Chapter 1
“A woman must be thin, pale and tend to the household. She must marry a wealthy lord. It is her duty.”
Such was the mantra pounded into the mind of every girl and young-lady-to-be in the years of the nineteenth century—the Victorian era, as history remembers it.
Not all women, however, were willing to be treated like delicate ornaments, granted all the sovereignty one would bestow a porcelain doll. Some rebelled, igniting a battle, that to this day, persists.
But this is not the story of a Suffragette. Our heroine fought for a very different kind of freedom—to preserve something very precious: magic.
I do not mean magic as the modern world perceives it—the kind found in the pages of Harry Potter or spun on Disney’s screen. I mean the magic that was woven into the fabric of the old world, that is hidden in the whispers of the wind and the glimmer of the unseen. Few still believe in it, myself included, and as such belief fades, so too does the realm of the Fae.
And that is why I must tell you this story.
This is the tale of a girl on the brink of womanhood in the age of Queen Victoria. It a tale of true magic and true belief. And I hope that, by the time I have finished recounting it, you too will know magic as it truly is.
So, seat yourself comfortably. Open your mind to the fantastic.
Shall we begin?
