An Enchantment of Ravens(63)
“You utter bastard,” we both said together, Gadfly speaking over me in cool counterpoint. He shook his head, disappointed but unsurprised, and said: “That one was a given.”
I thought I might be sick.
Clumsily, like someone reaching out in a dark room, a warm rush of assurance bumped against me. It felt unmistakably of Rook. He was testing the bond between us, aware something was wrong and doing his best to comfort me. He didn’t know, I thought. He didn’t know I’d condemned him to death. Soon, I’d have to tell him. I swallowed, pushing his presence away as best I could, and before the sensation vanished I received one last pang of unhappy surprise from him, as though I’d slammed a door in his face without warning.
“You are empty,” I said, my throat working, “and cruel.”
“Ah. Yes, now that is true. Would you like to know the greatest secret of fairykind?” When I didn’t answer he continued, “We prefer to pretend otherwise, but truly, we have never been the immortal ones. We may live long enough to see the world change, but we’re never the ones who changed it. When we finally reach the end, we are unloved and alone, and leave nothing behind, not even our name chiseled on a stone slab. And yet—mortals, through their works, their Craft, are remembered forever.” He turned us gracefully through the crowd without missing a step. “Oh, you cannot imagine the power your kind holds over us. How very much we envy you. There is more life in your littlest fingernail than in everyone in my court combined.”
Was that truly all it was? Was that the reason why fair folk condemned mortal emotion—because those few of them who felt it only served to remind the rest of what they couldn’t have? And thus love, the experience they envied most bitterly, became the deadliest offense of all.
“That’s why you’ve done this?” I whispered. “Jealousy?”
“I am wounded by your low opinion of me, Isobel,” Gadfly replied, not sounding wounded at all, and in fact sounding as though he cared so little about others’ opinions he might not even recognize what they were upon their delivery to him. “No, I am playing a longer game, a little deeper in the forest, farther along the path. And now I won’t keep you any longer. Time runs short, and I’m certain you’d rather be dancing with Rook.”
He wove us around the other dancers, steering us toward where Rook stood out like a sore thumb, unwillingly requisitioned into a dance with Foxglove. Gadfly maintained an expectant air, but I had nothing left to say to him.
“Fear not,” he said to my silence. “This business will be unpleasant while it lasts, but it will be over soon enough.” As his silk glove slipped from my shoulder, he brought his mask close to my ear. “Remember: for all my meddling, your choice is the one that matters in the end. Hello, Foxglove! Rook! May I steal this dance?”
Rose petals swept around us as we switched partners, disappearing with a ghost of heady fragrance. If I survived this, I thought, I’d never want to smell roses again.
“I felt—” Rook began, but I cut him off with a sharp jerk of my head. I meant to wait until Gadfly and Foxglove had moved away from us to speak. Yet I found, as the seconds passed, that I couldn’t say the words. I didn’t know how to say them. They were too vast and terrible to fit on my tongue.
Around and around we swirled. Lights glittered across Rook’s hair and the gold thread on his coat. Courtiers flowed past us, whirling but never touching, like flowers spinning on the surface of a lake. A wolf mask turned to stare at me as it passed; I felt countless eyes upon us, waiting for the first sign of the hunt’s climax. Two prey, one alert, the other unsuspecting, about to be flushed from a thicket toward a bloody end.
“Isobel? What is it?”
“I must ask you to do something for me,” I said.
He replied quickly, “Anything.”
I forced myself not to look away. “You must use the ensorcellment to change what I feel.”
Rook almost missed a step. “What are you saying?”
Nearby Foxglove tilted her head back, her silvery laugh splitting the masquerade.
“I’m saying that I—”
“No. Don’t.” He looked at me as though he were marooned and I were a ship he was watching sail out to sea, farther and farther away.
A sickly odor of decay reached my nose.
“Rook, I’m sorry,” I said. “I love you.”
Our next turn brought the tables into view. A fair one lifted a pear to her lips, only for the fruit to blacken in her hand, oozing through her fingers, swollen with maggots. She ate it anyway, wearing an expression of sweet delight as juice and pulp dripped down her chin. On all the platters, the fruit had turned rotten. Dark putrefaction spilled over the china, soaked the tablecloths, and dribbled to the ground.
“When?” he asked, his lips barely moving. The lower half of his face was masklike itself, ashen against his dark curls and high collar.
A songbird dove down, tearing a butterfly apart in its beak. Whirling in circles, the revelers grew sallow and feverish in the fairy lights’ multicolored glow. Animal masks snarled. Flower masks boggled at us, inscrutable. They spun dizzily and with delirious abandon, no longer playing at being human, parodying a mortal ball like a nightmare masquerade.
“Yesterday. But I didn’t know until . . .” I couldn’t bear to speak of it. “Please. We’re almost out of time.”