Too Wise to Love #2
He seemed to know I was boiling with anger.
I could see that it amused him. He was beautiful—perhaps it was not surprising he had caught the favor of the Queen.
He had an angel’s face with devil’s eyes, hair as fair as Miach’s or Alessa’s, features drawn by a delicate hand, and yet an air of menace hung around him, thick as velvet.
“Or perhaps you find me unworthy of a dance,” he suggested.
“My Queen will be so disappointed to hear I’ve fallen short. ”
My lady was on her throne, but her hard gaze lay upon us. It would not do to refuse the whims of a guest favored by the Queen. And so I let him take my hand, and place his own at my waist, and sweep me into a dance, and he smiled exactly as he had at the shattered glass.
He brought his lips to my ear. “I’ve been watching you all night, Lady Nene,” he whispered.
“I highly doubt that. Whatever measure of beauty I may have is far outshone by the ladies of the Court.” And this, of course, was true.
“Oh, no doubt.” He laughed. “You’ve an utterly forgettable face, and yet—” He pulled back, just enough to get a good look at me. “You seem familiar, somehow. Have we met?”
“Never.”
Coal-black eyes, cruel lips, a teasing note in his voice—that last the only familiar thing about him.
It called to mind my sister Celithe, when she found a mortal to torment.
I had once watched her cage a lover on a bed of hot coals.
Dance, my love, she had crooned, and later, when he fell to the ground and writhed in agony, when the burning coals seared flesh from bone, such a beautiful dancer.
I knew well the sound of someone who delighted in suffering.
He let go, and swept into a deep bow. “Sebastian Morgenstern, at your—well, no, that’s ridiculous, not at your service at all. Only at your Queen’s.”
“Well met, Sebastian Morgenstern.”
But he was turning away before I had even finished speaking, already tired of me.
—
Sebastian Morgenstern became a familiar sight at the Seelie Court.
It was known to all that he was a favorite of the Queen.
It was known, too, that he was the son of Valentine Morgenstern, enemy to the fey, as he was to all Downworlders.
But no natural son: This was a son with demon blood coursing through his veins.
He simmered with power. He seethed with hatred. He was, in many respects, a wise choice of ally.
But I could not forget what I had seen, looking into his eyes.
The void.
—
Then came the night the Queen sent a servant to roust me from my bed.
She was a slip of a girl, pale green and terrified. “My lady is in need of your healing services. Come quickly, or it will mean both our lives.”
There is always talk, in Court, of the Queen’s private quarters, but I had never seen them before, nor paid attention to the rumors.
They were more strange and magnificent than I could have imagined.
That night, they had the effect of a midnight forest. Sultry air, mighty oaks rooted to the floor, and a thick canopy of rustling leaves overhead.
I could smell turned earth, and hear the sound of birdsong, though I knew we were deep underground.
The Queen’s bed was a massive severed trunk of ancient wood, covered in a thick layer of flowers, and atop them, pale as a corpse, shiny with sweat and coughing a bloody mist, lay Sebastian Morgenstern, naked save for a sheet.
The Queen sat upright in a wooden chair near him, though she had not come close, as most loved ones did when someone was ill; she was too far away to stroke his hair or lay a hand upon his brow. The look she bent on me was command, plea, and threat in one. “You will save him,” she said.
I suspected that if Sebastian Morgenstern did not live to see morning again, neither would I.
There was no evident wound. Deep scars were etched across his back, the marks of a whip, but nothing fresh, nothing to explain this.
His entire body was shuddering, feverish.
His breathing labored. His pulse erratic, dangerously fast. At unpredictable moments, it would slow alarmingly, the pause between heartbeats excruciatingly long, until I thought, each time, surely this was the last. And then what would become of me?
There was a pale blue cast to his fingers, and blood ran from each of his ears, staining his skin: I had a theory.
“Is there pain?” I asked. Until then, I had examined him silently. Even in this weakened state, he frightened me. And he could tell.
Sebastian Morgenstern smiled, and raised an eyebrow. “I’m in agony,” he said, and I knew he meant it, and yet he was mocking it all at the same time.
“This is aconite poisoning,” I told the Queen. “It should have killed him instantly.”
“My Morning Star does love to defy expectation,” the Queen said. Ah, yes. Morgenstern. The morning star. “You can heal him?” Again, it was both question and not.
