Gilded Ashes
Page 19

“Tomorrow,” I say. “And then we’ll all have tea together in the garden.”
Koré’s gaze snaps to me, but she only says, “Yes. Now go.”
With a snuffle and a sigh, Thea leaves. Koré stays on her feet, looking down at me.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” she asks.
“I’m going to have tea in the garden,” I say. “Stepmother won’t get angry at her for that.”
“Halfway kindness,” she says flatly, “is worse than none.”
I have known for years that Thea longed to be friends with me, that it vexed her I would only obey her orders. But now I realize I might have actually hurt her. Koré’s hatred of me might have more than one reason.
Of course, it does not matter. Not when it’s so dangerous for anyone to love me. Koré, at last, understands how much.
“I’m only going to pour her tea like an obedient sister,” I say. “And, I hope, dance at her wedding.”
“If she comes to love you any more,” says Koré, “she will miss you far too much.”
“She’ll have you,” I say, and so it is settled between us that I will be kind to Thea but not encourage her, and together Koré and I will scheme a way for them to escape, and when my stepsisters are gone, they will never look back.
Then I will be utterly alone, except for my mother and the demons. It is the happiest ending I could ever wish, and thinking of it no longer makes me happy.
But for now, Koré is sitting down beside me and huddling against my shoulder for warmth. For now, there is the promise of tea in the garden and sly half-truths understood. For now, I have sisters, just a little, and that is far too comforting as I fall asleep.
The screaming wakes us.
For the first few moments, I think it is a dream. Nobody has been hurt in so long. I have been so careful. Mother, I am so very, very happy—
Then I realize that Koré is on her feet and flinging herself against the door and this is real. Thea’s screams are real.
It’s too late. Nobody has ever healed from seeing a demon, and as I think this, the screams die away.
If Thea’s lucky, she is dead now.
But Koré is still trying to batter down the door, and I can’t sit still and watch her desperation. Together we pound at the door until the old, rusty lock gives way and we stumble out into the hall.
I lean against the wall, gasping for breath, but Koré immediately bolts up the steps. She will only find Thea dead—or worse, clawing her face open while her eyes stare in silent, ceaseless agony. I should warn her, but she probably knows, and anyway, nothing will hold her back.
I was happy, I think. I was always happy with Thea. How can Mother have turned on her?
Perhaps it was an accident. And it doesn’t matter, because there is only one reason there are demons in the house, and that is me. Stomach roiling, mouth dry, I stagger after Koré.
I catch up with her on the second floor. Stepmother’s voice echoes from her room in a high, querulous rant. It does not sound like she is talking to herself, and we push our way into her room together.
“Koré,” says Stepmother, “maybe you can talk sense into the silly girl.”
But neither of us can speak.
Because I am lying huddled at Stepmother’s feet.
In the hallway of the duke’s palace was a mirror, and I caught a candlelit glance of myself in it as I walked into the ball. It’s as if that glance fell out of the mirror at Stepmother’s feet. Those are my thin, chapped hands; those are the sharp lines of my collarbones. That is how the demons pinned up my hair, taming the wavy brown mess into loops and curls; that is the shimmering gold dress they wove around my body; that is the red ribbon of the mask they gave me to tie around my face.
The girl raises her head, and that is my pointed chin, those are my thin, pale lips. Blood oozes down the side of her face from the edge of the mask.
“Koré,” she whispers hoarsely in my voice. But the way she shapes the word with desperate longing—
It’s Thea.
“The mask is stuck and she won’t hold still while I tear it off,” Stepmother says. “It can’t hurt that much.”
Blood drips from Thea’s face to the floor. One drop. Two.
“You bargained with the Gentle Lord,” says Koré, in the same lifeless, cultured voice that she says, I do like the weather lately.
“Now she’s exactly the same as that chit was when Lord Anax fell in love with her,” says Stepmother. “He can’t fail to marry her once the mask is off, but she won’t stop screaming. I did it all for her and the honor of our house, but she’s so ungrateful.”
Thea hunches away from her. But she doesn’t run, because she knows that would only make the punishment worse, and my throat closes up with horror. We should have saved her before she learned to cringe like that.
Koré tilts her head as if wanting to examine the room from every angle. Then she seizes my arm, and before I can get my balance back to resist, shoves me into Stepmother’s wardrobe and slams the doors shut on me. The latch goes click.
“Koré!” I shout, but my voice is drowned out by hers, loud and terrible and lovely:
“O Prince of Air and Darkness. O Silver-Tongued Deceiver. O Gentle Lord of all Arcadia! Let me make you a bargain.”
And he is there. I cannot see him—the darkness is absolute around me, except for one thread of dim light where the doors meet—but I know he is there from the way the air goes still around me, the way it burns cold against my skin.
“No,” says Thea, “Koré, don’t—”
At the same time, Stepmother begins, “What are you doing, you—”
“Silence,” says the Gentle Lord.
And there is silence. I cannot move my tongue, nor my fingers, nor shift my head from where it leans against the door, because his power has wrapped all around me, binding me in place until Koré completes her bargain.
“So,” he says after an endless moment. “Koré Alastorides. Are you ready to be your mother’s daughter?”
His voice is not a terrifying roar, nor a chilling hiss. It is warm and salt and sweet, like butter and blood and honey, and laughter trembles at the edges of his words.
“Let’s play no games,” says Koré. Her voice sounds like a statue that’s stood a thousand years, worn and weary but unbowed. “I want you to take back what my mother did to Thea.”