Cruel Beauty
Page 2

“I wish I could help you,” she whispered.
You could ask to take my place.
I pushed the thought away. All Astraia’s life, Father and Aunt Telomache had coddled and protected her. They had taught her over and over that her only purpose was to be loved. It wasn’t her fault that she’d never learnt to be brave, much less that they’d picked her to live instead of me. And anyway, how could I wish to live at the price of my own sister’s life?
Astraia might not be brave, but she wanted me to live. And here I was, wishing her dead in my place.
If one of us had to die, it ought to be the one with poison in her heart.
“I don’t hate you,” I said, and I almost believed it. “I could never hate you,” I said, remembering how she clung to me after we buried Penelope beneath the apple tree. She was my twin, born only minutes after me, but in every way that mattered, she was my little sister. I had to protect her—from the Gentle Lord but also from me, from the endless envy and resentment that seethed beneath my skin.
Astraia sniffed. “Really?”
“I swear by the creek in back of the house,” I said, our private childhood variation on an oath by the river Styx. And while I said the words I was telling the truth. Because I remembered spring mornings when she helped me escape lessons to run through the woods, summer nights catching glow worms, autumn afternoons acting out the story of Persephone in the leaf pile, and winter evenings sitting by the fire when I told her everything I had studied that day and she fell asleep five times but would never admit to being bored.
Astraia pulled me forward into a hug. Her arms wrapped under my shoulder blades and her chin nestled against my shoulder, and for a moment the world was warm and safe and perfect.
Then Aunt Telomache knocked on the door. “Nyx, darling?”
“Coming!” I called, pulling away from Astraia.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said. Her voice was still soft but I could tell her grief was healing, and I felt the first trickle of returning resentment.
You wanted to comfort her, I reminded myself.
“I love you,” I said, because it was true no matter what else festered in my heart, and left before she could reply.
Aunt Telomache waited for me in the hallway, her lips pursed. “Are you done chatting?”
“She’s my sister. I should say good-bye.”
“You’ll say good-bye tomorrow,” she said, drawing me toward my own bedroom. “Tonight you need to learn about your duties.”
I know my duty, I wanted to say, but followed her silently. I had borne Aunt Telomache’s preaching for years; it couldn’t get any worse now.
“Your wifely duties,” she added, opening the door to my room, and I realized that it could get infinitely worse.
Her explanation took nearly an hour. All I could do was sit still on the bed, my skin crawling and my face burning. As she droned on in her flat, nasal tones, I stared at my hands and tried to shut out her voice. The words Is that what you do with Father every night, when you think no one is watching? curled behind my teeth, but I swallowed them.
“And if he kisses you on— Are you listening, Nyx?”
I raised my head, hoping my face had stayed blank. “Yes, Aunt.”
“Of course you’re not listening.” She sighed, straightening her spectacles. “Just remember this: do whatever it takes to make him trust you. Or your mother will have died in vain.”
“Yes, Aunt.”
She kissed my cheek. “I know you’ll do well.” Then she stood. She paused in the doorway with a damp huff—she always fancied herself so beautifully poignant, but she sounded like an asthmatic cat.
“Thisbe would be so proud of you,” she murmured.
I stared straight ahead at the cabbage-roses-and-ribbons wallpaper. I could see every curlicue of the hideous pattern with perfect clarity, because Father had spent the money to give me a Hermetic lamp that shone bright and clear with captured daylight. He would use his arts to improve my room, but not to save me.
“I’m sure Mother’s proud of you too,” I said evenly. Aunt Telomache didn’t know that I knew about her and Father, so it was a safe barb. I hoped it hurt.
Another wet sigh. “Good night,” she said, and the door shut behind her.
I picked the Hermetic lamp off my bedside table. The bulb was made of frosted glass and shaped like a cabbage rose. I turned it over. On the underside of the brass base were etched the swirling lines of a Hermetic diagram. It was a simple one: just four interlocking sigils, those abstract designs whose angles and curves invoke the power of the four elements. With the lamp’s light directed down against my lap, I couldn’t make out all the lines-but I could feel the soft, pulsing buzz of the working’s four elemental hearts as they invoked earth, air, fire, and water in a careful harmony to catch sunlight all day and release it again when the lamp switch was turned on at night.
Everything in the physical world arises from the dance of the four elements, their mating and division. This principle is one of the first Hermetic teachings. So for a Hermetic working to have power, its diagram must invoke all four elements in four “hearts” of elemental energy. And for that power to be broken, all four hearts must be nullified.
I touched a fingertip to the base of the lamp and traced the looping lines of the Hermetic sigil to nullify the lamp’s connection to water. On such a small working, I didn’t need to actually inscribe the sigil with chalk or a stylus; the gesture was enough. The lamp flickered, its light turning red as the working’s Heart of Water broke, leaving it connected to only three elements.
As I started on the next sigil, I remembered the countless evenings I had spent practicing with Father, nullifying Hermetic workings such as this. He wrote one diagram after another on a wax tablet and set me to break them all. As I practiced, he read aloud to me; he said it was so that I could learn to trace the sigils despite distractions, but I knew he had another purpose. He only read me stories of heroes who died accomplishing their duty—as if my mind were a wax tablet and the stories were sigils, and by tracing them into me often enough, he could mold me into a creature of pure duty and vengeance.
His favorite was the story of Lucretia, who assassinated the tyrant who raped her, then killed herself to wipe out the shame. So she won undying fame as the woman of perfect virtue who freed Rome. Aunt Telomache loved that story too and had more than once hinted that it should comfort me, because Lucretia and I were so alike.