2. Vireth #2
Sephia exhales a disappointed sigh and comes to stand behind me, absent-mindedly picking up my damp white hair and plaiting it with practiced ease.
“I don’t know what I want,” she opines. “I don’t want to be some idle court fixture, sitting and smiling at vipers all day and being used all evening by a husband I do not care for.”
“It sounds to me as if you do know what you want,” I chuckle.
She shrugs and begins to twist the delicate braids around the crown of my head, securing them with the white gold comb.
The effect is rather flattering for me, and I wonder if the comb is enchanted with some kind of beautifying spell.
I am not normally this pretty. Unsettling?
Certainly. Ominous? Most definitely. Lovely? Ne’er.
“Have you told Mother and Bronwyn you do not wish to marry into the Moontide lot? Mayhap they would let you have a few seasons yet before shifting you to some foreign court,” I say, though I know immediately how false my words ring.
Sephia is the lauded daughter, certainly, but she also suffers grander expectations than the rest of us whelps put together.
Her brittle smile is all the confirmation I need. She will do her duty. She will win over whatever witless prince stumbles forward for her hand, and go be the fruitful womb she is destined to be. My heart suddenly thumps with pain for her.
She twists a final braid into place, eyes shimmering with unshed tears, and turns to leave again.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Vireth. I only wanted to give you your gift, since I’m likely to leave for Moontide soon. I didn’t know if I’d have the time.”
“Hold a moment, Sephy,” I say. “I’ll confess I didn’t get you anything, but I have an idea. If I do this for you, you must promise not to tell anyone. You must swear it. If Mother and Father find out, I fear a great deal more than their usual torments.”
She nods and eyes me with equal parts curiosity and suspicion.
I pick up the now-empty box that held my comb and hold it open.
Reaching deep within my personal reserve of darkness untouched by the leywort tea, I summon filaments of forbidden power.
I breathe softly into the box, exhaling black and blue spores that swirl in the air before taking root.
Sephia’s eyes widen as two mushrooms begin to grow—one a slick, glistening black and the other a velvety pewter blue.
They shiver and throb within the box and I gently close the lid, handing it back to her.
“In twelve days, pluck the blue one and dry it in the sun. Then, grind it into a fine powder. Drink it after your monthly courses and you’ll be barren for about six months—give or take. Err on the side of caution there, sister. If you do not wish to conceive, you needn’t.”
Her petal lips drop open in shock.
“Such a thing is possible?”
I nod, and something—hope, perhaps—flashes in her gaze. A little spark of sadness ignites in me that after all these years, she is only now beginning to understand the size and shape of my magic.
“And the black one?” she asks, gripping the box tightly to her chest.
Sighing, I stand and wrap my arms around her, drawing her in for a hug that seems to surprise us both.
“The court of last resort,” I murmur in her ear.
“Don’t touch any part of it without gloves.
It will work fresh, dried, in food, drink, or plain.
It will be painful. It will be ugly. It will cause the greatest suffering you can possibly imagine.
But if your prince is cruel, violent, or unjust, know that you will always have a bit of my protection. ”
When I pull back, I swipe at the tears tracking down her cheeks and swat her affectionately on her rump.
“Thank you, sister,” she says thickly.
“You make me crazy, Sephy, but truly you are the best of us all. I hope tonight goes splendidly for you and your match is well made.”
A smile breaks through the clouds on her face and she pauses at the threshold of my chamber.
“I forgot to tell you, Bronwyn invited a fortune teller for the feast tonight. Perhaps she’ll find something adventurous in your future,” she says, a spark of mischief in her gaze. “Or might a romance with a certain blacksmith be more to your taste?”
Thoughts of Ulfrid are like honey and vinegar in one.
My admiration has always been childlike in its sweetness—dreams of him finally returning my affections, breaking down my door with passion in his eyes and taking me away from this place.
Desire for a handsome man and escape in equal measure, though romance in any form would be a welcome distraction.
I roll my eyes. “Any fortune of mine is sure to involve ill omens. I’ll thank you to keep your soothsayer far away from me.”
Her tinkling laugh follows her down the hall, leaving me with a confusing mixture of emotions to sift through in my solitude. I step into the gray wyrm silk gown and lace up the sides, pleased with my reflection for once.