Now that I knew what I was looking for, I was easily able to determine the precise nature of the aconite poisoning and how much damage it had done.
No mortal—no one at all—should have been able to endure it as long as Sebastian had.
Even the few it didn’t kill outright were always driven mad by the pain, and yet there lay Sebastian, writhing in agony and yet calm as ice, as if he were observing his body from a safe distance, entertained by all the fuss.
“I know how to counter aconite poisoning,” I said, and busied myself distilling the remedy.
Because it was true, there is a standard cure for aconite poisoning and I knew how to make it.
No need to volunteer that the cure needed to be administered within minutes of the poison entering the bloodstream.
Too much time had passed for me to hope that it would work, and yet, what else could I do but hope?
Shadowhunters were peculiar creatures, and Sebastian was a peculiar Shadowhunter. Please, I thought. Save us both.
I could at least give him something for the pain, and so I eased him into a dreamless sleep.
“The remedy will take effect by morning,” I told the Queen, and that, too, was true. It would, one way or another, have an effect. He would either wake up healthy, or he would never wake again.
In his sleep, he did not look cruel. He looked blank, a canvas waiting to be painted upon. He looked young. Here in the land where age progressed slowly as a glacier moving, he could have been any age, and yet I still felt he was too young for the Queen, though not too kind or too innocent.
The Queen regarded him as a tiger tamer might regard the great feline under their power as it slept. There was wariness in her gaze, and pride. She watched his chest as it rose and fell erratically. But still, he breathed.
“He must live,” the Queen said. Her blue eyes glowed like chips of sapphire. “Our fates are entangled.”
I believe I was meant to think she referred to the fate of our people, but I could see, in the way she took his hand in hers, that she had a more singular fate in mind.
She cared for him—and though I was already afraid for my own life, when I understood that, I became afraid for her.
And for us all. The tiger tamer must not too much love that which is wild, lest it turn upon its master and devour them.
“I’ve never met a mortal with a soul so much like my own,” she said, with wonder. “His heart is ice, his mind a blade of fire. Can you imagine it, after all these centuries? Something new.”
The Queen stripped off her silk dressing gown then, as if she were alone.
And compared to the Queen, I was nobody, so indeed, she was.
She could be naked in my presence because I did not matter.
And she was splendid in her beauty. Like a princess in a legend, determined to die with her lover, she lay down upon the bed of flowers, beside Sebastian, and curled her body around his.
“You will stay with us, until he wakes,” she said, then closed her eyes before I could answer.
And of course, it was not a question.
And of course, I obeyed.
—
I woke to the sound of Sebastian moaning. My first sensation was relief. If he’d lived through the night, even if he was still in pain, it meant my tincture had had its intended effect, and we would both survive.
Then came the realization, as Sebastian’s moans mingled with those of the Queen, that those are not moans of pain, but of pleasure.
In the corner of the forest that was the Queen’s bedchamber was a ladder that led up to a small aerie, perched in branches that poked through the ceiling. This was where I had curled up for the night, feeling like a very small bird in a predator’s nest. Hiding in plain sight.
Not hiding, exactly, as the Queen knew I was there. Sebastian, I suspected, did not.
I stayed very quiet and still, and tried not to listen. I put my hands over my eyes, but I had already caught a glimpse of them, their limbs tangled together, her hair a red flame as she moved upon him. His back arched, his hands on her hips.
“My beautiful one,” he murmured to her.
“My Morning Star,” she said.
Then, for a time, there was only the sound of gasps and bodies in motion. Then the inevitable cries, and I heard the Queen laugh breathlessly. “Are you certain you’re well enough for such things, darling? You did almost die, after all.”
Now, laughter from Sebastian. Mirthless. “I told you, I cannot be killed. My mother, Lilith, has protected me.”
“I must remember to thank her,” the Queen said.
“The gratitude is entirely mine, my lady in red.”
“Well, one of your ladies in red, certainly,” the Queen said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” His voice took on an edge.
“Only that you seem to have a fondness for women with hair the color of fire.”
I could tell she was wielding the words as a weapon, though I couldn’t understand why or how.
A small gasp, from my Queen. “You forget yourself, Jonathan. Pain is to come only at my invitation.”