Midnight in Everwood(91)

The knowledge that he had been watching her at her most raw, intimate moments sent her thoughts pirouetting. Witnessing her and Legat’s slow descent into something more, something deeper. ‘Your elaborate manipulation took a misstep, did it not?’ She voiced her creeping realisation. ‘You desired to exert your power over me. Manipulate me for your own entertainment, my punishment for daring to decline your proposal.’ Her laugh was bitter and gleeful at once. ‘The last thing you had expected was for me to fall in love with another. A love which you would then be forced to witness.’

Drosselmeier’s face might have been carved from ice for the lack of reaction he gave. The smallest twitch in the corner of his mouth betrayed his fury. A single finger tapping against his arm. The rigidity of his spine.

‘I shall never be yours.’ Marietta’s whisper twisted with spite. ‘Yet I gave all of myself to him.’

Drosselmeier stormed down from the stage. Marietta opened one of the doors but with a click of Drosselmeier’s fingers, it ripped from her grasp and slammed shut, sealing her inside the ballroom once more. She let forth a scream of rage as she pulled at it but it was to no avail.

Drosselmeier tore the snow globe from her hand. ‘Actually I do believe you shall be. For if you do not become mine—’ He shook the snow globe slowly, his gaze resting on Marietta as the snow settled. It revealed Legat, sitting in a sleigh in the midst of the forest. ‘Well, I shall make a true soldier out of your precious captain.’ He held a hand above the snow globe and, with a choked cry, Marietta watched Legat forced to his feet, his body turning rigid. His face adopted a strange cadence, his expression stiffening, taking on a resemblance of the nutcracker she had found beneath her pillow in Everwood.

‘No,’ Marietta whispered.

‘A remarkable little charm,’ Drosselmeier continued, ‘and a nutcracker is rather useful this time of year, is it not?’ His smile was a wicked show of triumph.

Marietta lifted a foot forward. Pointed her toes. And snapped her leg up, shattering the snow globe with a single grand battement. She had not skills in steel and blade yet she possessed a great strength all of her own. In a tinkling of glass, the snow globe lost its magic and Drosselmeier’s grasp on his failed. The miniature Legat shook off Drosselmeier’s spell, his butterscotch eyes staring into the distance as if he could glimpse Marietta through the bounds of reality for a beat. She watched until the vision of him melted away.

Marietta glanced at Drosselmeier. His face had paled to the cold fury of an ice storm. Sparks raged between his fingertips. He opened his mouth to speak, to unleash some untold horror upon her.

In a flash of fear, Marietta spun past him and grasped a candelabra from the nearest table.

Drosselmeier began muttering; unintelligible words pitched too low for comprehension.

Marietta’s fingers tightened round the bronze candelabra, prepared to battle. A growing coldness against her leg tugged her attention down. When she slid a hand into her pocket, her fingers brushed ice. And paper.

Before Drosselmeier could draw another breath, Marietta swung the candelabra at his head. He evaded her with ease. As she had intended. She whipped her leg back in an attitude derrière Madame Belinskaya would have applauded. High enough for the box of her pointe shoe to crack into Drosselmeier’s head. He staggered back, his magic flickering.

With shaking fingers, Marietta pulled out the small twist of paper the market woman had bestowed upon her when she’d first entered Everwood, tore it open and poured the entire contents on Drosselmeier.

The magic clouded out and Marietta stepped back. Drosselmeier had not yet regained his senses; his gaze was unfocused. He attempted to speak but coughed instead, having inhaled part of the cloud. The rest nestled against his skin.

Her heart shuddering beneath her bodice, Marietta watched the moment he became aware of his fate. Drosselmeier’s fury swelled, his anger a visceral beast devouring his composure. He reached out but she danced away. Then Drosselmeier started to shrink. Marietta found herself unable to glance away. With a scream of rage, Drosselmeier shrank to the size of a child, then a baby. Marietta dropped the candelabra, frozen in morbid fascination. And still he continued to shrink until he was as small as the mice that had flitted over King Gelum’s brocaded suits. Then, a thimble. A thimble-sized man, a real-life approximation of Tom Thumb, gesturing at her and shouting in tiny, high-pitched squeaks she failed to understand.

Yet this was no fairy tale.

Marietta looked down. ‘I dance only for myself,’ she told him.

Staring up at her, his chipped-ice glare still distinguishable in his miniature stature, Drosselmeier raised his hands. Tiny sparks of magic fluttered between them.

Yet he was still shrinking. Down and down until he was the size of sugar granules. Then, particles of dust.

Marietta leant down and blew. Watched as the man crafted from magic and nightmares simply floated away.





Chapter Forty-Five


When she reached her bedroom, she shut the door behind her and sank onto the floor. The wood was hard and scented with familiar polish. Her room was smaller than she’d remembered, as if it had inhaled some of the shrinking magic, too. It had been Christmas Eve for the entirety of her time in Everwood. Other than Drosselmeier, not a soul possessed a hint of an idea that she had been worlds away. And no one would believe the tales she could spin. It was a peculiar kind of isolation.