Free A Wish Made Of Glass by Ashlee Willis

the floor, they dissipated from my mind and from my heart. In this moment all I can think of is the fey man’s face as he disappeared into shadow, and that I may never see him again.
    I see now the fatal flaw in revenge. It turns sour the moment it is exacted. I am sick with it, right down to my bones. I may have hated Blessing when she took Father from me, but since then something has changed. I can never hate her again. Not even after this. Perhaps the fey man knew that. Perhaps that is what makes this sin of mine worse than any other I have yet committed. For I have not turned my back on love, as I did once before, but betrayed it while yet holding it close.
    “You little fool,” Blessing says, and there is something close to helpless laughter in her voice. “Oh, Iz, you don’t know what you’ve done, do you? You can’t think I got the slippers for myself.”
    “I saw you try one on.” My accusation is quick as lightning.
    Blessing is unfazed by it. “Of course I did. They were utterly beautiful, just as you told me they would be. Who could resist it? But trying them on and keeping them are two wholly different things.”
    As Blessing squats on the floor, her gown billows around her like a cloud. With careful fingers she picks up one piece of the broken glass. And it is glass, I can see that now. Nothing more. Those slippers could never have held a heart, least of all mine. Why then, I wonder, does it feel as if the pieces of my fractured heart are lying on the floor with them?
    “They were yours,” she whispers. “I got them for you.” She rises and her next words flare with anger. “You’ve always seen the worst in things. Well, are you happy now? You’ve broken the slippers like a spoiled child, and they were yours all along. You were too selfish to see what would have been obvious to any simpleton—that I would never have taken them for myself. But you preferred to destroy them rather than to see anyone else so much as touch them.”
    Her words are so bright and harsh that I have to blink. The truth of them shatters inside of me, sending shards of light and pain straight into my heart. For she is right. I have broken everything which has ever been given to me, simply because it was not perfectly to my taste. It is a horrible truth to swallow. I fear it will poison me if I try.
    “Isidore.” When I hear the tenderness in Blessing’s voice I realize I am crying. But when she approaches I back away.
    “No.” This one last wound is too fresh, even if it is of my own doing. If I speak of it now I will surely bleed to death.
    “But—”
    “No.” I shake my head, putting all the resolve I can muster into my voice. Blessing’s mouth shuts like flower petals closing, and she gives me a look I cannot fathom.
    In my own bed I curl into a ball. I cannot even gather the strength to crawl beneath the covers. I think of the handful of words the fey folk have spoken to me here in the North. They sounded like comfort when they were first spoken. Now I fight the urge to see them as accusations.
    Though if I am honest, I must admit them for simply the truth.
    I remember the fey woman’s whisper to me the night she wove Dewdrops into my hair.
    Do not lose your heart
.
    The memory of broken glass thrusts its sharp corners deeper into my heart and I curl tighter, cowering.
Do not lose your heart
, she said. What she did not tell me was that the surest way to lose it was to hold it tight.
    Softer still come the fey man’s words.
    This is not your home
.
    No
, I want to answer him,
it is not and never has been
. I am wandering here, and lost. This world fits me like an ill-made garment, and I cannot help but dream of a time I might cast it aside to don one made to measure for me.
    When I remember the anguish in the fey man’s face, I know the slippers are not the only things that I have broken this night. The slippers would only have been a balm to cool the fire of this sickness I carry. They could never have