Meya glanced at the others, then back to Dad. Everyone looked just as surprised as her.

"Lord Crosset's daughter, Lady Arinel, is getting married to Lord Coris of Hadrian. She'll move out to live in Hadrian. Lord Crosset is recruiting young maidens of character to accompany and serve her there. He summoned for me."

"So that's what took you so long today?" Meya exclaimed, eyes bulging in disbelief. Young maidens of character, he'd said. And Dad chose her? It didn't make sense.

Dad had never chosen Meya for anything. Nobody of perfectly sane mind would. Unless she was the last resort, or there was a catch of some kind.

"But I'm a Greeneye. The Lady wouldn't want me anywhere in her vicinity, would she?" Meya pointed out, frowning. Dad nodded, apparently having considered it.

"That won't be a problem, since you'll be wearing your collar."

There it is. The catch.

Meya felt anger and frustration simmering in her bowels, but she clenched her fists and kept them from showing. She needed to keep her cool. Or Dad might change his mind. After all, he had four daughters to choose from.

Meya hated the collar. It was the only thing she would never forgive Jason for.

One fine day, five years ago, Jason had come a-calling, carrying an iridescent metal band he received from a dying Greeneye in Noxx.

The band was made from Lattis, a metal discovered two hundred years ago in an iron mine in Rutgarth. A few years later, the whole mountain face was melted, the mine sealed by a dragon attack from the neighboring empire, Nostra. Since then, all mining had been banned. Lattis weapons and trinkets circling in the market now were all secondhand.

The Lattis band would dim the glow from the Greeneyes' green eyes and lower their body heat, enabling them to blend in.

Yet, the fact that the collar looked no different from a dog's wasn't the main reason for Meya's chagrin; it was the side-effects. The collar was freezing cold on her skin, and it seemed to emanate an invisible, heavy aura that weighed down her limbs and fogged up her brain.

Meya would forget it at home whenever she could get away with it, or chuck it on the levee as soon as she had gotten to the fields. How could she even work otherwise?

Besides, being the only Greeneye in Crosset, pretty much the whole manor knew her face. It didn't provide her safety from the pranks and general shunning anyway, glowing eyes or no.

She had tried tossing it in the fire at Yorfus's smithy. Having cows in the communal pasture stampede over it. Drowning it in a bucket of vitriol. Nothing could leave a tiniest dent on it. Yet, there must be a way to destroy it somehow. Otherwise, how could it have been molded in the first place? The secret must have been burnt to a crisp along with those miners in Rutgarth.

Meya despised the collar. Yet, she wanted this job. Having Jezia as a best friend, Meya longed to go somewhere outside her birth manor for once. If only she didn't have to strap that loathsome thing to her neck.

All that aside, why was Dad going to such trouble to get her the job? What was his motive?

"Why not Morel, then? She's the best at cooking and cleaning, isn't she?" Meya probed, narrowing her eyes warily.

"What, me?" Morel jolted so hard she almost jumped straight into the fire. Dropping her bowl, she whirled around to Dad, hands clasped together as if in prayer. "No, Dad! Please don't send me! Hadrian's so far away!"

"I'm not sending you, Morel. You're needed here." Dad blew out an impatient sigh. Morel looked faint with relief, but Meya's heart jolted in pain.

"And I'm not, you were saying?" She cut in, her voice cold. Dad turned back, alarmed.

"Meya, listen—" He attempted to explain.

"No need. I understand." Meya closed her eyes, pushing down the surge of desperation and willing her face to show no emotion, then creaked out what she hoped was a nonchalant smile.

"It's the Ice Pillory. The Liar's Bridle. The Fest Trail. The Famine. The Song of May Day. But you must know, Dad: those were all me."

"Meya, how many times do I have to tell you? You have nothing to do with my Song!" Mum interrupted, indignant, glaring at Dad as if daring him to contradict. Though Meya longed to see Dad's reaction, she couldn't bring herself to look.

"That's very kind of you, Mum. But what I'm trying to say is," Meya brushed it aside, "All those times, I messed up. I made the choice to do the stupid thing. My eyes have nothing to do with anything."

"They have, as far as Latakia is concerned." Dad retorted with barely a pause, a furrow appearing between his brows. Meya was getting more frustrated by the minute.

"I won't be able to do anything properly with that thing on my neck. You're only making sure I'll mess up."

"That Greeneye in Noxx lived a perfectly normal life. You just have to get used to it."

"I'm telling you, Dad, I hate it!" Meya stood up, her voice raised, and Dad also blew his long-overdue top. He slammed his bowl onto the dirt floor, splattering lukewarm soup and lumpy vegetables onto Mum, who squealed and scampered back. His seven children tensed up in fearful anticipation.

"Then perhaps it's time you learn to do what you hate for once!"

Dad snarled, his face blotchy magenta with rage. Meya could only gape in silence as Dad went on, his furious voice thundering around the small house.

"Haven't you heard what the folks were shouting back there in the trench? They were calling for your banishment! Crosset no longer tolerates you! Lord Crosset struck me a deal; you leave, and we get your fine back. And I accepted!"

Accepted.

