Chapter 16 #3
He takes my hand. “Cardan is a fool. The rest of us don’t matter.
” His smile turns slanted. “But maybe this is part of your plan—persuade me to take you to the very heart of my stronghold. Maybe you’re about to reveal your evil scheme and bend me to your will.
Just so you know, I don’t think it will be very hard to bend me to your will. ”
I laugh despite myself. “You’re nothing like them.”
“Aren’t I?” he asks.
I give him a long look. “I don’t know. Are you going to order me off this balcony?”
His eyebrows go up. “Of course not.”
“Well then, you’re not like them,” I say, poking him hard in the center of his chest. My hand flattens, almost unconsciously, letting the warmth of him seep up through my palm. I hadn’t realized how cold I’d become, standing in the wind.
“You’re not the way they said you would be,” he says, bending toward me. He kisses me again.
I don’t want to think about the things they must have said, not now. I want his mouth on mine, blotting out everything else.
It takes us a long time to wend our way back down the stairs. My hands are in his hair. His mouth is on my neck. My back is against the ancient stone wall. Everything is slow and perfect and makes no sense at all. This can’t be my life. This feels nothing like my life.
We sit at the long, empty banquet table and eat cheese and bread. We drink pale green wine that tastes of herbs out of massive goblets that Locke finds in the back of a cabinet. They’re so thick with dust he has to wash them twice before we can use them.
When we’re done, he presses me back against the table, lifting me so that I am seated on it, so that our bodies are pressed together. It’s exhilarating and terrifying, like so much of Faerie.
I am not sure I am very good at kissing.
My mouth is clumsy. I am shy. I want to pull him closer and push him away at the same time.
Faeries do not have a lot of taboos around modesty, but I do.
I am afraid that my mortal body stinks of sweat, of decay, of fear.
I am not sure where to put my hands, how hard to grab, how deep to sink my nails into his shoulders.
And while I know what comes after kissing, while I know what it means to have his hands slide up over my bruised calf to my thigh, I have no idea how to hide my inexperience.
He pulls back to look at me, and I try to keep the panic out of my eyes.
“Stay tonight,” he murmurs.
For a moment, I think he means with him, like with him, and my heart speeds with some combination of desire and dread.
Then, abruptly, I remember there’s going to be a party—that’s what he’s asking me to stay for.
Those unseen servants, wherever they are, must be preparing the estate.
Soon Valerian, my would-be murderer, might be dancing in the garden.
Well, maybe not dancing. He’ll probably be leaning against a wall stiffly, with a drink in his hand, bandages around his ribs, and a new plan to murder me in his heart. If not new orders to murder me from Cardan.
“Your friends won’t like it,” I say, sliding off the table.
“They’ll quickly be too drunk to notice.
You can’t spend your life locked up in Madoc’s glorified barracks.
” He gives me a smile that is clearly meant to charm me.
It kind of works. I think about Dain’s offer to give me a love mark on my brow and wonder idly if Locke might have one, because, despite everything, I am tempted.
“I don’t have the right clothes,” I say, gesturing to the tunic I have on, stained with Valerian’s blood.
He looks me up and down longer than an inspection of my garments requires.
“I can find you a gown. I can find you anything you’d like.
You asked me about Cardan, Valerian, and Nicasia—come see them outside of school, come see them be foolish and drunk and debased.
See their vulnerabilities, the cracks in their armor.
You’ve got to know them to beat them, right?
I don’t say you’ll like them any better, but you don’t need to like them. ”
“I like you,” I tell him. “I like playing pretend with you.”
“Pretend?” he echoes, as though he’s not sure if I’m insulting him.
“Of course,” I say, going to the windows of the hall and looking out. Moonlight streams onto the leafy entrance to the maze. Torches are burning nearby, the flames flickering and wavering in the wind. “Of course we’re pretending! We don’t belong together, but it’s fun anyway.”
He gives me an evaluating, conspiratorial look. “Then let’s keep doing it.”
“Okay,” I say helplessly. “I’ll stay. I’ll go to your party.” I have had little fun in my life so far. The promise of more is difficult to resist.
He leads me through several rooms until we come to double doors.
For a moment, he hesitates, glancing back at me.
Then he pushes them open, and we’re in an enormous bedroom.
A thick, oppressive layer of dust blankets everything.
There are footprints—two sets. He’s come in here before, but not many times.
“The dresses in the closet were my mother’s. Borrow whatever you like,” he says, taking my hand.
Looking around this untouched room at the heart of the house, I understand the grief that made him lock it up for so long. I am glad to be let in. If I had a room full of my mother’s things, I do not know if I would let anyone inside. I don’t even know if I would brave it myself.
He opens one of the closets. Much of the clothing is moth-eaten, but I can see what they once were.
A skirt with a beaded pattern of pomegranates, another that pulls up, like a curtain, to show a stage with jeweled mechanical puppets underneath.
