The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(12)

“Are you coming to bed?”

“Soon.”

I drew a bath and stared at the water. I wondered about Melusine’s husband breaking his promise. Folklore categorized Melusine a mermaid, but never clarified whether that’s what her husband saw. I wondered about the moment when he caught the muscular flex of her tail, the red in her scales like so much gore, the knowledge of how she must have cramped her otherworldliness to fit into something as silly as a tub of water. When he broke his promise, did he see a mermaid, a maiden, or a monster?

If I broke my promise to Indigo, what would I see?





Chapter Six

The Bridegroom




The next morning, the blue bitterness of Azure’s name remained coiled in my jaw.

“You’re awake.”

Indigo sat up in bed, staring at me.

“I don’t want to be,” I said.

I turned from where I had been leaning against the large windows that looked out over the wind-wrinkled sea. I have never liked swimming in open water. I hated the cold void of the ocean, the disturbing weightlessness of my own limbs. Indigo’s eyes were cold and depthless, and I felt that same sensation, a pebbled seafloor pulling my feet out from under me.

“Bad dreams?” she said, throwing back the duvet.

“I’m still thinking about Azure.”

She rose from the bed, naked, and reached for the robe hanging on the lapis-and-Capiz-tiled wall.

“That’s to be expected,” she said lightly. “It’s the last name you heard before sleep.”

“Indigo—”

“I need to get ready,” she said, tying the robe. “Tati will be waiting for us. Hopefully, this time she’ll be lucid.”

Tati. I’d forgotten she would finally see us today.

If Indigo and Azure had been friends since childhood, then that meant Tati knew her too. Indigo and Azure. Both of their names conjured blue—sea skies and livid bruises, gas flames and rich cloth. Their hues were close enough that one might be considered the sister of the other.

When Indigo stepped out of the shower, she appeared unbothered. She paused before my armchair by the window. Droplets splattered onto my pants as she leaned over, taking my face in her hands, kissing me. She drew back, then pressed her forehead to mine so that I saw only her lips move as she spoke—

“This place is poisonous to my very soul, and I am sorry for how it’s changed me. But soon we’ll go home,” she whispered. “Just know that no matter how I am, I haven’t forgotten that you are all I have in this world.”

As she drew back, the sun broke through the clouds behind me, mottling her bare skin in rainbows. Scrubbed and bare, Indigo had something of the inhuman about her, and I was reminded of the promise she had extracted from me.

Do not look.

Do not ask.

Do not pry.

I have long imagined that my wife was cursed and that my silence might one day break it. But today, as the light rendered her lovely and alien, an idea slipped into my skull and my vision sheered sapphire, cerulean. A question edged in blue found my tongue:

What if the breaking of the promise is the breaking of a spell?

The thought was blasphemy, and yet it tasted like snowfall and rare sugar. My mouth watered.

“I love you,” said Indigo, and shame curled in my stomach.

Was this not some kind of test? If I could stand the taunt of curiosity, then perhaps she would no longer feel so hunted and whatever disjointedness had come between us would disappear.

I reached for her hand, kissed the inside of her wrist, her map of veins and dewed skin. “I love you too.”

Indigo’s shoulders relaxed, though she didn’t smile. When she touched my cheek, her hands were frigid, her nails sharp. “Don’t let me doubt it.”



I would not call the House of Dreams a home.

There was something flimsy about it, a quality to its shadows that suggested it was not always in one place. That if I arrived unannounced, it would not be there. It was aptly named in that sense, though I was unsure whether its provenance belonged to dreams or nightmare . . . or something else entirely. Like the substance of fairy tales.

I have lost count of the number of stories I knew that dealt in fae glamour. In some tales, the Fair Folk can make a handful of leaves appear like coins. Their homes might be richly appointed in one light and turn out to be nothing more than a pile of rough twigs and damp straw. To glamour was to lie, and that made it dangerous.

The moment Indigo and I stepped out of her car and onto the gravel driveway, I felt the House comb through me.

I see what you cannot, it whispered.

I tried to focus on Indigo. But it was as if her proximity to the House had drawn an uncanny, animal-like quality out of her. When she smiled, her teeth appeared sharper.

“I should warn you about Tati,” said Indigo. “She’s not fully present these days. Not after her injury years ago.”

I caught sight of the turret. I remembered the pale figure before the glass.

“Is there anyone else here aside from Mrs. Revand?”

Indigo looked at me sharply. “No. Why?”

The car came to a stop, and I pointed up at the turret and its curious window. “I thought I saw someone there yesterday.”

Indigo followed the line of my finger, and her mouth pinched.