Juniper & Thorn(88)

Chapter Fourteen




I had prepared myself for Sevas to let go of my hand. For him to stumble away, for him to scream. In his mirror, his reflection was unchanged, except that his clothes were gone. Pale bands of scar tissue wrapped around his arms and legs like white ribbons, and there were raised gashes all over his chest, as if every single one of the Dragon-Tsar’s blows had landed. Even his face bore the evidence of old wounds, but he was still so beautiful it made my breath catch to look at him.

I let my fingers go slack, anticipating the moment when he would wrench away from my grasp. But he only held me tighter and faster, like I was a lifeline tossed to him in churning waters. I turned to look into his eyes; in the mirror, my monstrous head turned, too.

“Go,” I told him. “Run.”

“No,” he replied.

“I’ll eat you,” I warned, my voice a whisper.

“You have already tried.” He drew his bitten fingers to my mouth, showing the small cuts I had left. “I welcome you to try again.”

I choked in disbelief. “You would be a fool to stay. The two men on the boardwalk, the one in the theater, the broker who came to our house . . . my very own sister. All of them killed by me and eaten by my father. I slit them open at the belly and tore out their hearts and livers to serve up on Papa’s plate. I could tear out your heart. I could even eat it myself. Do you ache for your own gruesome death so badly?”

“I have died a thousand times already,” Sevas said. “Cruelly, at the hands of the Dragon-Tsar. Gently, in Derkach’s bed. If this is what I am in truth, a man made up of nothing but wounds, why should I fear such a thing now? There is no more perfect mate for me than the one who wears my own mortality around her throat like a jewel.”

As he spoke, he lifted his hand and brushed the hollow of my collarbone, right where the serpent’s head rested, like an amulet of precious onyx.

“I don’t believe you,” I said. “What sort of man cares so little for the blood of innocents spilled? What sort of man weds a woman with such terribly sharp teeth?”

“I do,” Sevas said. His blue eyes were so bright, pooling with moonlight. “I could spend the rest of my days proving it to you. I have the patience and fortitude of seven thousand Ivans.”

His reflection in the mirror reached up to touch the end of my wing, and I felt a phantom shiver go through me, some disembodied sensation that was so faint I thought I must have imagined it.

Was I a woman inside the body of a monster, or was I a monster inside the body of a woman? I had wondered the same thing of my bird-mother, when she had first been transformed. Did she still have a woman’s heart and a woman’s mind within all those delicate bones and beneath all those white feathers? Papa’s potions had cut out a black space in my mind where the memories of my murders ought to have been, but that was not enough to absolve me. Those men and that broker and my sister were all still dead by my hand, even if it had been guided by Papa’s magic.

Tears came springing to my eyes, and when they fell, the fiery serpent opened its mouth and lapped them up off my cheeks.

“No,” I whispered. “I won’t let you take their deaths from me. Your love cannot make me less of a monster.”

Sevas let out a breath. “I wouldn’t presume my love could do such a thing. I would have you as you are, nothing less.”

Again, I said, “I don’t believe you.”

“Does the mirror tell the truth?”

“Yes,” I said, barely a whisper.

“Then look.”

A great tremor went through him, and his chest swelled. He drew himself up to his full height, assuming Ivan’s glorious bogatyr’s posture, shoulders raised high.

And then he took a rough fist to my hair, wrapping the wild, loose curls around his whitened knuckles, and jerked my face to his and kissed me. He kissed me so hard that it almost hurt, and I whimpered into his mouth, but he did not let go. I braced my arms around his neck and he gripped me at my waist and the serpent moved between us and in the mirror I saw a terribly scarred, terribly beautiful man embracing a monster.

His hand moved down my belly and I parted my thighs for him, moaning against his lips. I unfastened the button of his trousers so quickly that I nearly tore them. He lifted my hips and held me up against the mirror, the serpent slithering from my throat to his, and then he thrust into me without hesitation, without contrition.

Over my shoulder I could see my monster’s head falling back, mouth open with distraught pleasure, scaled breasts swaying. My wings were crumpled against the glass. The corners of Sevas’s eyes were pulled down by snaking lines of scar tissue, but the rest of his face was buried in my hair. At last he spent inside of me with a groan, and my legs slid back onto the floor, both of us panting and heaving.

Sevas stepped away, breathing hard. The serpent had wound itself around his throat instead, gleaming like a black jeweled collar. The mirror was fogged with the heat of our bodies, both of our reflections obscured. I could only see him standing there in the limpid moonlight, inches from my mother’s flung-open cage.

Something broke apart inside of me, like a glass sliding off the table and shattering. I reached out for Sevas again as my hair tumbled down over my bitten breast.

“Don’t you see?” he asked, his voice ragged and low. “You can take my heart and liver; slit open my belly and eat what’s inside. I would sooner bear it than lose you to those who call you plain-faced, who make you kneel and kiss their feet. Do not leave me alone. Do not leave me to lick my wounds like a dog before it’s put down. Do not look at the truth of me and then look away. Please, Marlinchen.”