สามีลูกสุนัขเช่นเจ้า ข้าไม่เอาอีกแล้ว!

*Bexley*

A pair of eyes stares at me from between two large trees in the middle of the dense forest behind our house. I stare right back, squinting through my binoculars to try to get a better look. I’ve never seen a female white-tail quite so large. I wish I could get a little closer so I could see her markings more clearly, but she’s hidden well behind the leaves of the trees, and it’s clear she’s spotted me. If I make one wrong move, she’s likely to bolt away, leaving me standing here staring at nothing but dense foliage. Still, I’m not seeing much at this angle, so perhaps I should hazard moving a little nearer.

Carefully, I inch forward, doing my best not to make a sound. I avoid the crunchy leaf piles that litter the ground. It’s nearly winter; we should be having our first snow soon. Then, it will be easier to move undetected, but for now, I have to be careful.

I slide to my right, leaning up a bit onto my toes, and I can almost see her back clearly when I hear the crackle of a thousand leaves dying excruciating second deaths. Letting out a sigh, I turn to see my friend Fiona traipsing toward me, a wide grin on her face.

“There you are!” she squeals, rushing over with her arms wide open. “Your mother said I might find you out here.”

“Here I am.” While I am annoyed that the deer has now shot off into the woods, likely to never be seen again, I am happy to see Fiona. She’s the first, and practically only, friend I’ve made since we moved to Luna Hollow almost a year ago. Her golden blonde hair catches the sun’s light, creating a halo around her pretty face. She’s beautiful in a traditional way, with bright blue eyes and perfectly shaped pink lips. Every young man in the kingdom is interested in making Fiona his wife someday. But since she’s only nineteen, her parents aren’t even entertaining the men who come knocking at her door.

I wish I was lucky in that regard as well.

With Fiona’s arms around me, I squeeze her back. She finally releases me and straightens her blue cloak. I do the same to my dark green one. I try to blend into the trees the best I can when I come out here to observe the animals. It allows me to get closer to them—that and avoiding leaves.

“Why are you out here?” she asks, looking around. “It’s so cold.”

“I spotted a deer.” I hear the excitement in my own voice. “You know how rare they’ve been lately. Before that, I saw a squirrel with a black patch of fur on its tail, and a flock of geese flew overhead.”

Fiona practically rolls her eyes, but she’s too polite to let me know how boring she thinks my animal investigations are. Instead, she just changes the subject. “You should be at home planning your birthday party, not standing out here freezing your toes off looking at wildlife.”

“My birthday isn’t until tomorrow,” I remind her, slipping my binoculars back into my pocket. It would be rude of me to insist on continuing my investigations when she doesn’t like it. We almost always do something Fiona likes to do, but that’s okay. At least it gives me someone else to hang out with, other than my mother and my new stepfather, Harvey. 

“I know your birthday isn’t until tomorrow.” Fiona loops her arm through mine, and we start walking back toward my house. Harvey’s house sits on top of a hill surrounded by ten acres. It’s a nice house—two-stories with four bedrooms and indoor plumbing—and since most of the yard is covered in forest, I like it a lot more than I did our tiny apartment in our old home kingdom of Hexeton. I do miss my friends and my grandparents, but Hexeton is only about an hour-long carriage ride away, and we do visit sometimes, though not enough.

“So why must we discuss my birthday today?” I ask, brushing a long brown braid over my shoulder. I’ve never liked the color of my hair, but at least it matches my eyes.

“Because, as I’ve told you, you never know if you’ll be allowed to stay at your home on your birthday or if you’ll be summoned to the castle.” A chill goes down Fiona’s spine at her own words, and I can feel her shiver.

It has nothing to do with the bite in the wind either. She’s genuinely afraid—afraid of being summoned to the castle for what’s called King’s Rite. I never heard of such a thing until I moved here. It all sounds so ridiculous to me. Why would some king who lives in a secluded castle at the top of a hill so high it’s practically a mansion, surrounded by forests so thick I wouldn’t even be able to see a deer five feet away, be interested in me? He probably doesn’t even know I exist.

“Fiona,” I begin, not for the first time, “I’m sure I will not be getting one of the infamous red letters in the mail you keep telling me about.”

“You never know. My friend Samantha’s sister got one just a month ago. She was gone all night, and when she came home, well, let’s just say she wasn’t the same.”

I try not to scoff because I know this is a real concern for her, but to me, it sounds like something made up—like the legends about the witches in Hexeton. While plenty of old timers like to scare the kids by saying witches live in the woods around town, no one has ever seen one. No one I know has ever been affected by them.

So… until I see this king with my own eyes, I will not fear him. “I intend to celebrate my birthday tomorrow,” I tell my friend. “Mother knows that.”

