Inheritance

Month 2 – Week 1 – Day 3

Dara – The Treaty Line Farmhouse

Damnit. It was time. Time to get her lazy butt out of the chilly bed. Dara frowned before she’d even opened her eyes because she was familiar with this sensation. The snap in the air and the chill of her bed sheet clearly let her know that the pan of warm coals she’s placed under the raised mattress had gone out in the night.

“This sucks!” She groaned at the unfairness of it all. It wasn’t her fault. None of it was her fault. She didn’t do any of the things she’d been accused of and had proven it. But…noooo…Vincent, the husband of the future Matriarch, got his feelings hurt because Dara wouldn’t give him her fictional fortune in exchange for sex.

And here she was.

Alone. In her own house. With a forest, a stream, and a magical pool nearby. It had to be magic. There was no way it wasn’t. Right? A magic pond where chivalrous strangers leave their cloaks on naked napping young women.

Her whole body flushed warm with embarrassment as she remembered how stupid it had been to just assume she was alone out there. It was enough warmth to get her to leave her bed. Clothes. She needed clothes.

No.

Warm clothes.

She walk-hopped across the painfully cold floorboards to the chest with her garments in them. Yep. There had to be a better way. Socks. She needed to start sleeping with socks.

Thick socks.

As she went to open the chest, her favorite book fell off. She heard the thump as it hit the floor but as she looked for it…nothing. Where? Was it there? She could have sworn.

Her book. What book?

The one from her mother.

But…Dara had nothing from her parents. Her eyes crossed as she focused on thinking that thought through. There was a book. It was always present. Had always been present.

Yet, Daralei, Ward of House Freyan, had nothing. She was not in the Line of Inheritance. She had not even a name. You have a book.

That thought wasn’t in her voice. It was a serpentine whisper fleeting and sonorous. Familiar. Masculine, feminine, chorusing ever so quietly. You will have a book.

For a moment. Dara was frozen. Then her mind blanked.

Of course, she was frozen. It was freezing here. She finished grabbing her clothes out of the opened chest, pulling on her socks, then loose pants.

Changing out of her nightgown would be miserable. The young woman pulled the dress up around her waist before tossing it over her head and reaching for a button-up shirt before the nightgown had even hit the floor.

Dara buttoned the heavy top up with trembling fingers.

“Gloves. Where are my damned gloves.” Muttering to herself as she finished up the first miserable part of her day. “Not those gloves.” She’d found the heavy leather gloves for working in the fields and threw them against a wall for later. They would be no good for working around her home. Not enough dexterity for lighting fires.

Eventually, she found her inside gloves. They’d been on the floor next to her bed. Right where she’d dropped them when she took them off before falling asleep last night. The thin flexible material might not be the warmest, but it took the chill off enough for her to be functional.

With that, she was ready to start her day.

The morning became mundane. Fumbling through the starting of a fire. Boiling water in her not-the-greatest kitchen wood-fired stove and burning her thigh when she leaned against it accidentally. Then sitting down to go over the planting guide she’d been given.

By the time she pulled on her boots and changed out her inside gloves for her work gloves, Dara was convinced she should go into town and buy herself a book. She loved to read. And she needed a book. There wasn’t a reason she could think of as to why that was important. But there was a book. And she needed it.