God, he missed Rilla. She was so calm and level-headed, and as soon as she left, the whole damn place fell apart.

There was a power void among the girls. In theory, the girl who had been here longest or perhaps the oldest girl ought to fill it. But Berta was a nervous, fluttering dormouse, and the oldest girl was now Seri. And she did fill the power void, but not in the way that Brand had wanted.

Seri acted like being a servant was an honor. She slept in the kitchen near the fireplace, drew the water, worked the garden, made breakfast with the cook, learned all the servants’ names, washed every single window in the castle, and sewed her own clothes. Which he learned about when he discovered her wearing a new apron out of his old tablecloth.

“What are you doing?” he asked angrily. “You can’t just tear up my things.”

“It was an old tablecloth with holes in it,” she said. “You’d have thrown it out.”

“You could ask for new clothes,” he said. “Or new material to make them, since you’re so fond of sewing.”

“I don’t require anything of you,” she said. “And it is Ida who is fond of sewing, not me. She did the embroidery work.”

This got under his skin. The fact that Ida, the quietest of the girls, had helped her only served to emphasize that Seri was gaining influence over the group. Also, it irritated him that he didn’t know Ida liked sewing. She’d been here a month and a half and had never asked for so much as a needle and thread.

Of course, Lotte was the one who was most infatuated with Seri. She was always by her side, helping out in the garden, sneaking her books from the library (as if Seri couldn’t have just gone in and picked one out). They were always outside together, presumably because there were no mirrors, and he couldn’t listen to them as easily.

Brand did, however, walk in on their conversations from time to time.

“But if they don’t rescue us—” Lotte was saying.

“They will. My uncle—” Seri stopped as she saw him. She bristled, then resumed, “My uncle is a great sorcerer. My father will rouse him, and he will find this tower and tear it to bits.”

“I have been doing this for years,” Brand pointed out. “No one has come.”

Seri ignored him. “You see, Brand is not so powerful as he appears. He is young. I can tell by the way he disguises himself. This tower was built was by an ancestor of his, and he uses its spells. But by himself, he is just one man, with a few paltry tricks. He has little power.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Says the girl whose father was born without magic,” Brand said. “The girl whose castle is rotting because no one can maintain the charms. Whose supposedly powerful uncle hasn’t been heard of in years. If he’s even alive, he’ll be old and senile and unpracticed in the art. Is this who you’d place your faith in?”

Finally, Seri turned to face him. “I place my faith in God and in my family,” she said tartly. “I place no faith in you.”

She was so infuriating. Every time he tried to say a single word to her, she turned it into an argument. And since she would not follow him into his private room, they were arguing right out in public, where all the girls could hear.

“Who do you think you are to give orders in my house?” he yelled.

“I live here, too.”

“You live here at my expense!”

“I live here because you abducted me!”

“Here we go again.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. You prefer to ignore that fact. Because it’s inconvenient to the lie that you have erected for yourself. That we are all your happy little wives, meant to smile and clutch your hand—”

“If you were my wife, I’d divorce you!”

“Then do it. Send me back.”

He said nothing.

“No?” she said. “Then I will continue to live as rightly as I can in the trying circumstances presented to me.”

“Trying circumstance?” he snapped. “You have no idea what the world is like! Everything you ever needed has always been provided for you, and all you ever had to do was ask. This place is no different from the place you came from, and no different from the place you’ll end up.”

“You keep me in captivity, and you think—”

“You have never been free!” Brand shouted. “Never! All your life, you’ve lived at your father’s pleasure and did as he said, and one day, your father will give you to another man, a strange man, who will take you his house and there you will live at his pleasure and do as he says. Your whole life is moving from one cage to the next, and you will never have a say in what cage you live in or who keeps you locked there!”

Seri sucked in her breath and drew her arms into her chest. She tucked in her chin, looked to the side, and walked away.

Brand realized he was shaking and a little out of breath. He’d stung her with that remark, and for a moment, he felt triumphant. But he’d also lost his temper, and he hated that. It made him feel out of control. Why was he arguing with her at all? Why did he keep arguing with her? All he wanted was for her to come down to dinner with him, like all the other girls did. Why was it so hard to get her to do something so simple?

* * *

Only Berta and Ida stood in the waiting room when the clock struck seven. Berta was jittering her leg and biting her fingernails, and Ida had a tense look on her face. Brand cast his reflection onto the mirrors and glared at them.

“Where’s Lotte?” he said.

Berta bit her fingers and murmured something into her hands.

“What?”

“She’s not coming,” Ida said.

Brand burst through the doors. “What?”

“It’s not our fault,” Berta cried. “Seri—”

“Lotte wants to be a servant like Seri?” Brand said. “Is that it?”

He was mad now. Seri was undermining everything he’d built. She was going to have his whole tower working against him before long. He looked at Ida and saw a noticeable change her, too—something challenging in her eyes. Well, no more.

“If you all want to act like servants, you can all be servants. There will be no supper tonight.”

“But—” Berta said.

He slammed the doors shut.