5. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Natasya

G rowing up as a reclusive assassin lord's daughter meant that I did not get out much. In truth, I spent a great deal of time in my mother's inn where it was deemed "safe" and "appropriate" for a girl of my age to be.

While my sister Corallin meted out assassination contracts, I had to sit up in the rafters listening to mother's bard practice his songs for hours on end. While my twin Bronwyn busied herself with her closest companions—her books—I was bored to death.

Father had his acquaintances from his respectable businesses though, and eventually I caused enough trouble at the inn by pulling tiny pranks with my sorcery that father relented and brought me along with him on those meetings. Those were tedious, of course, but occasionally something would come up, and he would have to attend to business in the world of shadows while I was around.

It was at one such meeting that I met Taryn.

Her father Michael was a vampire lord and her mother Bryn was a disgraced member of the Kotov line. The Kotovs are a powerful noble family with a pedigree in magic that stretches back to before the academy was founded, but that wasn't why my father was interested in Bryn and her husband. After all, she had been disowned.

No, it was because Bryn was the sister of Creed Kotov, a man who is arguably the most powerful necromancer of this current age.

And as such, he is near impossible to locate. But Elwis kept tabs on Creed through Bryn and Michael.

When I met Taryn, we immediately became close friends, as close as sisters really. After much begging, my father relented and let me spend my summers at Taryn's family home with the promise that I would study diligently during the winter months and share any necromancy secrets I might learn from Creed's family—even if they Taryn and her immediate family were actually all magickers.

It was during my time with Taryn's family that I was able to enjoy the occasional ball. Due to the vampirism, Taryn's father was extremely reclusive, but always tried to keep up good relations with the neighboring lords. So, when his family was invited to a ball, they would attend. If I was staying there, I was able to tag along and pretend that I had been born into nobility instead of as the abused daughter of a drunk farmer who got lucky when an assassin decided to take pity on her.

I'm sure that the ball Brom will be holding in Evengi's honor here in Sunder Hollow will not be anywhere near as enchanting as the balls I attended alongside Taryn and her family, but I'm still excited.

I've always loved an excuse to put on a pretty dress and put on airs.

I pull a pink dress with billowing skirts from my wardrobe and hold it up to my chest as I sway in front of my looking glass before I pull it on. Father bought a lovely little house in Sunder Hollow for me to use while I work toward getting that spellbook. It's the second nicest home in town, and fortunately, came up for sale only a few months before we arrived here when the previous owner died in a tragic " accident ".

The dress was a gift from Taryn herself. She gave it to me on my nineteenth birthday, but I haven't had much opportunity to wear it before now.

I smile at my reflection. This dress makes me look just like a noble woman. Standing here, in a house that my father bought me. The second largest in town, but one of the smallest of the houses my father owns, and it reminds me of just how far I've come.

I'm not that dirty faced urchin who dug up roots to try to eat them and spent my days hiding from my father and twin alike. No, I'm a lady now. A pretty one at that, but more importantly I'm powerful.

No one will ever push me around and tell me what to do again.

There's a creak as the cellar door opens, and I turn just as the skeleton shambles in. "What do you think, Father?" I ask with a smile into the empty sockets of the skeleton. But there is no reply from the knitted together bones.

Even though he is my father, nothing but the bones remain. A hollow husk of the man who sired me with no eyes to see or tongue to speak and no heart to finally give his daughter love.

I wish that when you reanimate a body, you can bring back their soul. What I would give to be able to raise my father's bones and show him the daughter he was so ashamed of that he drank himself in a stupor. The girl that he not only beat but encouraged her sister to beat.

According to him, we both killed our mother when she birthed us. But I came out last, I delivered the final blow.

" One daughter she could have managed, why did you have to be there?" was what he always said.

"So that I can become ten times what you will ever be," I whisper as I step toward the skeleton. I trace a finger across one of the bones that make up his shoulder. Even after all these years of practicing necromancy, he is my favorite to reanimate.

It isn't all for spite. I'm also sentimental, and whether either of us wanted it or not, he was my father.

If he wouldn't care for me in life, then he will in death.

"Will you help me do the clasps of my dress, Papa?" I ask my father's skeleton, even though no verbal command is actually required. Sorcery is not like magic in that it needs to be spoken; instead, sorcery is controlled by a mere thought.

It's so much more powerful than any magic, but perhaps that is why it is illegal. Because people fear the sort of power it grants.

Boney fingers start on my clasp as I turn my attention back to getting ready for the ball. Taryn picked the best dress for me. So many colors clash with my red hair and make it difficult to wear, but this pale pink instead compliments and brings out my coloring in a manner that I would not have expected.

The sleeves flare at my elbow and the skirts swoosh over my petticoats. I rest my hand over my heart and determine to thank Taryn the next time I see her for doing her part in making me the prettiest girl who will be in Sunder Hollow tonight.

I wonder if I should invite her to my wedding. On one hand, I would want her to be there, but on the other I worry that she will see right through me and know that I don't love my groom. For years, we lamented the fact that neither of us has brothers that the other can marry. The closest we came to being related is that at one point in time, there was an arrangement for her cousin to marry my cousin, but that fell through. Still, it doesn't matter. I've since realized that I don't need to be related by blood for us to be sisters.

After all, I don't share a drop of blood with Corallin or the rest of my adopted family. And yet they are just as much my family as my own twin Bronwyn.

Taryn is a sister of my soul, and I feel her with me as I wear this dress tonight.

"I think I'm ready," I tell myself, my looking glass, and the knitted bones behind me.

My father shambles back down to my cellar where I keep him hidden, and I put on the brightest smile I have, ready to enter that night and become someone else.

Someone that I might actually enjoy being.