Juniper & Thorn(50)



I turned around just as Papa picked up the beak and swallowed it in one gulp; I could see the sickled shape of it as it traveled down his throat. It reminded me of the earliest days of his curse, when his body was still accustoming itself to its new and depthless hunger. When nothing existed outside or between Papa and his appetite.

I trudged back up the stairs and went first to Rose’s room. She was still sleeping, curled as tight as a baby bird in its egg, fist closed under her chin. I stood beside her and prodded her shoulder gently.

Rose shot up at once, violet eyes wide as two spills of water, her long black braid lashing.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Papa wants us,” I said.

Rose pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m not going to be angry at you, Marlinchen. Papa has enough anger for twenty. But it was a terribly selfish thing of you to do, and don’t you try to tell me otherwise. What’s the worst that would’ve happened, if you hadn’t gone? One man turned to a mass of vipers? But if he were an ugly man, one with less charm and no seduction in his smile, would you have minded at all?”

“I don’t want anyone turned to snakes because of me.”

“That’s not the point.” Rose threw off her covers. “I wish I hadn’t helped you on your besotted fool’s errand. All this talk of marriage is just a ruse; it must be. Some cunning new way for Papa to punish us, because the old ways weren’t working well enough. Go wake Undine. My eyes are weary of looking at you.”

I left Rose’s room, my mind still roiling with storm clouds, my body working like a cotton mill, unconscious and automated. My sister was clever, but she had not seen the way that Derkach had gripped the back of Sevas’s neck. She had not watched Papa devour a chicken whole. Perhaps I would have been clever too, if I did not have so much carnage behind my eyes.

Undine wasn’t in her bed. She was standing by the window in one of her ruined gowns, the left sleeve ripped off and the collar torn down the middle, exposing the cleft of her breast and a sliver of pink nipple. I turned around at once, flushing fervently, but before I could get through the door Undine crossed the room and grasped me by my wrist.

She hurled me away from the door, and I stumbled back, catching myself against her unmade bed, and while I was still reeling she slapped me across the face.

The shock of it swallowed a bit of the pain, but when the numbness ebbed, I felt as if I’d pressed my cheek against the lit stovetop. I whimpered at that bristling heat as Undine arched over me, breathing furiously through her nose. I opened my mouth—to protest? To apologize?—and she slapped me again.

This time, I bleated out a shocked little sound, like a rutted sheep.

“Stop being a baby,” Undine said as she stepped away from me. “I didn’t even hit you very hard.”

“It hurt,” I said.

“Well, I meant to. Hurt you, I mean. What would be the point in slapping you otherwise? You’re such an idiot, Marlinchen.”

“I’m sorry.”

She heaved a sigh—exasperated rather than exhausted—then pulled up the ragged collar of her dress so that it covered her nipple. “I think you’re so stupid you don’t even know why I’m calling you stupid. Do you?”

“Because Papa tore up our dresses and jewelry and says he will make us marry and that was because of me.”

“It’s not just that,” Undine snapped. She leaned over and plucked up a pair of slippers from the ground, matching the glossy peacock of her spoiled gown. The heels were tattered, like something small had chewed through the silk. “You don’t think I wouldn’t love to be wed to some man, any man, who would take me away from this disgusting place? This shrine to Papa’s curse, the instrument of his loathing? But he’ll never let that happen. Whatever he has planned for us, it’s only more misery.”

It was the same thing that Rose had said. Perhaps Undine was just as clever as my middle sister, under all her frothing cruelty.

My cheeks were still prickling with tiny needles of heat. I pulled my housecoat tighter around myself while Undine slipped on her shoes and walked toward the door, turning back to look at me with her hand on the knob.

“You should be angry at me,” she said.

“Why?”

She looked at me with disdain. “Because I just slapped you. You are insufferable sometimes. You’re not doing me, or yourself, any favors by pretending not to mind when you get hurt. I would have slapped you harder if I didn’t know the truth—if I didn’t know that you would just blush and bat your lashes as someone tied a tourniquet around your thigh and prepared to saw your leg off. Do you know why the worst thing Papa has ever done to me is push me to my knees? Because I wail and scream and beat his chest with my fists whenever he tries to do anything more than bark orders at me from the chaise. You think he wants some mute little china doll to cook his meals and wash his sheets? No. He wants daughters with teeth. The hurting is the point. I can’t believe it’s taken you twenty-three years to figure out—if you even understand what I’m saying at all. It’s no fun stamping through old dirty snow. People want to ruin things that are clean and new. And you should hear the way men talk! Some of our clients, even. A woman’s worthless and spoiled once she’s been bred. That’s why Papa can’t stand the idea. He can’t stand the idea of anyone spoiling us but him.”

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