The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(50)

My mind snagged on that. The air whose metal scent promised snow now held the tang of blood. I pushed away the thought as we took out our starling keys and the gates swung open—

But this was not our Otherworld.

Winter was supposed to silver it—to hang pearls of ice in the oak branches, sleeve the apple trees in glass, gently curl the ferns like the fists of an infant. Our turret used to glow, promising the warmth of its woodstove, the cashmere blankets neatly tucked into chests of cedar, the samovars waiting to hold tea.

This was something else, like a pocket turned inside out. I stumbled backward.

“What’s wrong with it?” I said. “What happened?”

Indigo frowned. “What?”

“Look at it!” I said, pointing. “The tree is all wrong. The turret looks . . . wrong.”

“I don’t see anything,” said Indigo, squinting.

I stared at her, my eyes wide. Couldn’t she see how dull the light had turned? How stiff the oak tree stood? How ordinary the turret appeared, as if it were nothing more than a pile of rocks? Far off in the distance came the sound of a boat motor running through the water. That sound had never invaded the Otherworld before.

“It doesn’t seem different to you?” I asked, and heard the wildness creep into my voice.

Indigo laughed. “No. It’s the same, Azure. Nothing’s wrong—”

Except for me. I was wrong. This was my punishment, I realized. The Otherworld had denied me its magic. I sank to my knees, and Indigo knelt beside me, her hand warm on my shoulder.

“There’s something wrong with me,” I confessed. I lifted my eyes to hers. “What if I’m the weak one? I can’t see the Otherworld anymore. I think it’s punishing me. I feel wrong, Indigo. I think about things when I shouldn’t. Want what I shouldn’t have. Sometimes I even wonder if you’re wrong about us. What if we’re not the same soul? What if I’m different, made wrong, maybe there’s some empty space inside me—”

Indigo clapped her hand over my mouth. Her cold palm pressed so hard against my lips, I felt the outline of my teeth. She winced for me, but she didn’t move her hand.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” she said, her voice fierce and burning. “This is all a test, a way to try to keep us from joining together, to keep us as these weak, mortal things.” She spat out those last few words before she moved her hand to cup my cheek.

“Don’t be scared, Azure,” she said, her voice breaking. “All we have to do is wait a little longer and then you’ll see for yourself. We’ll be linked together, and there won’t be any gaps. I promise.”



After that day, Indigo left for a three-week tour of her family’s properties in North America.

On the Friday she left, Indigo stood before her mirror combing her hair with long, thoughtful strokes. Whenever she did this, I’d train my eyes on the floor, as if expecting rubies the color of a cut throat to fall from her strands and clatter onto the oak floors. When I raised my chin, our eyes met in the mirror’s reflection. Indigo’s stare was sharp and assessing, like she’d catalogued all my corners while I wasn’t watching.

It made me want to hide.

I’d always thought that Indigo’s magic was her flair for wonder, the allure she spun of a girl who lived in a house of magic, who carded jewels from her hair and knew how to braid the moonlight. Now I wondered if it were merely a distraction, the way one could dangle something glittering with one hand while the other moved unseen.

“You’ll keep looking for someone, won’t you?”

My face heated. Though I kept hoping she’d drop the idea, Indigo was determined that one of us have sex before graduation. She could have had anyone she wanted, but she was ceremonial about these things, refusing to waste our time on someone coughed up by mere proximity rather than selected like a pearl from a trove of gems.

We’d already kissed boy after boy and girl after girl during our weekly outings, but we still hadn’t found the right one. Even so, with every kiss, part of me grew bolder. I would hold their bodies to me longer, harder, some part of me trying to decipher a language I didn’t know how to speak. I would stay awake all night afterward, retracing their contours on my own skin, letting my hands bridge distances I hadn’t with anyone else.

“They have to be beautiful,” said Indigo, arranging her hair. “And with an aura of something special, like the world has marked them. The light has to treat them differently.” Indigo paused to apply a dark shade of lipstick. “Their voice should lure the rusalkas out of the water just to hear them better. And most importantly”—she met my gaze in the mirror—“they cannot linger.”

“I know,” I said.



Tati gave me the keys to the House of Dreams so I could stay overnight while they were traveling. The House was delighted not to be alone, and I was delighted to be alone with the House. The fires crackled like fits of laughter, the rugs remained polite and docile, not a single tassel reaching to catch my ankle. In the evenings, I curled up in the parlor chair and read while the winter wind sang through the glass.

That weekend, I dressed for the wharfs—leather jacket, velvet skirt, Tati’s sequined costume tights, black boots. I wore my starling key and hoped that wherever Indigo was, she would hear the music. Without Indigo, I didn’t expect anyone to see me. I was only visible when next to her, a shadow revealed by the light cast before it. So I startled when I stepped into the line queueing outside the wharfs and heard someone call out Indigo’s name.