Chapter Fourteen Idris #2
“Idris, why don’t you sit again?” Abram says, gentle now.
My legs itch, and it’s all I can do to hold still. I shake my head. My voice rasps when I speak. “You all right?”
“I’m surviving. Kit brought me some food, which was much appreciated.”
“Where is she?” I try to focus. The floor is a dark stone shot through with gold. I tilt my head back. There is no ceiling—just a glorious twilight, with lavender and golden clouds drifting across a velvety sky. All of the colors are a little too vivid, a little too bright.
My head spins. “Is this what it always looks like?”
Abram follows my gaze. “No, it changes every night.”
White sparks flash across my vision. I close my eyes tightly. Abram’s hand steadies me.
“You asked about Kit—she’s hiding.” Abram pauses. “I think they know she’s here, and they don’t seem to care, but she’s still being cautious.”
I nod. The music shifts from a slow melody into a jig. The itch in my legs is unbearable. “Sorry, I have to—”
Before I can finish my sentence, the mermaid has pulled me away from Abram.
Every step is like treading on glass, but I try to press into the vividness of the hurt.
Try to stay in this room and shrug off the blankness.
I don’t know how long I’ve been trying when suddenly everyone around me stops.
I careen into a finman, and arms come up to catch me.
They face me toward the end of the room, holding me up, and even with the help I sway like a listing ship.
A woman is carried into the hall. The midnight-blue fabric of her dress seems to float around her, like a mist over stars. A circlet of silver and pearls adorns her long white hair, which hangs in waves down to her ankles. She meets my eyes, hers solemn and cool and black. Untouchable.
I become acutely aware of every drop of sweat on my forehead, the smell of my armpits, the damp stickiness of my hair.
In those large black eyes I recognize something. Even though I never saw her face in the memory, I know her.
The Hidden Queen. The selkie my great-great-grandfather bound in iron.
When her retinue sets down her chair, she lifts her white hand and beckons me forward.
I stumble when the Hidden Folk around me move, supporting me step by painful step.
They release me in front of her, and I let myself sink into a kneeling position.
It’s all I can do not to collapse on the polished floor.
The silence of the chamber thrums in my head louder than the music did before. Patches of light and shadow chase their way over my skin. I lick my lips, searching through the cloud of fatigue for something to say to her. Some way to apologize. Or beg mercy.
“What a bonny face,” she says quietly. Her voice is unexpectedly deep and melodious. “You certainly have his blood.”
I find myself staring at the silver-embroidered hem of her long gown, which ends at my eye level. In the stitching, seals—selkies?—chase each other through waves.
“Did you never retrieve your skin?” I blurt, looking up.
Her mouth tightens. There are no lines on her skin, but there is an ancient smell to her. Like sailing near the deepest parts of the sea.
I swallow. “I—I am deeply sorry for what was done. I hope—I mean, is there anything …?”
Her eyes narrow, ever so slightly, and I am starkly aware of how little sense I’m making. I feel like I’m trying to converse in a language even I don’t understand. My head swirls, and my surroundings feel very far away. What is happening?
“Control.” Her lullaby voice remains soft. In her black eyes I see myself reflected—small and pitiful. “Even now, that is all your mind craves.”
My thoughts blur, and I struggle to remain, to feel my knees on the hard ground.
“What are you doing to me?” I croak.
“Me?” She smiles. There is no mirth in it. “I summoned you here. But your mind seeks to take back your body. After all, isn’t removing yourself a type of control? I am not responsible for this dissociation—you are. However,” she continues with a bored wave, “I did not bring you here to talk.”
A strand of her long blonde-white hair falls over her shoulder as she leans forward. An animal urge in me, an impulse that only seeks to survive, screams that I should flee. I am a minnow in front of a force of nature. But I’m frozen to the spot.
She presses three fingers to my forehead. Her skin is a cold that cuts through the burning in my head.
Almost in a purr, she says, “I brought you to dance.”
My sight goes sharp, and my pain vanishes.
I spring to my feet, and the music is playing again, and I grab for the first person I see.
A mermaid with algae-green hair. I pull her into the dance, and she’s laughing, and I feel nothing but the need to move, the pulse of the music in my veins, the maddening urgency for more and faster.
Partners change, and I lose track of the shifts in music, the tunes that bleed into the next.
I spot Abram to one side, expression worried.
The woman beside him shakes her head. He speaks to her and points at me.
I am turned away, and my vision smears. The over-sharp sting of too-vivid color sears my eyes, and black tinges the edge of my vision.
Then I am brought back around the circle of dancers, and new hands take mine.
Hands that are warm instead of cold and strong instead of delicate.
It takes a moment for her face to register in my mind.
Flushed skin, dark hair—Catharine. I am back at my birthday ball, back when dancing was a pleasure and my future stretched out in front of me.
“Idris?” she asks. Her fingers tap a steady beat on the side of my hand as we move through our steps. The rhythmic touch disrupts my thoughts. I close my eyes tight, putting all my concentration on the touch. I am here. I am enchanted. I am with Kit. Not Catharine, Kit.
“Thanks,” I breathe, opening my eyes again. The mad flurry of movement seeps out of me, and I slow. Mercifully, the tune has slowed with me. My chest is tight, and my breathing ragged. “Should you be out here?”
Kit glances at the other couples. They seem to be paying us no attention. “Abram said they already knew about me, and that he’s been able to stop dancing, so I probably wouldn’t get trapped, and …” She shakes her head and turns her gaze back to me. “We were afraid you …”
“I’m fine,” I say through force of habit.
Kit smiles gently. “You don’t have to lie, you know.” Her fingers drumming on my hand pause. “There is nothing fine about this whole situation.”
My body still moves in the dance, instinctively knowing it, even though it’s nothing like our formal ones on land.
This brings me and Kit close, my left hand on her waist and my right holding hers, always, not just the touch-and-go of our balls.
I had not noticed the closeness when I danced with the Hidden Folk—though I hadn’t noticed much here, at all—but with Kit I’m aware of everything.
The exhale of her breath on my neck, the brush of her skirt against my trousers.
I am fully here again, but in a strange, unsteady way.
“Why did you agree to this?” Kit asks.
I try to bring my thoughts into order. “To what?”
“Why did you agree to take the curse?”
“The question everyone seems to be asking me.” I force a tired smile and tell her what I told my father and Abram.
Someone had to do it. If I didn’t, it would fall to someone else.
Better me than them. The words are so familiar now, I hardly have to reach for them.
My attention drifts—to the twist and turn of the couple next to us, to the swelling of music, to an absent thirst.
“Why better for it to be you?” Kit asks. She starts tapping on my hand again. “Why should you have to pay for what someone else did?”
“The harm he did should be paid.”
“Yes, but it should have been paid by him.” She frowns at me, more interested than critical. “Why do you think you need to be punished?”
“I—I …” I fumble to find the right words. “When I accepted the curse, I wasn’t thinking about myself. I did it because it was the best thing, the right thing, to do. There should be justice for the crime.”
“That doesn’t explain why you want to carry the brunt of that punishment.” When Kit spins, a strand of hair comes loose from her careful bun. I like her better for that imperfection. “I don’t know that there is justice for this.”
I blink, taken aback. “What do you mean?”
“Your ancestor stole something that cannot be replaced.” Kit faces me again, the steps bringing us within a hand’s breadth of each other.
Her eyes dart up toward mine, and then she turns her head away to create more distance between us.
“What he did will never be undone, no matter how much you dance. No matter if—if you die. She remains bound in iron, and the years of that pain are not erased. Can there be justice for something that has gone on for so long?”