“And what does your stepfather say?” We cross a little creek that crosses the yard about a hundred yards from the back of the house. The bridge is only about four feet long, but I’ve always thought it was very pretty. In the springtime, I could stand here and watch the fish swim by underneath.

“He doesn’t say much,” I reply. The truth is, Harvey hardly speaks to me at all. Mother says that’s just how he is—quiet. But I’ve seen him in a room full of people when he didn’t stop talking plenty of times, so I don’t think that’s it. In my opinion, my stepfather simply doesn’t care for me, and I suppose I can’t blame him. After all, I was almost twenty years old when we met, a grown woman, and he’d gone his whole life without being a father. He leaves me alone for the most part, and I avoid him when possible. I do some work for his accounting firm, though, which he appreciates since I know he wishes I had a husband so I wouldn’t be living off him any longer.

And he’s doing everything he can to make that happen.

“Well, I think you should be on the lookout for that letter. If it’s coming, it’ll be in your mailbox in the morning. They just sort of appear overnight. No one has ever seen the person from the castle who brings them out,” Fiona explains. “My friend Marcy knows someone who stayed up all night staring at her mailbox to see if they could catch a glimpse of the delivery person, but no one ever came. She was shocked when she opened her mailbox the next morning and the letter was inside.”

A chuckle escapes my lips, and Fiona’s eyes widen. “I was just thinking I shouldn’t waste my time staring at the mailbox then if it won’t matter.”

“Bexley!” She shakes her head at me and marches up the steps toward my back door. “You have to take this seriously.”

“I am,” I tell her, but we both know that’s not true. I follow her inside, and we hang up our coats. My mother absolutely adores Fiona, so she won’t mind one bit if she spends time here.

“You are what?” Mother asks, wiping her hands on her apron as she comes over to greet both of us and give us a hug. “Your cheeks are so cold,” she remarks as she pats my face. 

“I’m nothing,” I begin, taking a deep breath and savoring the delicious smell of my mother’s famous vegetable stew. 

But Fiona jumps in. “She’s not taking the possibility of being summoned to the castle seriously,” she tells my mother.

With a deep sigh, Mother goes to the cookie jar, opens it up, and extends it to Fiona. My friend squeals with delight and plucks out a chocolate chip cookie, taking a bite before she says thank you. I almost giggle at this, too. It’s like we are still small children.

Cookie in hand, I sit at the table and wait for Mother to collect her thoughts. It’s not like her to agree with such silly notions. She was always quick to dismiss any talk of witches in our town. She’s a practical thinker, just like me.

So when she sits down across from me, Fiona to my left, and folds her hands, my forehead furrows. “I think we should celebrate your birthday tonight, Bex. Just in case.”

My eyes lock on hers, so very similar to my own in color and shape, and I don’t blink for a few moments. Finally, I manage to ask, “You do? Why?”

“Just in case.” She shrugs one shoulder. “I’ve spoken to Harvey about it, and while he doesn’t think there’s any need to be alarmed about the situation, he says it does happen. Over the past seven years, quite a few young women who live in this village have gotten a letter from the king to appear in his castle on their birthday. It’s happened in several villages throughout the kingdom, in fact, even in the older settlements on the other side of the mountain.”

I’m not sure what to say, so I don’t say anything at all. Instead, I finish my cookie.

Fiona jumps in on my behalf having already devoured her snack. She is one of those girls who can eat whatever she likes and always look perfectly fit. If I cared a smidge about my appearance, I might be jealous of her for that. “The girls who get the letter stay overnight,” she says, her explanation similar to what she mentioned to me earlier as we were walking in. “When they come home, they can’t speak about what happened to them there.”

“That’s what Harvey told me,” Mother agrees. “But he also said that many of the girls have been examined by a physician afterward, and there’s never anything physically wrong with them.” She takes a deep breath and adds, “Those that went in maidens return as such.”

I know I can speak to my mother about anything, but I don’t like to talk about that sort of thing with her. I swallow hard and wait for Fiona to speak, as I know she will.

“But some of them have scratches and bruises. They say they can’t remember how they got them.” She turns and looks at me, her blue eyes piercing. “They simply have no idea where they’ve been or what’s happened to them.”

“Oh, please.” I shake my head and wave one hand at her. “That has to be the king threatening them not to tell anyone.”

“I don’t think so,” Mother chimes in. “Harvey seems to think that there are a few different ways it can be done but that a person’s memory can be wiped.”

“Magic?” I ask with a chuckle.

“No. He called it… hypnosis or something of that nature,” she explains. “Don’t ask me, dear. But you should plan on celebrating your birthday this evening. Now, would you like chocolate or vanilla cake?”

I look at Fiona, and she bats her eyelashes at me prettily, knowing she has one.

With a deep breath, I say, “Chocolate.”