The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(29)

It was coming from inside the armoire.





Chapter Thirteen

Azure




For Indigo’s sixteenth birthday, Tati planned a masquerade, and the entire school was invited. The graduating class of Hawk Harbor was barely a hundred people. The House could easily fit them all inside. But Indigo didn’t want them there, and for this I was selfishly happy.

“It’s time to show face,” Tati said, the day the invitations were sent out. “It’s not only for the island, Indigo. The investors are coming in from overseas, shareholders want to know the girl who will take her parents’ place. People want to know who you are.”

I thought—hoped—that Indigo would fight Tati as she usually did, but even if she didn’t like how bossy Tati was acting, she liked being a part of the Caste?ada tradition. Her father had been formally introduced to his father’s business associates the day he turned sixteen, and his father before him.

“Think of all the people, the dresses, the cakes . . .” Tati said. We were standing in the kitchen while she examined the final stack of invitations—heavy blue cardstock with silver foil and a navy silk ribbon. “You’ll love it, Azure.”

I knew I wouldn’t. When Tati had insisted on inviting everyone, I’d been terrified that my mother and Jupiter would come and only slightly relieved when my mother turned up her nose and said they’d be too busy on vacation to “celebrate a poor little rich girl.” But even without Jupiter and my mother there, the party would be a disaster.

I could already picture it—Indigo on one side of the room, me on the other, a sea of people between us, the House rendered strange underfoot. I sensed the way people would stare at the grand windows and brilliant chandeliers, the sweeping grounds, and the hall of portraits. None of it was mine, and I knew that. But it wasn’t ownership I cared about. I had been a part of the House for so long that it now held pieces of me, and by the end of the party, I would feel rummaged through, like the House, stained by all who’d entered.

Before Indigo’s party invitations, I had thought our classmates never noticed us. We were a pair of silent, dark-haired cuckoo chicks sitting in a nest of cream-colored finches. We never lined up for the ferries to go shopping on the mainland or attended the beach bonfires, drinking beer out of canteens. We rarely spoke to anyone other than each other. But the Monday after the invitations were mailed, I realized that what I had thought was apathy was actually awe.

I felt the change the moment I stepped into homeroom, an electric hum tracing the lines of my skull. Indigo and I had entered the building together that morning, as we always did, but the principal had pulled her away for a quick word and scowled when I tried to follow, so I arrived alone.

The classroom seemed defined for once, all its edges articulated—the chalkboard decorated in crimped, painted cardboard, the square arrangement of sixteen blue plastic chairs, the sun-warmed smell of chalk mixed with my classmates’ sweat and hair products. And underneath it all: the sour, unripened scent of youth.

Our teacher hadn’t arrived yet, leaving me with twelve pairs of eyes that had never beheld me so closely until now. I stepped back, as if to melt into the wall behind me, when one of them, a boy named Barrett with a gentle voice and a constantly red face, spoke:

“What’s it like inside there?”

The eleven other students shifted in their seats, blinking away only for a moment before resuming their staring.

“What?”

“The House,” he said, licking his lips. “You’re always inside the Caste?ada house.”

“Is it actually haunted?” asked a girl. It took me a moment to find her name: Anna. She had lank blond hair and small, hooded eyes that flicked over my outfit: a pair of red velvet pants and a lacy black sweater cinched at the wrists with a high neck. A slow, vicious heat climbed my skin. The clothes belonged to Indigo, and Anna knew it. She smirked.

“Are we all really supposed to wear masks?” asked Emmanuel. His skin was the color of black marble, and he had the hands of a grown man at fifteen. “Like Halloween masks?”

My heart stammered. I didn’t like their focus. I didn’t like feeling pinned by their eyes. I thought of Jupiter across a room, some poison in his gaze paralyzing my muscles, and I could not find air.

“Are you guys related?” asked another.

I opened my mouth, then balked. How could I explain that we were two halves of the same soul? But I didn’t have to. Indigo stood in the doorway. She looked at the girl who had asked, and a corner of her mouth tilted up.

“Something like that,” said Indigo in her low, honeyed voice.

I exhaled, she caught my hand, and we transformed. I could not tell you where that magic came from, whether it was some unseen element insinuating itself into our atoms or if I served as mirror and moon to Indigo’s incandescence. All I knew was that together we were lustrous.

The classroom fell silent. I felt the tiniest thrill to see their lips part, their eyes unfocus. But then the teacher stepped inside, and the spell we’d cast upon them broke.



In the days leading up to Indigo’s party, I thought the House would be happy. Usually, it loved decorations. It always appeared grander, more elegant with the presence of flowers and wreaths, garlands and lights. Plus, it was constantly fussed over in preparation. Mrs. Revand arrived early and left late, directing the maids to scrub and polish every inch of the interior. I watched from the staircase as she ordered slabs of ice sent to the basement, snapped at boys wheeling ropes of fairy lights to string them across the grounds, signed for deliveries of carts of orchids and violets.