Winter Magic

1.❆

Winter Magic

❆

Avalone Hastings had been born into a wealthy and noble family and lived happily for most of her life in spite of the death of her mother at an early age. Her father adored her and doted on her, but never indulged her too much. She grew up with good sense, a kind nature, and an abundance of humility. Her father was a good man and considered eccentric by his contemporaries. It might have been due to the great distance that he lived from court, but he had very particular ideas about people and equality. He bestowed these generously on his daughter.

"Everyone's a person," he told his little girl, sitting with her after supper one evening. "People are amazing. They can do all kinds of things. They can be whatever they want to. They can always change."

"Why do they treat us so special?" came the inquisitive reply.

"Because we have a special job. We have to make sure that everyone is taken care of. We have to make sure that everything that we watch over is going right. So we have to learn as much as we can, so we can be helpful."

Avalone learned all kinds of skills that girls of her standing found beneath them, but she did not begrudge this. To her, all skill and craft was magic, and the ability to make things, to perfect them, and to tend them was spectacular. She was well loved by the staff of her father's household and helped them with their tasks in between her own formal education.

When she was thirteen, her father remarried, pressed by his position to produce an actual heir. He left his daughter and traveled to the capital to socialize and find a bride. His wealth made him desirable, but his strange ideas made him less so. He eventually married a widow who had two daughters of her own, who married him for his position and money. She was clever though and bent to his will enough that he rather pitied her and tried to instill a sense of worth in her. He was passively fond of her children.

Several years after their marriage, when Avalone was fifteen, he was carried away by a horrible fever, leaving his beloved daughter in the hands of a selfish clench fist.

Lady Bethany Hastings had no love for her adopted daughter, or for her own children. She was pressed by social and monetary ambition. She would do her duty by her stepdaughter, but her own daughters ranked first among her concerns. Well, second, next to raising her own position in the world. She had high ambitions for her own status and was extraordinarily self-interested. She did not believe in spending money she did not absolutely have to and spent as much of it as she could on herself.

A very short time after her second husband's death, Bethany realized that Avalone was capable of working around the keep, and began to rid herself of the "excess" staff. Avalone protected her various friends and teachers as best she could, but could not refuse the demands of her stepmother. She took over what chores she could and helped as best as she was able as the workload grew. But unfortunately, this only caused her stepmother to release even more staff.

Eventually, the disjointed family moved completely onto the first floor of the keep and Avalone became solely responsible for the building's maintenance. Her days were divided between the finishing of a basic maidenly education and keeping the house in order, to the extent that she could.

Bethany, in the meantime, was dragging as many young men as you could grasp from the center of society out to its fringes to meet her daughters. It was in this way, at the age of seventeen, that Avalone met Wylane Slasmutt, a handsome and arrogant young man interested in inheriting her father's fiefdom and expanding his own circumstances.

Avalone had been to some private formal events and had hosted very small parties for her father, but she had never been the object of a flirtation and could only be flattered by the attention that Wylane was giving her. He put his best effort into amusing and complimenting her, which was not difficult. He complimented her and brought her petty gifts. Avalone was convinced that he loved her and began to wait anxiously for his proposal.