The word echoed in the deafening silence within Meya's world. Jason's kindly smile flashed before her eyes, as she heard his soothing voice telling her not to give up on Dad. If only Jason was here now. If only he could see how hard that was.

"So...to put it simply, you're selling me off for three months of wages?" Meya finally found her voice, momentarily lost in the gaping void enveloping her heart. It was trembling so badly it surprised her. Dad's brown eyes remained cold, as they had always been, but even so, Meya whispered in utter disbelief.

"Is that all I'm worth to...to you, Dad?"

Dad turned away, ignoring horrified gazes from around the house. Tears were falling from Mum's gaping eyes. Poor wee Mistral looked confused; Myron was cupping his hands over her ears. Even Morel had shed her aloof façade and was staring at Dad along with everyone else.

Meya understood then. Dad had no choice. With Myron starting his apprenticeship and Meya paying her fine, there'd be three breadwinners to feed nine mouths.

Meya glanced at Mistral. Her tapered, beautiful fingers could weave a bobbin through hundreds of threads with ease. What would those fingers look like after months of tilling and plowing? Could she ever feel the texture of silk again through all those warts and thickened skin? She couldn't put Mistral through that.

Biting back tears, Meya sucked in a deep breath then asked up.

"When do I leave?"

"Day after tomorrow." Dad grunted. Meya blanched. She didn't expect it would be that soon. She probably wouldn't have a chance to say farewell to all of the few people who didn't mind having her around that much.

What if something happened to her during the journey? She had heard people would fall ill and die. Or run into thugs and bandits and thieves. Or become stranded in the middle of nowhere and starve to death. What if she never saw them again?

But all of that would probably be of no importance to Dad. Still, Meya couldn't help asking.

"And who will look after Hanna?" Dad snorted.

"Don't you worry. As if we'd let our winter food starve."

Maro shot Dad a reproachful glower which Dad ignored, as Meya felt her heart sink even lower. She might not even be there to send Hanna on her way to the butcher's board.

Her head feeling so blank and sluggish as if she had already put on her collar, it was all Meya could do to nod. She wrung her brain dry for some ingenious solution, anything that would get them all out of this predicament of her own doing. But nothing came. And she finally sighed, resigned to her fate.

"I'd better get started on saying my farewells, then."

Without waiting for permission, Meya turned and pushed open the door, walking out into the gathering night. The sun had disappeared behind the hill where Crosset Castle stood, black spires shooting up against a backdrop of star-spangled ultramarine sky. She felt it had never looked more beautiful.

Oil lamps along the road had been lit. Yellowish lights shone through oil paper tacked over windows in cottages crowded along the way. Cold winds batted Meya as she made her way down the sloping dirt road which led to the fields she had worked in.

Meya balanced expertly on the levee, walking past seas of purplish wheat swishing under the faint light of the half moon. She ventured into the forest, past the oak tree where she would knock down acorns for her piglets in autumn, using memory to guide her to the hollow trunk of a large, dead tree.

Meya knelt down on the damp earth and caressed the ground with both hands. She found a small pointed stone she had used to mark the spot and began to dig, raking back the loose soil. Barely a minute had gone by when she unearthed a drawstring cloth bag that had once been off-white but was now brown from spending most of its time in the earth.

Settling down with her back to the wall of the hollow, Meya loosened the drawstring and rummaged among the various accumulated trinkets. Then she found it; a wooden tub about the size of her palm.

Meya unscrewed the top and brought out the small, jagged stone by touch. The stone was cold and rough, but she held it tight and pressed it against her chest as she sang, her voice a mere whisper on the wind.

It was a little song she wrote herself, sung in a voice that supposedly belonged to Mum.

I'm here to sing a song I own.

I wish to hear the world sing along.

I'll sing my heart for all who'll heed.

So lend your ears to the wind as it blows.

Mum once traveled the region as a famous songstress, before she married Dad and settled down. Every year she would sing at the May Fest, and people would travel from as far as Easthaven to hear the Song of May Day.

It all came to an end on a rainy May Day seventeen years ago. Mum was in so much pain giving birth to Meya, she screamed until her throat gave out. The Song of May Day was no more.

Yet, many believed it lived on within Meya. From as early as she could remember, Meya was known as the thief who stole the Song of May Day. The fact that she was a Greeneye served as the final damning evidence.

Nobody knew for sure. However, they were right. Meya had never sung in front of a single soul. Though it was a torture suppressing her song, she was more terrified of what people might do to her, and most terrified of what Dad might do to her. Nobody knew she could sing, except for robins and thrushes, and a boy from the past she could only vaguely remember.

He was a visitor from another manor. He had stumbled upon her singing in the pigsty, alone on May Day as she usually was, as her family and the whole village were at the festival, witnessing Marin receiving another May Queen crown.

Perhaps as payment, the boy had given her the small stone encrusted with shards of raw emerald that were the color of her eyes, along with gentle words she would always repeat to herself, whenever she felt she needed a kind voice to usher her on.

"You're worth more than a pig, or simply your mother's song, Meya. Don't ever think otherwise."

I'm Meya, Meya.

I'm born on May's eve.

As my father grieve for my mother's song.

Oh Meya, they say

What good is a lass,

As unruly and poor as Meya Hild.