My Gown Had No Gems, So I Walked Out of My Own Bonding Ceremony novel · Chapter 21 of 32

Chapter 21: Margot at Dawn

The knocking started an hour before light.

It was not loud, and it was not steady, and that was why it woke me.

I felt Jasper come awake beside me and stop breathing.

"Someone's at the gate," he said. "Alone. Cold."

"Who?"

His nostrils flared.

"Your sister."

Margot stood on the step in a thin cream sweater and one boot.

She had no coat and no gloves, and her hair had come down wet over one shoulder.

The Council guard who should have been at her door was nowhere in sight.

"The guards changed at midnight," she said through chattering teeth. "I climbed down the trellis. I walked around the lake."

"It's twelve miles," said Jasper.

"I know."

"You'll lose that foot."

"I know."

She was looking at me, and not at him.

I stood in the doorway in Jasper's flannel shirt and did not step aside.

"Go away, Margot."

"I will." Her mouth shook. "Let me say it first. Please, Clara. Then I'll go."

Cecily appeared on the stairs behind me with a blanket.

She did not say anything.

She went past me and put it around Margot's shoulders, and Margot's face crumpled at the touch.

We sat her at the kitchen table, and Jasper's beta rubbed her foot between two towels.

She did not look at the fire.

"I didn't write the letters," she said.

"You said that in the hall."

"I didn't. It's true, it's the one true thing. I practiced the hand, because Mama said Dad would want a second pair of hands someday, in case hers got tired." She wiped her nose on the blanket. "I thought it was a game she was playing with Dad. A joke on him. I never read a single letter."

"You knew about the stones."

"She sewed the first one onto my gown herself, the year I turned seven. She said it was Ironwood's courtesy to the family."

← Chapter 20 · All chapters · Chapter 22 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend