My Sister's Mate

The Dress Rehearsal

There are bruises that bloom beneath the skin long before a hand ever touches you.

It’s been three days since I found my mother’s necklace snapped clean in two on my cot, left like a discarded thread, two days after Seleste tried to fix it. No one else knew. Not about the break. Not about how I curled around it like it still held her warmth. I just keep it hidden beneath my pillow, pretending the world hasn’t shifted again beneath my feet.

I was elbow, deep in root inventory, soot streaked across my wrists, when the runner appeared. Barely sixteen, breath ragged, face pale.

“Luna Julia requests your assistance in the ceremonial hall.”

No further explanation. No additional context. Just that single sentence tossed like a match into a pile of dry leaves.

The ceremonial hall.

The words hit like ice water down my spine.

I wiped my hands on my apron and nodded. I didn’t ask questions. I didn’t need to.

Ceremonial summons from Julia weren’t invitations.

They were performances.

The hall was already half full by the time I arrived.

Velvet banners, black and crimson, dripped from the rafters like spilled wine. Polished silverware caught the sunlight pouring through the tall windows. Someone had doused the room in pine oil and crushed roses. It clung to the air like a warning.

Everyone was dressed in muted pastels and practiced indifference. They didn’t look at me, but they saw me.

A maid approached, eyes low, mouth tight.

She handed me a gown, light purple, the shade of wilted wisteria. It was simple. Too simple. No embroidery. No beading. No crest. Just enough fabric to say you may stand here, but don’t belong.

Behind the changing screen, I undressed quickly, the silence swelling like a bruise. The gown hung awkwardly on me, the seams too tight at the shoulders, the neckline too low. I tugged at the hem as voices began drifting through the room, syrupy and deliberate.

“She always had her own way of dressing. Her mother too, I suppose. Different instincts. Wild ones.”

That voice.

Julia.

A pause.

“She was only with Father a short while, wasn’t she?”

A soft laugh, feigned confusion.

“I was just a toddler… but I remember people saying she didn’t last long before she passed. Weak genes, I suppose. Unfortunate when it passes down.”

I stopped breathing.

Fingers frozen around the laces.

There it was, delivered with the elegance of a blade hidden in velvet: the reminder. We share a father, but not a mother. And in her eyes, not a legacy.

When I stepped out from behind the screen, the hush was instant.

It lasted just long enough to sting before dissolving back into idle chatter, as if I were no more than part of the furniture.

But I had been noticed.

And I was exactly where Julia wanted me.

She arrived moments later, flanked by a trail of attendants who moved like silk and shadows. Her gown shimmered like starlight, woven through with threads of silver, the Blackthorn crest stitched in midnight blue along her collarbone. Pearls adorned her blonde hair. Power adorned her posture.

And that smile, gods, that smile, sharp enough to bleed you before you even knew you were cut.

"Ava," she purred, voice honeyed and poisonous. "There you are."

She didn’t wait for a response. She turned to the gathering crowd as though she were onstage, and maybe she was.

“Our honor attendants must represent the finest of Blackthorn,” she announced, voice lilting like song. “Poise. Grace. Tradition.”

She cast a glance toward me that didn’t linger, but the weight of it crushed.

“Even family,” she added, with a touch of exaggerated sympathy, “is not exempt from tradition.”

A chuckle rippled through the gathered crowd. Controlled. Measured. Cruel.

I stood tall, every muscle in my body screaming to run, but I stayed.

We were led to the center stage.

The space where ceremony bled into spectacle. Where eyes watched, where every movement became memory. I followed the attendant’s gestures silently, my legs heavy beneath the ill, fitted gown, as if the fabric itself knew I didn’t belong here.

Julia’s voice rang out like a bell dipped in poison.

“Ava will demonstrate the ceremonial walk for our alliance envoy’s arrival next week,” Julia announced, voice dripping with sugary authority. “It’s a significant duty... one typically reserved for the highest-ranking attendants, as first impressions are everything.”

Whispers stirred like restless ghosts behind me.

Highest, ranking.

I wasn’t one of them. We all knew it. But she said it anyway.

I walked once, back straight, steps measured.

Then again, heel, toe, heel, toe.

“Slower, Ava,” came Julia’s voice, lilting, with just a pinch of disappointment.

A third time.

“Your posture,” she sighed. “It’s giving… apprehensive. This isn’t a hunt. There’s no need to look like prey.”

A soft laugh bubbled from the side of the room. I didn’t look to see who it came from.

My knees burned. The dress pinched under my arms. Sweat pricked at the base of my neck. I pushed through.

“Let’s try the curtsy again,” Julia called, turning toward her inner circle as though this were all a tedious rehearsal and not an orchestrated unraveling.

I dipped, chin down, arms poised.

“Again,” she said, without even glancing up.

I did it.

“Again.”

I did it again.

“Hmm. It’s giving… apprehensive. Try smiling this time.”

I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted iron. Still, I dipped.

The hem caught.

