Ava and the Glass Wish | Updated Fridays

Chapter Three

The carriage door had hardly closed when Ava's mother gave a huff from her seat. Settling into the plush yet stiff seat across from her mother, Ava faced her, taking in the harsh set of her eyes and the turn of her mouth.

"You were quite late." Ava nodded. "Did Averie give you permission to be so?"

"No, Mother."

"Then why were you?" Ava fought the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. It wasn't like her mother didn't know— it was the same reason as every time she was late. Some task, some book, some distraction, but helping her father care for his plants was one of her joys. She did not mind it and he loved her knack for it. There was not a plant she didn't know, nor one she did not resonate with.

"Caring for Papa's projects took longer than expected. I came as soon as I could."

Her mother gave another huff, this time crossing her arms to match. It was not a real anger; that would demand silence.

"Well he ought to know by now how important this is for you. Just because he insists on treating you like Michel, does not mean you can ignore your duties."

And there it was.

"I did not ignore any of my duties, either given to me by Papa or by you. I was waylaid by a street urchin and regardless, as I said, a single gown is all that is needed. I do not see the importance of appearing to go to the seamstress more often when we all know I am not fit to be seen at court."

"That is more your doing than mine."

"No, it is my father's doing, although I rather believe you share equal blame."

Her mother gasped, but it took everything Ava had not to roll her eyes at her. It is nothing she did not know and nothing Ava or others had not said before.

She and Rowley had more in common than she often admitted. Ava was the product of her mother's first marriage— an ill-fated love match that indirectly resulted in the death of her father, a traveling merchant from far off Espany. They shared the same mouth, eyes, hair, and skin, painting Ava as an outsider, even if she'd lived her whole life in Eldendore.

Averie, her mother's second husband and the court alchemist, treated her as his own and for all intents and purposes, she and her older brother were his children. He'd done so since he met them at six and eight, respectively. He taught them how to read in their new language, how to defend themselves. He taught them skills outside the ones his own son, Michel, would need to know. How to navigate. How to bargain. Her true father was her father still, but Averie was their father as well, because he taught them all he could to protect them.

Ava knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if her actual father had a chance to choose who would raise her, he would be glad it was Averie.

In the eyes of her mother and elsewhere, this was not enough.

Averie was the second-born son of a wealthy lord. Ava's mother was the first-born daughter of the Cromwells. If it weren't for her two legitimate but shunned children, Ava's mother would live a charmed life.

Instead, her mother could only go to second-class seamstresses and third-class tea parlors. Her son, Michel, got into a second-rate school instead of a first one. She could not run in the same circles as her mother. She was not invited to the birth of the newest princess several years before.

For Ava's mother, social capitol was everything and she had only a little of it. In other ways, she had far more than most. Her husband, though well-born, went into a trade that was extremely well respected and he was the best at it in the city. It was he that treated the royal family if they ever fell ill, and oversaw the mirror, to make sure it remained intact and kept its integrity. However, it was not his reputation that brought Ava and her mother to arguing in a carriage.