Nibblebones emerges from her den with a chittering sound and twirls around my feet.
I stoop to pick her up and she scampers across my shoulders, settling around my neck like a patchy fur stole.
Taking a deep, fortifying breath, I shove my feet into a pair of gray slippers and make my way down the hall, following the echoes of music and din of voices emanating from the ballroom.
The cool wyrm silk caresses my legs as I walk, sending pleasing shivers through my body.
The doors to the great hall yawn open like the mouth of a beast. Perhaps it will digest me before I die of boredom and polite conversation about the weather and all its ill omens.
Warmth spills out first—redolent with smoke, roasting meat, beeswax, resinous perfume, and the musky smell of damp silk.
Music follows, thrumming skin-drums pulsing beneath fiddles and bone flutes, their notes tripping across the vaulted ceiling and catching in the banners that hang from the rafters.
The hall has been decorated in a mix of Sephia’s favorite color green mixed with the oranges and golds of autumnal abundance.
Despite the meager harvest and frost-choked soil, everything looks perfect—garlands of dried berries and grain sheaves, golden lanterns sputtering with costly leviathan oil, tables bowed beneath the weight of platters and bowls and exotic treats imported at obscene cost.
Bloomday feasts are usually joyous affairs, but whether it’s due to the grumbling sleet outside or the unearthly pall hanging over our province, this one feels a little desperate.
As if enough food and finery might convince everyone that everything is all right, and we’re not all pretending that we don’t feel how things have started to feel strangely off-kilter outside the castle walls.
I pause just inside the threshold, letting the noise wash over me. Nibblebones lifts her head from her comfortable coil around my neck and sniffs the air, whiskers twitching.
“Yes,” I murmur. “I smell it too. Overcompensation.”
A few heads turn in my direction, followed by a few more. The cacophony of conversation dips low without stopping altogether, like a wave pulling back out to sea before another set crashes in.
It’s Lady Vireth, they whisper behind hands, fans, and napkins.
The rot-touched one.
Mind your food—your drink. Mind your steel. See how she rusts, how she destroys.
Don’t stand too close. Don’t even look at her.
Skin prickling with awareness and chin jutting high in defiance, I glide forward anyway, my slippers soundless against the stone.
The gray wyrm silk does its best work under candlelight, catching silver and shadow both, and I feel eyes on me, but not in any kind of admiring way.
They’re measuring, recoiling, curious despite themselves.
It surprises no one that I am alone, as always—no mother on my arm, no escort or beau sending sweet, secretive glances under his lashes, no sisters fluttering at my side.
Dull pangs of hunger rise in my gut, but I don’t know if they’re for food or companionship.
At this point, I’ve forgotten how to separate the two.
I pass a table decorated with autumn roses—Bronwyn’s doing, most certainly.
The nearest rust-colored bloom curls inward as I go by, petals browning at the edges like a spot of old blood.
I grit my teeth and draw my power tightly.
I promised Sephy, after all. I should have drunk more leywort tea before I came.
Focus, Vireth. You are here to eat, not to commit horticultural crimes.
The nearest table groans beneath roasted capon glazed in honey and vinegar, trenchers soaked with gravy, and bowls of herb-crusted turnips and excellent boiled potatoes swimming in butter.
Steam drifts upward, fragrant and tempting, and my stomach gives an audible growl.
Fortunately, no one is close enough to me to hear it—the silver lining to my forced isolation.
Long since freed from the expectation of socialization, I’m able to focus on the food before me instead of the frustration and disappointment teasing my senses.
I select carefully: a still-warm chunk of bread first, dense and dark, topped with a thick swipe of soft butter.
A slice of roast ham, sticky with honey and dusted with flakes of crunchy salt.
Pickled onions, black grapes, pomegranate seeds that glitter like tiny rubies in the candlelight.
Hard cheese veined with blue that calls to the rot magic ever-festering beneath my skin.
Apple tartlets topped with brown sugared sunflower seeds that I’d eat in fistfuls if I were alone here.
As I lift the bread to my mouth, a noblewoman two places down leans toward her companion and murmurs, not nearly quietly enough, “Seeing her eat ruins my appetite.”
“I hear it spoils in her mouth,” comes the reply, filled with disgust. “Turns to mold before she swallows.”