Juniper & Thorn(79)

It was no crueler than anything I had heard from her before, but now her words smoldered in my belly like the black end of a match. All these years Rose and Undine had both known that Papa’s potions didn’t work, but they had let me go on believing that they were real. They’d enjoyed their furtive rebellions while I was butchering chickens and worse for Papa, while I was folding his laundry and scrubbing the floors and walls until the whole house gleamed as if it were an amulet. They could have told me the truth, but why would they—I cooked all their meals too.

My head was still throbbing and my mouth was dry, but I remembered the way that Undine had shouldered past me to bat her lashes at Sevas, and a bit of my own cruelty flowered up.

“You don’t know everything,” I told her, each word trembling like a plucked string. “You don’t know that when I ran away I went to the ballet theater, and when he saw me there Sevas stopped dancing and leaped off the stage and took me into his arms. Then he coupled with me right there in the theater, in a room full of shattered mirrors, and afterward he said that he would come back to Papa’s house and compete for my hand.”

I said it all in a rush, and hearing it aloud it sounded better than my favorite story in Papa’s codex, better than the swan-tsarevna and Ivan. It sounded better than any dream I might’ve conjured in my own mind, where I was a blushing mortal girl rescued by a valiant bogatyr. Best of all it was my secret that had made it so, the magic of my own little rebellion.

It scarcely even occurred to me that Undine’s face was darkening, turning the shade of a plum near to rot. But then she lurched forward, one breast swaying, and caught me by the throat. Her hands pressed down hard until tears gathered at the corners of my eyes and my breath could only come in short, hot gasps.

“You don’t deserve it,” she hissed in my ear. “You’re the ugliest and stupidest of us all—I’ve never seen a plainer face or a duller mind than yours. And worst of all, you’re like a dog that loves its lashings. You bow to Papa’s every word and smile as he works his knife into your breast. What right do you have to be rescued? The dancer was a fool to come at all. You would rather sit meekly at Papa’s feet and lick his boots than run away with a beautiful man. You’re too much of a coward. You won’t leave with him anyway.”

My vision was starting to narrow and my throat burned with pressure. I reached up and clawed at Undine’s face, drawing three lines of blood across her cheek.

She let me go and stumbled away, shoulders heaving like a pair of wings was ready to unfold from between the blades of her back. Then she snarled, “Maybe I’ll tell Papa the truth before you get the chance. You’re better off dead to him than defiled.”

Before she could reach for me again I turned around and hurled myself through the sage flowers and the wheat grass, nearly tripping as I clambered up the stairs to the house. My heart was pounding so loudly and furiously that I could count each crooked beat, and my head was aching like an egg about to hatch.

I shoved my way inside and collapsed to my knees in the foyer, just as the grandfather clock gonged seven. I could hear the drowsy voices of the day laborers from the sitting room, yawning like old cats. I worried over the sound of footsteps from the second-floor landing, wondering if Papa had already woken. He would be angry. He would want his breakfast.

But as I rose, trembling, to my feet, it was only Sevas that I saw in front of me, his blue eyes fierce and bright with concern. In the wash of early morning sunlight, he looked too beautiful to touch. Grief and horror made my own eyes water.

“Marlinchen,” he said, taking my face into his hands. “What happened? Is it your father?”

At first I wanted to tell him what had just happened, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak. After several moments passed I realized the futility of saying anything at all. My words were too gruesome and ugly for his ears. Worse still, this house was too horrible to keep him cached in its belly; it didn’t deserve such a sweet meal.

“No,” I managed. “I didn’t get anything from him last night; I’m sorry. And just now I only fell down in the garden.”

“That’s all right,” Sevas said softly. “We have time to try again.”

A tiny furrow emerged suddenly between his brows. He let go of my face, but his gaze did not leave mine. It bore into me, tender and wanting, as if his lovely stare alone could dredge more words from my throat. After another beat I saw him wince, gaze lowering to the ground.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. I might have laughed at such a quick and neat reversal if my head wasn’t still ringing with Undine’s threat.

“It’s nothing,” Sevas said, trying a pained smile. At least the humor of it wasn’t lost on him either. “It’s just my feet. Usually after a show I have someone treat them, but this last time I was a shade preoccupied.”

“Oh,” I said. It was so perfectly mundane that it washed away all my deep, churning horror. “Let me see.”

I drew him into the dining room and pulled out one of the chairs so that he could sit, while I knelt in front of him. He did, and then began to slide off his boots, sucking his lower lip into his mouth. When at last he was free of them I looked down, alarmed at the sight of his bare feet before me.

They must have been the only ugly thing about him, his toes mangled and knobby like the small pieces of birch branches that we cut for casting lots, his heels rough and callused, and half his nails blackened with the welling of old blood. I was not a healer, and I could not even think of where to start. A single filthy bandage was peeling off his left ankle.