Chapter Text
"You aim the bow a little higher than the target," I said, aiming my bow just a little higher than the bull's eye to demonstrate, "to account for the inevitable arcing that the arrow does. And then, once you have the bow properly aimed-"
I let go of the bowstring, and watched as the arrow flew towards the target, hitting it right in the center of the painted-on bull's eye.
"You let it fly," I finished, turning back towards my older sister Elain.
Elain placed her hands on her hips and scowled.
"I hope you know I'm only here because Nesta made me do this," she scoffed. "I have no intention of transforming into an unrefined, unladylike minx like yourself."
It was true. Our older sister, Nesta, had indeed insisted that I take Elain out to Old Widow Mallory's farm to teach her archery. And yes, I knew full well it was only so Nesta could suck face with Thomas Mandray in private.
But archery was a valuable skill for hunting, and perhaps by hunting with Elain, I could repair my relationship with her. And that I would therefore have at least ONE healthy relationship with someone in my family. Papa didn't count; he'd been six feet under for years now.
"Archery is not unladylike," I protested, quickly trying to change track. "The baroness is an avid fan of it. I...I hear she regularly practices it on her estate."
The baroness in question, Lady Catharine Bathory, was the new wife of our local Baron Bathory. Nesta and Elain were among her most fervent admirers; they saw her as the embodiment of everything a woman should be. Especially a noblewoman or a woman who aspired to be nobility. In their eyes, she could do no wrong.
"Yes, but she doesn't use it to go hunting," Elain snapped. "The baroness would never be so unladylike as that. And after all, isn't that what you're teaching me to use this for, Feyre?"
"I...was," I admitted, "But you don't have to hunt if you don't want to. Here-"
I slung my bow back over my shoulder, rushed over to the target to retrieve my arrow, and went back to Elain.
"Why don't we help Widow Mallory with her crops instead?" I suggested. " You like gardening, right? There's nothing unladylike about gardening, is there?"
Elain did indeed like gardening, but more importantly, it was absolutely clear to me now that she did not, nor would she ever want to, learn archery. Which was fine: handling weaponry wasn't for everyone.
"I suppose there isn't," Elain admitted. "Still, I would rather not stoop so low as to harvest wheat like a farmhand."
"Poor women take what they can get in this world," Widow Mallory told us as she walked out of her house and into the farmyard. "Feyre has harvested many a bushel of wheat for me these past few years, and been all the better for it. You would be wise to emulate her. Put away your delusions of childish nobility, Elain Archeron, and start living in the real world."
"We are NOT poor!" Elain insisted, clearly mortified at the idea of being classified as such. "We have servants! Do poor people have servants?"
"One old nurse who just won't leave despite not having been paid in years does not count as having a maid," Widow Mallory scoffed. "And neither does bossing Feyre about whenever you feel like it."
"Okay," I said, stepping between the two of them and pushing an arm out at both of them. "So...gardening is off the table. How about...we go inside and have some tea? You like tea, right, Elain?"
"That I do," Elain replied, puffing her chest out with pride as she began to stride into the house. "Come, Mrs. Mallory, let us have some tea."
With that, the three of us walked back into the farmhouse and made our way to Widow Mallory's parlor. Once there, Elain sat herself upon one of the fluffy pink chairs and ordered,
"Alright, Feyre, go down to the kitchen and boil the tea."
Before I could obey, however, a disgruntled Widow Mallory protested:
"There's no need for that! I have servants, you know. Ones I pay."
Indeed, she did. And they were very fine servants, too: a cook all the way from Bharat, who made the most wonderful curry dishes, albeit ones quite on the spicy side, a scullery maid to assist the cook and do the menial housework, a housemaid, a coachman, and a groom for the horses. The thought of any of whom immediately caused Elain to get all huffy. And Elain was already irritated enough.
"No, really, it's no trouble," I assured Widow Mallory. "I do this all the time."
With that, I hastily curtsied and rushed off to the kitchen, where I began the work of preparing tea. Once the tea was prepared and poured into the teapot, I asked Padma, the cook if I could borrow some tarts, explaining that the Widow Mallory was having tea with Elain.
"And she expects you to wait on her, does she?" the stout, middle-aged cook remarked dryly.
"Well-"
The cook grabbed the tea tray out of my hands, bundled some tea cakes on it, and handed the tea tray to the scullery maid.
"Bring this to the parlor," she ordered. "And tell that hussy Elain that I don't care much for how she treats her sister, or for being upstaged in my own kitchen."
