The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(36)

“Real faeries subsist off dew and forest fruits and the choicest of honeycombs,” Indigo told her one day. She licked a bit of honey from her thumb. “You have to purify your body with our diet before you can become one of us.”

After that, Puck pushed aside the cafeteria food and nibbled on apples, even drank from a birdbath when Indigo told her it was considered a delicacy amongst the Fair Folk. I should’ve stopped Indigo before it went this far, but by then, I had stopped feeling bad for Puck.

I hated how she breathed through her mouth, how she’d clutch at a scrap of Indigo’s attention. A few times we kept her waiting outside the House, watching her from behind the trees just to see how long she could stand it. She looked weak—her shoulders curved in; her legs squeezed together as she rocked on her heels. Even her bored humming reminded me of a wounded thing mewling in the dark. Looking at her embarrassed me.

Two weeks after Puck joined us, Indigo invited her to the House for a second time.

“Are you serious?” I asked her.

“Of course not,” she said, brushing out her hair. “It’s not like I’d ever take her to the Otherworld. It’s only a bit of fun, Azure.”

That day, she greeted Puck wearing a floor-length emerald velvet duster—I had been given a matching gray one—and promptly looped their arms together. Puck turned slavish and adoring. Her eyes never left Indigo’s face as she was led through the sunlit halls, and when we reached the Room of Secrets, she didn’t even register the animal heads and skulls lining the walls.

“I have something for you,” said Indigo, gesturing to the table.

A dozen ebony candles lined the long black table, along with twelve dainty crystal glasses filled with water. Indigo gestured me to her, leaving Puck stranded on the other side.

“This is the final test before you can truly be one of us,” said Indigo. “One glass grants immortality, three are filled with poison, one will make you ugly, another will make you beautiful, four are filled with plain water, one will make you easily controllable, and one will make you lose your memory.”

“I—” started Puck, looking confused as she took in the glasses on the table. “Can I have a minute to pick out—”

“No,” said Indigo. “Your instinct will reveal if you’re right or not.”

Puck swallowed hard, then reached out, randomly grabbing one. She steeled herself, then threw back her head and downed its contents in one gulp. She looked at Indigo, her eyes wide.

For a moment, I wondered what Indigo had put in the glasses. It was sometimes hard to tell when she was playing and when she wasn’t, and the only one who truly knew was her. Indigo winced, hissed in her breath, and exchanged a knowing glance with me.

“Oh, Puck,” she said. “You chose the one that makes you easily controllable.”

“I did?” said Puck. “But . . . but I don’t feel any different?”

“No?” said Indigo. “Watch.” She lifted her hand, her voice deepening in command. “Slap yourself.”

I stared at Puck and realized that she was staring back at me, as if seeing me clearly for the first time. Her eyes held mine.

“I said . . . slap yourself,” said Indigo.

I wished I could’ve seen my face in that moment, seen what Puck saw. But she squeezed her eyes shut, raised her hand, and slapped her face.

“Again,” said Indigo.

Puck slapped herself. Again and again. She sniffled loudly. Tears ran down her cheeks. One side of her face turned bright red, and yet her hand was still raised, ready.

“Told you, you picked the wrong glass,” said Indigo. “But that’s okay because you passed. The real test was to see whether or not magic even works on you.”

Puck snuffled, nodding. An odd laugh broke free from her chest.

“Magic works on me,” she repeated.

I looked at Indigo. She smiled, and it barely appeared human: a flash of glossy teeth, there and gone. Maybe she meant it to be a conspiratorial thing between us, but it only raised goose bumps along my arms. Indigo thought this whole situation was a joke, that of course there hadn’t been any magic in this moment. She was wrong.

The magic was nothing so tangible as a crystal glass or an uttered incantation. It lay in how the House decanted the light, the aristocratic lines of the shadows cast on the floor. The magic was the spark in her brown eyes, rendering them an animal shade of amber. The magic was this: the supple sorcery of Indigo’s words, such that your own hand became a blade you eagerly welcomed.



After a few months of Puck trailing after us, parroting Indigo’s made-up nonsense, and, at one point, stealing her mother’s engagement ring so that we might offer it as a gift to the faeries, Indigo began to grow bored.

She had run out of commandments and stories. She no longer tried to dazzle. Maybe she thought Puck would grow bored with us, too, but it only humbled the other girl, made her sticky with gratitude.

One day, Indigo summoned Puck to the water behind the House of Dreams. The water was special to us, the place where all our worlds came together—the far-off glimmer of the city, the freezing shade offered by the yew and willow trees, the stone bridge that ran over the little stream we used to reach the Otherworld.

That was how I knew Indigo was never serious about Puck. For all that she granted her entry to the House and, on occasion, the lavender shadows of Indigo’s bedroom, we never brought Puck to the Otherworld.