The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(31)

Tati crouched like an animal, and when Indigo still didn’t move, Tati crawled forward, resting her shaking forehead against Indigo’s knee until, finally, Indigo’s glowing hand molded to her skull.

I stopped watching, and after that went to bed. This was not the first time I had seen Tati plead with Indigo, though it was the first time I’d seen her crumpled on the ground. I imagined being in Indigo’s position, watching someone you love kneel at your feet, knowing you can make them stand or fall with a single word. Before I fell asleep, I saw my mother kneeling before the firelight, and it was not Indigo’s hand she begged to absolve her, but my own.



An hour before the party began, Indigo and I were waiting in her room, watching the cars pull up the driveway. I had never seen so many elegant people in my life—women in shining dresses, men in gleaming suits, masks wrought of pearls and silk ribbons. Our classmates walked past the driveway in a daze, staring at the cars, up at the House, at their reflections as if they were bewildered by what they saw, and I felt my chest swell with borrowed pride.

Indigo and I were already dressed. Tati had bought me a short, cap-sleeved, black velvet dress with an empire waist decorated with small blue jewels to match my mask. Indigo wore a long, off-shoulder blue gown that gathered in the back to form an elaborate train. Her mask was a simple length of black tulle, and her hair—now grown past her breasts—fell heavily against the middle of her back. My hair had grown out to the same length. I’d thought that with every inch I gained, I’d lose the magic of invisibility, but my power seemed to have grown with me, fitting me as close as a second skin.

“Tati says I have to show the world who I am,” said Indigo, carding her fingers through my hair. “So, let’s show them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s show them who we are,” said Indigo. “What we are.” I closed my eyes and let her words reach into me. “That we’re two halves of a soul, Azure. That when we’re together, we weave magic. I bet the Otherworld will notice and gift us with more power. It’ll be proud of us.”

I opened my eyes. My pulse climbed into the hollow of my neck.

“We don’t look the same,” I said.

People had always told us we could be related, but that was only because we were both dark-haired with the same golden tint to our skin. My mother sometimes called herself Persian; other times she said her family hailed from an island off the coast of India. Indigo once told me her mother was adopted from a tribe of Bedouins. We never knew, really, but we were always aware that there was something other about us, something Indigo said even the faeries had noticed, and that’s why they obsessed over us as we did them.

Beyond those broad strokes of likeness, we looked nothing alike. Where my nose was big, Indigo’s was daintily snubbed. My mouth was frog-large, and hers was sweetly ripe. My eyes were brown and my eyelashes sparse. Her eyes were a rich mahogany with a fan of soot-colored lashes. Our hair was nearly the same shade. But where hers was the color of charred wood, mine was flatter . . . blacker. In the summertime, her hair was warm and smelled like hay and syrup. Mine always seemed a few degrees cooler. Indigo said it smelled like snow.

“It has nothing to do with ‘likeness,’” said Indigo, eyes feverish and alight with her idea. “Come on, we barely have an hour.”

“But, Indigo—”

“Don’t you want magic?” she asked, grabbing my wrist.

Indigo unzipped my dress. Her fingers brushed heat down my spine as she tugged off her gown and handed it to me. Next, she undid the neat coils of my hair, brushing them out and rubbing something that smelled like violets into their ends. When she was done, I looked down. I wore Indigo’s clothes like an animal pelt. I wore her scent like a talisman.

“Go,” said Indigo, tying my mask around her face and grinning. “Go and enjoy our party.”

“Where will you be?”

“Right beside you,” said Indigo, squeezing my hand.

I walked out of Indigo’s bedroom and into the hallways overflowing with music. Strands of light braided across the ceiling, flowers of freesia and peonies hung in thick, perfumed veils. I walked down the stairs, my fingers trailing against the wall of the House. I felt it purr in delight.

The crowd swelled through the entryway and servers instantly threaded through them, balancing platters of fizzing drinks and dainty bite-size pastry cups with spoons of tartare. I wondered if this was how Indigo felt when she walked down these same stairs, as though the world was not something she stepped into, but on.

People I didn’t know smiled warmly at me. I was embraced. I was exclaimed over.

“You look lovelier every year,” whispered a woman whose swanlike neck was roped in pearls. She touched my cheek, smiling, before melting into the crowd. Indigo moved behind me—a cool, sly shadow.

“Happy birthday, my dear,” said a tall, dark-skinned man. He was handsome, with wide eyes and crooked teeth. He bowed neatly over my wrist.

He had an accent. I’d never heard an accent before. I couldn’t place it.

“You must visit the Paris flagship, non? You will love it.”

Behind me, I felt Indigo recoil. I wanted to shake my head or say no, but his words had already conjured an enticing image—boulevards and bougainvillea, the trill of a language stamping the air and the brief, abrupt collapse of the walls of my life where other cities winked in the distance.