The Crags

Chapter 8

Another ball. At least after this assembly she could return to her family. Ela refused to take her place and hurried home after breakfast. Santi had no appetite, nor a desire to dress, but she went through the motions to appease her guardians. She had never felt more lonely than when Ela rushed off that morning. In Down-under she had her uncle and Ms. Anise to talk to, but the Spheres avoided all topics related to the previous day.

Her uncle had once told her about a darkness that dwelled inside of every magical being. The choices they made in life either fed the darkness or kept it at bay. Sleeping had given the darkness time to drag her deep into its clutches. Ela avoided men. Pen became savage in her hunt for a husband. And she became depressed; her mind filled with all the things she would never have. Never becoming a mother to Louis seemed to take center stage, though she tried to convince herself she had not set her heart on the Leigh of Sundial.

However, she had something her sisters did not have. A will to get free. A desire for revenge. She would not allow herself to go the same route as her aunt. Nor her mother, or her uncle. The darkness would fuel her anger when the time came. For the first time, she hoped the priest and the energy thief would arrive at the ball. She still did not know the identity of the dark mass, but the priest would pay for ruining her week.

Dressed in her green and gold gown with her hair in a single braid, decorated with glittering butterflies and two daggers disguised as crystal combs, she accompanied the Spheres to the inn in Dawn. Mr. Sphere secured them rooms since they could not risk the three hour return trip. The temperatures already dropped below zero at night. Most of the dams and lakes they passed had ice clinging to the banks. In several places, snow decorated trees and frost had turned the meadows brown. Not only would the craft not survive the return trip after midnight, the heated blankets could not hold out the cold for the duration of the trip. It barely lasted during the day.

Since so many people had arrived before them and the Munts, Mr. Sphere settled his wife by the fire. She assured him she did not need anything the girls could not get for her, so he rushed into the cards room to claim a seat by a table.

Santi offered to get them tea so they could warm up after their cold trip, but kept her eyes on the door. If she had her senses about her, she would have realized the potential of her brother and middle sister attending. No wonder Ela refused to go to Dawn.

If Santi passed the people standing in front of her in the road, she would not have recognized them. They looked nothing like Ela or her.

Mr. Sphere had it right when he said Halim looked aged beyond his years. However, the sun and weather played no part in the creases above his brow, nor did it turn down the corners of his mouth. In his eyes, Santi saw a hardship she had not expected from someone who lived a happy, luxurious life. Years of watching people, inside and outside her home, had given her an advantage over her sister, if Ela thought Halim was happy. Perhaps when he first married Ria, but not now. Yet, he still carried himself with an air of importance as though his job as a steward gave him distinction over the people around him.

The woman Mrs. Sphere introduced as Mrs. Ria Crag, nee Ayrie, acted nothing like a loving wife. She barely had her fingers resting on Halim's arm as he led her into the assembly rooms. Now she had her body turned away from him and she had not once looked his way. The woman also had her nose stuck so high in the air, she had to tilt her head. If she thought she was above her company, she had to take a closer look at her family tree.

Hugh Crag always had his shoes repaired at the shoemaker four doors down from his funeral home. Santi took her boots to him for the first time shortly after she turned sixteen. As he worked, the shoemaker told her about his family. He had a sister and three brothers, all blacksmiths, though the oldest had inherited the family fortune and moved to Dawn. Just the day before she came to his store, this brother came to borrow credits from him, but he refused because Mr. Ayrie already owed him credits he could not repay. After Mr. Ayrie sold the shoemaker a portion of his land, he bragged about his daughter marrying a Sein's son, who would one day inherit a great fortune, and then he would buy back all the land his brothers had bought from him.