Chapter 36 #2
And yet I felt myself shrinking as I neared the house, as if I could will myself small and disappear into the overgrown weeds. The thought was so ludicrously appealing that I got lost in it and didn’t notice the small woman glaring at me from the terrace until I’d nearly run into her.
I stepped back, the musky smell of wine suddenly flooding my nose.
The woman wore her gray hair in an untidy knot, and the shadows under her eyes spoke of too many unhappy nights.
She wore a pristine Upper Army uniform, and something about the shape of her nose, the lines of her mouth, looked familiar.
My mouth went dry. This was Gareth’s mother.
“Gareth told me a whole passel of you creatures would be joining us,” she said, her words slightly slurred. The smell of drink on her breath was rancid. She looked me up and down with quick gray eyes. “But I see only you.”
I nodded once in greeting, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in the barb of every feather. “Lady Fontaine. I’m honored to meet you.”
“Why? Who am I to you?” Then the hard mask of her face shifted into disbelief. “You’re Mara, aren’t you? You are the one my son has chosen.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, but I didn’t need to. She barreled on, her voice clipped and harsh.
“Why do you look like this?” she demanded. “I thought Roses turned into beasts only during battle.”
Her words bludgeoned me, shattering my calm, my resolve, and the remaining shreds of my courage with one fell blow. The stone I’d used to pave over my heart crumbled into dust, leaving me raw and bleeding all over again.
A beast.
A monster.
This woman had never seen me before, and the first thing that had come to her mind upon meeting me was monster.
“I can no longer transform like the others,” I replied, screaming at myself to shut my mouth even as the words tumbled out of me. “I…” I gestured helplessly at my body. “This is me now.”
It was like I’d fallen victim to some awful spellwork. I knew I shouldn’t care about Lady Fontaine’s opinion. She was a drunk, she was unkind, and Gareth hated her. And yet my body burned with shame under her incredulous gaze. I felt clumsy, stupid, absurd.
“Really?” she asked. She sounded almost gleeful. “Why? Is this a punishment?”
Suddenly I was back there in the entrance hall of Rosewarren, screaming my throat raw as the Warden’s will ripped through my body, the binding magic that tethered me to her obeying her commands without mercy. The memory made my skin crawl. Soon I would need to apply Nanette’s balm.
“Yes,” I whispered. “A punishment.”
“Does Gareth know?” She peered closely at me. “I think not. Not even my son would willingly fuck you when you look like this. How would that even happen? Is your cunt the same as it was? Or does it now have teeth?”
I could hardly breathe. My eyes burned with tears, but I couldn’t let them fall, I couldn’t, or I felt sure that I would die.
“Well?” She stepped a bit closer, her mouth twitching with a smile. “Does he know?”
The look on my face must have given her the answer. She burst out laughing.
“Everyone!” she crowed, calling to the soldiers setting up their tents. “Come and listen to this! Come see! My son, the vaunted professor, has been bedding a bird woman. A beast.” She looked at me impatiently. “What do you even call yourself?”
The soldiers nearest us had fallen utterly silent.
Some of them looked so distressed that I thought they might come forward at any moment and help me get away from Lady Fontaine.
I even thought I glimpsed a shape that looked very much like General Haldrin striding angrily toward us from one of the officers’ tents, but my tears made everything blurry, and I could no longer feel my arms and legs.
This was all happening so quickly, and yet it seemed it would never end.
Then, before anyone could say another word, rapid footsteps approached from inside the house, and Gareth burst out into the sunshine.
The sight of him left my knees weak. He wore a plain shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and there were ink smudges on his fingers, and his glasses needed a good cleaning, and I’d never been so happy to see someone and simultaneously so full of dread in my entire life.
He stormed over to his mother, stopping right in front of her with such a dark look on his face that she staggered back in astonishment.
“Walk away from her,” he said, very low, his voice tight with anger.
“Right now. And if you say even one more hateful word to her or about her, if you don’t treat her with the respect she deserves, if you even for a moment consider cruelty again, I will have you removed from this house and make sure that you can never come back to it. Do you understand me?”
Lady Fontaine nodded slowly, apparently shocked into silence.
I didn’t wait there for another second. I hurried past Gareth and made straight for the kitchen stairs. I knew this house; I knew Gareth’s map and the gentle hands that had drawn it. I fled to the silence of the attic.
***
It was a huge room and just as empty as Gareth had said it would be. Sunlight streamed through four dirty windows; the floor’s wide wooden planks were coated with dust. Here my sisters and I would destroy three anchors of the ytheliad curse and eliminate one of Kilraith’s greatest advantages.
But as I sank to my knees in the corner of the room, where the sunlight couldn’t quite touch me, I could hardly imagine doing such a thing.
My tired mind could no longer wrap itself around the concepts of facing my sisters, or calling upon my power, or putting my tired body through yet more punishment.
I hugged myself and shivered there in the shadows until I remembered Nanette’s balm.
Applying that, at least, was something I could do.
An easy thing. I slipped the pouch’s strap off my wrist, talking myself through each motion like I was learning how to move through the world for the very first time.
Grip the jar with one hand and the lid with the other.
Twist open the lid.
Coat your fingers in the balm.
Rub it into your grotesque, inhuman skin.
The laugh that burst out of me turned quickly into tears. Soon I couldn’t see what I was doing, how much balm I was using, if it was absorbing properly. I would run out if I wasn’t careful. I wouldn’t be able to help my sisters destroy the anchors because I’d be too busy scratching my skin off.
What would the Warden think, I wondered, if she saw me like this? Hunched pathetically in the corner of a dusty room, rubbing medicine into my abused body with trembling, taloned hands.
A small part of me hoped she would feel remorse, and that vain hope made me cry even harder.
