CHAPTER 1
IOLANTHE
The day I grew taller than my father was the day I realized I'd be unwed forever. My mother's people are Yshremi, from a land of scholars and knowledge traders. She was delicate. Small. Pretty. My father's people are the sturdier Adassians, and unfortunately, I take after them. I am tall. Strong. My shoulders are broad and my hips broader. This wouldn't be a problem if my parents were rich.
They are not rich.
When I sprout up, I know my father's thoughts before he voices them. He can marry off a pretty daughter to further my family's fortunes, but a tall daughter with a plain face? I am useless to him. It doesn't matter that I dress myself in the prettiest gowns available, that I hunch my shoulders to hide my height, or bind my breasts and adjust my belts to make my thick, strong body seem more willowy. I cover myself in lotions day and night so that my skin might be soft and pretty, but as if the gods are determined to insult me, I am covered head to toe in freckles. I do not even have the fortune to be blonde. My hair, white-gold as a child, turns to a muddy brown the moment my breasts come in.
In short, I am strong and I have nice skin. I will make a fantastic spinster aunt to my siblings' children. I cannot even aspire to be a cleric of the gods, as temples must be bribed, and we have no money for the bribing.
(That suits me well enough. While clerics are great readers—which I enjoy—they are also great healers, and I find I do not have the stomach for such things.)
I try not to worry about my lack of appeal to a husband. After all, I have five younger sisters and my mother to spend time with, and I can avoid my father's baleful gaze if I'm careful. But then my mother dies from a wasting sickness. And then, one by one, my sisters—all pretty, delicate things that take after my mother's Yshremi blood—marry off. They marry farmers and merchants, and one marries a titled knight despite the fact that we are penniless.
Eventually, it is just me at home with Father. My siblings are gone, my mother in her final rest, and my father's remote hold in the rocky crag-lands of Adassia, Rockmourn Keep, grows poorer by the day. The woales, our beasts of burden, are sold off to pay retainers, then the pigs. My mother's jewelry disappears and when the fine, old tapestries disappear off the walls and my books vanish, I start to wonder what will be left for my father to sell.
I know it will not be me. He cannot even give me away. Perhaps he will cut my hair and make me ride with his men as a knight and pretend I am a man. Or perhaps I should run away and seek my own fortune. One night, I study my face, trying to decide if I will pass as a boy, but my breasts are too big, my mouth too full and pink to be anything but a woman's. So much for that.
I am stuck at Rockmourn Keep with my father until it crumbles to stones around us.
But since I have nowhere else to go, I hide my books, I keep smiling, and I make the best of things.
On my thirtieth birthday, Cook bakes me a tiny cake and I read letters from my sisters in the sunshine of the gardens, determined to enjoy my day. Two of them are pregnant, and the youngest just had her second child. They do not ask when I will marry. No one ever does. I try not to be envious. I've been tall for a very, very long time, so it's not as if my fate is surprising to me. I'm just…wistful. I don't know if I want to be a mother, but I'd like a home of my own…a husband of my own.
Something—anything—to call my own.
When my father arrives home that night, however, he has no gift for me. Instead, he smirks at me from across the dinner table. "Pack your things," he tells me. "I've found you a husband. We leave for his keep tomorrow."