The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(33)

Well, what do you have to give me?

This, said the House. Look.

I reached for the knob; the thumping of the fan reminded me of a heartbeat. I drew a quick breath, my hands closing around the rough carved wood of the handle before pulling hard. The doors opened to a rush of air, a flat darkness, and then, unmistakably, a small childlike cry.

He came to me in a rush of wings and a flash of silver. He screamed once more, and in that shriek, I knew it was my brother. It made no sense. I knew I never had one. And yet I still lifted my hands to receive him.

At that moment, the door to the kitchen swung open and Mrs. Revand screamed. I turned my head for only a brief instant. In that second, the blades of the fan choked. The smell of iron hit the air and Mrs. Revand clutched the back of a settee, the tea tray trembling in her hand.

“Gods, not again,” she said, lunging to unplug the fan. “I am so very sorry, sir. I have no idea how that bird got in here. Please allow me to get this cleaned up.”

A black feather floated to my shoe. I caught sight of my pants. Blood spattered.

Before me, the blades of the fan clamped a starling’s body, the wings bent, the neck clearly snapped. I was shaken, not by the sight of the corpse but by the unmistakable certainty that my brother had disappeared again. I had never felt this before, this belief that I truly had a brother. Yet now the conviction was solid and as irrevocably a part of me as my own bones.

I remembered the fairy tales. Forms are not to be trusted. Bodies might be inhabited and deserted, slipped on like so much cloth. Some forms are made to please and others to deceive. Here, a wolf pants in bed, the nightgown of an old woman thrown over its fur. There, a being places marigolds in its mouth and petals in its hair, and through a handful of flowers makes itself a wife. Now a brother is revealed and taken away, and the House of Dreams smiles because it knows I have been ensnared.

Mrs. Revand touched my arm. “Please, sir, this way. The driver will be here shortly, and I’ve asked them to retrieve you from the dining hall.”

“What?”

Mrs. Revand blinked, and pity snuck into her eyes. “Miss Indigo left a few minutes ago. She has another meeting with the solicitors. She sent word for you to meet her at the hotel. The car should be here shortly.”

“She left me here?” I repeated. “Didn’t Indigo want to see Hippolyta?”

Mrs. Revand fell quiet. I recalled the guilt on her face when she’d summoned me, the look of apology when she’d closed the doors.

“Hippolyta didn’t want to see her,” I guessed.

Indigo must know that I had seen her aunt. I wondered if she also heard the House whispering to me, if she could somehow feel our wedding vows slipping between my fingers.

A thread now stretched between my brother, my bride, and Azure. I thought of promises made and broken, of the dark circles beneath Indigo’s eyes and the engraved tooth.

What if my vow was another test?

Our first night together, Indigo and I played Eros and Psyche. It was only through the shattering of a promise that Psyche proved her love. Otherwise, Eros might have tired of her in the dark. Perhaps I had been given a chance to prove I would rescue my bride from whatever enchantment held her captive from me.



Mrs. Revand brought me to the dining room to wait while the staff cleaned the starling’s blood, and there I beheld a curious echo. A small golden plaque hung on the wall outside the entrance: Camera Secretum. The Room of Secrets.

The ceiling of the dining room was domed and open, like the observatory of a planetarium. Golden fretwork curved beneath the glass. A long, uneven slab of white-veined onyx served as the dining table, which was bare except for a dusty candelabra at the center.

On one wall hung a series of taxidermied heads—an oryx with swordlike horns, three alpine goats, an ibex, pheasants, chamois, and musk oxen, and the radiant fall of a peacock’s plumage through which a roe deer stared at me almost flirtatiously. The wall opposite held skulls and tusks. I recognized only a few of the creatures, but among them were mounted alligators and crocodiles, stately bison with polished horns, hog skulls, and the long, sinister ovals of a baboon’s face stripped of flesh.

In our own home of glass, Indigo had a Gallery of Beasts. Her beasts were all made of stone, though they were no less menacing. I had found a clue to Indigo’s secret hidden there. Even now, I could recall the cool temperature of Azure’s hair, the smoothness of the engraved tooth. What secrets did this room keep for itself?

A button from my shirt plinked to the ground. I bent to pick it up and glanced at the underside of the onyx table. The House of Dreams was lying in wait, and the images of my brother that I had thought were false now crystallized into memory.

My brother and I had often played under our cherrywood dining table. Once, Father had come home while we were pretending to be wild wolves. My father threw some bread on the floor, and I picked it up off the rug.

If you’re going to act like an animal, said my father, bending down to wink at us, then you’ll have to eat like one too.

We ate under the table for a whole week, making animal sounds the entire time. Sometimes our parents joined us. Our father barked and howled.

I’d never laughed so hard.

But now the memory sheered, curled along its edges. The House sought to punish me for being so slow to take up its quest, and so it poisoned the details. Now my father showed his teeth, and beneath the dining table, my brother and I stared at our parents’ feet and whimpered with hunger.