When Nelle Wychthorn was forced to sign herself away in marriage, she should have read the contract's fine print. Because she signs not with ink, but with blood. And that changes everything.
Season 1 'Of Crows and Thorns'
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Fiery Nelle, the isolat...
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Twelve Years Ago
We were traveling home from Ascendria. My mother, myself, and Ferne. My baby sister was harnessed into her car seat, and her chubby, three-year-old hands, clasped a rag-doll to her chest as she slept.
I ran my palms up and down my thighs, staring out the window of the limousine at the black winter night.
What am I going to do?
My thoughts were as dark as the countryside blurring past. Worry and guilt and confusion at what I'd learned, what I should do, swirled around in my head. Those all-consuming thoughts were so loud, I hadn't heard my mother ask the first couple of times until my body rocked when she shook my shoulder with a slender hand. "What is it, Gray?"
My mother had golden hair like wheat and grassy-green eyes. A ray of sunshine in the dark looks of the Crowthers. Years ago, when I'd asked where I'd gotten my black eyes, she'd said, a little wistfully—Not from me. She'd wished at least one of us would look like her—a little blond child with bright green eyes. But my black eyes came from the Crowther ancestors, Wyrm Tamers, she'd said. Every so often, black would appear amongst the violet.
I plucked at a stray fiber along the outside seam of my jeans. "I was just..."—shit, am I really going to do this?—"...thinking about Nelle."
My mother smiled, a knowing smile, obviously believing this was about something quite different. "Oh, I like Nelle, a lot," she said, doing a little shimmy with her shoulders. "She's so fiery and full of mischief."
I snorted. "She's fucking weird."
My mother snapped out with a hand to clip my ear. I yowled, frowning back at her as she glared and waved a pointed finger in front of my face. "Graysen Crowther, you know I don't like that language."
"Well, she is." I crossed my arms across my chest, sinking sullenly against the leather seat. I grumbled, "You should hear her—she cusses worse than Ennio Battagli, and she's only seven."
My mother huffed a delighted laugh. "She's a magpie, Nelle, alright. Marissa and Byron have their hands full with that one."
Nelle was so different from her sisters. Evelene and Annalise were Wychthorn princesses, prim and proper with their pretty dresses and glossy hair and perfect manners. Nelle was a ball of furious energy in too-big dresses and bare feet, running everywhere, climbing trees, her hair long and loose and wild, with intense gray eyes. Just staring at anyone she felt like for way too long—including me.
"I've seen how you look at her," my mother said.
"Ugh, gods, mom!" I was thirteen and she was seven. Far too young. And a girl. A GIRL!
Okay, I was starting to notice girls in that way, like my older brother Kenton had for some time. And my stomach did some kind of weird fluttery backflip thing whenever I encountered Alison Troelsen at a House Gathering. She was a little older than me, and so fucking pretty with her sweet smiles.
