The Last Tale of the Flower Bride(55)

The night I found Indigo and Lyric together, I screamed at her. I locked myself in the bathroom, dragging a duvet off the bed as I went and shoving it into the copper tub. Indigo had bathed an hour earlier, maybe less, and small puddles bled through the blanket. I pictured her soaking in the tub, scrubbing her bronze limbs, rubbing rose oil into her neck while Lyric walked up the stairs. I wondered if our faces blurred together when he was inside her, whether he called her Azure.

In the morning, I stepped out of the copper tub and beheld myself in the mirror. My eyelids were shiny and swollen, my skin cracked from crying. I had forgotten to remove my starling necklace and now clutched it in my hand so tight I could feel the cool edges of its carved wings digging into my palm.

This was not about a boy. This was about theft. The theft of a dream wrought solely for me.

I knew Indigo was on the other side of the door, and I hesitated to open it. I was aware of how little I could call my own. Not a house, not a trust fund, not a Tati. But Lyric had been mine. Or at least, he had wanted to be and that was more than I’d ever had.

For a breath, I was certain we were not the same soul. We were sisters who wandered in the other’s dreams and shared magic the way some girls shared clothes. But the previous night had altered me. I was scared that at any instant, my arms would shoot out the windows and my head would snap off the roof and the House would not be able to hold me. I needed space.

I opened the door.

Indigo sat on the floor, naked, her hair hanging all around her. The candles had gone out, leaving uneven pools of wax. She was surrounded by knives: a polished steak knife, a brass letter opener in the shape of a crane, a paring knife, her father’s hunting knife. I recognized its ivory hilt. Indigo had once told me her father named it ?’leos.

Mercy.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

I stepped toward her. She flinched, shrinking back and drawing her knees to her chest.

“It’s over,” she said in a small voice. She rocked on her heels. “I tried. You know I tried. But I’ve failed.”

The walls of Indigo’s bedroom seemed to bend around her, as if the House were trying to protect her . . . from me.

“You screamed at me for trying to save us,” she said, a tear running down her cheek. She lifted her gaze, her black eyes huge and wet. “You want to leave, don’t you? You’re going to tell me that you need space from me . . . and then you’ll never come back. Tell me that isn’t what you were going to say? That you need to leave?”

If I had felt gargantuan before, my body pulled back into itself now.

“Indigo . . .” I began.

“Don’t,” said Indigo. She sounded so frail and delicate, like even moonlight might burn her skin. “I can feel the truth.

“We only needed a little more time and then we would’ve been reunited, all-powerful. Transformed.” She drew in a loud, shuddering breath, biting her trembling lip. “Maybe that was the problem. Maybe we would’ve been too powerful together. Maybe Cast-Out Susan really is happy, and some people can live knowing they’ll never be whole.”

Indigo ran her finger along the ivory hilt. Winter sunlight spread through the room, and I beheld my fury in all its cold brightness: I had accused Indigo of theft. Indigo. The one person who was willing to share everything she had been given. The person who would have given everything to me. Even, I realized as she lifted the knife off the floor, her own life.

“I’m not as strong as you,” said Indigo quietly. “I can’t stay here like this, like some half thing. Now that I know you’re going to leave, what’s the point? Maybe next time, we’ll get it right. I’m sorry I failed us.”

I lunged forward, knocking the blade from her hand and sinking to the ground. I tried to hold her, but she pushed me back, shaking her head.

“You don’t want us anymore,” said Indigo. “You don’t want the Otherworld anymore. You want to be outside. With him. With—”

I clamped my hand over her mouth. I trembled in the glare cast by her words. If I left, what would I be? Only a girl orphaned by dreams.

I pictured my mother sitting at the plastic kitchen table, something essential cored out of her and sucked down the mouth of all the carnivorous things that lived in the outside world. That was all that waited for me, and I had almost given in to it.

“I believe you,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’ll wait, okay? I can be patient. I’m sorry.”

Indigo was stiff in my arms, and then, finally, her hand came to rest atop my head.

“I forgive you,” she said.



We were gentle with each other in the weeks that followed, though my weakness still poisoned me at times. At night, I dreamt of Indigo and Lyric, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the headboard, him thrusting into her. I dreamt of the warehouse clubs and the rancid brine off the wharfs, the delight I felt lifting my sweat-matted hair so the cool air could kiss the back of my neck.

Indigo said there was no point in us returning. She comforted me. She told me that if I was sad—and I grieved the loss of that music like a lost limb—then that was proof of how close I had come to losing it all, and wasn’t it good to be reminded of all the brightness that lay ahead?

The Otherworld held little solace for me. The air felt like teeth set on edge. Vines tangled around my ankles. I couldn’t feel the warmth of the woodstove in the turret or smell the cinnamon sticks Indigo threw in the fire.