These Hollow Vows (These Hollow Vows 1)

“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 noble, 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.”