"No, please-" I begged, as the scullery maid dashed out of the kitchen. "It's fine-"
"It's not fine," Padma snapped. "You're not a carpet, Feyre. You need to stop letting your sisters walk all over you."
Padma then grabbed my arm, dragged me to the servants' dining hall, quickly went to back to the kitchen, and then put a plate of pakoras before me.
"Eat," she commanded as I stared open-mouthed at the plate of delicious-looking fritters from Padma's homeland. "It's not like you're going to get anything better at home."
Padma had a point. Given our poverty, we didn't have an abundance of food to begin with, and Nesta and Elain insisted on getting the lion's share of it. I usually ended up eating the table scraps.
So I obediently dug in to the pakoras, happily consuming every last one of them. Once I was done, Padma shooed me out of the servants' dining room and ushered me back into Widow Mallory's excessively pastel parlor, where Elain, upon seeing me, immediately began glaring daggers in my direction.
I held up my hands in an appeasing gesture.
"Don't blame me," I pleaded. "It wasn't my idea-it was all Padma!"
"I don't care," Elain snapped. "You still disobeyed me. Wait 'til I tell Nesta about this!"
I flinched reflexively. Nesta was a terror once she got a whip or a rod into her hands, and she was not afraid to use either one of those.
"Go right ahead, little missy." I heard Padma say behind me.
I turned to face Padma, who was standing right behind me, scowling, with her strong, callused hands on her hips.
"Tell your heartless shrew of a sister that I stood up to you," Padma hissed. " And the moment you do, I'll tell her about that little tryst you're still continuing with Isaac Hale. You know, the one your sister ordered you to end?"
Elain's face went white.
"How do you know about that?" she gasped.
It was pretty obvious, actually. I was honestly surprised that Nesta still didn't know. And I also honestly didn't see what the big deal was. Although I personally didn't care much for him, I could understand why Elain did; Isaac Hale was young, handsome, and his father was very rich-he was quite a catch. In fact, Isaac's father was arguably one of the richest men in town. Elain would be very happy with him. According to Nesta, though, because Isaac wasn't a nobleman, or even gentry, he wasn't good enough for Elain. And so she had ordered Elain to dump him, so that the two of them could keep attempting to court noblemen together.
The fact that Elain was doing the latter-albeit halfheartedly- without having dumped Isaac Hale was not going to sit well with Nesta.
"Does it matter how I know?" Padma snapped. "I'm still going to tell Nesta unless you act like a grownup and admit you can't push Feyre around everywhere you go."
"Fine," Elain snapped, seething in rage as she rose from her chair. "But if you interfere in our family affairs again, I'll see to it that you won't work in this town again."
"Except that I'm her employer," Widow Mallory pointed out dryly. "Not you."
That's hardly any protection, I thought as I recalled what had happened to the last person who had tried to intervene in our family affairs. Last year, the local fletcher's wife had chewed Nesta off for making me sleep in the stables in all seasons. A week later, the baker's wife had found a glove belonging to the fletcher's wife in her bedroom. She'd angrily chewed out her husband for cheating on her, then stormed over to the fletcher and told him. Enraged, the fletcher had tossed his wife out with nothing but the clothes on her back, and she'd been forced to leave town in disgrace.
Of course, everyone except for the fletcher and the baker's wife knew that the glove had been planted. To this day I don't know if Nesta or Elain was the one who did it, but I did know that Elain would not hesitate to do something similar to Padma.
So in a conciliatory gesture, I hastily began cleaning up the tea dishes, the Widow Mallory and Padma scoffing as I did.
"Well, at least she knows her place," Elain said with a satisfied smirk. "Even if you two don't."
Widow Mallory seethed in rage, clearly about to go off on my poor sister. Before she could, however, I hastily gave the dishes to the housemaid, who was standing behind Elain waiting patiently for an order, and then grabbed Elain's arm.
"I'm terribly sorry, but I'm afraid we have to go," I said hastily. "The sun is setting, and Nesta won't like it if we're late."
While Widow Mallory looked out the window and saw that the sun was indeed setting, I took the opportunity to usher my sister out of the house and begin the trek towards our house. Elain spent most of said trek going on at length about how quaint and small Widow Mallory's parlor was, how deeply unfashionable the widow's gowns were, and otherwise talking smack about her. I let her carry on, but refused to indulge any of it with a response. While it was still winter and there was nothing to harvest as of yet, I still wanted to be able to harvest crops for her come springtime, and talking about the Widow behind her back was a guaranteed way to not make that happen.
When we at last arrived at our poor, pathetic ruin of a country cottage, we found Nesta sitting by the fire and staring at her hand with an enormous grin on her face.
