Free Ash by Malinda Lo Page B

hope for now, Aisling, is to be a lady’s maid.”
    Ash flushed with anger. “I wil not—” she began, but her stepmother interrupted her.
    “You are not the only one who must sacrifice. I hope that Ana and Clara’s future wil not be shortchanged because of your father’s debts. And if you run away, you wil not only be confirming the fact that your father was a selfish man who did nothing more than take my money before he died, you wil be at the mercy of whoever finds you wandering out there on the King’s Road.” Lady Isobel asked in a silky voice, “Do you know what happens to girls who are found wandering about without protection?”
    Ash reluctantly closed her fingers around the hairbrush and raised it to her stepmother’s head. She began to brush Lady Isobel’s thick hair with short, rough strokes. A small smile twisted her stepmother’s lips as Ash yanked the hairbrush down, pul ing out strands of auburn hair. Her stepmother reached up and grasped Ash’s right wrist in a bruising grip and said, “Careful, now. Is that any way to treat your mistress?”

    78

    MALINDA LO

    The next morning, Ash moved her belongings into the room next to the kitchen where Beatrice had once slept. There was no brazier in the room, so it was the coldest in the house, but Ash did not mind the chil . Now that Beatrice was gone, there was nobody to unlock her door in the mornings, which meant that Lady Isobel could not lock her in at night, either. At first Ash thought that she would go immediately into the Wood at night she wanted to find that fairy again. But doing Beatrice’s work as wel as her own left her exhausted. At the end of the day, al she wanted to do was lean against the warm kitchen hearth, reading, the soot smearing down the length of her skirt.
    And just as she became more adept at her work, the winter came in earnest.
    It snowed earlier and more heavily than it had in years, and the roads were often impassable. Yule was a subdued affair, for the King and his eldest son were away on a military campaign far in the south, and because of the harsh weather the hunting season ended earlier than usual. So by the time she was able to return to the Wood, stealing out of Quinn House on the first night the chil lessened, it had been almost a year since she had walked back to her mother’s grave. This time, as she wrapped herself in her old cloak and let herself out of the house, she knew what she was seeking, and it made her pulse quicken in anticipation.
    When she reached the forest, she hoped that she could find the path she had followed the year before. But although she 79

    Ash

    walked and walked, she did not find it, and as she went farther into the trees the ground became more and more overgrown, so that soon she was picking her way over tree roots and grasping low-hanging branches to keep her balance. Once she tripped and fel , and a sharp stick reared up like a claw at her cheek. She put her finger to her face and to her surprise felt a warm, wet smear, and in the dim light she saw the dark shade of blood on her fingertips.
    The night was growing colder, and when a gust of wind blew past her she remembered that it was, after al , barely spring, and the ground beneath her was stil frozen, the hollows stil dusted with snow. It was dangerous weather; she could freeze to death. Yet she went on with a kind of feverish urgency, driven by a fierce need to go deeper into the Wood.
    She could feel something cal ing to her, and that should have been a warning, but she only felt reassured by it: She was going in the right direction. She went on until her feet grew numb from the cold, and at last she found what she had been looking for. There, sitting on a fal en log as if he had been waiting for her, was the fairy who had taken her back to Quinn House last spring.
    She went to him, her heart pounding, and knelt down on the ground, pushing back her hood. “I came to find you,” she said, looking up at him. His face was