Bring Me Their Hearts(31)
She’s infinitely more refined at art, and music, and dancing. She invites several nobles to have dinner with us, including Baron d’Goliev, as a chance for me to learn how to conduct myself properly without the pressure of the entire court’s eyes. They ask me questions I clumsily respond to, my fingers slipping over the four spoons laid out for soups alone. After dinner, they linger over chocolate and tea in the sitting room, taking turns at the key harp or showing off their latest sketches of nature. Compared to Y’shennria’s sketches, though, they’re like children’s scrawls. Even her conversation skills are more refined, quicker, sharper, keeping everyone entertained. She’s the pinnacle of what a noble should be, what a noble was in my mind before coming here.
I start to realize just how much she’s lost when the others tell fond stories of Ravenshaunt’s beauty and grandeur, of Lord Y’shennria, stories of how the two of them fit together so well, how gallant and good he was. Y’shennria listens to them all patiently, her eyes in those moments softer than I’ve ever seen them. I can only stare at my hands with shame. Shame that what I am—things like me—took so much from her.
It makes me want to learn. To make her proud, no matter how impossible that might be.
Slowly, with her excellence as my teacher, the dinners get less and less awkward. I speak clearer, and some people even laugh at the things I say. I start to correctly pick the small spoons for cold soups, the big spoons for hot ones. Instead of waiting for Nightsinger to heal me, impatient and suffering loudly, I now understand my pain threshold with perfect clarity, a silent knife’s edge I dance on just before the tears are about to spill from my eyes. I time my excuses to the bathroom—between courses being set out but before dessert. I can’t play an instrument or draw, but Y’shennria has me sing after dinner. She asked me if I had any talents, and I told her I sometimes sing. I showed her, and she must’ve considered it passable enough. I get scattered applause, and Baron d’Goliev insists I have the sweetest voice he’s heard since Queen Kolissa was my age, but no one takes it seriously, considering he likes his Avellish brandy after dinner far too much.
I drown my doubts, my fears, my confusion in the lake of learning. In the strange, vast lake of becoming Zera Y’shennria, niece of Lady Y’shennria.
The morning of the Spring Welcoming comes too fast. Dawn breaks through the window, crimson and ice-blue bleeding together, but even the beauty can’t distract me from the truth—I’m not ready. None of that matters now. Time has a way of disappearing on me, and then reappearing with horrifying punctuality. The time is now. I have to be ready. At the very least, I have to fake it, if not for the court, then for the witches whose lives hang in the balance, and for my heart.
I’ve died dozens of times. I know—I’m getting sick of hearing myself even think it. But in the end, that’s the only advantage I have in this quiet war between the court and myself. They can’t kill me. They can belittle me, they can mock me, they can tear me apart. But they can’t kill me. Only my own mistakes can do that.
Only I can do that.
It’s a small comfort, to have a bit of control in the dizzying madness of this dance.
I watch my reflection in the window, my straw gold hair freshly cut to my shoulders, and lift my chin. Everything comes down to this day, these next few hours. If I don’t successfully debut, it’s over.
My one chance at freedom—gone.
Maeve draws me a bath, sprinkling whole black roses and sticks of cinnamon in the tub. I ease myself into the water, the smell soothing my frayed nerves. It’s a familiar smell—Y’shennria’s hair and clothes smell the same, and I feel a little honored that I’m allowed to carry the scent, too. When I’m dry, Maeve dresses me in an effervescent, cherry-blossom pink dress, and it’s so beautiful my nerves part for a brief moment as I stroke the silken ruffles. Next she fixes my hair, her slow, gnarled fingers catching on tangles. She’s been doing this for longer than I’ve lived, and it shows; she forms dozens of plaits into a rose, elegantly nestled halfway into a bun. She tries to fasten the whole thing with a lattice of quartz pins, but she must get tired, because the pins keep falling out loosely.
“That’s quite enough effort on your part, Maeve,” Y’shennria says as she sweeps into the room. “I’ll handle it from here.”
Maeve makes a little bow and closes the door behind her. It’s just me and Y’shennria and the glint of the sun off the quartz pins.
“You don’t have to,” I say. Her hands aren’t shaking, but her lips are tight.
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s simple enough.” She arranges the pins, sliding them in tight against my skull. Touching me out of necessity, of course—she’d never do it otherwise. Y’shennria pulls the last few strands of hair free from behind my ears and looks at me in the mirror. “Have you eaten?”
“Those perfectly uncooked livers downstairs? Yes.”
She jumps right in to a refresher course. “Never take the hand of a man if offered to you—”
“—in the evening,” I finish. “When sitting at tables, it’s women first.”
“In what order?” she interjects quickly.
“Noble rank, modified by age. Highest in both categories sits first, but only if she’s married. The unmarried sit last.”