Ironically, it seemed that all this time, Father had been the one standing in the way. While he was running the Bittersweet Wayward it had only ever been marginally profitable. Usually they could afford to eat; usually they had comfortable lodgings. But it wasn't unheard-of for them to sleep in the wagons outside the walls of a city, crowded up on makeshift beds of costumes and curtains.
It wasn't until after Father had died, and Faella had inherited the business, that she realized how incompetent he'd been. Always the showman, always the promoter, he'd managed to secure business across the kingdom, but he'd mismanaged the funds horribly, given away too much of the gate to unscrupulous theater owners, squandered money on expensive theatrical detritus: props, amplifying cabinets, real velvet costumes when felt would do just as well.
No, Father had been a deeply impractical man. Faella had loved him, and had grieved when he'd passed away just after the end of midwinter, but now she rarely thought of him. And now, just a year later, The Snowflake was hers. The down payment had been made with gold that she herself had earned through hard work and perseverance.
The problem was, it wasn't anywhere near enough.
She stood upon the stage and bowed deep to the empty theater. Legions of imagined adoring fans applauded her. She stretched, sang a few scales.
Faella had been a brilliant mestine since she was a little girl; that was common knowledge. She'd been the star of the Bittersweet Wayward since she'd been old enough to speak. All the other mestines in her employ knew it and grudgingly accepted it.
It had never occurred to Father, though, that Faella might not have wanted that for herself. He'd just assumed that because she was so talented, and because she enjoyed it so much, that she'd never want anything else.
Faella knew she was meant for more. She just knew it. She'd hoped that owning the theater, being in charge of the mestina, would do the trick. But quite the opposite was true: It only made her feel more constrained, more trapped in her tiny life.
There must be more than this. It was as though there was a living thing inside her that yearned for greatness, that lived inside her heart and pummeled at her to be released from the tedium of her days.
Such thoughts always led to thoughts of Perrin Alt, Lord Silverdun. She'd met him on the way to Estacana, during the dead of midwinter. She'd fallen in love with him on sight. Foolish girl that she was, she'd assumed the feeling was mutual because he was attracted to her.
Silverdun was everything she'd ever dreamed of. Gorgeous, talented, intelligent. And important.
Silverdun was a lord. A nobleman. He could sweep her away, make her a lady. Surely that would fulfill her longings? In her headstrong desire, she'd made an ass of herself, thrown herself at him. And when he'd done what any man would have done-that is, bed her and then leave her-she'd become furious. Beyond furious. If only she'd known then how vile other men could be, she might have been a bit more forgiving. But not so then.
Then something very strange had happened. The thing inside her that knew she was destined for greatness had leapt out at him. It had done something. It had made him ugly. Changed his face somehow. Not that there was really a thing in her. It was her. The part of her she'd been pushing down all her life.
At first she'd thought it was just a very well done glamour that she'd done, despite the fact that she knew deep down that it was something else entirely. She'd written a spiteful note on the mirror: Be as ugly out as in. That would show him!
Then he was gone, and she wished she'd done something different. She played back every minute of their time together and realized that at every turn she'd played the desperate common girl to the hilt, that she'd been petty and foolish. He'd liked her, and he'd slipped through her fingers, and his last memory of her would be that stupid glamour. And yes, it had simply been a glamour, nothing more. What else could it have been?
Yes, he was gone, off on his secret mission or whatever it was with gruff, gruff Mauritane and that scary woman and the human and the sullen fat one. Off they'd gone, into the Contested Lands, and she'd never seen him again.
A month or two later, though, she'd been paging through one of the court papers, reading gossip about people she hated to admire but did anyway, and there was a likeness of Silverdun. He was a hero now. A true war hero from the Battle of Sylvan.
Of course. Just her luck. The one she let go would turn out to be not just a nobleman but a war hero to boot.
But then she'd noticed something even stranger, that had made her forget all about her own self-pity.
Silverdun's face was still changed. It wasn't quite the hideous face she'd given him in her rage. But it wasn't the face she'd met him with, either. It was something in the middle. Oddly, she liked it a bit better than the pretty face he'd started out with.
But if he was still wearing it, then it was no glamour. There was no way to elude that nagging feeling anymore. The thing-no, not a thing-Faella had done something that she wasn't sure anyone knew how to do. Certainly
