Chapter XXXV #2
It didn’t matter. I needed to know, and I needed to know now.
But no mirrors hung on the walls. No vanities occupied the gilt bedroom.
No reflective sconces offered enough surface to see the damage.
Just before I resorted to emptying drawers, I found a hand mirror on a dresser top and turned it over.
The facial hair I had worn from my time in prison had likely minimized the damage, as the lower half of my face sported nothing but a few minor cuts from shaving.
Wounds on my forehead and cheek scabbed over on the right side of my face, still raw, still angry, but healing.
Eventually, with time and salves, those would make a full recovery.
But the left side of my face....
I had already endured so many lowering experiences, but there had always been the possibility of restoration and reinstatement.
Even as a bird, I had been given the tenuous possibility of being human again.
But there was no remedy for being an ugly and ridiculous man.
This was permanent, and I could do nothing about it.
If Alaina had been open to accepting me as a man, then surely this was what had prevented the continuation of her affections. No wonder Alaina had withdrawn from me.
I lowered the mirror.
“The surgeon said you would die from infection if he didn’t....” She could not verbalize the description of the procedure that took a significant portion of the left side of my nose, scarred my cheek, temple, and forehead, and deprived me of most of my left ear. “I couldn’t let you die.”
She would just see that I lived out the rest of my days in a different isolation and shame. Even though I had been ugly as a bird, I had still been whole. Maybe being blind in addition would have been preferable so that I would never have to fully know this reality.
“What did you have in mind for my future?” If she wanted to see me live, I was determined to find out why she thought this fate might be preferable to dying. “Do you need a disfigured jester for the Altanian court? I have experience. My suffering has entertained many.”
My left leg trembled with exertion and pain.
I could not risk returning to the bed because I would have to turn around and face Alaina.
Instead, I sank to the rug. I began laughing, afraid that if I did not find some hideous humor in it, I would devolve into weeping in earnest. And then I might never stop.
I didn’t even have my face for more than a few hours.
And, sentimental fool that I was, I had allowed myself to hope in that brief time that Alaina might want me with her in Altania, not as some reclusive pet, but something more.
As a man, albeit a foreign man without any connections and a past he would not disclose, I could have found reason to live among others and be at her side. How could she want me with her now?
She approached me from behind and joined me on the floor. She put her hand on my shoulder and rubbed it through the linen shirt.
“You can be whoever or whatever you want to be here,” she whispered.
“I should never have left Varnasia.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’m selfish. And I give thanks both to the Great Holy and The Kind and Fair that you were in Ilyichia when I needed you most.”
“I don’t believe in fated purpose, higher or otherwise. If not me, someone else would have stepped forward to help you through.”
“Not likely. I needed someone who wasn’t like the rest of them. I needed you.”
“But you don’t need me here in Altania.”
“No, I don’t need you here in Altania.” She inched closer and rested her cheek against my back. “I want you here in Altania.”
“Why? So that all your acquaintances can mock your foreign oddity?”
“They would not dare mock my husband.”
Husband.
“No one sane would hold you to that,” I assured her, “not once they knew the circumstances and the inferiority of the groom.”
She tugged on a lock of hair at the nape of my neck in chastisement. “I will thank you not to speak so ill of my husband.”
“You are your brother’s heir,” I insisted. “You cannot be wedded to a disfigured foreign nobody.”
“I can be wedded to a noble man who earned grievous wounds by keeping me safe.”
“Gratitude is not enough. You deserve more, better.”
“There is no one better, not for me.” At my silence, she rose and kissed the spot behind my right ear. “I meant it when I said it. I love you.”
“I don’t see how you can.”
Alaina stood and swept her skirts around me. She arranged them and then sat on the floor again, this time in front of me, fluffing up the pink satin layer of skirt like a flower unfurling its petals. Her long dark hair, loose and silky, draped her shoulders like an exquisite shawl.
I turned the left side of my face away from her.
“Kaylay,” she said in her haughty princess voice, “do you know how insulting it is to think that I only care about you for your looks?”
“You should care.” I was unrepentant. I certainly cared about them.
“I will not ruin the rest of your life by holding you to a marriage that was arranged out of malice and cruelty. You do not owe me that. And if I saved your life, then you must share it with someone worthy, someone who will be a credit to you. That is the extent of your debt.”
Selflessness was not my intention. I wanted to be her husband, to live in ecstatic bliss together in Altania and make up for every indignity we had suffered.
I wanted to drown her in kisses and adoration.
I wanted to worship her in every way I could.
I wanted to beg her to love me as I loved her, wholly and completely.
But I knew the world. I knew her world. Her reputation, her future, and her throne would surely suffer if she honored a marriage to a man who had lost everything that might have made him suitable.
She took my left hand, bandaged as it was, and raised it to her mouth. She kissed it. “You are someone worthy.”
“I have been reduced to an ornament, a curiosity, an amusement. I have no value.”
Did she know how it hurt or what it cost me to verbalize my greatest insecurity?
