Gilded Ashes
Page 16

Even in just a few days, I’ve forgotten how much he can see of me.
“Why did you want to apologize?” I ask quietly. Perhaps, if he’s feeling guilty, I can make him promise to marry Koré as reparation.
His smile vanishes. “For the last time we met. In the park. It was—inexcusable to seize you that way. When you had given me no permission and clearly had no desire, and needed to fear the power of my position besides.” His lips press together a moment and then he goes on, “I have been very selfish and very stupid all my life. But I promise you, I am starting to learn.”
“Oh,” I say. My head is spinning as I realize what that day must have looked like through his eyes, because despite how well he understands me, he has still never guessed my most important secret. Anax doesn’t notice my confusion; he plunges on, the words tumbling out as if they can’t be stopped.
“And once I realized how I’d wronged you, I realized how I’d wronged Lydia. All that time blaming her for my broken heart, because I didn’t want to admit that I had been so blindly selfish, I could kiss a girl without realizing that she loathed it. So I wrote to her yesterday. I told her the truth and I told her I was sorry. I told her that I hoped someday to earn her friendship again, but that she didn’t owe it to me.” He draws a breath. “I would like to have your friendship, too. Someday. If you will let me earn it back.”
And I know why I came here; I know what I must do. I must win him for Koré and leave him for his own safety. But he is looking so desolate and brave at once, I can’t stop myself.
“You do,” I say. “You have always had my friendship.”
“Thank you,” he says, his voice soft and unfathomably grateful, and I can’t stand it. I can’t stand that he is grateful to receive so little from me, and the words flow out of me without any trying, the same way my feet are dancing out the pattern of the music.
“You were very rude,” I say, “but I didn’t hate it when you kissed me. I didn’t hate it at all. I—” And then finally I manage to close my traitor mouth, but it’s too late. He’s looking at me with dawning wonder and delight, and he can see me. He knows.
“Maia,” he asks, “why did you come here tonight?”
I know what I should say. What I should do. But his fingers are wrapped about mine, his hand is on my waist, and the glittering music is swirling us around and around the room.
“I wanted to know,” I say, and my voice feels like it’s coming from miles away and the depths of my bones at once, “if you really loved me. The way you said when you asked me to marry you.”
“Then?” His mouth crooks. “No. Not really.”
“Oh?” I say.
“I didn’t love you,” he says. “At least, I didn’t know it. I thought you were—lovely, and honest, and the only wife I could possibly respect. But you were right, I didn’t love you. I just thought you were an escape. And then I lost you. These past four days, when I thought you gone forever? Every book I read, I wondered what you’d think of it. Every idea I had, I wanted to ask your opinion. Every breath I took, I listened for your breathing beside me. Then I knew what you meant to me, and what you could have been to me. And then I fell in love with you.”
He stops dancing and clasps both my hands.
“So yes. I love you, Maia, daughter of I care not whom. And I will say so as often as you like, to anyone you please.”
I can’t breathe. Those words are all I wanted in the world, but I can’t hear them. Not when I am my mother’s daughter.
He will die if he loves me.
He will die if he loves me.
He will die, or else he will live beside me as a slave to my mother’s ghost, and I will bear him children who are slaves as well, and I will not do that to him. I will die first.
I will do any other evil thing first.
“Will you,” I say, “will you kiss me?”
His eyes widen. He knows that kissing me here in public is as good as declaring me his bride—that if he does not marry me after, the world will think me wanton and him a cad.
Then he leans down and cups my face in his hands and there’s nothing, nothing in the world but the warmth of his lips.
And the depths of my own betrayal.
I can’t stand it for long. I break the kiss. “Promise that you’ll marry me,” I say raggedly. “Promise you’ll marry the girl with this mask, no matter who she is in the morning.”
“I swear it,” he says. “I swear by Zeus and Hera, I don’t care who you are. I’ll have you to wife or I’ll have none.”
I pull out of his arms. “Come to the Alastorides house tomorrow. Ask for their daughter. The one who wore the mask.”
He catches my wrist. “I thought you were a servant?”
“It’s a long story,” I say.
The simple, trusting grip of his fingers burns me with shame. I can’t meet his eyes. “I’ll explain later,” I lie, and then I run.
When I get home, Koré is sitting up in bed, cheek leaned against the wall, candlelight glinting from her half-closed eyes.
I kneel beside her. As she straightens, drawing her face back into order, I slip off my golden mask.
“He promised,” I say, “that he will come to this house tomorrow and marry the girl who has this mask.”
She takes it from me. Her mouth clenches a moment, and then she asks, “Are you sure?” in the tired, wary voice of someone who has waited too long to trust in hope.
“He promised,” I say.
She touches my cheek, as if to wipe away a tear, but there are no tears. I know there are no tears, because nobody is dying. Because I am still, even with my heart breaking, strong enough to smile.
“Good night,” I say, and leave her to go tell my mother what a lovely evening she gave me and how perfectly, perfectly happy I am.
Breakfast is a grim meal. Koré is better but still coughing, while Thea can only stare at her plate in exhaustion. Stepmother has forgotten her anger at Koré, but only because she’s too busy being furious at the slatternly chit who danced with the duke’s son and snared him with her scandalous misbehavior.
For once, her anger doesn’t frighten me. I don’t feel afraid at all, because I know exactly what will happen: Anax will come to our door, smiling and impatient, and I will betray him completely. I know this, and all I feel is a cold, sick horror slowly rising in my lungs.