The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(41)

That evening when we sat down to dinner on the covered patio, dusk lay a thick coat of shadow on the grounds, and the periwinkle clouds held still enough to be admired.

“What a lovely evening, girls,” said Tati, sighing into a chair.

Indigo wasn’t hungry. She rarely was after a day spent sketching. Even so, she reached for a slice of peach, dipped it in honey, and held it out to me. I ate it from her fingers and handed her a glass of water. When she drank, I was no longer thirsty and when I ate, she was no longer hungry. This rhythm soothed me, and I might’ve forgotten about the woman altogether if Tati hadn’t then taken a deep swig from her wineglass before swirling it in the air:

“And what shall we do with our summer, my dears? Take a gondola around the Venice canals? Hide away in the Florida Keys?”

I didn’t mean to respond. But the way Tati held her glass and the way she accented her phrasing brought back the elegant man from Indigo’s masquerade. My hand tingled, remembering how he had bent over my wrist and spoke of a city where the skyline was jagged with life—

“We could travel,” I said, and my voice rang alien in my ears. “We could go to Paris.”

Indigo looked up from her empty plate. There were smudges of purple and red on her face, splotches of yellow and green on her arms. This latest project had consumed her. She referred to it only as “our gift,” and whenever she sat down beside me looking as if she’d spent the afternoon wrestling a rainbow, my chest ached because I knew she loved me.

“Why would we leave?” asked Indigo, her gaze darting toward the Otherworld.

“I don’t know,” I said. I twisted the starling key around my neck. “I just thought—”

“I love this idea, girls,” said Tati, clapping her hands together. “Indigo, you need to visit the Paris site anyway! Remember Guillaume? He was here for your birthday . . .”

Tati trailed off and I held my breath, wondering if she’d mention how Indigo and I had revealed ourselves that night. Ever since that one confrontation, Tati had mostly laughed it off, but there were moments when her face grew serious, and she would touch my hand and beg me never to do something like that again.

Tati smiled. “He would love to show you the grounds. They’re my absolute favorite. Oh, and Azure! You can get a passport! It’ll be such fun!”

Indigo caught my hand under the table. I could feel the pulse of her wrist beneath my fingertips. I waited for her to speak, to shoot down the idea entirely. Her eyes were alert and focused. Overhead, the clouds were released and began to glide across the darkening sky.

Tati stood up from the table, glowing with excitement.

“When do you want to go?” she asked. “You know what, let me make some calls first. This is going to be wonderful! I know it!”

Tati practically skipped back into the House, leaving me and Indigo alone outside.

“Why would we leave?” Indigo said to me, our hands still clasped. Her voice was even. A cold breeze touched my neck. “We’re meant to be here. If we leave, the Otherworld might get mad. What if we become Cast-Out Susans?”

Whenever I imagined this fate, I felt a door threatening to close behind me forever. But then I pictured an endless string of frozen summer afternoons, the air brewing so thick and humid I could no longer breathe.

“We’re exiles, Indigo,” I said. “That means we must’ve already done something wrong. Maybe we’re supposed to learn something out here and bring our knowledge back to the other side.”

It had to be true. Or else what would we have to show for the time we were here? I imagined these stories piling up like coins in our hands, bright tithes to the future.

Indigo frowned and sank her teeth into her bottom lip. My mouth felt her ache and I held back a wince.

“We’ve experienced too little of being mortal,” she said, thoughtful now. She raised her eyebrows. “And if we only did what we wanted, maybe we’ll be punished even more.”

I nodded and grasped her hand tight. “Yes.”

Indigo looked up at me. “I will never let us become Cast-Out Susans.”



I caught my mother in the lone half hour before Jupiter came home. When I stepped into the kitchenette, I almost didn’t see her. She was indistinguishable from the brackish walls and scuffed furniture. Her dull orange sweatshirt matched the cloth spread over the dining table to hide its stains. Her hair was the same shade as the scorched cabinets. Jupiter’s house had never been a home at all but a mouth—a place that chewed and swallowed and fed on her so well she couldn’t even see how deep she was buried in its belly.

“Azure?” she said, blinking at me in confusion. “You’re home. Is something wrong?”

I hated the gentle way she said that. When I was little, she had been a walking flame, but fire requires feeding and either my mother didn’t know how to sustain herself or had stopped working at it. Over the years she starved and shrank until she was a matchstick, a short burst that quickly chewed down the wood and inspired no warmth.

“Azure?” my mother prompted. “Why are you here?”

The way she said it wasn’t cruel, only curious. I stopped at home once a week, but I always took pains not to be noticed. And she knew that.

“Indigo and Tati—sorry, Miss Hippolyta—want to take me on a trip overseas.” I thrust an official-looking form into her hand. Tati had given it to me that morning. “You need to sign this so I can get a passport and go with them. I can go, can’t I?”