The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(4)

I used to take that book with me everywhere. Sometimes, I even hid in the great cedar armoire at the end of our hallway to read it. I liked crouching on the warm wood with a flashlight in my lap, the sleeves of winter coats resting on my shoulders like tame birds. Best of all, I liked seeing what was lost—and could be discovered—in the belly of the armoire. Misplaced hats, pennies, the left hands of gloves, the occasional key.

I lost something there, too, though I could never be sure what it was.

One day, when I was seven years old, I saw that the armoire doors had been left open. I called for my brother, thinking he must be inside waiting for me. He often crawled into the armoire and sat by my feet while I read him a story by flashlight. We loved to pretend that the smooth wall of the closet was secretly a door to Faerie.

I called for him over and over. Finally, I went to the kitchen to ask my mother where he had gone.

She blinked at me. “Sweetheart, what do you mean? You don’t have a brother.”

I didn’t believe her at first. I looked for his clothes, his toys. I hunted for his smudgy handprints on the wall from when he had gotten into the jam jar, the notch on the doorframe when he begged to see how tall he was growing. Everything was gone.

I had no choice but to believe my mother. Now, though, as the years have softened my memories, there are days when I cannot decide whether this is a truth I cannot accept, or a lie I cannot let go of.

My brother’s absence, real or imagined, lived inside me. Because of him, I became obsessed with finding proof of the impossible. I shrouded this search in the semi-respectability of comparative mythology and folklore, but that need drove me all the same.

Until Indigo, I was lost in that search, hidden in my own thoughts. But she saw something in me. Something that turned her kiss into a knife that cut me free from the dark.



In fairy tales, a kiss marks a threshold—between the state of being cursed or cured lies a kiss. But not all kisses cure; some kill. Thresholds go both ways, after all. I wasn’t thinking about this when Indigo drew me to her beneath the chandeliers of her Paris hotel. At the time, I wished only to trap her laughter under glass. I could not hear, back then, how uncannily triumphant the sound was.

Indigo pulled back from our kiss and reclined in her chair. The glittering world of the Caste?ada bar intruded once again. Everything about this place now offended the senses, from the electronic lounge music to the fused smell of cigarettes and cologne.

Indigo stood to leave, and I braced myself to be abandoned. She reached into her slim black purse and withdrew a single key.

“Follow me,” she said.

As if I could do anything else.

I followed her past the gleaming bar, the velvet chairs, the chandeliers glinting overhead and into the main hallway of the hotel. It was cool and empty. Everything was vaulted ceilings and milky marble, which stood in contrast to the rich scarlet and brocade rug spread on the floor like a trail of blood. Indigo led me up a staircase of gold and iron, and into a private hallway, where a doorman in a red jacket stood with his hands clasped.

“I can manage alone this time,” said Indigo.

The light-skinned doorman tilted his head. He pressed a single button, which opened a private elevator cleverly disguised as a tall, cracked painting of the dryad Daphne caught mid-transformation into a laurel tree. The moment we were alone, Indigo moved closer. She was tall, but still she had to tilt up her head to meet my eyes. She put her hand on my belt.

“Do you know the tale of Eros and Psyche?” she asked.

The elevator began to climb and so did her fingers.

“Yes,” I said. Her fingers stilled. She wanted me to tell the tale, and so I did. “The god of love fell in love with Psyche, a mortal princess whose beauty rivaled even Aphrodite’s. He stole her away on a sweet wind, cloaked her in darkness, and brought her to his palace.”

I touched Indigo’s hand. Her skin was hot, pressed silk. I moved my thumb over her wrist and felt her pulse. Calm, even.

“He made her swear not to look on him. He folded away his wings and visited her in the darkness and in midnights they grew to know one another,” I said. I lifted Indigo’s hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. “But then Psyche broke her promise. She looked at him while he slept and for that betrayal, he left her.”

“And then what?” asked Indigo.

“Then she had to prove she could find him,” I said. “She endured misery after misery to be with him.”

Indigo’s silk dress scratched against the cheap fabric of my blazer. Her synthetic apple scent washed over me. I forgot about the elevator until it chimed, opening into a wide vestibule. The floor-to-ceiling windows of Indigo’s penthouse boasted the jeweled skyline of Paris. Off to the side, a white staircase spiraled into lavish upper suites. On the main level, antique winged chairs, gilt mirrors, and a single white couch adorned an elegantly austere room.

“So you know the tale in theory,” said Indigo, one hand on my chest as she pushed me into the foyer. “But not in practice.”

I reached for her. She drew back and undid the silk tie at her waist, held it out to me. She raised an eyebrow and looked at the floor. Slowly, I knelt at her feet.

“We can play at gods,” she said. “What do you say . . . will you play with me?”

Play, worship, follow. It was all the same to me. I nodded. She lowered the silk over my eyes. It was still warm from her skin.