There is even one stitched with the silhouette of dancing fauns as tall as the skirt itself.
I’ve admired Oriana’s dresses for their elegance and opulence, but these awaken in me a hunger for a dress that’s riotous.
They make me wish I’d seen Locke’s mother in one of her gowns.
They make me think she must have liked to laugh.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dress like any of these,” I tell him. “You really want me to wear one?”
He brushes a hand over a sleeve. “I guess they’re a bit rotted.”
“No,” I say. “I like them.”
The one with the fauns is the least damaged.
I dust it off and tug it on behind an old screen.
I struggle, because it’s the sort of dress that’s difficult to put on without Tatterfell’s help.
I have no idea how to arrange my hair any differently, so I leave it as is—braided in a crown around my head.
When I wipe off a silver mirror with my hand and see myself dressed in a dead faerie’s clothes, a shudder goes through me.
Suddenly, I do not know why I am here in this place. I am not sure of Locke’s intentions. When he tries to drape me in his mother’s jewels, I refuse them.
“Let’s go out to the garden,” I say. I no longer want to be in this empty, echoing room.
He puts away the long string of emeralds he was holding.
As we leave, I look back at the closet of moldering clothes.
Despite my feelings of unease, there’s a part of me that can’t help imagining what it would be like to be the mistress of this place.
Imagining Prince Dain with the crown. Imagining entertaining at the long table we kissed against, my classmates all drinking the pale green wine and pretending they had never tried to murder me. Locke, with his hand in mine.
And me, spying on them all for the king.
The hedge maze is taller than the height of an ogre and formed of dense, glossy leaves in a deep green.
Apparently, Cardan’s circle meets here often.
I can hear them laughing at the center of the maze when I walk outside with Locke, late to his own gathering.
The smell of pine liquor is alive in the air.
The firelight of the torches makes long shadows and limns everything in scarlet. My steps slow.
Reaching into the pocket of the borrowed dress, I touch my knife, still stained with Valerian’s blood.
When I do, my fingers light on something else, something Locke’s mother must have left years before.
I pull out her bauble—a golden acorn. It doesn’t look like jewelry—there is no chain—and I cannot imagine what purpose it might have had other than to be pretty. I drop it back into my pocket.
Locke holds my hand as we move through the turns of the hedge maze.
It does not seem as though there are many.
I try to map it in my mind as I go, in case I have to find my way out alone.
The simplicity of the maze makes me nervous rather than confident.
I do not believe there are many simple things in Faerie.
At home, dinner will be coming to a close without me.
Taryn will be whispering to Vivi how I went somewhere with Locke.
Madoc will be frowning and stabbing his meat, annoyed with me for missing his lessons.
I have braved worse things.
At the center of the maze, a piper is playing a lilting, wild song.
White rose petals blow through the air. Folk are gathered, eating and drinking from a long banquet table that seems mostly piled with different distillations—cordials in which mandrake roots float, sour plum wine, a clear liquor infused with handfuls of red clover.
And beside those, vials of golden nevermore.
Cardan is lying on a blanket, his head tipped back and his loose white shirt unbuttoned.
Although it is still early in the night, he appears to be very drunk.
His mouth is flaked with gold. A horned girl I don’t know is kissing his throat, and another, this one with daffodil hair, presses her mouth against the calf of his leg, just above the top of his boot.
To my relief, I do not see Valerian. I hope he’s home, nursing that wound I gave him.
Locke brings me a thimbleful of liquor, and I take a tiny scalding sip for the sake of politeness.
I start coughing immediately. At that moment, Cardan’s gaze goes to me.
His eyes are barely open, but I can see the shine of them, wet as tar.
He watches me as the girl kisses his mouth, watches me as she slides her hand beneath the hem of his silly, ruffly shirt.
My cheeks heat. I look away and then am angry with myself for giving him the satisfaction of seeming uncomfortable. He’s the one who’s making a spectacle of himself.
“I see a member of the Circle of Worms has chosen to grace us with her presence tonight,” Nicasia says, swanning up to us in a dress with all the colors of the sunset in it. She peers into my face. “But which one is it?”
“The one you don’t like,” I tell her, ignoring her jibe.
That makes her give a high, false laugh. “Oh, you might be surprised how some of us feel about both of you.”
“I promised you better amusements than this,” Locke says stiffly, taking my elbow.
I am grateful when he pulls me toward a low table with pillows strewn haphazardly around it, but I can’t help giving Nicasia a small, antagonizing wave as I go.
I pour out my thimble of liquor onto the grass when Locke isn’t looking.
The piper finishes, and a naked boy, shining with gold paint, takes out a lyre and sings a filthy song about broken hearts: “O lady fair! O lady cruel! How I miss your sweet misrule. I miss your hair. I miss your eyes. But most of all, I miss your thighs.”
Locke kisses me again, in front of the fire. Everyone can see it, but I don’t know if they’re looking, because I close my eyes as tightly as they will go.