She grabbed my chin as she had once done with a beak and forced me to look at her. I did not pull away. If she wanted to view the ruin of my face, then so be it. Maybe she would come to her senses if she looked long enough upon the truth.
“You are more than what the tsarina would have you believe,” Alaina insisted. “Did the last year teach you nothing?”
“It taught me that I am disposable.” I stared straight back at her. “It taught me that I can work hard, do all the right things, and still end up with nothing. It taught me that the things I have always wanted most in this world are not meant for me.”
“If you still had feathers, I would pluck one out for such a defeatist answer.”
“Alaina, please, look at me. Truly look at me. This,” I gestured to my face, “won’t get better.”
“Yes,” she said thoughtfully after a good long moment of looking. “You are as ugly as I expected. My opinion hasn’t changed on that.”
“And you,” I said, realizing her game and surrendering to it, “are still the size of a twig.” An amusing thought pulled up one side of my mouth. “No. I’ve thought better of it. You are more the size of a fifth nested doll in a matryoshka.”
She dropped my chin and cupped her hands around my face. She bent my head down and kissed my brow as she had done so many times before.
“I love you. All of you.” She pressed her lips to my forehead. “Your wounds are honorable.” She pressed her lips to my temple. “And noble.” She pressed her lips to my cheek. “And beautiful.” She kissed the bridge of my nose, where it healed after being broken.
She had never kissed me with a real face before, and now she never would.
“Why don’t you want to be my husband?”
“I cannot face court again,” I admitted.
“I’ve had my fill of being the brunt of every joke and the subject of every insult.
If I had my wish, I would fade into obscurity somewhere and never have to be in the public eye.
I’m not strong enough to withstand the Altanian court finding fault with me at every turn. ”
“Unfortunately, being my husband does mean being at court.” She fiddled with her hair for a moment before sweeping a large section behind her shoulder.
“But Altania is different than Ilyichia. It’s warmer,” she said, knowing how much weight I put in that.
“And I will not tolerate anyone treating you as less than.”
“But I am less th—” I broke off, my attention caught by a bandage on her chest, visible now with her hair brushed aside. “You told me you were well,” I accused.
“And I am!”
“That’s a wound, princess.”
“Yes. And,” she said, brushing her hand over the bandage, “it’s probably going to scar.”
My throat constricted.
“Don’t you dare blame yourself for it,” she threatened. “I went through that ordeal too. And I’m going to wear my scar proudly. I earned it. After all, I couldn’t let you get all the glory.”
She had an odd notion of glory.
“I plan on wearing daring decolletage for the rest of my life so I can show it off,” she said.
If only I could feel that way about mine.
“We should tell your brother that you’re alive,” Alaina said.
“He won’t want me back.”
“Then you leave me no choice.” Alaina took my hand again. “Prince Mikhail—”
“Former prince,” I corrected. “I haven’t been reinstated.”
“No. Not yet.” Alaina smiled. “My brother, however, is king, and you are now a prince of Altania. I don’t remember what district he’s given you, but it was a good one.
You’ll have to talk to him about that. And he’s made you a member of the Order of the Falcon for saving me.
It’s the highest honor you can be given in Altania.
” She shot me a glance through her eyelashes. “Now, Prince Mikhail—”
I held my tongue this time.
“Good.” She took a deep breath, content with my submission.
“I, Princess Alaina of Altania and heir to the throne, have heard your arguments against acknowledging a wedding that took place in Ilyichia not long ago under stressful circumstances. Being your social superior, I have answered them all to my satisfaction and have determined that your reasons are insufficient to merit an annulment. So I only have one more question to ask to determine if indeed I should let it stand.” She dropped the act and reached out to take my hands.
“Do you love me, not just as a companion through difficult times but enough to spend the rest of your life with me?”
“Yes.” It was the easiest answer in the world.
“Then it is decided. I will have none other.” She lowered her voice.
“Although I think perhaps we should also get married in the sight of the Great Holy too. What do you say? Be my husband? Remember, if you say no, you doom Altania to an heirless throne. The hopes and expectations of an entire country, and more importantly, me, rest on you.”
“What do we do about my face?”
“Perhaps a small mask if it so concerns you.”
“No feathers,” I stipulated.
“I suppose if you insist. Hammered gold and jewels then? To match your ring?”
I probed the bandages on my left hand. Though I had nothing beyond the second knuckle, the wedding band remained.
“You really want me, after everything?” I asked.
“I wanted you as a bird too,” she admitted, reaching into her bodice and retrieving the red-gold feather I had once given her as an ornament for her hair, “but I couldn’t figure out how to make that work. This is so much easier.”
Nothing would be easy. I didn’t know Altanian well.
I would have to learn a whole new set of cultural expectations and norms. I would have to become acquainted with a whole new set of people who would look at me as a suspicious foreigner.
But I would have Alaina there beside me, and no one else had to know my true history.
“Then, my wife, let our marriage stand.”
And for the first time, she leaned over and pressed her lips to mine.