The room is barely bigger than the kitchen from my old apartment in New York, but there are hundreds of books that line the entire room. I pull one out of its place on the dusty shelf and the spine opens with a crack. The neglected texts beg for me to read them, but as I try, the words are coded in strange symbols and confusingly ordered, and although I can somehow make out a few words, I cannot read them all.

Gaitha charges in before I can really look through the book. I see a word that means human, a word that means test, and a word that means blood, and I cannot help but feel an eerie chill down my spine before the old leather- bound manuscript crashes from my hands to the chilling marble floor. I hardly get time to explain myself as my caretaker rolls her eyes at me furiously and grabs my arm, dragging me from the library back to my room.

As she pulls and stretches and sizes and measures and sews and re-sews, I can't help but think about what the ancient books in the small library were, selfishly thinking that they had something to do with myself. But Gaitha clears her throat and pulls me out of my thoughts. And for the first time, I hear my seamstress, my babysitter, speak to me.

"You will take care of this dress," she tolls me coldly. "I put much time into forming and protecting this dress. You will keep it safe." The fey never meets my eyes. And as I throw the words around in my mind, they seem off. 'Protect' and 'safe' don't sound like words to describe a silly dress she could make again in maybe an hour at most. It clicks in my mind that she is telling me to stay safe and to make sure I don't get myself into trouble.

I look down at her, but she pushes my chin back up so I can stand straight, but I can only smile. "Don't worry," I say back quietly. "I'll take care of it."

It is when she finally finishes the dress and is gently removing it from my thin frame that Sage bursts in, and I scream, clutching short black silk robe around my bare body. It is a shock to me that Sage doesn't blush in the slightest or even avert his eyes.

Gaitha, though hurriedly drags me into the bathing room and shoves a baggy black sweatshirt over my head as I pull on the white pajama shorts and the thick woolen socks she throws at me. And when I get back out, Sage is sitting on the bed, looking attentive as always.

"We need to speak," he tells me, and drags me from my room, to a room that looks more like a lounge or a study several hallways away from my own. The floor goes from marble to black squishy carpeting, and the furniture is a dark oak and soft emerald and leather.

Curiously I look around. "Where are we?" I mumble, sort of used to not talking the past few days.

"My room," Sage states, sitting down comfortably on a large brown leather sofa. "My study, actually."

I'm shocked as I sink into the huge comfy leather chair across from him. I sink into the cool material that wraps around my legs, my back, and even my arms. Never had I imagined Sage as having his own room, his own life outside mine. I look around the room seeing foreign objects. A book opened on a grand desk that flips a page as I stare at it for a second. A small globe, spinning constantly and slowly in the air without an axis, without any strings. A collection of beautiful arrows. Several walls lined with books stacked to the high ceiling. A pale pink handkerchief framed in oak and hanging on the wall. It makes my heart stop, but I cannot stop looking. The remains of a broken pearl necklace fallen on the floor. A memory of a puffy, black, silk gown and a delicate fey, no older than myself, sobbing as the male, Sage, grabs her wrist, begging her not to go. Pearls scatter, he yells, she runs, he stays. Holding that pale pink handkerchief, letting out a roar of anger and sadness, and finally silence. And before he cries, I am pulled back to reality with his persistent, even-toned voice.

"-and Mab wants to move the date closer, but I told her we've barely even talked about it yet-" Sage continues, and I nod, because it's all I really can do.

I'm not sure if the vision is real or if it was imagined, but my mind pieces together my thoughts and my feelings. Sage has loved before, and it hasn't been me. Sage has a life, and it has nothing to do with me. Sage has duties, and can't be bothered with me. But I can't tell him. I cannot just say I can't marry him, can I? But he deserves happiness.

"Are you okay?" He catches me off- guard with the question.

I admit to him that I wasn't listening at all and that I was just daydreaming. I know that he can't just be my brother figure anymore. I know that it's too late for that. So I sit and I listen to him babble about wedding dates and who we have to invite to the actual wedding and the music that must be present and the food for the guests and the actual ceremony. I participate in the conversation, the planning, with Sage. I should be excited for my own wedding, shouldn't I?

At the end of the night, he brings me back to my room and looks at me closely. "We're going to work this all out, I promise," he tells me. And somehow he knows that I doubtful of our plans to be married, but his presence and his knowledge of my doubts is actually calming.

"I know," I tell him, and he bids me goodnight, giving me a short, familial kiss on the forehead.

I go to sleep, unready for the engagement party the next day, and uneasy about the wedding.