Any Other Name by Emma Newman

and coughed. “Urgh. Mathematics tastes horrid.”
    “Goodness.” Poppy turned back to Sam. “When it’s broken into the tiny bits you seem to value, five years sounds like much more time.”
    Sam realised what the hourglass represented. “Now just hang on one fucking minute – you mean I have to do whatever you want for a total of five years?”
    “Yes.” Poppy twisted his cane with a horribly smug look on his face.
    “Not five years off the end of my life?”
    Poppy frowned. “Goodness, no. Why ever would I want your worst years? Or did you think you would die earlier? Oh! What a fascinating misunderstanding. You were willing to die sooner for those waifs? How noble.”
    Sam pinched the skin between his eyebrows to stave off the headache spreading across his skull.
    “Not all at once,” Poppy said. “Every now and again. Half an hour here, five minutes there.”
    “That’s it, I’m going,” Sam said. “Fuck this. Fuck all of it.”
    “See you soon!” Poppy called.
    Sam raised his middle finger and held it aloft as he left the clearing. Thankfully, it seemed the Fae didn’t know what it meant.
    When Cathy was certain Will wasn’t coming back straightaway, she went into the bedroom and freed herself from the wedding dress. She ended up ripping some of the seams as she couldn’t reach all of the tiny buttons at the back but the sound of the fabric tearing was wonderfully cathartic. When the dress was nothing but a pool of beaded silk around her feet she jumped up and down on it a few times and then kicked it across the room until she realised how childish she was being. The tears started.
    She let them fall as she unlaced the corset and peeled off the stockings. She brushed her fingertips over the red marks the corset’s bones had left in her skin and remembered the new curse they’d put on her. The one her father had placed on her had been removed that morning and she only knew that because she’d overheard a brief and cryptic exchange between her parents during the reception. She’d been curse-free for less than an hour.
    An experimental tug on the wedding ring confirmed her suspicion; it fit too snugly for her to pull it off easily. She considered experimenting with soap and cold water but knew it wouldn’t work.
    She needed clothes in the mundane fashion and she needed to get out and walk. Cathy wiped the tears off her cheeks and pulled a couple of jewels from her hair as she looked at the wall of fitted wardrobes. The sound of a police siren going past the window reminded her that she was in Mundanus and it cheered her. Getting out of the Nether was half of the battle.
    The food had been laid out before they arrived so she suspected the Iris machine would have selected clothes for her honeymoon, had them brought to the flat and unpacked at the same time. She opened the first door she came to and found dresses hanging with matching shoes beneath. She rummaged in drawers and found underwear but no jeans or sloppy tops of the kind she would prefer. The Irises didn’t want her to wear trousers. They probably thought it was indecent.
    “Fucking Irises,” she muttered as she pulled on knickers made to delight a husband rather than be comfortable and a lacy bra that would itch like crazy. “Fucking Fae bastards,” she added as she laddered a new pair of stockings and then abandoned them.
    She pulled out the most comfortable-looking dress, even though it was one she would never pick out for herself, and put it on. It was too neat, too floral and far too feminine for her taste. When she looked in the mirror she felt sick at the sight of herself as the perfect little wife in the perfect little dress. “Fuck all of you,” she said to the reflection, and went hunting for a clock.
    She missed her wristwatch. In the Nether men had pocket-watches and the ladies relied on the clocks around the house and the punctuality of the staff to run their day. Thankfully the electric oven in the mundane kitchen