Just a thread, just a shift of fabric, nothing more.

But I didn’t see it coming.

There was a sharp tug as my heel snagged the bottom edge. A sound like tearing silk. Then I was falling.

No time to grab hold. No time to recover.

Just air, then stone.

My knees hit first. Then my palm. A gasp escaped my lips as the sting of the impact bloomed across my skin like fire.

And then,

Silence.

A silence so sharp it might as well have been a scream.

Time stretched. My breath was loud in my ears. My vision blurred for a moment, and all I could feel was the weight of their eyes. Of her eyes.

Then,

“Ava!” Julia’s voice rang out, high and sweet and merciless. “Oh, darling, you poor thing!”

Heels clicked toward me.

“I knew the fit might be tricky for you. Your build’s always been a little… unusual, hasn’t it?”

Gasps. Suppressed smiles. A sharp snort quickly disguised as a cough.

Pity thickened the air like smoke.

I forced myself to stand, refusing help. My palm throbbed, blood smeared across the skin like a warning. The hem of the gown had torn across my thigh. My pride lay scattered in invisible pieces across the marble.

And still, I stood.

Across the room, a figure watched.

Kieran.

He stood near the archway now, half, shadowed, his eyes fixed on me. Still. Silent. Like a storm just beyond the mountains.

I didn’t even know when he’d entered. But he saw.

Everything.

Julia saw him too. Her eyes sparkled with amusement as she turned, offered him a delicate smile… then leaned in close to me, too close. Close enough for her words to slither straight into my ear.

“We all have our place, sister,” she whispered, soft and sharp. “Some just don’t belong center stage.”

I didn’t flinch.

I didn’t breathe.

Because deep inside, something was unraveling, but not in the way she wanted.

Not broken.

Awakening.

And then....

“That's enough!” a voice snapped.

Lena.

She stormed forward, shoving through the stunned ring of onlookers. Paige, her mother, followed like a storm in a silk shawl.

“What is this circus?” Paige demanded, eyes sweeping the room. She didn’t yell. She didn’t need to. Her authority crackled like lightning. “Your sister’s bleeding.”

“I didn’t mean....” Julia started, but Lena was already beside me, lifting my arm over her shoulder.

“You meant exactly what you did,” Lena hissed.

Paige was already peeling back the ruined fabric, her mouth a thin line. “We’ll take her from here.”

“But the rehearsal...”

“Is over,” Paige said. “And if anyone wants to challenge me on that, they’re welcome to try.”

No one did.

They took me to their quarters; quiet, warm, and tucked above the east wing, where pine-scented wind curled through open windows and the walls smelled like cedar oil, lemon balm, and old stories.

Lena muttered curses under her breath as she helped me in, her grip still steady at my waist.

“She’s lucky I didn’t rip that smug smile off her face,” she snapped.

“Lena,” Paige said calmly, “you are not in charge of face-ripping. I am.”

That earned a reluctant huff of laughter from me.

Paige was already gathering supplies, linens, salve, a bowl of marigold-scented water, before motioning me to sit beside the hearth. “Up you go, love.”

And I did. Because when Paige said sit, you sat.

She knelt in front of me, not as an elite but as the woman who once snuck me honeyed bread after I’d cried myself to sleep. The one who always said she had three daughters.

Lena. Selene. Me.

“You’ve always had the worst luck with ceremony dresses,” she murmured, dabbing gently at my knee. “Remember the Equinox Feast? Ten years old and already allergic to fashion.”

“The itchy lace one?” I said, the memory tugging loose.

She nodded, smiling. “You looked like you were trying to crawl out of your own collar. I told the tailor you had a rare reaction to imported lace.”

“You lied?”

“No,” she said, eyes meeting mine. “I protected my daughter.”

The words landed like a balm all their own.

She worked in silence for a while, her hands steady as she smoothed salve across my palm. Then, softly: “You always hold pain too close. It doesn’t make you braver, it just slows the healing.”

“I’m used to pain.”

“But you shouldn’t have to be.”

My throat tightened. I couldn’t answer.

Lena returned with a cup of tea and passed it to me. “If Julia even looks at you wrong, I swear....”

“She won’t,” Paige cut in, sharp and sure.

She brushed a strand of hair from my face like I was still ten years old with bruised knees and tangled braids. “You’re staying here. Your room’s cold, and I already set something soft out.”

I didn’t argue.

Because this place, with its warm lamplight and quiet strength, felt more like home than anywhere had in years.

Later that night, when Lena had drifted off, arms crossed, muttering threats in her sleep, I padded to the small sleeping nook Paige had readied for me beside the fire.

The blanket was soft. The cushion thick.

But just beneath the fold of the cover, placed with intent, was a jar.

Dark. Heavy. Familiar.

The scent hit before I even opened it, amber and pine and something sharp beneath it. Not quite medicinal. Not quite soothing. The kind of balm you only used when bruises went too deep for the surface to explain.

My hand froze.

I didn’t need a note to know who had left it.

Kieran.