Juniper & Thorn(80)

Sevas leaned over, huffing a laugh, and said, “I wouldn’t blame you for falling out of love. If the audience could see their Ivan’s feet, they would retch.”

My face went magnificently hot. “It’s a good thing that I’m a witch, then, and not a blushing mortal girl. I can wrap your cuts and bring you one of Rose’s elixirs for the pain.”

Sevas’s lips turned up faintly at the corners. “You know, this is the first time in years that I’ve gone a single day without dancing. If I stay out of the theater long enough, I wonder if my feet will begin to look like a normal man’s.”

“You told me once that when you dance, you have to beat your body until it obeys you,” I said. My finger brushed over the tendon of his ankle, pushing outward through his skin, and he shivered. “Perhaps you should treat it kindly instead.”

Sevas lowered his head so that our eyes were nearly level. “You will have to show me how.”

I felt a fast and desperate rush of affection, so complete that I could forget about the throbbing pain behind my temple or the soreness in my throat from my sister’s fingers. I bent over and kissed his ankle, then all the way up his calf, until my chin came to rest on his knee. Sevas gave a soft moan and it made me go slick between my legs just to hear it. He cupped my face for a brief moment and then trailed his hand down my throat, across my collarbone, and over my breast.

This time I shivered, and as his thumb brushed my nipple through my dress I thought abruptly of Undine and Indrik and the look of her breast jostling with each of his thrusts.

I pulled away from Sevas and said, “Would you have me on my knees in the dirt? Would you take me without any tenderness? It would be all that I deserved, being a plain-faced witch with a dull mind—”

Sevas drew a quick sharp breath. “How could you ask that? If I have you it will be as a man has a woman, a husband his wife. Do you dream of Bogatyr Ivan when you kiss me? Do you wish I entered you while holding a wooden sword? I would not like any story to lie between us like a third body in our marriage bed. When I touch your breast I am touching the breast of Marlinchen Vashchenko, not a witch, not a swan-girl, not a flesh diviner, not a third daughter. Even I am not near lusty enough to satisfy five women at once.”

His words left me flushing even more deeply. “I will pull the secret out of Papa, I swear it. I will figure out how to break his spell and then we will sell Mama’s mirror and you will never have to dance again.”

“I would like that, Marlinchen,” he said, and leaned down to kiss me.

I pushed myself up to meet his lips, but as I did an astonishing bolt of pain went through my skull. My vision daggered with tiny needles of white light. For a moment I could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing except Sevas’s hands on my shoulders as he slid off the chair and knelt beside me. My head rolled back and when it snapped forward again, I saw his blue eyes blown wide with panicked desperation.

“My head,” I managed. There was spittle gathered on my tongue that hurt too much to swallow, and a bit of it dribbled past my lips. “I think I need to lie down.”

It occurred to me, suddenly and terribly, that I hadn’t told him about Undine’s threat. But when I tried to speak again there was another stroke of dizzying white pain.

Sevas helped me to my feet and all but carried me into the foyer, up the stairs. His lips were moving and I knew that he was talking, that perhaps he was even asking me questions, but it felt as if my ears were packed with cotton. He brought me to my room and I collapsed on my bed, everything sharp and bright and stinging.

The cotton dissolved just long enough to hear him say that he was going to fetch my sister, that he was going to find Rose. I tried to mumble something back, but I could not tell whether or not my mouth managed to form the words.

I thought of Undine in the garden, her hair spilled in the dirt, her hand curling around my throat. I thought about how I had laid my secret on her tongue like a sweet red berry, the way I had given her a knife with which to cut both Sevas and me.

I reached for Sevas’s arm as he fled the room, but then the white light drowned me, and I saw nothing more.



There was only darkness and a thin blade of moonlight when I woke. I could not tell how many hours had passed, but the blinding headache had vanished just as inexplicably as it had come, and when I lifted my arm up there was dirt caulked under my nails. Everything smelled of soil and damp.

As I sat up, a cold girdle of fear gripped my heart. I hadn’t gotten the chance to warn Sevas about Undine’s threat. That fear propelled me out of my room and down the stairs, but the foyer and the sitting room were both empty. The grandfather clock was casting its usual shadow, lengthened by the day’s late hour. Its small hand was brushing eight and the windows into the garden were painted the deep blue of Papa’s beard.

On the other side of the door, I heard a commotion. I took the knob in my hand and opened it, cool air blowing right through my nightgown. When I glanced down I saw that the hem was ragged, as if it had been torn, and a thousand loose threads were feathering against my ankles. Had it happened when I was running through the garden earlier, and I simply hadn’t noticed?

Fireflies lit up the blue-washed garden; the one-eyed goblin pattered through the wheat grass, not weeping for once. But there was sound, at the line of the fence, where all fourteen of the day laborers were gathered, along with Papa and Sevas. They were clamoring loudly, and pressed so tightly I couldn’t see past them to what was beyond the gate, so I walked forward barefooted, feeling as cold as if I’d been doused by frigid seawater.