutting in the hay with Isaac Hale like an animal."

Feyre laid her palms flat on the table as she stared her down. Elain removed her hand from where it lay nearby, as if the dirt and blood beneath the older twin's fingernails would somehow jump onto her porcelain skin and in some way ruin it. "Tomas's family is barely better off than ours," Feyre said, trying to keep herself from growling the words out. "You'd be just another mouth to feed. If he doesn't know this, then his parents must."

"And we can't afford a dowry." I continued, and though my tone was firm, my voice almost as cold as the weather outside. The hoarseness of it by now familiar to the family of five. "For either of you."

"We're in love." Nesta declared, and Elain nodded her agreement.

I almost laughed again—when had they gone from mooning over aristos to making doe-eyes at peasants?

"Love won't feed a hungry belly," Feyre countered, keeping her gaze as sturdy as possible.

As if she'd struck her, Nesta leaped from her seat on the bench. "You're both just jealous. I heard them saying how Isaac is going to marry some Greenfield village girl for a handsome dowry." She said looking directly at Feyre before turning her angry eyes towards her youngest sister continuing her speech "And you. You pass your time in a tavern. You are no better than the whores that sit in there all day waiting for a man to pay a couple of coins for their bodies."

"I work in the tavern Nesta. As a maid. Do you know the meaning of word work?" I started. Slowly pronouncing the words in a soft tone as one would when in presence of a child "Perhaps you don't know the meaning behind the word but you certainly acquaintanced yourself with the money that I bring back as they always ended up in your greedy hands." I finished, now lowering my voice, deadly and sharp enough to cut through stone, I couldn't help but stare at my sister with cold eyes.

"Jealous?" Feyre said slowly, answering the accusation that Nesta held to her and at the same time, shifting her older sister's focus to her, preventing the harsh fight that would have probably started between us two if we had continued. She always did that, coming between us two whenever we were about to fight. To protect me or Nesta, I didn't know. "We have nothing to offer them—no dowry; no livestock, even. While Tomas might want to marry you... you're a burden."

"What do you know?" Nesta breathed. "You're just a half-wild beast with the nerve to bark orders at all hours of the day and night. Keep it up, and someday—someday, Feyre, you'll have no one left to remember you, or to care that you ever existed." She stormed off, Elain darting after her, cooing her sympathy. They slammed the door to the bedroom hard enough to rattle the dishes.

I lowered my own hand onto my twin sister's. Squeezing it tightly trying to give her as much comfort as she could. Small gestures that I was still capable of doing.

The wooden bench beneath our father groaned as he shifted. "You should talk some sense into her." Feyre spoke to their father

He examined a burn mark on the table. "What can I say? If it's love—"

"It can't be love, not on his part. Not with his wretched family. I've seen the way he acts around the village—there's one thing he wants from her, and it's not her hand in—"

"We need hope as much as we need bread and meat," he interrupted, his eyes clear for a rare moment. "We need hope, or else we cannot endure. So let her keep this hope. Let her imagine a better life. A better world."

For a moment, I fell through the fog of her memories. Moments of years that still haunt me asleep and awake. Pain, sadness, anger, loneliness. Nothingness.

I shifted my eyes back to my father, my gaze was hard, cold. Almost inhuman as the shadows of death danced across my features as I stated to my father one of the things that I was more certain of. "There is no such thing. Hope is for the foolish, and it is something that will get them killed in one way or the other."

✎

˗ˏˋ 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 ˊˎ˗

Hello everyone!

I'm sorry, I know this is a small chapter but I promise, the others are much longer than this one.

I don't feel like saying anything else lmaoo. Let me know if you are liking this story so far!!

˚ · ° . 𝐔𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐞 . ° · ˚

𝐖𝐞𝐝𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐝𝐚𝐲

𝐒𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐚𝐲

𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐬𝐚𝐟𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞!

– 𝐋𝐨𝐥𝐚 ☾