"Guess what, Elain?" Nesta cried as she stood up to greet us. "He proposed! Thomas Mandray proposed!"
"Really?" Elain gasped as Nesta extended her hand, revealing an amethyst engagement ring on her ring finger.
"Yes," Nesta replied, positively beaming. "As of Friday, I am officially going to be the next Viscountess Mandray!"
"That's wonderful!" I cried, tears of joy starting to form in my eyes. "Congratulations, Nesta!"
Nesta's gaze turned towards me, and then, without warning, she slapped me.
"Did I speak to you, you little whore's get?" she snapped.
"N-no," I stammered, cupping my injured cheek and taking a half-step back. "N-no, you didn't."
For those curious as to why she called my mother a whore, allow me to explain: my mother is not the same person as Nesta and Elain's mother. Their mother, Papa's first wife, was none other than Lady Eleanor Valhemia, niece to the late Count Valhemia. My mother, Valeria, meanwhile, was merely one of our father's housemaids, whom he was having an affair with while married to Lady Valhemia. I was born when Nesta was five and Elain three, and for the first six years of my existence I lived in the servants' quarters until, while exploring the estate, I was discovered by Lady Valhemia, who had up until then been ignorant of both my existence and the affair in general. It did not take Lady Valhemia long after discovering me to learn of the affair, however, and once she did, words cannot describe how furious she was.
The night she discovered it, she chewed out my father for his infidelity for a good three hours before then dragging my mother in by her hair and attempting to burn my mother's face in the fireplace. When Papa stopped her, she tossed her wedding cuff into the fire, ordered the servants to pack her bags, and then left, taking her massive dowry with her. But not before declaring that Papa could "keep" Nesta and Elain, saying they were "his" and that she didn't care what he did with them.
As if her parting words weren't enough, the loss of her massive dowry also did a huge blow to our finances. With Lady Valhemia being the niece of a count, her dowry had enabled Papa, Nesta, and Elain to live as large as nobility did, and indeed, to almost call themselves nobility. Without said fortune, however, we now had to rely on Papa's income as a mere middling merchant, which, while hardly making us poor, was significantly less. Papa was hardly concerned about that though, after allowing for one week to finalize the divorce papers, he proposed to my mother, delighted to be finally free of Lady Eleanor. My mother accepted, and they got married immediately.
My mother was hardly cruel to them, but Nesta and Elain were still none too pleased to have her as a stepmother, probably because their own mother had declared she cared nothing for them. And Papa, while not neglectful in any sense towards them, did demonstrate a slight favoritism for me, which only poured salt into the wound. Thus I don't blame them for being pleased when my poor mother died of an epidemic no doctor could cure. I, being the tender age of eleven at the time, was devastated, of course, but at least I know my mother loved me.
Not to mention, two years later, Papa would end up losing all his money to a bad investment, forcing us to move out of our lovely home in Seraston, fire almost all the servants, and move out to the only piece of property Papa could afford: our current, pathetic little cottage. As if being penniless wasn't, Father would also end up losing his life thanks to a rogue attack by one of the Fae, who had escaped over the wall dividing the Fae world from the human lands and murdered him. One can hardly judge them for not mourning my mother properly when so much misery was to follow.
"Then why did you?" Nesta hissed.
"I-I...because I love you, Nesta," I tried to explain. "And I want you to be happy."
Nesta scoffed.
"If you wanted us to be happy, little whore's get, then you should have never have been born."
Nesta turned towards Effie, her and Elain's old nanny, who was currently setting the table for Nesta and Elain. Papa had tried to explain to her that since they couldn't pay her, she didn't need to stay, but she refused to listen. Since she was a lesser fae whose life Lady Valhemia had saved at one point, she owed Lady Valhemia a life debt, and thus was not serving them for payment in the first place. Lady Valhemia had also refused to let Effie accompany her back home, so Effie thus had chosen to pay the life debt by serving Nesta and Elain. Her main duty nowadays was cooking whatever I managed to hunt or buy with what little money we managed to scrounge up, since my hands were not fit to touch Nesta and Elain's food, and Nesta and Elain were too ladylike to cook.
"Effie, give the whore's get her scraps and send her out to the stables," Nesta ordered.
Effie obeyed, shoving a pot full of random table scraps into my hands and pointing in the direction of the stables.
The stables were not, of course, home to any horses, since we couldn't afford any, but they still had hay for me to sleep on, of which I was glad. I dutifully sat down on my hay bed, ate my scraps, and, when the moon was high, went to sleep.