My fingers were shaking; I could no longer hold the jar.
Someone took it away from me, set it safely on the floor.
Someone’s hands gently took hold of my own; their thumbs brushed my talons tenderly. I knew those hands.
I looked up to see Gareth crouching before me, looking at me just as he always had—like I was marvelous, and full of goodness. Like he would be happy looking at me and only me, for the rest of his life.
“I’m so sorry, Mara,” he said. I’d never heard such sadness in a man’s voice. “I could kill her for saying those things. They meant nothing. She’s a miserable, sour person whose only pleasure comes from shooting, drinking, and hurting those around her who dare to be happy. Especially me.”
“But she was right, Gareth. Look at me.”
He did, unflinchingly, his eyes soft. “I’m looking, and I’m delighted to. You are beautiful, Mara, in this form and every other.”
“Didn’t you hear what I told her? I can no longer transform. I’m stuck like this.”
“It’s hurting you, isn’t it?” He picked up the jar of balm. “Nanette gave this to you?”
I nodded, fresh tears slipping down my cheeks. Their warmth stung my sensitive skin. “It’s meant to help the pain. Every few hours until it’s gone, she said.”
“Can I help you apply it? If it becomes too much, you can tell me to back off. But until then—”
“Gods, Gareth, just stop,” I blurted out, squeezing my eyes shut. “Don’t you understand what I’m telling you? Unless she decides to grant me relief, if she ever does, this is me. This, forever. I’m hers, forever.”
“No.” He was on his knees now, so close that my body prickled from the heat of his. “You are not hers. Binding magic, Order duty, I don’t care. That doesn’t matter. You are not hers. You belong only to yourself.”
“No, no, you don’t understand—”
“But I do understand. Look at me, darling.” His voice broke on the familiar endearment. “Gods, I want to touch you, but I don’t want to hurt you. Will you please look at me?”
I did, and immediately wished I hadn’t. That fierce conviction in his eyes, the passion painting color on his cheeks—he was too beautiful, too dear. I couldn’t bear it.
“There you are,” he whispered, smiling. “Did you know that I first fell in love with you because of your eyes?”
I let out a sob. “Gareth—”
“It’s true. All your power and grace, and it was your eyes that first ensnared me.
They’re warm and kind, and when you’re angry, they’re keen as knives, and when you’re happy, they light up like stars.
And the wild, wonderful thing is, they’re only a small part of you.
There’s so much else to love. Your strength, your heart, your wit.
The care you have for others. The way you look at me when I’m being an ass.
The way you look at me when you want my ass. ”
It was such an unexpected, perfectly Gareth comment that I laughed despite myself. His face lit up at the sound.
“Please, darling,” he said, gently brushing his fingers against my cheek. “Let me help you.”
I was too tired to argue anymore, and some fragile, frightened part of me still dared to hope. This was Gareth; he loved me. He wanted a life with me. Our home. With a slight nod, I relented.
He began with my legs, applying the balm with long, gentle strokes.
I held myself stiffly, bracing myself for disaster: I would flinch from pain, and he would never be able to bring himself to touch me again.
He would suddenly realize what was happening, the true horror of what I was, and leave me, repulsed.
But I should have never doubted him. He worked in silence, a look of earnest concentration on his face, and not once as his hands smoothed the balm across my changed body did he recoil.
In fact, he seemed entranced. I let my eyes drift shut, shifting whenever he murmured for me to do so.
He ran his hands down my arms, between my fingers, across my back and—reverently, carefully—between my thighs.
The way he touched me was like praying. I was the god, and he was the man on his knees in worship.
When he finished, I opened my eyes to find that my wings had come around to encircle him. He gazed at me, flushed and adoring, from within a nimbus of brown-and-gray feathers.
“Did that hurt you?” he whispered.
I shook my head, feeling suddenly shy.
“Good. Now, you listen to me. Your heart is your own. Your mind is your own. You belong only to yourself and not to her, never to her. But gods help me, Mara, you’re also mine.”
He brought my hands to his lips and kissed the hard curves of my talons.
“You’re mine to love, mine to cherish, in this form and in every other.
I wanted to have you as you were in Fairhaven, and I want to have you now.
Don’t you see how lovely you are?” He bent to kiss me, a soft sigh escaping him.
“The lines of your body, the feathers in your hair, the power in your muscles, the breadth of your wings. Darling, you feel like silk in my hands. And I will want you and love you—all of you, every part of you—for the rest of my life.”
I closed my eyes, the last of my tears spilling over. “I love you,” I whispered, sliding my feathered arms around his neck and pulling him into the curve of my body. “I love you, I love you.”
He kissed my hair, my brow, the curve of my chin. When he palmed my breast, I arched quietly against him, natural as breathing.
“Mara, I need to ask you something,” he said quietly, “and you must promise to answer me truthfully.”
“Of course I will.”
“You’re certain my touch doesn’t hurt you? You’re not just saying that to reassure me?”
“It doesn’t hurt me,” I replied. “The balm helps. And, I think, it doesn’t hurt because it’s you.”
“Oh, Mara.” He bent to kiss me, soft and slow, and then dragged his lips down to the hollow of my throat. “Let me take you downstairs to my bed. Let me love you properly. You’ll never doubt your beauty again.”
I tilted my head back to let him explore, ran my talons through his hair. The soft scrape of my claws across his scalp tore a moan from his throat, and he shivered against me. The familiar heat of his body was glorious; I was suddenly ravenous for it.
One last jolt of uncertainty gave me pause. “Gareth, I…I’ve never made love like this before.”
He pulled back from me, held out his hand, and helped me rise. His eyes were soft, his smile gentle. “Then let’s find out what it’s like together.”